“I was.”
“And you looked out the window and saw the fugitive, Deke Walters, across the street, hunkered down in this yellow Toyota, right here?”
“That is correct. I looked out, he popped his head up, and I recognized him immediately.”
“And then you…got mad?”
“Well.” Ginny swallowed, because she realized she wanted to giggle, and she knew Adam really wouldn’t appreciate that. “Now that I think on it, Sheriff, I do believe I was perhaps a little bit beyond ‘mad.’”
“I see.” Adam rocked back on his heels, and he folded his arms across his chest. “And then what happened?”
Ginny opened her mouth to answer and then closed it again. The truth was, now that it was over, she wasn’t completely certain what
had
exactly happened next.
“Why, then she just flew out the door of the restaurant, like an avenging angel sent by God Himself!” Anna Jessop, curator of the Lusty Historical Society Museum, stepped forward, her head nodding.
Ginny felt another urge to laugh. Anna Jessop always put Ginny in mind of Mrs. Santa Claus. She was so pretty and plump and looked like a harmless little elf.
The sharp mind and sharper wit, which were the woman’s greatest qualities, were certainly well disguised behind her sweet and benign appearance.
At the moment, Anna Jessop’s round face beamed with pride. “Why, I swear to you, Adam, I got gooseflesh watching the way she just marched across the street and pulled that hooligan right out of his car. As a matter of fact, I could have sworn I heard a choir of angels singing!”
Adam looked at his Aunt Anna, then back at Ginny. He opened his mouth, shut it, seemed to reconsider, and then met her gaze.
This time, Ginny could have sworn that a couple of the men—she thought maybe Colt and Ryder—snickered.
“You came out of the restaurant, approached the fugitive,
all alone and unarmed
, and pulled him from his car?”
Ginny felt her face begin to color. She looked from the restaurant, to the car, and then she saw Deke, head hanging low, sitting in the back of Matt’s cruiser.
She met Adam’s gaze again. “Well, I just got so mad!” She shrugged because in the end, it really was as simple as that.
For a long moment, no one said a word, and Ginny couldn’t recall a time when she’d ever experienced so much quiet amongst such a large crowd of normally boisterous people.
Jake shook his head and muttered what sounded like “holy shit.” Adam Kendall wasn’t nearly as reserved as his brother. He exploded. “Jesus Christ, woman, are you out of your
mind
? Do you have any idea how much danger you were in? Honest to God, I ought to turn you over my knee and paddle your ass but good. What if that bastard had been armed? Did you even think of that? What if he’d had a gun? He could have pulled out that gun and shot you dead! Then where would Jake and I be?”
Ginny folded her arms in front of her chest. She felt like laughing, and
not
as a reaction to what she realized must be an adrenaline crash, and
not
because she didn’t take Adam’s fears seriously.
She felt like laughing because Adam Kendall was yelling and clearly furious—
no more kid gloves, thank you very much
—and she wasn’t even a little afraid of him.
He might just turn her over his knee, and he did have cause, although she would never say so aloud. But she wasn’t even a little bit afraid that he would, or that he’d hurt her if he did.
Come to think of it, a spanking might not be such a bad thing if the whispers she’d heard from some of the other women could be trusted.
The sound of a throat being cleared drew her attention to the semicircle of women behind her.
Samantha Kendall had made the sound, and Ginny gaped when that good woman raised her right hand to show what she held there.
It was the prettiest little handgun Ginny had ever seen.
“That scum would
never
have had a chance to shoot our Ginny, Adam. Trust me on this.”
Adam seemed to deflate from his temper just a little. He whipped off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. “Darn it, Mother…”
“You’re darned right he wouldn’t have.” Kate Benedict nodded in agreement, her own weapon gleaming bright silver in her tiny, well-manicured hand.
As Ginny watched, almost every woman who’d come in to the restaurant—was it just a half hour before?—revealed that she, too, had been armed.
Ginny had had the best backup in the world, and she’d never even realized it.
“Maybe we ought to be grateful that Susie at least
had
a fucking shovel,” Ryder said to Colt.
“Yep. Right now, I’m thinking that very thing myself,” Colt said.
Ginny had to fight her grin. She’d heard how Susan Benedict had chased after a villain brandishing nothing more than a garden shovel.
Adam appeared to be fighting his grin, too. He looked over his shoulder at his new cousins. “You’re not helping,” he said. Then he turned back to Ginny.
She met his gaze, and then Jake’s. “Y’all have a right to be angry with me. It was a dangerous thing that I did.” She looked over her shoulder and took a minute to meet the gazes of the women of Lusty, Texas.
Pride and love shone from them, and she knew, in that moment, that she’d really left the past behind for good.
She turned back to face her men. “It was a dangerous thing I did,” she repeated, “but to protect the people I love, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
“
That’s
an apology?” Jake asked.
“No, darling. That’s a promise.” Then because the two men she loved with all her heart looked as if they didn’t know how to, she stepped forward and into their arms.
They gathered her in, held her close, and it didn’t matter that she knew they could feel her shaking. Or maybe, and more likely, they were all three of them shaking.
“I’ll take care of the prisoner, Sheriff,” Matt said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “You just take care of your woman.”
“I would if I knew what to do about her,” Adam said.
Ginny heard the laughter in his voice, and couldn’t fault him for it.
“Son, I do believe a nice Glock 9 millimeter would make a fine wedding gift for your bride,” Preston Kendall said.
“And lessons, too,” Taylor said. “But maybe get Jordan to give them to her.”
“Good idea,” Charles said, “since he is a better shot than you are.”
Adam looked at Jake. “They seem to be pushing it just a little, don’t you think?”
Jake shrugged. “Maybe. But now is probably as good a time as any.”
Ginny looked from one to the other of them, not really certain what they were talking about—even as hope began to grow in her heart.
“You’re right,” Adam said. “It is.” He looked over at Jake once more, and nodded.
Ginny’s heart caught when they each knelt before her on one knee. They each took one of her hands.
“Ginny Rose, I love you with all my heart.” Adam’s voice softened, and Ginny had to swallow the lump in her throat. “I love Benny as if he were my own son. I promise to love you, and cherish you for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?”
Before she could even take a breath, Jake said, “Ginny Rose, you’re the perfect woman for me, and I love you with everything I am. You and Benny are the center of my world. Will you marry me?”
Their faces blurred because her eyes filled with tears, and how could they not? Wasn’t a woman entitled to cry a little when every dream she’d never even dared to dream came true?
“Yes. Oh, yes, I want more than anything to marry you. I love you both so very much. Yes. Yes, yes, yes!”
As the people of Lusty cheered, Adam sprung up, wrapped his arms around her, twirled her around and kissed her, his lips hot and wet and carnal. She sank into his kiss, loving it, loving him.
Then Jake held her, and his mouth took hers, his passion just as deep, his taste as necessary to her as Adam’s.
Jake eased his lips from hers and set her gently on the ground.
“Let’s go home. I want you both. I need you both.”
“Yeah.” Adam stroked her hair, then brought her hand to his lips. “We need you, too. We might even let you talk us out of that spanking.”
Ginny felt her grin widen. She leaned forward, just a bit, just enough to keep her words private.
“Maybe I won’t even try.”
Chapter 20
“You said yes.” Adam cupped Ginny’s face, his gaze locked on hers as his thumbs caressed her cheeks.
He thought the sound of the door closing behind them still echoed in the hallway. Jake moved in behind her, and Adam had one moment to relish that they had Ginny Rose, soon to be Kendall,
exactly
where they liked her best—between them.
“Of course I said yes.” Ginny went up on her toes and placed her lips on his. Then she eased back flat on her feet, and leaned against Jake.
“I love you both so very much, and have for some time. But until today, I didn’t really feel worthy of you.”
“
Ginny
.” Adam saw the clarity in her eyes, and he understood that had been one thing missing, almost from the beginning, in their Ginny.
“Honey, we’re the ones who don’t deserve
you
.” Jake caressed her arms and met Adam’s gaze.
How could they not have understood the depths of her self-doubts?
“You’re both so sweet.”
“No, we’re not, not really.” Adam caressed her cheek. He needed to give her words, words that would let her know that she wasn’t the only one who had regrets about the past. Words that would tell her, as much as did their actions, that they were more than equals.
“We love you and have for quite a while, now. Kendall men tend to fall in love only once, and very quickly. I didn’t know it would be you.” He reached for her hands, and then brought them to his lips.
“For a lot of my life, I tended to see things as either black or white. You changed that. You changed
me
.”
Adam read such tenderness in Ginny’s gaze, that he knew in that instant, he could say anything, tell her everything, and it would be all right. God, hadn’t she laid herself bare for him, even before he loved her? How could he do less?
“That first time, when I entered The Triple K Diner, and I saw you, I was pretty certain I had it all figured out—I’d had
you
all figured out. I’d come there, ahead of Matt and Kelsey, with my mind already made up. And then I listened to you, and I realized…nothing was really what I thought it was. Black and white simply didn’t work in that situation.”
Ginny reached out and caressed his face, and he read understanding in her eyes.
“And then I let you interview me”—she said the words softly—“back at the farm. The next day. I knew you were angry, and I figured you were angry with me, for leaving Benny. I didn’t blame you for that. I was pretty angry with myself.”
“No, sweet baby. When you said that you’d let me take those pictures, file the affidavit—I wanted to kill Walters when I saw what he’d done to you. That morning, I was angry with him, but more with myself for being so fucking judgmental.”
Ginny reached up and stroked his face again. “Adam, no.”
“Ginny, yes.” He looked up at Jake, who stayed silent, letting him have his say. He sent his brother a look of gratitude, then focused on their woman once more.
“We grew up, Jake and I, in a robust family, with aunts and uncles and cousins every-fucking-where. Not a one of us has any inkling what it would be like to be alone in the world. There’s always been family here, ready to catch us, ready to watch our backs.”
Ginny gave him the sweetest grin he’d ever seen. “I had a taste of that today. Somehow, your mother and the others knew something could be happening, even when I didn’t. They obviously came prepared, and I didn’t even have a clue about it until it was all over.”
“Something you’ll have to get used to, I guess,” Jake said. He set his hands on her shoulders, then bent over and kissed her hair. “You’ll have family, and lots of it, from now on.”
“I’m grateful for that, more than I can say.” Ginny turned, and while she was still between them, Adam figured she did so in order to be able to look at them both at the same time. “Mostly, though, I’m grateful for the two of you.
You’re
my family. Well, you and Benny. And maybe, more children someday. If you want them.”