Kitabı oku: «Outcast»

Praise for the novels of
JOAN JOHNSTON

“Johnston warms your heart and tickles your fancy.”

—New York Daily News

“Romance devotees will find Johnston lively and well-written, and her characters perfectly enchanting.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Joan Johnston continually gives us everything we want … a story that you wish would never end, and lots of tension and sensuality.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Joan Johnston [creates] unforgettable subplots and characters who make every fine thread weave into a touching tapestry.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“Johnston’s characters struggle against seriously deranged foes and face seemingly insurmountable obstacles to true love.”

—Booklist

“A guaranteed good read”

—New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham

Also by

Joan Johnston

New York Times bestselling author of the Hawk’s Way series and the Bitter Creek novels, which include

THE COWBOY

THE TEXAN

THE LONER

THE PRICE

THE RIVALS

THE NEXT MRS. BLACKTHORNE

A STRANGER’S GAME

only from MIRA Books

Please visit her website at

www.JoanJohnston.com

for a complete listing of her titles and series.

Outcast
Joan
Johnston

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Logan and Meghan

Bright lights in my life

who shine with joy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book happened because I met a stranger on a plane. I was looking for an occupation for the hero of the first book of a brand-new series, and my new friend’s husband just happened to be an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent. My hero quickly joined this updated branch of Homeland Security.

I want to thank Karen Goldsberry for her inspiration and support during the writing of this book. I’m grateful for the friendship of Sally Schoeneweiss, who listens with kind ears to my work in progress. A special thanks to Karna Small Bodman for advice on who’s who in Washington. Any mistakes are mine.

Thanks to Liesa Malik and Pat Feliciano for locating information I couldn’t find no matter how hard I looked.

I especially want to thank the sales force at Harlequin Books, who are so good about making sure my books get into the hands of readers. Kudos to Margaret O’Neill Marbury and Adam Wilson, who help me make my work the very best it can be. My thanks to Mary Helms, Amy Jones and Margie Miller for their parts in creating the stunning cover for Outcast.

There is no maintenance shed behind Lincoln Middle School. I’ve created problems with the magnetometer and MPD cop on duty at the school to suit my fictional novel.

Finally, I wish to thank the (anonymous) ICE agent who provided me with background information on ICE procedures.

Prologue

Ben Benedict’s gaze moved restlessly from one potential partner to the next in the Georgetown bar. He wanted a woman. Check that. He wanted sex. Which made him a bastard, he supposed. It was hard to admit that what he really wanted—what he really needed—was to hold another human being close. To feel alive. To forget.

He gritted his teeth as his hands began to tremble. He turned toward the mirror behind the dark, crowded bar and clenched his fists on his knees. He stared down at the glass of McClelland’s single malt whiskey in front of him. Alcohol would dull his senses while he was awake, but it wouldn’t keep him from dreaming. It sure as hell didn’t stop the nightmares.

Ben pictured himself walking along a mountain trail through a fragrant forest of green pines and golden aspen, sunlight streaming through the lush foliage, and felt the tension ease from his body.

“I saw you looking at me. I thought I’d come over and say hello.”

He took his time turning to face the pretty young woman who’d slid onto the bar stool next to him. He flattened his now-quiet hands on his jeans and prayed his body would cooperate long enough for him to do the sweet-talking necessary to get her into bed.

She had spiked, light brown hair and long-lashed eyes. Several buttons of her blouse were undone, revealing a hint of enticing cleavage, and her skirt was short and tight, showing off very long legs.

Legs that could likely wrap entirely around him.

Ben tried to smile but couldn’t manage it. He kept his blue eyes on her and willed her to be the kind of woman he needed tonight. Uninvolved. Unexceptional. Uninhibited.

“You don’t have a government job, not with hair down over your collar,” she said.

He shivered as she brushed a hand through the black locks that fell over the collar of his white Oxford-cloth shirt, teasing the skin at his nape. It took all his willpower to remain still as she settled her hand on his shoulder.

She tilted her head like a small bird and slowly surveyed him from head to foot, her dark brown eyes telling him she liked his chiseled features, his broad shoulders, his narrow waist and hips. And the way his jeans cupped his sex. Her gaze was almost a physical caress, and his body reacted predictably.

She made a purring sound in her throat before her eyes met his again. “What kind of job does one do in D.C. if one isn’t in politics?”

“Does it matter?” he asked, avoiding the question.

She laughed nervously and let her hand drop.

I did something to scare her off. But what? He consciously relaxed his body, modulated his voice to make it less sharp and said, “What do you do?”

She smiled, revealing perfectly capped teeth, and said, “Secretary to an assistant undersecretary who’s an assistant secretary to a secretary. If you know what I mean.”

He knew he was supposed to laugh. But he couldn’t manage that, either. “Would you like to come to my place?” Sensing her hesitation, he quickly added, “For a nightcap?”

He watched two narrow lines appear above her upturned nose, between her finely tweezed eyebrows.

“You’re not a serial killer or anything, are you?”

He made a sound that might have been a snort. “Not hardly.”

She surveyed him for another moment, and he did his best to look unthreatening.

“All right,” she said, placing her hands on the edge of the polished wooden bar to push herself off the backless stool. “Just let me tell my girlfriend I’m leaving.”

He watched her walk over to a high-top table and confer with another woman. He nodded as her friend waved at him. Made himself wait for the woman’s return. He felt like bolting, but his need was greater than his fear that if he invited her home, she would discover his secret.

“I live around the corner,” he said when she rejoined him. “Mind if we walk?”

“No problem. I told my friend I’d take a cab home.”

“Fine.” He didn’t allow the women he brought home to spend the night. That was far too dangerous. “You ready?”

“Let’s go.” She slid her arm through his and hugged their bodies close. He could feel the weight of her breast through the arm of his black leather jacket as they left the bar.

He would take the brief escape she offered, the momentary warmth and comfort of another human body. Give pleasure in exchange. And send her back into the night.

1

The shooter aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger. One dead. He squeezed again. A second victim dropped in his tracks. He held his breath and squeezed a third time. As the third victim fell to the ground, he whispered, “Gotcha!”

The teenage boy standing next to him whistled in appreciation. “You’re a crazy man with that gun.”

Ben Benedict, former military sniper, grinned as he blew off imaginary smoke at the end of his plastic M1911 Colt .45 and shoved the gun back into its plastic holster on the arcade video machine. “That’s me. Your average lunatic with a gun. But you notice I won.”

The thirteen-year-old playing “House of the Dead” with Ben laughed. “Really, man, you’re loco. I’ve never seen anybody shoot like you. You never miss.”

Ben accepted the compliment without bothering to deny the charge of insanity. It was entirely possible the kid was right.

Ben had done his best to hide the nightmares, the night sweats, the daytime flashbacks, the trembling that started without warning and ended just as mysteriously, from his family and his new boss at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called ICE, the largest branch of the Department of Homeland Security.

As far as Ben knew, none of them suspected his struggle to appear normal since he’d resigned his commission in the army six months ago to become an ICE agent.

“One more game,” the kid pleaded.

“It’s Wednesday. I know you have homework.”

“I can do it later.”

Ben shook his head. “I can’t stay. My stepmom’s giving a prewedding party for my sister Julia and Sergeant Collins tonight. My whole family’s supposed to be there. She’ll have my head if I’m late.”

“I can’t believe your sister’s gonna marry a cop on Saturday.”

“Sergeant Collins is not just another cop. He’s my friend,” Ben said. Their families owned neighboring plantation homes south of Richmond, Virginia. They’d been best buds until Ben’s parents had divorced, and Ben had left Richmond to go live with his father in Chevy Chase. After that, Ben had only seen Waverly when he visited his mother on holidays and vacations.

Waverly Fairchild Collins, III, possessed a notable Virginia pedigree, but his family had been forced to sell most of the land around their plantation home after the Crash in 1929. The Benedicts still owned the vast tract of rich farmland surrounding their estate, The Seasons, where their ancestors had grown tobacco, but which now produced pecans and peaches.

The family gathered at the old plantation house, a white, two-story monstrosity right out of Gone With the Wind, on holidays and special occasions.

“That cop might be your friend,” Epifanio said. “But to me, he’ll always be a sonofabitch.”

Ben bit his lip to keep himself from giving the kid a hard time about his language. At least Epifanio had given up using fuck every other word.

Ben had met Epifanio five months ago, when his older brother Ricardo had been caught in a joint ICE-MPD sting aimed at gang kids boosting cars in Washington, D.C. for shipment to South America. Sergeant Waverly Collins, head of the Metropolitan Police Department Gang Unit, was the man who’d arrested Ricardo. Epifanio didn’t know that Ben, representing ICE, had also been involved in the sting.

ICE was working with the MPD Gang Unit because so many members of D.C. gangs—the Vatos Locos, Latin Kings, 18th Street gang, and especially MS-13—had once been members of violent gangs south of the border.

Gangs had been named a danger by Homeland Security because so many of their members were illegal aliens. Ben had seen the results of gang violence—the extortion, the theft, the beatings, the senseless death and destruction. The government feared that foreign terrorists might recruit these kids, many of them gangsters without a moral compass, to commit acts of terrorism. Hence the effort to interfere with the gangs’ financial survival by eliminating all their sources of income.

Illegal aliens caught in the sting, including Ricardo, were deported back to their homes, usually somewhere in Central or South America.

Upon learning that he was being deported, Ricardo had asked if someone would notify his grandmother. His abuela didn’t have a phone, so he couldn’t call her, and she couldn’t read, so a letter wouldn’t work.

Ben seemed to be the only one moved by the eighteen-year-old’s plea. Despite warnings from Waverly not to get involved, Ben had gone to see Ricardo’s grandmother at her run-down apartment in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, a half hour north of his row house in Georgetown.

Mrs. Fuentes was a small, wizened woman with white hair she wore in braids bobby-pinned at the top of her head. She reminded Ben of his maternal grandmother, who’d died in a private plane crash along with his grandfather when he was ten.

Quiet tears had streamed down Mrs. Fuentes’s brown, wrinkled face when Ben told her Ricardo’s fate. Mrs. Fuentes offered Ben a cup of coffee, which he’d felt obliged to take.

When she had him seated in the tiny living room, where the brown couch was covered with vinyl to protect it, she told him how worried she was that Ricardo’s little brother Epifanio—who, thank the Blessed Virgin, had been born to a black father in the United States—would follow in his older brother’s footsteps and end up dead on the streets from drugs or gang violence. The 18th Street gang was already pressuring Epifanio to join.

Waverly laughed when Ben told him later how he’d offered to check in on Epifanio now and then and do what he could to keep the kid in school. Waverly warned Ben that he was asking for heartache. He’d told Ben his chances of keeping Epifanio out of the 18th Street gang and off hard drugs—highly addictive crystal meth and crack cocaine—when his brother had been a gang member and a methamphetamines addict, were slim to none.

Despite Waverly’s advice, Ben had made a point of seeing the kid at least once a week over the past five months, although he never had told the kid what he really did for a living. Epifanio thought Ben worked in an office in downtown D.C., which Ben did. It just happened to be the ICE office.

It had taken a long time to earn the kid’s trust. And there had been setbacks.

Three months ago, Ben had come by one afternoon when Mrs. Fuentes was still at her babysitting job and been concerned when Epifanio didn’t answer his knock. He’d stepped inside the unlocked apartment and found Epifanio sitting on his bed, leaning against an interior wall spray-painted with graffiti, his pupils dilated so wide that Ben could have fallen into the kid’s eyes.

“What are you on?” he’d demanded, searching around the kid’s iron cot for drug paraphernalia. He’d pulled out his cell phone to call 911, afraid the boy might be in danger of OD-ing, but Epifanio had grabbed his wrist and said, “It’s only Ecstasy.”

“Only Ecstasy?” Ecstasy wasn’t addictive, but it was still a powerful narcotic. Then he’d had another thought. “Where did you get the money to buy that junk?”

The kid had hung his head.

“Well?”

“I stole the E from a locker at school,” he’d mumbled.

Ben had been so mad he could have wrung the kid’s neck. “I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

“It’ll wear off in a couple of hours,” Epifanio protested.

Ben had hauled the kid out to his car anyway, taken him to the emergency room and waited with him while the hospital did a blood test. The toxicology report confirmed that the only drug in Epifanio’s system was the amphetamines in Ecstasy.

Ben had been standing by, his arms crossed over his chest, when Mrs. Fuentes arrived at Epifanio’s hospital bedside, her dark brown eyes huge with fear.

Epifanio had been defiantly silent in response to Ben’s disapproval. But when his grandmother sank into the chair beside his bed, crossed herself, closed her eyes and folded her hands in prayer, the kid started to cry.

“I’m sorry, Abuela,” he said. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”

Ben had kept up his visits to the household. And the kid had been true to his word. Two months later, Epifanio was still off drugs, still not part of a gang and still in school. Ben was counting his blessings, but because of constant reminders from Waverly that the good behavior couldn’t last, he was taking things one day at a time.

“I’m looking forward to having the sergeant as my brother-in-law,” he told the boy.

“I hate cops,” Epifanio said, his dark eyes narrowed, his lips pressed flat.

I’m a cop, Ben thought. But he merely met the kid’s gaze.

Epifanio made a face as he holstered his own plastic gun. “You might wanta watch yourself when you come around to the neighborhood. I been hearing rumors of something bad goin’ down.”

“Bad like what?” Ben asked.

Epifanio shrugged. “Just guys lookin’ over their shoulders, you know? That sorta creepy feeling you get when something’s not right?”

Epifanio might not belong to the 18th Street gang, dubbed the 1-8 by the MPD, but most of the kids in his neighborhood did. It was impossible for him to avoid them entirely.

As far as anyone in the neighborhood knew, Ben was supposedly a “Big Brother” from the community group Big Brothers and Big Sisters. His ICE connection was a secret. Which was why another ICE agent monitored the activities of the 18th Street gang.

“Thanks for the heads up,” Ben said.

Trouble among the gangs hit the streets like ocean waves. Some waves passed without incident. Some devastated everything in their path. He put a hand on Epifanio’s shoulder and said, “You be careful out there, too.”

“You know I will,” Epifanio said with a cheeky grin.

“How about that homework?” Ben said.

The kid grinned. “I ain’t got—”

“Don’t have—” Ben automatically corrected.

“Any homework,” Epifanio finished, his grin widening.

Ben ruffled the boy’s short dreads, something he wouldn’t have done even a few weeks ago. “Then go read a book.”

As they left the Games & More video arcade, Epifanio teasingly flashed Ben the 18th Street gang sign. He laughed when Ben frowned at the display, then sauntered down the street toward home.

Ben stuck his suddenly trembling hands deep in his pockets, clenching them into fists. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He had trouble catching his breath.

He felt the searing heat of the desert. The grittiness of the sand at his collar. The stickiness of blood on his hands.

“Hey! You gonna stand there all day? We’re late!”

Ben’s tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He jerked a nod toward Waverly, who’d pulled his Ford Explorer up to the curb.

“You okay?” Waverly asked, sticking his head out the open window.

Ben forced himself to take a step. Another step. He crossed behind the car, to give himself time to recover. After all these months, he wasn’t going to let this … shit … get the better of him. The incidents were occurring less often. They were less severe. Surely, at some point, they would stop entirely.

By the time he got to the front passenger door of the car his hands were out of his pockets and functioning without a visible tremor. As he slipped into Waverly’s Ford he said, “I can’t believe you and Julia are letting Patsy throw you a party, especially this close to the wedding.”

“Your dad was more of a dad to me than my own. When she suggested it, I didn’t want to say no,” Waverly replied. “Don’t blame me if your stepmother invited your whole family. Julia said just about everybody agreed to come.”

Ben groaned. “Everybody? My mom and the senator in the same room with my dad and Patsy?”

“Yep,” Waverly said.

Ben groaned. Although his parents had divorced twenty years ago, his mother had never forgiven his father for cheating on her with another woman. His father had never forgiven his mother for her lack of understanding and inability to pardon what he claimed was a single lapse in judgment under extraordinary circumstances.

Both had remarried within a year, and from what Ben could see, both had remarkably successful second marriages. But he was pretty sure his parents had never really stopped loving each other. Otherwise, they wouldn’t still be so miserable in each other’s presence.

Unfortunately, their continuing attraction made things pretty uncomfortable whenever their respective spouses were in the room. Which meant the party tonight would be a parental minefield, exacerbated by the warfare that went on between the very different children who’d grown up as relatives because of their two second marriages.

Ben was one of thirteen siblings. And nobody was married yet or had produced offspring.

Actually, fourteen siblings. He was forgetting the reason for his parents’ divorce, his father’s bastard son, Ryan Donovan McKenzie. Ryan was the result of a one-night stand his father had indulged in with a barmaid, Mary Kate McKenzie. His dad had insisted on acknowledging and supporting his illegitimate son, and invited Ryan to every family gathering. The Black Sheep always declined.

“How many of the Fabulous Fourteen have said they’re coming?” Ben asked Waverly.

“The senator’s three kids by his late wife, one of your three brothers, your stepmom’s twins with her ex from Texas and your three half sisters. And, of course, my lovely fiancée. In short, nearly the whole dysfunctional bunch. No surprise, the Black Sheep sent his regrets. Should be a great party.”

Ben felt his heart take an extra thump. “I can hardly wait.”

2

“How are things with the kid?” Waverly asked as he drove out of the ethnically and economically mixed Columbia Heights neighborhood toward elite Chevy Chase, Maryland, where the party was being held. Columbia Heights was becoming gentrified, forcing out the poor, but right now it was still a blend of the crumbling old and the very new. The distance to Chevy Chase wasn’t far in miles, but it might as well have been a trip to the moon, the two worlds were so far apart.

“The kid is fine,” Ben said as he reached for the rep-striped tie he’d left in the backseat with a jacket earlier in the day.

“For now.”

Ben buttoned up his shirt, slipped the tie around his neck and began to tie it. “I’m optimistic.”

“You’re naive.”

“You’re jaded.” Ben shoved the Windsor knot up to his throat.

“Maybe so. We’ll see.”

Ben hesitated, then said, “Epifanio has heard rumblings that something bad is in the works.”

“If the kid asks too many questions, they’re going to shut him up. Forever,” Waverly warned. “Don’t push it.”

“I didn’t ask for information. He volunteered it.”

“Someday somebody’s going to make the connection between you and ICE and the kid. They’ll start to wonder what he’s told you. And—” Waverly made a ragged sound as he drew his forefinger across his throat.

“I’m his Big Brother. That’s all.”

“Yeah. Right,” Waverly said.

As the man in charge of the MPD Gang Unit for the past two years, Waverly knew far more about gang behavior than Ben did. If Waverly was worried about Epifanio, Ben knew there was something to worry about.

“Have you heard something I haven’t?” he asked.

“Just the same stuff as the kid,” Waverly said. “That something is going to happen. Something big.”

“What are we talking about here?” Ben asked. “New car theft ring? Counterfeit bills? Drug shipment? Illegal weapons?”

“Terrorism.”

Ben mentally reeled. He’d chosen to work on an ICE joint task force with the MPD dismantling gangs in D.C., rather than join the investigative arm of ICE and search out terrorists, precisely because he’d had enough of war. Apparently, this time the war was coming to him.

“Terrorism,” he mused. “What does that mean? I have trouble imagining white or black or Hispanic or Asian gangs hijacking planes and flying them into buildings.”

“Maybe not. But they can help smuggle dirty bombs or biological weapons across the border from Central or South America. Or learn how to make improvised explosive devices—IEDs—and plant them in big cities across America—Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, New York—and of course, the District.”

“Is that really going to happen?”

“Nobody knows for sure,” Waverly said. “But you and I are going to keep a damned close eye on MS.”

Mara Salvatrucha 13, called MS by the MPD, was known to be a merciless and violent gang in El Salvador, where it had originated. Its members had brought that arbitrary death-dealing with them when they stole across the border and joined MS gangs formed in the States.

“Are several gangs involved?” Ben asked. “Or only MS?”

“MPD and ICE share info, so I’m sure you know Al Qaeda had sent lieutenants to El Salvador to recruit members of MS to commit terrorist acts. The presumption is they’ll make use of members of MS here in the States to help them, by threatening their families in El Salvador, if necessary. Which is why we’re focusing on MS.”

Ben hadn’t wanted to believe Al Qaeda would be successful in El Salvador. His job was going to change radically if a bunch of hired assassins began infiltrating across the border and joining local MS gangs to cover up their terrorist activities.

“Have you heard anything on the streets about exactly who—or what—Al Qaeda’s target might be in D.C.?” Ben asked.

“That, my friend, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. They have a helluva lot of choices.” Waverly brought his car to a stop in front of an impressive, two-story Colonial redbrick home with white shutters and a tall, elegant front door.

“We’ve reached the end of your father’s obscenely long driveway—and this conversation,” Waverly said. “You know Julia doesn’t like me to talk about work around your mother. It upsets her.”

Ben got out of the car and dumped his leather jacket in the backseat. He grabbed a navy suit jacket from a hanger on a hook over the window to wear with his khaki trousers. He knew what really upset his mother was the idea of her eighteen-year-old daughter marrying a thirty-year-old cop. Especially since the bride and groom had only met six months ago.

And it wasn’t just the age difference, or the short time they’d known each other. His mother blamed him for the fact that in three days Julia would be marrying a man with a dangerous job that could get him killed. Worst of all, the young couple was determined to live on the paltry income of a D.C. cop.

Ben’s mother, Abigail Coates Benedict Hamilton, not only had inherited wealth of her own, but a year after she’d divorced Ben’s even wealthier father, she’d married a wealthy widower, the senior senator from Virginia, Randolph Cornelius “Ham” Hamilton, III.

Ben’s half sister Julia had been born into a life of opulence and privilege. His mother couldn’t bear the thought of Julia wanting for anything. She deplored the small apartment that was all Waverly could afford, and which would be her daughter’s first home, and had announced she was “devastated” that Julia would be attending Georgetown University instead of her alma mater, Wellesley.

Seeing that Waverly and Julia were in love, Ben had let his mother’s complaints roll off his shoulders. The fact he pretty much always fell short of pleasing his mother was something he’d learned to cope with at a very young age. Eight, to be precise.

That was the year his parents divorced. Ben had always wondered who’d come up with the idea to split up the Benedicts’ four living sons—Nash, Ben, Carter and Rhett—and give two to each parent.

Nash, who was eleven, and Rhett, who was only a baby, had stayed with his mother. Ben, who’d been a little intimidated by his father, Foster Holloway Benedict, an army officer who’d been awarded the Medal of Honor, had begged to be allowed to stay with his mother in their home in Richmond. But his father had taken him away to live in Chevy Chase, along with his younger brother Carter.

Not that Ben had spent much time with his father once he’d taken up residence in the mansion in Chevy Chase. Within a year of his parents’ divorce, his father had married a woman named Patsy Taggart. Patsy had done all the caretaking while his father was off being a soldier. At thirteen, Ben had been sent off to Massachusetts to attend Groton, an Episcopal prep school.

At the time Patsy married his father, she’d had twin two-year-old sons who lived most of the year in Texas with her former husband. But it wasn’t long before she was pregnant with Ben’s twin sisters Amanda and Bethany. A few years later, Camille had come along. Ben called the girls the ABCs, because their names started with the first letters of the alphabet.

It was hard not to love the ABCs because they so obviously adored him, and he did his best to be a protective and loving big brother.

It had taken a long time before he let Patsy fill the hole left in his heart when his mother had given him away. But his stepmother had been persistent. He loved her now far more than the mother who’d borne him.

Ben had seen the pain in his biological mother’s eyes when he’d remained aloof through the years. Diabolically, his parents had arranged for their four sons to spend time together in the same households from time to time—for holidays or vacations—so they wouldn’t lose touch with each other.

As it turned out, he and Carter were close. Rhett, no surprise, was everybody’s friend. Nash was unknowable

Ben had always been in awe of Nash, because when that Solomon-like custody decision was being made, he’d refused to leave their mother. Ben had overheard him tell their father flat out, “I’m not going.”

Of course, that meant Ben had been forced to go instead. He didn’t blame Nash. Ultimately, his mother had agreed with the decision to send him away.

Ben had never given her another chance to reject him. But he dreaded family gatherings because it dragged up all that ancient history.

He was keenly aware that he’d once again managed to disappoint her by introducing Julia to Waverly. Ben felt an ache in his chest. He focused on the peaceful forest scene that helped him quiet the demons. The last thing he wanted was to have an attack now.

He thought of how little any of his family knew about the bad things that had happened to him as a soldier. And how grateful he was that they’d never asked.

Ben intended to keep it that way, which was why he was so careful to conceal the nightmares and all the rest of the crap he was dealing with these days. If his family got an inkling he was having trouble coping with a world not at war, they’d be in his face wanting to help.

He envied the Black Sheep, who had just said no, and his two brothers, who had good excuses to be absent tonight. Carter was serving with the marines in Iraq, and Nash was out of the country doing whatever secret work he did for the president.

“Ben! You’re here!” his thirteen-year-old sister Camille squealed as he stepped into the circular domed foyer of his father’s Chevy Chase mansion with Waverly on his heels.

“I’m here,” he replied, putting a smile on his face and opening his arms to catch Camille as she leapt into them.

“Ben! You came!” his seventeen-year-old sister Bethany said, her long blond curls bouncing as she hurried toward him.

As if he’d had a choice. He hugged Camille before setting her down, then wrapped an arm around Bethany’s shoulder.

“Ben! You need a shave!” Bethany’s twin sister Amanda said as she wrinkled her nose.

Ben grinned as Amanda put her hands on either side of his bristly face and leaned forward to kiss him on each cheek, in the continental style she must have learned in the exclusive Swiss boarding school she and Bethany attended.

“Girls! Give Ben a chance to get in the door.”

His half sisters stepped back to allow their mother to embrace her stepson. His father’s second wife wasn’t conventionally pretty and she’d never been thin. But Patsy had hazel eyes that warmed to a golden brown every time she smiled.

When he hugged her back, he did it with all the love a son gave to his mother.

“Wave!” a female voice shrieked.

Ben watched a blond streak go flying by and laughed as Julia threw herself into Waverly’s open arms in much the same way his youngest half sister had flown into his. Except Julia followed the hug with a long, lascivious kiss.

Ben was pretty sure his mother would have been appalled to see her only daughter behaving like a hoyden. And equally sure that Julia would have found a way to charm her mother out of any rebuke for her behavior.

Ben turned back to his stepmother, urging her and his sisters toward the living room as he said, “I can’t believe you got that uppity Swiss school to let the girls come home for a wedding.”

“Mom didn’t give them any choice,” Amanda interjected.

Ben had long ago realized his mother and his stepmother were equally strong women in their own ways. He just saw a softer side to Patsy that his mother didn’t possess. Or had never shown to him.

“Where’s Dad?” he asked as his stepmother herded everyone toward the living room.

“Reception at the Argentine embassy,” Patsy said. “He’ll be here later. I mostly wanted to give you kids a chance to catch up with each other before the wedding.”

Ben found his youngest brother sitting on the arm of a silk-covered sofa, flirting with one of the caterer’s helpers who was passing canapés. Rhett’s job was made easier by his incredible good looks. His parents had produced five sons—Darlington, the fourth boy, had died at age four—and with the fifth, his mother had produced a perfect male specimen. At least, every girl who’d ever crossed Rhett’s path seemed to think so.

“Welcome, Ben. Hi, there, Waverly,” Rhett called as Ben entered the room with his entourage of females and the groom.

Rhett rose and whispered something in the helper’s ear that made her duck her head and blush, then crossed to Ben with his hand outstretched. Ben started to shake Rhett’s hand, but his younger brother used his grip to pull Ben close. He wrapped his other arm around Ben’s neck and gave him a hard hug.

“How the hell are you?” Rhett asked. “You’ve been slipperier than a fish lately. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

Away from all of you, Ben thought. So you don’t find out the truth about me. “I’ve been working,” he replied. “How’d you get away from West Point?”

“You know Mom,” Rhett said with a grin. “She had a word with the senator who had a word with the commandant.” He opened his arms wide. “And here I am in the middle of the week.”

Yes, my two mothers are very much alike, Ben thought. Both women had no qualms about going around the rules if the rules didn’t suit them. The result of being indecently wealthy all their lives, he supposed. Patsy’s family had land in Texas swimming in oil.

“Where’s Mom?” Ben asked as he searched the enormous living room and the four hallways leading away from it.

“The senator had some business on the Hill, so she represented him at a reception at the Argentine embassy tonight,” Rhett replied. “They’ll both be here later to toast the bride and groom.”

Dad and Mom on their own in the same place at the same time? He glanced at Patsy, wondering if she was aware that his mother and father were together tonight at the Argentine embassy, while she was here. His father who, after nineteen years of marriage to another woman, still snuck longing glances at Abby Hamilton whenever he thought no one was looking.

“Hello, Ben.”

Ben shook hands with his stepbrother John, the senator’s son. At thirty-seven, John Hamilton was the eldest sibling and the one most likely to antagonize the Benedict boys. John was a pacifist and happily defended conscientious objectors. He was militant in his belief that there were better ways to settle disputes between countries than to wage wars.

Ben didn’t really disagree. But Foster Benedict had retired from the army as a four-star general. All four Benedict boys had attended, or in Rhett’s case was still attending, a military academy. And three of the Benedict boys had served honorably, and in Carter’s case was still serving, in the military. Thus, any conversation with John often descended into controversy.

“You look beat,” John said.

Ben was surprised John had noticed—much less commented on—the dark patches under his eyes. Nightmares had been interrupting his sleep, but he wasn’t about to confess that to anyone. Instead he said, “Too much carousing.”

Which earned him a disdainfully raised eyebrow from his stepbrother. John’s two sisters, thirty-four-year-old Augusta and twenty-six-year-old Alexis, who went by the nicknames Gus and Alex, merely waved to Ben from the opposite side of the room, where they sat in comfortable chairs before a cheerfully crackling fire in the redbrick fireplace.

Ben was keeping mental track in his head of everyone he’d greeted. Fourteen siblings minus himself and the three who weren’t coming left ten. Camille, Bethany, Amanda, Julia—although she hadn’t exactly “greeted” him—Rhett, John, Augusta and Alexis. That left Patsy’s twenty-year-old twin sons from her first marriage, who weren’t in the living room.

“Where are the twins?” he asked Patsy.

She glanced around the living room and down the various hallways and said, “I’m not really sure.”

“They’re in the kitchen,” Rhett volunteered.

“What are they doing in there?” Patsy asked.

“Josh bet Reese he could—”

“Josh bet Reese?” Patsy interrupted. “Those two will be the death of me yet.” She turned and hurried toward the kitchen.

“Josh bet Reese what?” Ben asked Rhett.

“That he could swallow a whole egg.”

“Without choking to death?” Ben said. “Why didn’t you say something to Patsy sooner?”

“Josh shot me a wink. I figured he had some trick up his sleeve,” Rhett said with a shrug. “As usual.”

“This I gotta see,” Ben said, hurrying after a disappearing Patsy.

When Ben got to the kitchen he saw a smug-looking Josh with slimy egg dripping down his chin and an angry Reese counting twenties out of his wallet onto the Mediterranean-tiled kitchen counter.

“What’s going on here, Reese?” Patsy demanded. “What is that all over your face, Josh?”

“Egg,” Josh said with a grin. “I bet Reese I could swallow a whole egg.”

“Looks like you lost,” Ben said, giving Reese a comforting pat on the shoulder.

“The sonofabitch cheated!” Reese said as he laid the fifth twenty on the counter. “He broke it up in his mouth and chewed the shell before he swallowed it.”

“You did what?” Patsy said to Josh. She whirled on Reese and snapped, “Watch your language, young man!” She glanced at the two middle-aged women preparing food on the other side of the kitchen and said, “There are ladies present.”

“Sorry, Mom,” Reese said.

“It was just a raw egg, Mom. And a little eggshell,” Josh said. “It won’t kill me.”

Patsy threw up her hands. “I give up. You two are incorrigible. You talk some sense into them, Ben.” She turned and stalked back toward the living room.

“How are things on the ranch?” Ben asked with a wry twist of his mouth.

“It’s a lot warmer in Texas than it is here,” Josh said, grabbing a towel from a rack and wiping the egg off his face. “And there aren’t any females around to drive a man crazy.”

“Sounds good to me,” Ben said, unable to keep from smiling.

“I don’t know why Mom keeps insisting we come up here,” Reese said. “Why don’t you guys come down to the ranch sometime?”

“That might be a little awkward,” Ben pointed out, “considering your dad and your two uncles live there.”

“Dad wouldn’t care,” Josh said. “He doesn’t have a girlfriend or anything. And Uncle Cain and Uncle Cash are more like older brothers than uncles, they’re so much younger than Dad.”

“I know the ABCs would like to come visit,” Ben said. “They love to go horseback riding.”

Josh and Reese exchanged a glance.

“What?” Ben said.

“We heard Mom talking on the phone to your dad tonight,” Josh said.

“Overheard, you mean?” Ben said with an edge to his voice.

“They were arguing,” Reese said in his defense. “It was hard not to hear.”

“And?” Ben prodded.

After a pause Reese said, “She was threatening to take the ABCs and head for Texas if he missed this party.”

“That was all we heard.” Josh shoved Reese in the shoulder. “Because he didn’t think we should listen anymore.”

It was enough, Ben realized. He couldn’t say he hadn’t seen friction between Patsy and his father. If he’d noticed those secret looks his father shot his mother, Patsy had likely noticed them, as well. But like all kids, he didn’t want his parents to split up. Especially since he liked Patsy a hell of a lot better than he liked his own mother.

“Patsy doesn’t know you heard?” Ben asked.

Josh and Reese shook their heads.

“Keep it that way. Maybe things will change.”

“Do you really think so?” Josh asked, his eyes bleak. “I think it would kill Dad to have Mom back in Texas at her dad’s ranch. It’s too close to the Bar-3, you know. Dad would have to see her all the time.”

Another man in love with a wife he’s lost? Ben wondered. He hoped he never fell in love. The people he knew who’d done it—his father, Patsy, his mother—had only suffered as a result.

“Everything’ll settle back down,” he told the twins. It was what he wanted to believe. He hoped he was right.

Ben heard a commotion in the living room. He listened for a moment and heard his mother’s voice. And his father’s. They must have arrived together from the embassy party. He listened for the senator’s gruff voice but didn’t hear it.

He wondered how Patsy was handling the fact his mother and father had arrived together. As the perfect hostess she was, he supposed. But she would be hurting. Because his father couldn’t keep his eyes off his mother whenever she was in the same room.

Ben’s stomach knotted. He forced himself to leave the kitchen. He had to help Patsy by distracting his father.

That shouldn’t be too hard. All he’d have to do was mention his job.