Love Under Two Honchos (2 page)

“You hope,” Jonathan, their other father, said.

“Yes, sir,” Josh said. “We do hope.”

“Waiting for something to not happen isn’t the Benedict way, either,” Grandma Kate said.

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Since she was directing her steely gaze at him, Joshua swallowed and said the only thing a smart grandson could say. “No, ma’am, you’re absolutely right. It’s not. I apologize.”

Grandma Kate considered him for a moment longer, then nodded.

“Since you brought it up, Mother, you must have something in mind to set this situation to rights.” Jonathan said, and for a moment, Josh had a sense that his father had been reciting a line. He flicked a look at Alex, wondering if his sibling had the same sense. But Alex’s gaze was on their grandmother.

“As it happens, I do.” She took a moment to make eye contact with each member of the family—Benedicts, Jessops, and Kendalls—

sitting around the table. This wasn’t, by any means, the entire membership of the Lusty, Texas Town Trust. They’d become too numerous to sit down, all together, for the quarterly meetings. They all got together a couple of times a year, and needed the Lusty Community Center—a fairly new facility that could hold five hundred—for those events. No, these were the members elected by the Trust at large to serve as the oversight board. The term was for two years, and Josh and Alex were nearing the midway point of their first term.

“In order to show that Benedict Oil and Minerals, and by extension the Benedict, Kendall, and Jessop families, is proactive, I suggest we hire an environmental consultant. This consultant would report directly to this board, but would work closely with Josh and Alex. Every project, every site, every well, every mine, under the aegis of the family—past and present—will undergo a thorough environmental assessment. Where we are found lacking, ladies and gentlemen, we will remediate.”

Uncle Carson, the one man Josh thought bold enough to protest both the intrusion and the expense of bringing in an outsider, sat back in his chair, puffed out a big breath, and said, “Mother, that’s absolutely brilliant! We can get started right away, looking for the best candidate for the job.”

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Crap
. The last thing that Josh wanted was someone sticking their nose in on every damn thing. Especially now, when he and Alex had initiated the Legacy Project.

“There’s no need to do that,” Grandma Kate said. “I’ve already located the best candidate for the job.”

* * * *

Penelope Primrose blinked as she looked at the photograph on the museum wall and tried to quell the butterflies in her stomach. There was no reason whatsoever for her to feel nervous. Completely out of character for her, this sense of anxiety was as annoying as it was unexpected.
Best just pretend it doesn’t even exist
.

So she refocused on the image before her, a historical photograph showing a group of people sitting together on blankets on a lawn.

Unlike so many old portraits she’d seen of subjects looking stern and unyielding, everyone in this photograph was smiling. Reading the caption, she felt one eyebrow go up. Seated before the camera were Benedicts, Jessops, Kendalls, and two rather famous figures from the old West.

Not that she’d doubted her grandmother’s best friend, no, not at all. It just seemed surreal to be here, in Lusty, Texas, a place that had captured her imagination since the first time she’d heard the stories of its founders so many years before.

Especially in recent years, Penelope had simply assumed the stories were a way that a very nice lady had tried to make her feel less afraid and alone when she’d come to live with her Grandmother Wright. Those tales Kate Benedict—who insisted on being called
Grandma Kate
instead of Mrs. Benedict—had told the ten-year-old, frightened child she’d been did help ease her sense of helplessness, and gave her something more, beyond herself, to think about. She’d imagined what it would have been like to have been sold into marriage by a greedy father and then have to travel across wild and
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untamed land. That had been a fate worse than her own lot. Oh, yes, the stories of the Benedict forebears and the founding of a town had not only comforted her loneliness, they’d fired her imagination, too.

How else to describe those wispy, sensuous dreams she’d had since she’d come of age? They had to have been the by-product of Grandma Kate’s stories.

Until this moment, Penelope had never really believed those stories. Looking at the pictures of characters whose names she knew as well as her own, she could not deny the evidence before her. Every tale Grandma Kate had told her about Lusty, Texas, was true.

I should be feeling surrounded by the familiar.

Instead, she felt as if she stood on the precipice of something totally strange and unknown. Standing there, looking at a group photo that included the legendary Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp, Penelope couldn’t decide if this was a good kind of feeling or a bad one.

Piffle. It’ll be the good kind, of course
. She grinned. Her Grandmother Wright’s favorite word edging into her thoughts helped to settle her. Piffle, indeed. This job was the break she’d been hoping for, the chance to earn a good salary doing the kind of work she’d trained long and hard for, the kind she’d spent so much time doing as a volunteer. Not only that, it was the change she needed, just when she needed it.

Penelope had studied environmental sciences, not just as a career choice, but as a passion. She had come to believe, with all her heart, that it was possible to marry economic and environmental goals.

She’d never bought into the theory that all progress and business was bad for the environment, nor that all things good for the environment were bad for business. She did believe changes needed to be made.

But for entrepreneurs who were concerned about the Earth, she knew there were moneymaking green technologies out there, waiting to be discovered, developed, or invested in.

The sound of steps approaching had her turning around.
My
goodness, she looks like Sarah Benedict!
Of course, Penelope knew it
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Cara Covington

couldn’t be Sarah. In fact, now that her brain decided to join her, she had a suspicion she knew who the pretty young woman smiling at her was.

“Ms. Primrose? Hi, I’m Susan Benedict.”

“Just Penelope, please. You look like your ancestor.”

Susan’s smile grew wider. “I know. I think it’s kind of cool, myself. If you’re ready, Grandmother asked that you join us, now.”

“Certainly.”

Penelope followed the young woman, not at all pleased that those butterflies that had mostly calmed had taken flight once more.

Susan Benedict waited beside the door and gestured her forward.

Penelope inhaled deeply and entered the conference room.

Good heavens, there certainly were a lot of them! Penelope estimated that there had to be a good twenty people in the room, seated around the tables that had been set in a quadrangle. Her eyes fastened on the one person she knew and felt fairly comfortable with, Grandma Kate. She knew she was smiling because her face was beginning to feel stiff.

Since the two gentlemen on either side of Kate Benedict seemed to be regarding her with great attentiveness, she nodded to them.

Likely the oil executives
. In the few seconds that had lapsed since she’d entered the room, her mind chose the opportunity to ask a question she probably should have asked before now.

With all the rich details of the stories Grandma Kate had told her, why had she been so laconic about the family members in charge of Benedict Oil and Minerals?

“There you are, Penelope,” Grandma Kate said. The elderly woman got up from her seat at the far end of the table and came toward her. “Thank you so much for waiting. Everyone, this is the environmental consultant you’ve all just voted to hire.”

Grandma Kate reached her and put a comforting hand on her back. “Penelope, this motley crew is some of my family. I’m sure you’ll meet them all and be thoroughly confused later, at dinner. But
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for now, I’d like to introduce you to the men you’ll be working most closely with. Gentlemen?”

Chairs scraped the floor as two men, one sitting on each side of the room, stood.

“Penelope, this is Joshua and Alexander Benedict, two of my grandsons, and the current head honchos of Benedict Oil and Minerals.”

Oh, dear.
It wasn’t the older men who had risen their feet, but two younger ones whose faces she hadn’t seen when she entered as they’d been sitting, heads down, and writing. Her eyes fastened on two of the most handsome, well-built, yummy-looking men she had ever seen in her life. But that wasn’t what had her heart pounding and those butterflies doing somersaults.

It was the sudden realization that there, standing before her, were the very images of the wispy, ethereal lovers who had haunted her dreams for the past six years.

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Cara Covington

Chapter 2

“Um…I wonder if you can tell us a little about yourself? That is, your past positions? I mean, of course, your experiences…as an environmental consultant?”

Penelope felt the heat of Joshua Benedict’s gaze on her and wondered that she didn’t melt into a puddle right then and there.

Judging by his demeanor, and the way he’d just tripped over his words, he was as jolted by her as she had been by him and his brother.

Never had she experienced such a reaction to the male of the species.

She knew there were a whole lot of people in the suddenly-too-small boardroom, but at the moment, the only ones she seemed to even register were those two honchos.

Don’t stand there like a bleeding idiot. Answer the man.

How disconcerting to have her inner voice sound like the English waif she’d been as a child.

“Certainly. I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University, with an advanced degree in Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences.

I’ve spent the last two years working with the Kensington Foundation in Connecticut. It’s a nonprofit foundation researching various green technologies and the interaction of those technologies with the natural habitats of the local flora and fauna. We were able to prove that a number of the new industries were able to coexist with these habitats without any negative side effects.”

“So you’re not interested in shutting down industries that have in the past proven detrimental to the environment?”

That question came from an older man sitting three seats down from Alex Benedict. He looked familiar to her, but several of these
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people did, since they were related to Kate. Then he smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m Carson Benedict.”

One of Grandma Kate’s sons
. “No, sir. People need industry as much as they need a clean environment. I happen to believe there can be a marriage of the two principles. However, industry does have to be accountable, and do that which is right, not just that which is expedient. At the same time, I believe that environmental scientists must also be mindful of the needs of industry.”

“People.” Kate got to her feet and immediately commanded attention. Penelope resisted the urge to smile. The elderly woman was small, but by golly, one word from her and everyone looked at her, waiting.

When I grow up, I want to be just like her
.

“I’ve got Penelope’s full dossier that I will be happy to distribute to you. In addition, perhaps I should have mentioned that I’ve known her since she was ten, and that her grandmother was my good friend, Eloise Wright.”

Penelope’s throat tightened at the mention of her grandmother.

That good woman who’d raised her had only been gone a few months.

Looking at the faces around the table told her that was a fact with which they all seemed to be acquainted.

“Let’s go have some dinner over at Kelsey’s,” Kate said. “I’m starving.”

A man dressed in a khaki-brown uniform jumped to his feet.

“F..phooey. I’d better let Kelsey know she’s about to be inundated.”

Grandma Kate laughed. “Relax, Matthew. I believe your mother has already notified your bride of the impending family invasion. And
now
, the meeting is over.”

Kate was immediately swamped by her family, each one of them obviously glad to see her back home. Penelope sighed, grateful to no longer be the center of attention. One of the older men whom she’d originally pegged as an oil executive approached her.

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Cara Covington

“I’m Caleb, one of Kate’s sons.” He offered his hand. Penelope had heard of Caleb, of course, named for his great-grandfather.

She shook his hand. “I’m pleased to meet you. I’ve heard a great many tales from your family history.”

Caleb smiled. “I suppose I should fess up and say I’ve heard about you, too. Mother always looked forward to visiting you and your grandmother. She took her passing hard. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. I feel very fortunate to have had my gram.” Penelope swallowed the tears that still threatened from time to time.

“It’s only a short walk to my daughter-in-law’s restaurant,” he said. “Why don’t we head on over. Mother will be there, shortly.”

Before she could answer, she felt a peculiar heat curl through her, touching off tiny embers that teased her female bits. She inhaled, and the scent of something very appetizing nearly made her mouth water.

In her peripheral vision, she saw that both Joshua and Alex had approached, and stood, one on either side, just behind her.

“That’s a good idea, Dad,” Joshua said.

Penelope turned so that she stood nearly beside the senior Benedict.

“Perhaps we’ll have the opportunity to get to know each other as we walk,” Alex said. “Since we’re going to be working together.”

Why did that sound like a threat? Penelope swallowed and decided to brazen it out. She stuck out her hand to Josh. “How do you do, Mr. Benedict?” She shook hands with the man, but was unable to hide her reaction to the zing she felt at his touch. “And you, Mr.