One Thanksgiving in Lusty, Texas Cara Covington (books for 8th graders .TXT) 📖

busy couple of weeks for all of us.” Time had simply raced from the evening her father had given his approval of her marriage until they were standing in the living room in front of Reverend Sparks with their small gathering of family friends.

“And one during which we skipped the courtship and rushed you straight into marriage.” James had leaned across the aisle and said that.

She opened her mouth to respond, but Adam leaned in closer.

“To answer your questions, it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive home. Our cousin, Caleb Benedict, is going to pick us up at the airport. We—the three of us—have a two-story house in the Victorian style, just a couple of houses down from where the doctor’s office is located, in the middle of town. Though it’s possible to do so, no one actually lives in that house anymore. Our house has a master suite, along with three other bedrooms upstairs. Downstairs there’s the usual—kitchen, dining room, living room, downstairs bathroom, and an extra bedroom that we currently use as a combination den and home office. There’s a good-sized, enclosed back yard with some gardens. I understand our mother’s been keeping an eye on them for us while we’ve been away.”

“Any furniture you don’t like, we can replace with new,” James said. “It’s your house now, angel. We both want you to be happy there.”

“I’m sure everything will be perfect.” She knew, intellectually, that her new husband—her new husbands—were well off. But that was no reason to just spend money, willy-nilly. As long as the furnishings were decent, and the bed comfortable, she’d be happy.

Bed. Wedding night. Adam and James.

Pamela hadn’t been at all nervous up to this point. She couldn’t say that any longer.

She looked out Adam’s window in time enough to see the city of Dallas rushing up to meet her. And then the plane jostled as the wheels made contact with the tarmac. The brakes came on, and she felt the reverse thrust, as the seatbelt did its job of keeping her from flying forward.

The plane had landed, and her new life was about to begin. One moment of hesitancy, maybe insecurity swept through her. And then she dug deep, breathed deep, and mentally revisited the main thing.

She was hopelessly, deeply and irrevocably in love with Adam and James Jessop. She hoped—no, she believed—that they would soon come to love her, too.

Everything was going to work out fine.

While the plane taxied to the gate, she looked from Adam to James. “Your cousin is driving all the way to Dallas to pick us up?”

“No. He works in the Dallas area. He’s a cop—a Texas Ranger—and he’s getting off a bit early today in order to take us home.”

“Caleb spends a couple of nights a week in Dallas. He says he doesn’t mind commuting. He and Jonathan, his brother, married Bernice a couple of years ago. Weekends especially, he heads home.”

“I guess there are a lot of people in the New York area who spend a long time on the road, even though they don’t live that far from where they work. I’ve even heard of people stuck in traffic for a couple of hours or more at times.”

“We were in New York City for a week, and I can tell you a few times we almost left the taxi and walked instead,” James said.

“The traffic here isn’t anywhere near what you’re used to,” Adam said. “We each have a car at home. You can use either one of ours until we get you your own.”

“Oh! Well, you don’t have to buy me a car.”

Adam grinned. “Yes, we do.”

“Absolutely, we do.” James’s grin matched his brother’s.

Pamela liked the way her husbands saw to it she was protected as they deplaned. Adam held her hand as he led the way toward the luggage carousel.

“I still can’t believe you only brought two suitcases.” James shook his head. “We each have one that’s about as big as your two combined—and we’ve got clothing where we’re going!”

Pamela laughed. “I left my winter wardrobe in Maryland. I didn’t think I’d need it here.”

“We do have some cooler days in December and January,” Adam said. “But nothing like what happens up north.”

Pamela giggled at the shiver Adam gave just then. There’d been a few cold days this past winter, but nowhere close to what she’d experienced when she’d visited her cousins in upstate New York. She recalled now how both of these Texan men had reacted to that bit of cold in February. It had been hard at the time not laughing at them.

James motioned to a skycap to give them a hand with their luggage. The man had just loaded the bags onto a cart when another man approached, his blond hair just barely visible beneath the white cowboy hat he wore. Adam noticed him immediately, and the two men greeted each other warmly, which included hearty handshakes with a bit of back pounding. Pamela didn’t have to guess because Adam called the man Caleb.

Then Caleb spotted James, and the whole vigorous shake and back-slapping ritual was repeated again. Adam stood beside her, grinned, then slipped his arm around her.

That got the man’s attention. He looked directly at her, his blue eyes revealing his intelligence, and his curiosity.

“Sweetheart, this is our cousin, Caleb Benedict. Caleb, I’d like you to meet Pamela Franklin Jessop—our wife.”

* * * *

James escorted Pamela to the ladies’ room while Adam followed Caleb to the bank of telephones.

“Your wife seems like a lovely woman,” Caleb said.

“She’s beautiful, inside and out, and we both love her very much.” Adam sighed. He and his brother were both looking forward to having some private time later that evening to let her know exactly how they felt about her and what she meant to them. “I married her yesterday evening, in a small ceremony in her father’s living room. All legal, of course.”

Caleb made a great show of trying to look at Adam’s ass. When Adam just raised his eyebrow at his cousin,