Love Under Two Jessops (11 page)

At twenty-one she hadn’t had any idea how to go about trying to get justice for her sister and herself. She’d contacted the police,
and
children’s services, but no one had been interested in helping her.

She was just a “nobody,” after all.

She met Jake’s gaze. “The money he stole from us will likely be all gone by now.”

“Likely,” Jake agreed. “And, the statute of limitations is passed. If we
do
find the man, he can’t even be charged for what he did.”

“So why bother?” Not that a part of her wouldn’t relish getting into “Uncle Ralph’s” face and maybe even bitch slapping the prick. Come to think of it, that action might be extremely cathartic.

Yes, by God, she’d like that a lot.

“The general consensus is because it’s the right thing to do.”

“General consensus?”

“Mmhmm. Kate had already asked me to look into the matter—you do know she’s the head of the Town Trust—and then I was approached by Carrie’s fiancés,
and
those two firemen.”

“Didn’t they know about the statute of limitations?”

“Of course. Their answer—unanimously, by the way—was that the money didn’t matter. Standing up for two young orphans, did.”

Chloe had never been really good at subtext. She always considered herself just a plainspoken person, who said what she meant and meant what she said.

She never played “head games,” and she’d bet that Jake didn’t either, though she imagined he certainly could play them, and well, if he wanted to.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because, although everyone means well, and we all only want to right a wrong,
not
telling you about it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do—not to me, and not to Adam, and not to Kate.”

She understood what he was saying. “Not telling me would be like what happened fifteen years ago, happening all over again, in a way.”

Jake gave her a slow, relieved smile. “Precisely. And while others don’t see it that way, and sure as hell don’t mean it that way, we worried that you might see it that way.”

What would she have thought if she’d found out about the men’s plans on her own? She’d
like
to think that she’d accept their actions in the spirit in which they’d been intended.

She’d like to—but the way she was feeling right now told her she might not be as mature or as highly evolved as she liked to believe herself to be.

Chloe had gone for her first horseback ride in years, right here in Lusty on Christmas Day. After sitting and listening to Kate Benedict tell the amazing story of her World War II courtship by and love for Gerald and Patrick Benedict, she’d imagined that pivotal moment when Kate had seized her destiny with her own hands.

She could actually see, in her mind’s eye, the scene of Kate riding out on Sarah Carmichael Benedict’s horse, Coco, to the family’s summer campsite to claim her two men.

She’d heard, since, that the moment had echoed a previous time, many years before, when another woman had made a bold move by a moonlit stream to claim herself a couple of gunslingers named Benedict.

As coffee and desserts had been passed around and so many of the family mingled by the Christmas tree in the great room of the Big House, Chloe had said—and she couldn’t even remember to whom—that she really missed riding.

The next day Kelsey Benedict had called and invited her out to the ranch, to join a Christmas Day trail ride—somewhat of a tradition with some of the Benedicts, Kendalls, and Jessops.

Of course she’d accepted, and it had felt as if years dropped away as she had ridden out with so many new friends.

When she’d returned to the barn, she’d been told by Steven, in no uncertain terms, that she was welcome to come and ride
any
time she wanted to do so.

She hadn’t done that often, but she had made sure she’d taken Steven up on his generous offer a couple of times, since.

Now she thought that there must have been something on her face, some outward sign of the pressure within when he’d suggested, just a few minutes ago, that she take Sugar this time.

She’d been told that this particular filly loved to run, and right then, riding fast with the wind whipping past her was exactly what Chloe needed.

She knew herself and her emotions and knew she was on the verge of doing something that, in all the romance books she read, she’d always believed was just plain
stupid
—stupid and unrealistic and unnecessary.

A part of her wanted to march right over to that fire hall and plant herself in those damn firemen’s faces and give them screaming hell.

How
dare
they presume to ask someone to dig into
her
past, into Carrie’s past! And for what? So they could perform some sort of ham-handed, hardheaded, idealized kind of “white knight” fucking dumbass
quest
?

Didn’t they stop to think for one fucking moment that the last thing she wanted to do was to go back in time to those days following the death of her parents?

They had no idea how devastating a loss she and her sister had suffered—the triple whammy of crap they’d gone through.

Orphaned, deserted, and torn apart—and beggared.
Make that a quadruple whammy of crap.

It didn’t matter, or even irk her, that Kate had already gotten this particular ball rolling. Emotionally, there were only two people in her target-sights, and only two people on whom her volcanic emotions had fixated.

And the question running through her was, didn’t those damn Jessops even
care
?

Chloe pulled back on the reins, bringing Sugar—a direct descendant of Sarah’s Coco—to a stop. Around her, the trees stood like silent sentinels, neither large nor overly lush, yet somehow straight and strong and looking as if they stood on guard.

In the romance books she loved to read, usually just after the hero and heroine made love for the first time, the newly intimate couple often had a huge fight about something totally inane and stupid, something certainly not worth risking a relationship over. Sometimes, if the “fight” seemed stupid enough, or contrived enough, Chloe would close the book and never go back to it.

Chloe thought that she might finally get it, and intellectually, at least, she didn’t know how she felt about that.

Well, hell…all those books I never finished. If I’d only known.

Chloe realized that, by accident or subconscious design, she’d reached the spot that Kate had spoken of on Christmas Eve, the area that in those days the Benedicts had used as their camping site.

Sometime in the nineties, she’d been told, the family decided to vary their spot every few years.
These
days, of course, they were all more careful than ever about their “carbon footprint,” and so it would be hard to pick out exactly where the family had camped last summer.

But this looked a lot like the spot Kate had described on Christmas Eve. Chloe dismounted, and found a low, fairly sturdy branch to tie Sugar’s reins to.

Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply. She could almost believe that rain was in the air, but figured that for wishful thinking. Central Texas was in the midst of a horrible drought right now. Already farmers were worried about the coming year’s plantings.

Chloe listened, and when she heard the light babbling, she followed the sound until she came to the stream.

Just as Kate described it, the water ran southward, although the water didn’t reach close enough to lap over all the rocks that lay strewn between the grassy bank and the deepest part of the narrow channel.

Another sign of the drought, most like
.
The stream’s certainly not as healthy as it was in the 1940s
.

Chloe spotted one rock that looked big enough to sit on, and she made her way over to the small boulder. A spot like this one would have appealed to her parents. Sometimes, when they all would go camping together, they’d head out to one of the state parks. She could remember a trip they took to Mustang Island once.

But sometimes Daddy preferred something more remote. If he’d had access to a piece of stream like this, Chloe knew he’d have chosen it, and made camping in the middle of nowhere a great adventure for them all.

What else would her daddy have done, if he could have?

“Well for one thing, he’d have gutted that son of a bitch, Baxter, if he’d’a had any idea the man would steal our inheritance.” She hadn’t meant to speak out loud, but hearing the words only made them seem truer. And if he’d found out about it
after
the fact? If someone had done something so unconscionable to her and Carrie, and he’d found out about it
years
later, what would her daddy have done?

Chloe knew the answer to that without even really having to think about it. He’d have gone after the villain, and wouldn’t have rested until that person had been brought to justice—or given a sound thrashing.

And how would he have felt, knowing the men who loved her baby sister, and the two who claimed she belonged to them, intended to hunt this bastard down now?

He’d have folded his arms across his chest, nodded his head once, and said, “Good. Now get ’er done!”

Well, hell, he
would
have done just that. Chloe sighed. Emotions were funny things, blinding a person to the logic of a situation. She supposed that one of the reasons she’d had such a strong emotional reaction as Jake had been filling her in on what was what had to do with her own guilt.

She knew that her parents would have expected her to do her best to take care of Carrie in their absence. She hadn’t been able to do that. She’d let them down, and Carrie had been the one, ultimately, to pay the price for her failure. And, oh God, what a
horrible
price her baby sister had paid!

Everything around Chloe went silent and still. It almost seemed as if the sun dimmed, just a little on this sunny, cloudless January afternoon. Even the birds hushed. Then she felt a kind of warmth fill her, and an old, familiar kind of comfort that she hadn’t known in more than fifteen years. As if her mother’s arms had just slipped around her.

She even thought, for just an instant, that she could smell the scent of Lily of the Valley, her mother’s favorite perfume.

Oh, baby! At seventeen, you weren’t much more than a child yourself, Chloe Diane. Your daddy and I never would have expected you to do more than you did. You went where the authorities sent you and began looking for Carrie before you’d even dealt with your own grieving. You applied yourself every day, getting good grades and working after school, so that you’d be ready to take charge when you found her.

You did find her, and you were ready and took charge, and no other young woman could have done more than that. We’re so very proud of you, muffin.

And then, in the next heartbeat, she was alone again. The sun shone down, and the birds sang, and Chloe wondered what the hell had just happened to her.

Inside of her, deep inside where there’d been a mass of ugly guilt for so long, she felt a strange and curious sensation. She felt…at peace.

The sun warmed the rock around her, and Chloe exhaled, stretching out her legs in front of her, leaning back on her hands behind her. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing until the tiny trembles had passed. When she opened her eyes again, it almost felt as if she was looking at the world with fresh eyes.

This was a pretty spot, with just enough trees, and the stream, to offer shade and refreshment on a hot summer’s day. She’d never been one for camping after—well,
after
. She hadn’t particularly been fond of it before, either, but she’d loved the time out in the country with just the four of them.

She’d loved fishing with her daddy, and hiking with her mom. She’d loved lying in the small tent with Carrie late at night when the stars and the lightning bugs came out. Mom and Dad would cuddle by the fire and just talk. Chloe couldn’t remember now any one thing that they’d talked about in particular. What she recalled more than anything was that sense that the world was safe, and everything was just
right
because they were all there, together.

Chloe heard the nickering of horses as they approached, but didn’t turn around. She didn’t have to, because she knew who’d just ridden up. She didn’t move. She simply waited.

It didn’t take the men long to find her, and to range themselves on either side of her. Grant sat down on her left, Andrew on her right.

She didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at them. Grant reached forward and brushed her cheek, catching a single tear on his finger.

“Did we do this to you, baby girl?”

“No. I was just sitting here, thinking about my momma and my daddy. Just missing them.”

“It would tear us up inside to make you cry, Chloe-doe.” Andrew’s words, soft and low, caressed her inner woman, a kind of emotional hug. “Thing is, sweetheart, we very likely
will
make you cry from time to time. We’re guys, and not always able to understand what you might need, or want from us.”