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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.
3
Ben was exhausted. He sat in his undershorts on the brocade-upholstered couch in his newly furnished four-story row house in Georgetown, his head in his hands. He could see the pink-and-yellow light of dawn through the silk-draped windows. When was this going to end? How long was he going to have these damned nightmares? He’d woken up screaming. And been afraid to go back to sleep.
He rubbed a hand across his bristly face. Thank God he’d been alone. Thank God he’d sent home the woman he’d picked up at a bar last night after he’d left Patsy’s party. He didn’t remember much about her, except that her body had been a brief haven for his.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his gritty eyes. He’d been seeking escape from more than his own troubles. He’d felt bad for Patsy.
When he’d entered the living room last night, his father had been helping his mother remove her coat. Patsy would have had to be blind to miss the yearning in his eyes. And his stepmother was a woman who saw things very clearly.
Ben had been furious with his father. And frustrated by his inability to change the situation. It was a feeling he’d lived with since he was eight and understood that his father had gotten another woman pregnant, which had caused his mother to ask for a divorce.
But he was no longer a helpless child. He could protect his stepmother. And had, by refocusing his father’s attention on himself. “Looks like some kind of gang trouble is going to hit the District soon,” he’d said.
“You should have stayed in the army,” his father replied. “There you could have done some real good for this country.”
“I’m doing good where I am, Dad,” he’d said. “The threat is right here in our backyard.”
“You were a good soldier. A great soldier.”
“I’m a good ICE agent.” But it was clear from his father’s expression that there was no chance for greatness in that role.
His father snorted. “You spend your days rounding up illegal aliens and deporting them.”
“That isn’t all I do.” But he knew that, in his father’s eyes, his work as an ICE agent could never measure up to the contribution he could make to his country as part of the military. His father couldn’t understand why he’d resigned his commission after training for a life in the army.
And he wasn’t about to tell him the truth.
Luckily, within a few minutes Ham had arrived, everyone shared a toast to the bride and groom, and Ben’s mother and the senator left to return to the senator’s Georgetown home.
Ben had given Patsy a hard hug before he left. But he hadn’t looked her in the face. Because he couldn’t bear to see the silent suffering in her eyes.
Ben wondered if Patsy and his father had argued last night. Probably they had. He worried that the day was coming when they wouldn’t make up.
Ben shoved his hands through his hair. In order not to stick out as a cop on the street, he was allowed to let his hair grow long. But it was time for a haircut. He needed to get up off the couch and get moving. Get a shower. Eat some breakfast. When was the last time he’d eaten a decent meal? Breakfast yesterday, maybe. He’d had no appetite last night. No wonder his stomach felt like it was gnawing on his insides.
