Love Under Two Honchos (22 page)

“Damn straight we will,” Alex said.

Penelope let her gaze linger on them for just another moment, then she turned her attention back on her breakfast. Chatter resumed, and it was only at that moment she realized the entire table had gone silent during their exchange.

“Coffee, Penelope?” Bernice asked.

She hadn’t even noticed the woman get up from the table to get the beverage. “No, thank you.” Usually she loved a cup of coffee after a meal. She could smell it, and the aroma that usually soothed her this time instead rolled around in her stomach.

“If you’ll excuse me? I’ll be right back.” She wasn’t certain if she was going to be ill, or not, but she thought it prudent to remove herself to the powder room just in case.

Her reflection in the mirror there shocked her. She looked a bit wan. Since she’d put only minimal makeup on that morning, she splashed some water on her face, then pinched her cheeks to give herself a bit of color.

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When she returned to the dining room, the men had, for the most part, taken themselves off. She pitched in, helping to clear the table. It seemed to her the Benedict women had the scrape-and-clean ritual down to a fine performance. There were few leftovers to be dealt with, and most of the dishes got put into the dishwasher.

Cleanup was over in a matter of moments. Feeling at odds, she decided to wander the house. She felt a sense of history, especially when she entered the library. Here there were more photographs on the walls. She saw one of Sarah Benedict with her husbands Caleb and Joshua, taken as they enjoyed their front porch—a porch that looked the same to this very day.

Sarah was looking at the camera, but the men were looking at her.

The love she read in the men’s faces nearly stole her breath.

It reminded her of the way Joshua and Alex had looked at her just minutes before.

“Penelope?” Susan stood at the open door. “Grandma Kate asked for you. Something’s happened, but I don’t know what.”

Penelope hurried to where the elderly woman sat in a downstairs study. Caleb was with her, as were Henry, Josh, and Alex. Kate was sitting, talking on the phone, and she certainly didn’t look happy.

“Now you listen here, Cletus Jones. Don’t you go doing anything rash like contacting the news media. Give me and mine a chance to have a look at this situation. No, I’m not fluffing you off, you know me better than that. What am I going to do? I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to send the honchos of Benedict Oil and Minerals themselves, as well as an environmental scientist, right now, today. They’ll have a look at what’s happened there in that arroyo, and they will deal with it, you have my word. In two hours? How in the name of Hades am I going to get them clear up to your place in just two hours?”

Henry touched her shoulder.

Kate said, “Just a moment, Cletus,” then held the receiver against her shoulder and gave Henry her attention.

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“I can take them up in the helicopter,” Henry said. “I need just thirty minutes to prep the bird, and we can be airborne.”

“Thank you, Henry.” She put the phone back to her ear. “Cletus, we’re going to fly my grandsons and Ms. Primrose up to your place in a helicopter. They’ll be there in just over an hour. And Cletus? I appreciate you calling me here, first. We’ll clean up this mess. You have my word on it.”

When she hung up, Josh and Alex spoke at the same time.

“Where? What arroyo?”

“What’s happened?”

“You’ll have to discover that for yourselves. Cletus wasn’t very clear. We’re talking up at the westernmost field. I don’t even remember when we stopped oil production there. It’s just outside of Rio Pecos.”

“I know where it is,” Henry said. “Spent a summer working on the remediation, myself.”

“Excellent! Susie, you take Penelope to your place and get her some jeans and some sturdy shoes to wear, so she’ll be more comfortable.” She looked at Penelope. “Caleb will come by in a bit and take you to the helicopter.”

Kate looked so worried, Penelope didn’t even consider saying no.

“All right. We’ll take care of this, Grandma Kate.”

The older woman nodded. “I’ve got my money on the three of you.”

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Chapter 20

Josh wanted to punch something—or some
one
.

As he pulled the Hummer H3 up to the hangar where the Town Trust serviced the copter and the jet, he thought that someone was standing right there, wearing a flight suit and looking cocky as hell.

He and Alex had bided their time during breakfast, certain they’d have the chance to get Penelope alone for five damn minutes to explain about the Legacy Project, and to beg her forgiveness, just as soon as the table had been cleared.

They’d planned to explain to her that they finally figured out they were deeply and totally in love with her.

Instead, they’d been manhandled by family and then swept along in the general chaos of an emergency, the nature of which he still didn’t have a complete handle on.

“First chance we get,” he said to Alex as he parked the car. “I don’t care if we have to tell this Cletus to put a lid on it. First chance, we grab our woman and grovel.”

“Bet your ass. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being at odds with Penelope. It makes my stomach hurt. And I absolutely
hated
sleeping without her last night.”

“Ditto.”

It was a short walk to where Henry stood waiting beside the EC120 B Colibri, the new helicopter the Town Trust had purchased just last year. The copter’s blades were whirring slowly, the bird obviously ready to fly.

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“Get in back, buckle up,” Henry told Alex. “Penelope can get in beside you. And you, hot shot,” he said, pointing at Josh, “you get to ride up front with me.”

“Figure you can fly that bird safely with a split lip, fly boy?” Josh asked him.

Henry laughed. “You didn’t like me flirting with your girl, huh? I can fly it with a split lip just fine, if you figure you’re strong enough and fast enough to give me one, geek-boy.”

It was the kind of ragging back and forth they’d always done.

Growing up amongst such a large family—everywhere he turned in Lusty, Texas there were cousins of one branch of the family or another—tended to make you take shots first and ask questions later.

Josh sighed. As much as a part of him would like nothing better than to try and take on Major Kendall and pound the living hell out of him, the truth was that the time had come to put boyhood habits aside.

Josh shook his head. Then he said, “No fancy tricks up there, today, Major. Penelope isn’t used to flying, or the way we carry on between us. I don’t want her any more upset than she has been.”

Henry’s laughing expression turned serious. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful with your woman.” Then he grinned again. “Besides, I have to be gentle with her. Kate likes her, and Kate scares the hell out of me.”

“You’re afraid of my grandmother more than you’re afraid of me?” Josh asked.

“Bet your ass. Want to make something of it?”

Joshua didn’t have time to respond, because just then his father, Caleb, drove up with Penelope.

“I’ve been trying to explain that I don’t have any of my equipment,” she said as she joined them.

“We’ll see that you have all that you need,” Caleb said. “Mother thinks the best thing we can do to fix this mess is to just get the three of you over there as quickly as possible. I happen to agree with her.”

“The clock is ticking. Let’s go.” Henry opened the back door and ushered Alex and Penelope into the copter.

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Josh jogged around to the other side and got into the front. He immediately turned to look in the backseat. Penelope didn’t look her usually sunny, smiling self. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

“I’m fine.”

Her answer came quickly, but Josh wasn’t convinced. One look at Alex and he knew his brother wasn’t convinced, either. Alex set about securing her seat belt.

Henry climbed into the pilot’s seat. “Buckle up. Headsets on. I’ve already conducted the pre-flight check. We’re out of here.”

Josh didn’t even have his headset completely in place when Henry lifted off. He did hear Penelope’s gasp. A quick check in back assured him Alex was watching over her.

“How long will it take us to get to the old Pecos site?”

“Well, since Cletus is the one who called, my instructions were to take you to him, which is shy of the site some. Take us about twenty minutes to get there.

Josh sat back, his eyes taking in the scenery while his mind began to rearrange all the information he had about the site, adding in everything that had happened today, beginning with his Grandmother’s summoning of him and Alex into the study.

Josh only half paid attention as the scenery zipped past beneath him. He wondered how it was that things looked so different from several hundred feet in the air than they did flat on the ground.

The day had dawned bright and sunny, with intermittent white, fluffy clouds filling the sky.

He frowned when Henry banked the bird just slightly as he made a right turn. Joshua would have thought that they’d fly in a straight line to their destination, which would have been left—due west. He opened his mouth to say something then snapped it shut again.

Puzzle pieces began to fall into place, and Joshua sat up straighter, paid more attention to the ground flying past under him. He shot a sideways glance at the pilot.

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Henry must have felt his scrutiny, because he returned his look, and smiled.

Well, son-of-a-bitch
.

His agile mind reached back, looking for more puzzle pieces.

Click, click, click. They began to fall into place, fast and furious.

Half of him wanted to celebrate, the other half wanted to protest, if only on principle.

“There’s our destination, dead ahead,” Henry said after several more minutes.

Joshua looked out the window and smiled.

“Hey, isn’t that—”

“Cletus’s place,” Josh said, cutting his brother off. He cast him a look over his shoulder. Alex met his gaze, and then his eyes widened.

“Yeah,” he echoed. “Cletus’s place.”

Henry set down the helicopter a bit of a distance from the cabin.

He didn’t shut the copter off. “Alex, help Ms. Primrose with her straps. She looks like she needs to set foot on solid ground again.”

“I’m on it,” Alex said.

Josh undid his seat belt, took off the headset, and then turned to look at Henry. The other man shook his head, then locked his gaze on the instrument panel directly in front of Josh. Then he met his gaze again, and raised one eyebrow.

Josh reached forward, felt the bottom of the panel. He nodded, and quickly peeled off the envelope his fingers had found there. He folded the envelope and put it in his pocket.

He hopped out of the craft, ducking down, circled the front of it, and joined his brother and his woman.

“…noisy as anything you think the man would have opened his door by now,” Penelope was saying.

“Cletus is old.”

“Cletus is hard of hearing.”

Alex spoke at the same time he did. Then Josh said, “Come on, let’s go knock on the door.”

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Only a couple of hundred feet separated them from the front porch of the cabin—although calling the building a “cabin” could be a bit misleading.

Penelope led the way, obviously feeling better now that she had both feet on solid ground. She lifted her hand and knocked.

The noise from the helicopter increased, and Josh turned with the others to watch Henry raise the bird off the ground and shoot off, really fast, toward the south.

* * * *

Penelope blinked as the helicopter rose off the ground and then flew away.

“Where’s he going?” she asked.

“My guess would be, back to the hangar.” Josh walked over to the corner of the porch and seemed to reach under the railing. Moments later he returned. He inserted a key into the lock and opened the door.

“What are you doing? Shouldn’t we wait for Cletus?” Penelope thought Josh’s presumption a bit rude.

“There is no Cletus,” he said, and entered the cabin.

“What do you mean, there is no Cletus?” She followed him inside the building, then stopped and gasped. Beautiful hardwood floors, gleaming maple furniture, and a clean, fresh scent combined together to tell her this was no ordinary cabin in the woods—or in this case, open range.

“I mean, Grandmother pulled a fast one on us all.”

“But what about the disaster? The mess we’re supposed to fix?”

Alex smiled. “I’m pretty sure that
we’re
the mess we’re supposed to fix.”

“And I think Grandmother intends for us to stay up here, alone, until we do,” Josh said.

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“Stay here, alone? You mean she had us dropped off here and then abandoned us? That she manipulated the entire situation? That there is no ecological disaster?”

Alex smiled. “That would be my guess, yes.”

Penelope began to shake. How many times in a person’s life did they tolerate having their lives clandestinely directed by another?

When she’d been a child, she’d had no choice in the matter. She’d been manipulated as if she’d been not much more than a piece of luggage or furniture—moved out when she no longer “fit in.”

She was no longer a child and would be damned if she’d let that happen again.

“Where’s the phone? I’ll let Grandma Kate know exactly what I think—”

“No phone,” Alex said.

“And not much electricity, either,” Josh said.

“Look,” Alex stepped closer, “we’re not too happy about being lied to and manipulated, either. But we’re here, in the middle of nowhere, Texas. Would it hurt for us to get comfortable and to talk about things?”

Years of resentment rose up, a solid wall that wouldn’t let reason, or emotion, penetrate.