Love Under Two Benedicts(4)

“I need to think about this. Obviously, the two of you have been planning…considering…” Kelsey waved her hands in the air almost, Matthew thought, as if she was trying to grasp something to hang on to.

Matthew stilled her hands with both of his. “No, Kelsey. We’ve been hoping, mostly.” He could have told her that in the last couple of months, as they’d talked from time to time, gotten to know her better, they both understood her resolve not to get involved romantically. She’d turned both him and Steven down when they’d each, in turn, asked her out on a date.

However, in the last few weeks especially, they’d each noticed a change in her reaction to them.

“I close up at ten tonight. You can pick me up then. We can go someplace and talk about this.”

“We can go to the ranch.” Steven exhaled and looked at Matt. “We’ll take you to the ranch.”

Before either he or his brother could say another word, Kelsey stepped around them and exited the museum.

Matthew looked at Steven. His brother’s brow furrowed, and he rocked back on his heels.

“Holy hell,” Steven said, his tone just above a whisper. “She still doesn’t get it.”

“It took her a few months of living here before she ever became aware of either one of us as men.” Matthew continued to look at the door where Kelsey had just exited. “After what she’s been through, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise either one of us she would think we only want sex.”

“You’re right. We knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but that’s okay. She’s the woman we love, so we’ll do what it takes. So now what do we do?” Steven asked.

Matthew grinned. “She’s so responsive to us both. We’ve both seen it in her eyes when we’ve talked with her. We’ll know when we see her tonight if she’s leaning toward us. If she is then there’s really only one thing we can do. We seduce her into our bed. Then we fuck her brains out and get her body so addicted to ours that her heart has no choice but to join in.”

“Okay, that sounds like a pretty good plan.”

Matthew thought it did, too. He just hoped to hell it worked.





Chapter 2



Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that.

Kelsey kept her pace brisk as she covered the distance between the Lusty Historical Society Museum and her restaurant. She didn’t think the men would follow her, not now when she’d agreed to think about what they apparently wanted.

She put on her business smile as she entered her domain, nodded to the patrons who looked up and gave her a wave or a howdy, but kept her demeanor all business. She didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. A fine tremor worked its way up from her belly, spreading out to her limbs. She headed straight to her small office, closed and locked the door behind her, then slid, nearly boneless, into her chair.

“Oh, damn. Oh, damn.” Her face flamed, and she covered it with both hands. Nothing to do but to wait out the shakes and the blush. Inhaling deeply, Kelsey closed her eyes, leaned back in her chair, and focused on relaxing her jittery body.

Not a panic attack. No, what she felt at the moment wasn’t one of those. Relief washed through her. She’d not had a panic attack in the last year but had experienced them often enough just after the shooting that she’d come to dread them.

Her eyes opened, and she her gaze roam around her small office. This was her dream come true, a restaurant of her own, and while she didn’t own the building, she owned the business, and the menu, and the essence of it.

Business had been brisk since opening day. While Kelsey had braced herself for the possibility of failure, three out of five new businesses did that in the first two years, in her heart she knew her business would continue to grow and prosper.

Her eyes landed on the framed newspaper article on her wall. When the food editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald had contacted her last month, of course she’d said yes to the interview and the feature. What restaurateur wouldn’t? It had never occurred to her the reporter would mention her personal tragedy of years before. She’d cringed, reading that part of it. So far, though, the responses she’d gotten from that article had been positive. Lusty Appetites had experienced an influx of business from the larger city. People, it seemed, didn’t mind driving more than an hour to enjoy her food. She knew they did enjoy it because she’d developed a clientele from Waco and surrounding area. Her business was growing? Hell, at the moment, it was thriving.

Just as she, personally, had begun to thrive. She’d stopped believing herself capable of personal happiness in the aftermath of the shooting. In those dark first days after watching the horror unfold before her, she’d been tempted to end her own life.