“Addison isn’t the only Benedict with a sick sense of humor,” Dale said. Of course, he was smiling, so he knew his cousins understood there was no offence intended.
“The family runs in it,” Chase said. “Montanan, Texan, hell, even New York, there’s no difference that I’ve ever seen.”
“And since there is no difference,” Lucas said, “we were wondering.”
“Wondering what?” Parker asked.
“If the two of you would like to stay here permanently and work with us.”
Dale looked at Parker. They both set their forks down. He gave his brother a slight nod. He always preferred it if Parker did the talking for the both of them.
“We were looking for work, but…we’re not sure we want to work with family ever again,” Parker said.
Dale didn’t think they’d really have to explain that to their cousins. But one thought entered his mind. If it’s hell working with family, how come they all seem to have a really tight relationship? Dale nearly chuckled. That wasn’t the first time in recent memory his good angel had spoken up. One of the benefits of leaving the family home.
“We know exactly how you feel,” Trace said. “That was us when we got here, too. So how about, after we finish up eating, you hear us out first?”
Parker nodded, and Dale turned to his cousins. “I guess it can’t hurt to listen.”
* * * *
Jenny considered herself a practical, level-headed woman with simple ambitions and simple tastes. She also had supposed that some day she might meet a man who attracted her. It hadn’t happened yet. She’d believed herself in love in college when she’d taken her first serious boyfriend and given him her virginity.
She’d been mistaken.
Jenny didn’t like to think that her disappointment with Jerry was the reason she’d left college with nothing more than a four-year college degree in business management.
She’d moved to Houston after graduation, had joined a large company, and considered, very seriously, climbing the corporate ladder. It didn’t take her long to figure out why they called it the rat race. So she left the big city and ended up in Waco, where her career ambitions were where her heart happened to be. She didn’t need huge dollars or an important, high-stress job. She just needed to make a living and feel as if she was doing something to put a smile on people’s faces.
Jenny was at a place in her life now where she supported herself with a job she liked, she had friends, and a nice apartment in a small town with a somewhat spicy name. Really, everything was going well. Great, even.
So why, then, did they have to walk into Angel’s Roadhouse, making her all twitterpated and everything? She had no answer to that self-posed question. She only knew they had, and she was.
Why them? Why now? Jenny had seen so many handsome, sexy, perfect men since she’d come to Lusty. She would have begun to wonder if there was maybe something in the food or the soil or the air or even the water that helped to grow ’em that way, except that a good number of those fine-looking specimens of manhood hadn’t even been born and raised in Texas! There were some from New York and some from Montana and even a couple who’d arrived not that long ago from Wyoming.
“Hey, girlfriend, you’re off shift now, right?” Ari Benedict’s voice preceded her appearance, as her short friend was in amongst all the tall Benedicts who’d just entered…with them.
“Yes, just now. I was just going to—” Jenny intended to tell her bff that she was on her way home.
“You were just going to come over and sit with us!”
Jenny had always thought Ari’s wide smile and sparkling eyes were two of her friend’s finest features. Until now. Now, they just looked like trouble. Trouble for Jenny.
“Red.”
Cord’s warning tone as he used his pet name for Ari put an extra sparkle in her friend’s eyes. Ari turned to him and batted her lashes. “Yes, dear?” Then she didn’t give him a moment to even reply. “Oh! Oh, I am so remiss! Of course, I need to make introductions.” She turned back to Jenny, and then she pulled them closer.
“Jenny, these are Cord and Jackson’s cousins from Montana. Meet Parker and Dale Benedict.
Jenny had avoided looking at them directly as soon as they’d entered the roadhouse and stolen all the oxygen from the room and sped up her heart. Now, however, she had no choice. She had to be well-mannered. Mentally bracing herself, she pasted a smile on her face and looked up, and up. Her gaze met Parker Benedict’s. He focused so singularly on her that she wondered if he could see down to her very soul, and her heart leapt when his very kissable lips slowly slid into a sexy, “c’me-here-baby” smile.
She reached out her hand, just wanting to be polite, and wondered why the act of his hand encapsulating hers caused her nipples to turn hard and her pussy to turn soft. Her girl parts never did that.
“I’m pleased to meet you, Jenny.”
“Um…hi.” She waited for him to release her hand, and when he finally did, she sought refuge by turning to his brother, and felt the bottom fall out of her world.
Dale’s reaction to her and her response to him was every bit as electric as what had just happened between her and Parker.
Dale took her hand and held it between both of his, all the while cradling her gaze in a magnetic caress. Parker pressed just slightly closer, and she felt as if she were cocooned between them. Heat seeped into her, and she could have sworn everything and everyone else disappeared from the planet, except for the three of them.
Jenny gasped and blinked. It took every bit of her will to come back to the real world.
“You were saying, Cord?” Ari’s tone sounded superior.
“Never mind.” Laughter bracketed those two words.
Jenny chose to pretend she hadn’t heard that quick exchange between her friends or seen their
