Love Under Two Cowboys (10 page)

Brian threaded the fingers of his left hand with her right.

Because she could, she rested her head on Chase’s shoulder.
This is good. This is better, if I don’t see them. Then I can just pretend I’m talking to myself.

“Have you ever had to ride out a bad storm?” The weather often could be a topic of conversation when nothing else came to mind, but Carrie thought this once, their choice was an omen.

She hadn’t known how to start, but now she did.

“We’re in Texas?” Chase’s deep voice rumbled beneath her head and settled over her skin like a warm blanket. “We’ve all had to head for the bathroom or inside a closet from time to time.”

“That happened to us, too, a couple times that I remember,” Carrie said. “I can recall thinking how silly it was that we would all huddle in the basement under the stairs. I wasn’t afraid, because my parents didn’t act afraid. They made it a game, and I never realized, then, how dangerous—how deadly—weather could be.”

“Did something happen to make you aware of that fact, Carrie?”

He called her Carrie, not darlin’. She guessed they’d heard the quiver in her voice.

“When I was eleven, and my sister Chloe was seventeen, mom and dad got invited to a wedding. They hadn’t been away together for the longest time.” She took a moment to remember the good, as she always did when she thought of her parents. It wasn’t doing them justice to only recall the end. They’d given her and her sister
so
much in the short time they’d had them.

“They were so much in love. Chloe remembers better than I do. She says when they would see each other they’d just light up.”

“That’s a special kind of love.” Chase stroked the back of her hand with his thumb.

“Yes, it is. It’s what Chloe wants. I guess it’s what I want, too.” Carrie took a deep breath. “Anyway the wedding was to be on a Friday night, so mom and dad left Tuesday afternoon and flew into Tennessee. They called us Wednesday morning, just before we left for school. I guess they were nervous leaving us alone, even though Chloe was seventeen. She’d babysat once overnight, but never for several days. They were worried about leaving us, and even second-guessed if they should go, but Chloe and I gave them our solemn promise that we would be good.”

She had to stop, because the power of remembering those two days always overwhelmed her.

“That would have been in 1998? April?” Brian’s question told her he’d guessed what came next, so she just nodded.

“They didn’t call Wednesday night, but we just figured they were having a good time. We were a bit concerned when they didn’t call Thursday morning, either.” She swallowed hard. “We went to school Thursday, and I guess I forgot to be worried. But that night, at home, Chloe was really upset and worried. She’d heard about the tornado outbreak, but didn’t want to tell me.

“She told me, years later, that when they found mom and dad, they were in each other’s arms. They’d taken shelter at a friend’s but the house had collapsed on them all. Mom and dad were the only ones killed.”

“Sugar, I’m so sorry.” Chase hugged her tight, and Brian kissed her hand.

“So Chloe raised you?”

“You’d think, but no. She wasn’t yet old enough, you see. We both got put into separate foster homes. The family I got placed with moved about a month later. Chloe had been in touch with our parents’ lawyer, but he didn’t seem very interested in helping us out any.

“They didn’t even let us say good-bye to each other before they moved me. I was having some emotional issues—I guess I’d wake up at night screaming.”

“Who wouldn’t? Darlin’, you were just a baby, really.”

Carrie couldn’t prevent the quick grin. Trust a man to think a eleven-year-old girl was a baby. But really, hadn’t she been just exactly that? She’d grown up sheltered and naïve, raised by parents in an openly loving home, parents who would never have harmed her in any way.

“Well, my new family didn’t care for the idea that the pretty little girl they had gotten might have
problems
, so I got sent to another foster home, and then another and another.

“Chloe tried to find me, but she was trying, too, to go to school and work part-time. She needed to be ready, she said, so that she could assume responsibility for me.”

“Didn’t your parents leave an estate for the two of you?”

Carrie shrugged. “We didn’t know it at the time, but my dad’s business partner managed to grab hold of the whole thing. An investigation was launched, but they never did find the man.”

“No wonder you keep to yourself, sugar. Can’t say that I blame you one bit.”

She could end it here, this telling of her past. She could end it and they would consider it enough.

But she couldn’t. She needed to be honest—and lying by omission was still lying.

“That’s not the reason.”

She felt the tension in both men. She couldn’t quit now. She’d never get here again if she did.

“The last family I moved in with—when I was thirteen—was the Lockwood family. They had a nice house in a nice neighborhood in Abilene. The father was a teacher, the mother a nurse. They had a son, George, who was sixteen, and, to all appearances a bit of a nerd.”

“Children’s services moved you into a home with a teenaged boy?”

Carrie shrugged. “Every other prospective family had shied away from taking me. I guess I was a little difficult—I don’t remember all that well, but I do recall being very angry all the time.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Brian’s epithet eased her emotions, some. No question these two cowboys were on her side, looking at things from her perspective.

God, she wished she’d met them earlier.

“I stopped being a problem when I lived with the Lockwoods. I thought, if I behaved, then George wouldn’t hurt me anymore.”

“What did he do to you, sugar?”

“The first night I had my nightmare, I awoke to find him in the bed with me, telling me to hush. At first I thought, ‘How nice, he’s not screaming at me to shut up.’ And then he raped me.

“He told me that if I told anyone, he’d kill me. And then he would find my sister and kill her, too. He told me that I was his gift from God, and that it was my duty to let him do whatever he wanted to do to me.”

“Dear God, sweetheart.” Chase scooped her up and held her on his lap. She saw the pain in his face. Looking at Brian, who’d moved closer, scooped her legs onto his lap, and stroked her, she could see his expression mirrored his brother’s.

“How did you get out of there, darlin’?”

“When I was fifteen, my sister found me. She contacted me at school. And because by then, neither of us trusted ‘the system,’ we made a quick plan. The next day when I left for school, I crammed as many clothes as I could into my backpack and I left—not for school, but to join my sister, who had a car, and a job, in Dallas.”

“Did you report that son of a bitch to the cops?” Chase asked.

Carrie could feel him shaking, and knew that his anger was on her behalf. She sat up and looked him straight in the eye.

“It would have meant going back there, Chase, and putting myself under the thumb of the same caseworker who’d been assigned to me before. It would have meant possibly, my sister being charged with kidnapping. Mostly, it would have put me in that sick bastard’s sights again.” She blew out a breath. “I’m not proud of the fact that I was afraid to go back. Anyway, apparently, about two weeks after I left, George broke into the neighbor’s house one night, thinking the young girl who lived there was home alone. She wasn’t. Her parents were there.

“They woke up when she screamed, and they caught him, in the act of raping her. He was charged, and convicted, and sentenced to ten years. That was enough justice for me.”

She didn’t understand the quick look that passed between the brothers then. But a new worry had occurred to her as she’d done what they’d wanted—as she’d shared her soul with them. That worry mushroomed to mega-size proportions.

She was done keeping things back, and letting things stew and grow in ignorance and silence.

“Look, if you’ve changed your mind about me after all of that, I’ll understand.”

Chase reached forward and gently wiped the tears away that she hadn’t even noticed had begun to fall. How could a person cry and not know it?

Then he said, “We’ll give you a pass this time, because this has been a very difficult thing for you, giving us this gift of trust. But if you ever make such a suggestion again, you’ll go over my knee.”

“But I’m damaged—I’ve only been with one man, that was
my
choice, and it was kind of a bust.”

“Did you love him?” Brian looked as adamant as his brother.

She didn’t even have to think about it. “No.”

“There you go,” Chase said.

“I don’t know for certain that I love you, either.”

“Of course you don’t,” Chase said. “Not yet. But you’re attracted to us, and you like us. Most importantly, you trust us. That’s a pretty damn good start, don’t you think?”

Carrie frowned. She didn’t know if she would ever get to the point where she really understood these men. “It is a good start.”

“Besides, you’re forgetting the most important part, darlin’.” Brian brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.

“What am I forgetting?”

“We love you.” Chase’s words made her heart feel like it thudded in her chest.

“We love you,” Brian repeated. “And we’re not going anywhere.”

“I…” She had to swallow over the lump in her throat. They’d said the words simply, without fanfare, and Carrie knew in that instant they were telling the gospel truth. She knew she trembled, but trusted that was okay. “I don’t know what happens next.”

“What do you want to happen next?” Chase asked.

That was easy. Carrie knew exactly what she wanted. She’d never felt this free to ask for exactly what she wanted. “I want you to do what you do every time I’m here. I want you to hold me and kiss me. Only this time, don’t stop.”

“Are you sure?” Brian’s voice quivered and she understood she wasn’t the only person feeling the power of passion. “Be sure, darlin’, because once we cross that line, there’s no going back. Not for any of us.”

Carrie felt an amazing calm, something she’d never experienced before as she looked from one brother to the other. She kissed Chase, the same kind of kiss he’d given her earlier. Then she reached for Brian, and when he leaned forward, she kissed him, too.

“I’m very sure. Please, take me to bed.”

* * * *

Julián didn’t know if he hadn’t made the biggest mistake of his life, coming here to Lusty. He’d felt itchy and edgy the moment he’d stepped out of his truck at the Benedicts’ ranch. Of course, the reason for that feeling and his doubts was right there in his sights. Here he was, about to visit a man he hadn’t seen in five years, a man he never should have lost touch with but had because of his own arrogance and unbending, false morality.

You’ve done a hell of a lot of shit that required a hell of a lot more nerve than knocking on that door up there.
He hadn’t lied when he’d laid his past out for the Benedicts. Five years ago when he’d suffered an angina attack at the ripe old age of thirty, he’d known he had to make some serious changes in his life, and lifestyle.

He’d spent all of his adult years up until then in denial. He’d denied his Hispanic heritage, he’d denied his Texas roots, and he’d denied his true heart. He’d been spending the last five years cleaning all the bullshit out of his life. He’d begun by turning his back on what his so-called friends, the movers and the shakers, had come to expect of him and set out to discover who he really was. He’d come to understand that he needed very badly to know the heart and mind and soul of Julián Alvarez.

At the beginning of this journey of self-discovery he’d set out upon, it hadn’t taken him long to understand who he’d become, and he didn’t like any of it. He’d been a greedy venture capitalist, pursuing the biggest and the best deal. He’d been a disaffected son, who rarely gave thought to his parents, and when he did, made the contact as limited and as sterile as possible.

And to one sibling, especially, he’d been a piss-poor brother.

He had come a long way in the last five years, but he had a ways left to go.

The next part of my journey is right over there at the end of that lane, behind the walls of that very nice-looking house.

He hadn’t called ahead, because he was afraid. Afraid he’d be told to fuck off—which he deserved. If he was told that now in person, he’d take it as his just deserts.

But he’d had to come here
tonight
. He didn’t want his youngest brother to hear about him being in the area through gossip—or through his brother’s new Benedict cousins.

He pulled his Ford into the driveway behind an Audi, a Buick, and an ancient Crown Vic.

I don’t need to ask which vehicle is Peter’s. The Alvarez men are partial to Fords.
He was stalling and he knew it. He and Peter hadn’t parted on very friendly terms. They’d had a bit of a dustup, the two of them, and Julián wished he could say that his cause had been just. But he’d been pissed that his brother was becoming a cop, and
really
pissed to find out he was bisexual.