Douglas Vance knew what he had to do. He needed to see what he could do about becoming her only living heir again.
* * * *
“Is this a family party or something?” Jenny asked that as soon as Ari released her from her usual greeting—a big hug that always made her feel good. She’d often thought, since she’d met her, that Ari was exactly the way she’d always imagined a sister would be.
Jenny knew Ari felt the same way about her.
“No, it’s supper. You know we often have a lot of people here for supper.” Ari’s gamin grin always slayed Jenny and muted a multitude of questions.
Jenny knew Ari’s story and was amazed by the warm and loving woman her friend had become in spite of the horrible trauma she’d endured at such a young age.
Two of the things that bound them together had to do with childhood and birth. They had each been born as only children to their mothers. Ari had a stepbrother named Jeremy Bishop, but they hadn’t grown up together and had only become friends after Ari had moved to Lusty.
The second connection was tragedy. Jenny’s birth mother had been struck and killed crossing a street when Jenny had been an infant, only weeks old. The young woman had been pushing Jenny in a stroller at the time. According to her adoptive parents, it had been the hand of God that had spared her from the same fate.
Ari had been sexually abused by her stepfather, a man currently in prison, and betrayed by her own mother. She’d fled to live on the streets at the age when most girls are still playing with dolls.
“Hey, Tinker Bell, are you going to let Jenny come all the way inside the house?” Jackson’s question made them both laugh.
“Of course. We were just saying hi.”
Jenny stepped in and closed the door behind her. Then Ari slipped her arm through hers, and that was how they walked into the living room.
It certainly looked like a family gathering, but the only two people Jenny really noticed were Parker and Dale Benedict. Sitting in chairs with an empty chair between them on the right side of the love seat, the two men looked up and smiled. The small sofa held Jesse, Barry, Shar, and baby Patrick. Those two new Benedicts drew her gaze as if she was metal filings and they were magnets.
The Benedict men, every last one of them, were too sexy looking for their own good, and these two Montanans were no different. Parker’s light brown hair, fairly short, but not brutally so, looked soft enough to comb her fingers through. His face and those kissable lips—somehow just looking at them made her girl parts cheer. But it was his eyes that captivated her. His warm brown eyes beckoned, offering her a place to curl up and rest.
Dale was just as Benedict-yummy. His blond hair nearly brushed his shoulders, and his sweet almost-baby face made her fingers itch to cup it, to caress his cheeks and kiss those sweet, smiling lips. His brown eyes held a depth of humor, as if he was just waiting for the chance to share the fun, or a laugh.
Since she’d met Parker and Dale last night at the roadhouse, she hadn’t been able to get them off her mind. This morning, she’d cleaned her entire apartment, done her laundry, put on an exercise video, and called her folks.
That should have been enough to move those two just-met Benedicts off of her mental front burner, shoving them into the corner labeled “trivia.”
But, no, there they’d stayed, front and center, and right now it felt as if it had only been moments since they’d sent her those sly, how-about-it-baby smiles, and said good-night.
Belatedly she realized she hadn’t said hello to anyone, that she’d been standing and staring for what felt like forever. Oh, God, I hope I’m not drooling. She just barely resisted the urge to brush her chin with her fingers and find out.
Jenny pasted on a smile and met each person’s eyes in turn, nodding. Cord was there, of course, along with Addison and her husbands, Mike and Terry who sat on one of the sofas. Jackson settled himself down beside Cord on the other, leaving room for his wife between them, and Ari’s other in-laws were on that love seat.
Jenny heard a snicker and shot a narrow-eyed look at Shar. The woman appeared innocent, but that was probably a ruse. Being a psychologist and all, Shar could do innocent like nobody’s business.
“Grab a seat,” Ari said. “I’ll get you some tea.”
Grab a seat? There were only two seats available—one between Ari’s husbands and one between them.
Jenny felt all eyes on her, so she did the only thing she could do. Under the heading of “fake it ’til you make it,” she walked, nonchalant, across the room and sat down between Parker and Dale Benedict.
Addison, Mike, and Terry had nodded and said hello, as had Cord. It wasn’t until she’d sat between them, however, that she realized neither of the Montanans had said a word.
Parker, on her left, half turned toward her in his chair. “Hello, Jenny. It’s nice to see you again.”
Dale, on her other side, executed the same move. “Hey, Jenny. Good to see you.”
“Hi. Nice to see you both, too.” The only thing that wasn’t nice, at the moment, was the amount of heat she could feel in her cheeks.
Ari came back into the room, doing a poor job of hiding her amusement, and handed her a glass of tea.
“Supper’s going to be another twenty minutes, so we have time for an update.”
“Update?” Jenny had a pretty good idea what
