“No, hija. That is not the way to handle Jessop men. I understand the need you feel to be open and honest with them. But if you set that example now, they will never learn to ask rather than to assume they think they know how you feel.”
“You need to make them work for your forgiveness,” Grandmother Chelsea said. “And then you can tell them your truth.”
“Exactly. You are not being dishonest, sweetheart. You are merely letting them have their way—until you decide they may have figured things out for themselves.” Then Maria giggled. “Of course, I am only speaking of the actual commitment ceremony.”
“No need to punish yourself by withholding your affection until that day,” Grandmother Chelsea agreed. There was a light of mischief—and maybe remembered passion—in her eyes. Then the older woman patted Pamela’s hand again. “I’m so very pleased you’re my granddaughter.”
Pamela felt a little like her head was spinning, but she was very glad of that fact, too.
Chapter Six
“Let me get this straight. You bribed the woman to marry you?”
Adam blinked and looked from his father Warren, whose incredulous sounding question still hung in the air, to his father Douglas, who wore outrage very well. Then he sent a pleading look to James.
“We don’t think it was like that at all,” James said.
“Well, obviously you don’t,” Douglas Jessop said. “The question is, does our poor Pamela agree with your assessment?”
“And the very next question we have to ask is,” Warren said, “does your mother know about this?”
“Or your grandmother?” Jeremy Kendall asked that one, and Adam began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
I’ll explain, and then they’ll understand. “Well, we couldn’t very well let Pamela worry about her father,” Adam said. “Our woman was practically frantic. It was our job to ease her worry, wasn’t it? And we knew that as long as Reg Franklin was in jeopardy, she would never agree to leave her father, and…oh. Oh, shit.”
Adam knew he was wearing a shocked expression as he saw how the fathers and grandfathers had come to the conclusion that he and James had bribed their wife. He looked at his brother. James appeared just as shocked as he felt. Adam sank into the wooden kitchen chair that his grandfather Dalton, showing great timing, pushed under him.
“I do believe the lads have had their eyes opened.” Grandfather Dalton always did have a way of delivering the most revelatory statement in a droll manner.
“That wasn’t what we meant at all,” Adam said. “It never occurred to us that anyone would interpret our actions as bribery.”
“It absolutely was not,” James said. “We’d have made that investment in the Franklin farm, regardless.”
“We know that,” Warren said.
“But then, we’re men.” Douglas nodded. “It’s the Lord’s own truth that men and women are as different as night and day. Equal, of course, but different. We men don’t always see things the way our women do.”
“And you can take it from me, our women certainly don’t see things the way we men do.” Grandfather Jeremy nodded. “Boys, it appears that you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“This won’t be a problem. As soon as we get home tonight, we’ll tell Pamela that we’ve had our eyes opened by our fathers and grandfathers and confess that we’d never even looked at the situation that way.”
“And we’ll tell her that we would have invested in her father’s farm whether she’d agreed to marry us, or not,” James said.
Adam nodded and looked to his fathers and grandfathers, expecting to see smiling approval on their faces.
“Why do y’all look so horrified?” James asked.
Grandfather Jeremy turned to Warren. “Is this how you raised them? Did we do such a piss-poor job of explaining the facts of life to you?”
“No, sir,” Warren answered. “I think there’s a disconnect between their brains and their mouths. It’s likely the result of too much medical knowledge being crammed into so small a place as their brains have available for that purpose. Some men can’t handle the volume of learning and still function properly. Saw it in med school many times myself. Never once dreamed my own sons would be affected that way.”
Douglas grabbed a chair and turned it around, straddling it.
“Listen and learn, you two. A man has to be very careful of the way he treats his woman,” Douglas said. “The truth is they’re very clever and very quick. And as a bonus, they have a wonderful emotional filter that, I must confess, at different certain times of the month operates with varying degrees of prime efficiency.”
“What does that mean?” Adam asked.
“It means, basically, when you fuck up—and boys, I’m sorry, but you have really fucked up—you need to bow and scrape and grovel. In other words, you need to make amends.”
“Copious amends,” Warren said.
“Heavy emphasis on the word ‘copious,’” Grandfather Jeremy said.
“Okay, we can do that. What do we do to fix this?” James asked.
“Well, what were the things she enjoyed the most while you were courting her?”
Adam understood an important tenet after about thirty seconds of dead silence, during which he and James looked at each other. They were trying to come up with the right words to explain that they’d intended to start courting her but they’d run out of time. Apparently, they had indeed fucked up to an unbelievable degree.
“If it turns out that you become the first, since the founding of Lusty, to divorce, I declare here and now that we’ll keep Pamela. She, at least, appears to be a sensible, kind, and intelligent woman.” Warren sounded really disappointed in his sons.
That got Adam’s back up. “We love her. We’re sure as hell are not letting her go, not ever.”
“And she loves us, too,” James said.
“So at least you’ve made and received those declarations. So, it’s not
