He and his brother collected their luggage from the sky cap and muscled the bags into the trunk of the car. Then James climbed into the back seat with Pamela while Adam took the front with Caleb. He’d more or less had their wife to himself since they’d arrived at the airport in Baltimore that morning. It was only right to give James some time with her.
He turned and looked at them both, smiling when he saw the way they’d laced their fingers together. “I called Mother to let her know we’d landed safely. She’s excited to meet you, sweetheart. We’re going there for supper tonight. I hope you don’t mind I accepted the invitation?”
“Of course, I don’t mind. I’m looking forward to meeting your family. Is there a grocery store in your town?”
“There is, yes. It’s not like some of the bigger supermarkets they have in Maryland. But there is a larger grocery less than an hour away, in Gatesville. I thought we could visit the store in town tomorrow, if you’d like. And if you need anything that’s not there, well, we can head on into Gatesville.”
“That sounds like a plan. We’ll need to stock up, and I enjoy cooking.”
Adam met James’s gaze. He didn’t have to lay things out for his brother. He’d been very well aware they’d been unable to reach their mother that morning.
Caleb put the car into gear, and Adam faced the front and prayed that everything over the next several hours would go well. He didn’t want Pamela to regret that she’d said yes to a future with them.
Chapter Four
One of the things that Pamela had recalled from her school days was the assertion by one of her teachers that the farther south one traveled in the U.S. in the spring time, the further along toward full bloom the trees and flowers would have come.
The trees had buds and some leaves when she’d left Baltimore. Here, the trees were in full leaf, and the fields were dotted with pretty flowers of a type she’d never seen.
“Those are bluebells,” James said. He leaned in closer to her and pointed out the side window to a veritable carpet of blue. “You’ll also see fields that sport orange and yellow blooms. There’s one closer to home. Those are called Indian paintbrush.” He nodded to the field. “Both of those wildflowers bloom in the spring, from March through April. Actually, I think they’ll be reaching their peak in another week or so.”
“They’re beautiful! The trees are different here, too.” She was familiar with the foliage of the land of her youth. She wouldn’t even think of Baltimore as home from here on out. She was now in Texas, a wife, about to settle down in the hometown of her husbands.
She’d start out as she meant to go. Texas, in general, and Lusty, in particular, was home to her now.
“Because we have such hot weather, the trees don’t tend to grow as tall—at least, that’s what I’ve always believed. I’ve heard my Aunt Madison talking about having to learn what the soil would adopt and nurture and what it wouldn’t.”
“She’s not from Texas?”
“No, she’s from Ireland.”
“You’ll find, sweetheart, there are a lot of people living in Lusty now who weren’t born there.” Adam turned slightly in his seat and smiled at her.
“I’m looking forward to meeting everyone.”
“There are quite a few folks living in and around Lusty now. Have these cousins of mine told you the history of our families?”
“There’s a history?”
“Oh, indeed there is.” Caleb sent Adam a scowl. “One that most of us are very proud of.”
“If you mean to imply, cousin, that we’re not proud of our family history, perhaps we should stop off somewhere and discuss the matter in greater detail?”
Pamela giggled. “My mother used to have a hard and fast rule that if there were more than two males in a vehicle with her, she’d have to have the window open. Inevitably, she claimed, someone’s brain wouldn’t be getting enough oxygen.”
Caleb grinned. “That sounds like something my mother would have said.” He sounded downright pleased with that fact, too.
“Sweetheart, Caleb is right about one thing. We really should tell you the story of how Lusty, Texas, was settled. It all started with a couple of gunslingers named Benedict.”
“Gunslingers of the righteous kind,” Caleb immediately put in. “They didn’t commit crimes but often helped their closest friend, who was with the Waco division of the Texas Rangers—the first of our family to be a member of that illustrious law enforcement agency.”
“So you’re a law man, just like your forefather’s friend?”
“I claim Adam Kendall as a great-grandfather, too,” Caleb said. “As do your husbands.”
“So…gunslingers?”
“Indeed. And as gunslingers, Adam Kendall told them about an opportunity to collect a new bride and bring her home to her husband who had a ranch not too far outside Waco. Along the way, they discovered the bridegroom was a man whose heart was as black as sin…”
All three of the men took turns narrating. She learned of a young woman named Sarah Carmichael, sold into marriage by her father as much to please his own new, younger and greedy bride as any desire to see his daughter settled—happily or otherwise.
She heard of how two very famous lawmen—Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp—played a pivotal role in seeing to it the killers sent after Sarah by her new husband were foiled.
She learned of an ahead-of-her-times young woman, Amanda Dupree, who came to visit her cousin Sarah and fell in love with two lawmen—Adam Kendall and his lover Warren Jessop, a lawyer.
She heard of Amanda’s mother, a demimonde, being escorted from Virginia to the newly founded Lusty by a friend of Warren’s and Amanda’s, Terrence Parker, Terrence’s lover Jeremy Jones, and her mother’s friend and companion Phyllis MacNab—and how those three escorts stayed and made a family of their own.
“So now, you see,
