They’d only been walking their mounts, so Cord wasn’t all that far ahead. He turned in his saddle and looked from Parker and Dale to his brother.
“Son of a bitch! I knew I should have picked thirty to thirty-five days!”
“Ha! Chase is gonna be pissed,” Alan said. “He had thirty-six to forty!”
“Did y’all bet on how long it would take us to decide to stay?” Parker asked.
“That y’all sounded pretty damn good,” Duncan said. “Of course, none of us are born Texans. And to answer your question, yes, we all did.”
Laughter rolled between them.
“So who bet we wouldn’t decide to stay?” Dale asked.
“No one.” The others had waited for them to catch up. Cord’s two words didn’t surprise Parker, but they did please him.
“We all knew that if you gave it a chance, this place would grow on you.”
“It’s not the place,” Parker said. “It’s the people.”
“Yeah.” Jackson sighed. “It is the people.”
They were within sight of the barn when Cord’s cell phone went off. He answered it immediately. Then his grin spread. “We’ll be there shortly, cousin. Thanks for letting us know.”
He tucked his phone into his pocket. “New plan. That was Chase letting us know that the titans just took Maggie to the clinic. It’s baby time.”
“Hot damn!” Alan grinned. “Can we stable our horses here and ride in with y’all?”
“Yup. Let’s get these animals taken care of first, and we can be on our way.”
“Will they let us in at the clinic? All of us?” Dale asked.
His brother had beat him to it. Parker figured it had been a reasonable question. After all, he’d seen the clinic, and while he had no doubt it was well equipped and served the needs of the community, it wasn’t very big.
“This is Lusty,” Cord said. “The place where families come first, which is likely one of the reasons you two have decided to stay. So, what do you think?”
Chapter Fifteen
Maggie, Rick, Trevor, and Kevin welcomed their daughter at four fifteen in the afternoon. Her own full-bodied wail announcing her arrival was greeted by the cheers of the dozens of people—Benedicts, Kendalls, and Jessops chief among them—crammed into the waiting room at the Lusty Clinic.
And because Jenny was taking a break and talking to the guys via FaceTime on her cell phone, she got to hear that wail and those cheers, too.
“Hang on, baby, I’ll turn my phone around so you can see this. We’re both wowed by the crowd.”
Laci came up to her and looked over her shoulder. “Is Maggie’s baby here?”
“Yes, ma’am. This is breaking news from the Lusty Clinic, via Dale.”
She and the guys had been chatting on FaceTime, and Dale’s timing proved to be excellent. He’d said he was going to show her the crowd and instead caught the moment when the door to room one opened and Jillian Jessop stepped out to face the assembled family.
“On behalf of the parents, I’m pleased to announce the birth of Katherine Abigail Benedict. She weighs eight pounds, three ounces, and is twenty inches long. Mom and baby are doing great. The jury’s still out on the dads.”
Laughter rippled through the room, along with more cheers and applause.
Dale turned the phone back around. “Oh hey, Laci! I have a further update. Along with the titans, I believe Aunt Abigail and Grandma Kate are in the room, too.”
“Do you think you’ll get the chance to take a picture?”
“We’ll do our best, sweetheart. Or work day is done, so we’re going to be heading over there when we’re finished here. We can show you any pictures we get then.”
“Good job, guys!” Laci beamed. “I’m going to go tell the rest of the staff.”
Laci left Jenny to her phone call. “Thanks for calling and letting me be a part of the excitement.”
“You’re welcome. We’ll see you soon.”
Jenny closed her phone and slipped it back into her pocket. Since that “war council” a bit more than a week ago, Jenny had been keeping her cell phone with her at work, set on vibrate. She wasn’t used to doing that, but Adam had asked her to be available—until the situation of persons unknown looking for her was resolved.
Neither Laci nor Angela, who’d returned from her honeymoon, had a problem with that.
Stepping into the kitchen to grab her apron, she grinned in response to all the smiles she saw. Though she hadn’t thought of it before in just these terms, they were a family. Angela, Laci, Bailey, and herself, even Patrick and Darla, his sous-chef, and JJ, the other chef, were members of this clan—a clan that automatically included their life partners and their extended families.
Today, their number increased by one.
Jenny was soon lost in the rhythm of the work. At five, she waved as Laci’s guest from the other day, Nancy Drew, arrived for an appointment with Angela. She stood quietly to the side, but her gaze, Jenny saw, tracked everywhere. There was an attentiveness to her, something in the way she stood that made Jenny believe the woman not only saw everything but was ready for anything.
Then Nancy looked at her and met her gaze. Jenny mouthed the words “good luck,” and Nancy’s smile held warmth. She knew from working at the restaurant out by the interstate that sometimes there was fierce competition between wait staff. That was one of the reasons she left there once Angela put her on full time.
This place was a family in the best sense of that word. They helped each other, and in fact, she’d never noticed a moment when there’d been any competition between anyone.
Angela met Nancy at the waiting area and led her off to her office. Jenny really hoped she got the job.
Time flew, and though she had her back to the door, she knew when her guys arrived. She could feel them, as if their spirits connected to hers, despite the crowds separating them.
“Hey, Jenny,” Laci got right
