Awakening Veronica (5 page)

“So you’re in a holding pattern?”

“Until the meeting, yeah. I’ve heard that there are a number of qualified applicants and I’m not sure I want to live in California again. I miss Texas. I miss the Hill Country.”

Hank weighed his words before he spoke, torn between wanting the best for his closest friend and wanting to influence him to stay in Divine. “You remember a conversation we had years ago, before you transferred to Wyoming?”

Travis took another sip from his beer and his eyes took on a faraway look. “Sharing a woman? You’re appointed to your current position by the voters. Do
you
still think about it?”

Hank put down the beer glass and pointed at his temple, where more and more silver was crowding out his formerly jet-black hair. “I turned forty-four this year. There will come a point where I’ll be too old to compete with the younger guys coming up in the sheriff’s department. I don’t begrudge them their chance to make a difference in this community. I just don’t want to arrive at the end of my tenure as sheriff and realize that my years of service have cost me more than just a few silver hairs. Walking into a dark, quiet house at the end of shift has been getting to me. I wondered if you still felt the same way we did back then.”

The other dream—one he’d all but given up on—also because of his elected position, hovered in the back of his mind but didn’t fully surface. He didn’t know if Travis still enjoyed the same Dominant tendencies he did, but he’d content himself with having one dream come true. Hoping for both felt greedy.

What if we found our one and she
was
receptive to being dominated?

“If you’re asking after all this time, that must mean the thought of sharing a woman, loving the same woman, has been on your mind.”

“Frequently, yeah. Some things have changed since the last time you visited. Remember Jack Warner, Ethan Grant, and Adam Davis?”

A deep chuckle rumbled from Travis’s chest and he sat back in his seat. “They’re kind of where this dream started. How are they?”

A disquieting knot of emotion churned in Hank’s gut as he recalled the first time Jack, Ethan, and Adam had shared their secret dream of sharing a woman—not just for sexual pleasure but for a lifetime. He knew the emotion stirring in him wasn’t jealousy, but it still burned. Want. He wanted what they had with Grace. He longed for the peace he saw in Jack’s eyes when the subject of Grace came up.

“They found her.”

“They did?” Travis’s tone made it clear he was shocked. Hank thumbed through the pictures on his personal cell phone until he found the right one. He turned the phone so Travis could see it. “This was taken on Fourth of July. That’s Grace.”

Travis took the phone from Hank, looked more closely, and his eyebrows did a brief, appreciative jump. “She’s beautiful. Looks familiar, too.” A grin spread across his face, and he glanced at Hank and said, “She have a sister? I’ve got a thing for curvy women.”

“Me, too, man. Yeah, she has one already-married sister. Charity.”

Travis paused and looked closer. “Stuart?”

Hank nodded. “Used to be.”

“She was a shy little thing and Charity was a pistol, as I recall.”

Hank nodded and then chuckled. “Speaking of pistols, they also have a daughter. Little Rose Marie. She’s three. A lot has changed since you last visited Divine. Among our generation, Grace is the center of the first ménage I know of in this area. There are others from our parents’ generation, but they’re all still very much in the closet.”

“You said the first ménage. There are others?”

Hank licked the beer foam from his upper lip and nodded. “Several. Including people you know.”

“I’d like to hear more about that, maybe get caught up with some of them.”

Hank hoped that meant Travis still thought about their discussion years before. One night, when they’d gotten rip-roaring drunk, long before Hank ever conceived the idea of running for sheriff and before Travis had moved on to his first posting away from Divine as a game warden in Wyoming, they’d talked about sharing a woman.

Both of them were so territorial back then, and they’d agreed that the only way either of them could ever share a woman with another man was if it was the two of them…and no others, ever. Their beer- and lust-soaked imaginations had run away with them, and they’d both fantasized about the kind of woman they could love together and what they could do with her if they were ever given the taboo opportunity. That original fantasy had led him to gradually discover other needs he had as a grown man that extended beyond the bedroom. Needs that were left mostly unmet.

Hank settled back in his seat and said, “Tell you what, why don’t you relax for a few days. I’m off on Tuesday and we could go fishing if you’d like. I have an invitation to a wedding next weekend, and it includes a plus-one. Why don’t you come with me? You could get caught up with some more friends.”

“Dude, when I said I was willing to share with you, I didn’t mean I wanted to date you,” Travis said and then barked with laughter, shielding himself when Hank raised a fist.

“The wedding involves a ménage. Remember little Maizy Owen?”

Travis gaped. “Itty-bitty Maizy Owen is old enough to get married?”

Hank burst into laughter, relishing the shock he was about to deliver. “Trav, she’s in her early thirties now, and yes. She’s getting married. Three
big
dudes.”

“Three? Hell. They’ll break her. Last time I saw her she was nearly small enough to fit in my pocket.”

Hank snickered. “She might be but she’s got all three wrapped around her pinky finger. Her brother Patrick is also part of a ménage.”

“Oh, hell. I bet two of his kids in ménages went over well with Old Man Owen.”

“It wasn’t easy for them. Hasn’t been easy for a lot of them. There’s a faction here that takes delight in pointing them out, trying to shame them, make them feel bad for the way they live their lives, even though they don’t rub anyone’s noses in their private business. Maizy’s even had to contend with her own sister, Roberta.”

“Prissy Owen? She doesn’t have much room to talk if I’m recalling right from her wild child days.”

“That’s the one. But I gotta say…”

“Yeah?”

“Seems to be working for them. Maizy’s a school teacher and she had a hard time with the school board for a while, but it all worked out, at least in the short term. Old Lady Dumphrey was up in arms for a while but wound up being one of her biggest supporters. It was weird.” Hank’s backside still stung every time he thought of the elderly teacher and her oaken paddle. She’d had quite a swing back in the day.

“Dumphrey? You mean from fourth grade, Dumphrey? She’s still alive? Man, I remember when she lit my ass up with that paddle of hers.”

“Yeah, and cantankerous as ever. Speaking of paddles…” Hank leaned close and spoke softly so he wouldn’t be overheard.

Hank saw the answer to his unspoken question in his friend’s eyes as he looked at him in the mirror behind the bar. “DC was a no-go, of course. I went to a few munches when I was out of town but didn’t make a strong enough connection with any of the subs to make travel worth it. Made some good friends, though.”

“Sorry, man,” Hank said, tilting the beer to his lips. “Sucks to flip that switch and then realize the sub of my dreams—our dreams, I guess—isn’t out there.”

Travis looked at him and pointed at his temples that were still mostly dark brown. “I’m not quite ready for the nursing home yet, old man.”

“Maybe working together we can find her, if you wind up staying this time. So what do you say? Want to be my date for the wedding?”

Travis snorted at his word choice and nodded. “Why not. I’m here for at least a month. I’ll have to see what happens with that meeting in two weeks, and I’ll go back to DC after Thanksgiving.”

“Thought you politicians had cushy hours and took off around all those holidays.”

There was a trace of disillusionment in Travis’s features that got Hank’s attention. He’d said he was considering early retirement. Maybe he was serious.

The timing couldn’t have been better. Hank would need to be deciding soon whether he wanted to run for another term as Sheriff of Divine County, or retire to the private sector. He loved his job but the thought had a certain appeal.

“So has life in Divine been as boring as ever?”

Hank had to laugh. “Let me tell you some stories and you decide, Fishcop.”

* * * *

Saturday morning, Veronica sat in the plush leather seat of the Colibri and tried to focus on the open document on her tablet. The Texas Hill Country landscape zoomed past in her peripheral vision, making her queasy. She wasn’t sure what was worse, being at a higher altitude in an airplane and having a wider panorama to tune out, or being closer to the ground in a helicopter and being unable to escape the sensation she was falling.

Research. This is research, damn it. Detach yourself. Pick it apart. Breathe. You’re not falling. You’re perfectly safe.
She darted a glance out the window and a wave of cold anxiety washed through her in the luxurious but close confines of the helicopter. Her distant cousin, Henry, was piloting the ultra-extravagant conveyance on its way to Divine, Texas.

Enlisting the aid of Cord and Jackson, and their fiancée, Ari, Grandma Kate had bamboozled her into a side trip while she was at their engagement party the night before. She hadn’t been able to say no. She’d had another mild surprise when she discovered that Grandma Kate was not really her great-aunt. She was actually a distant cousin. Due in part to her advanced age, it was beyond odd to think of Kate Benedict as her first cousin by marriage, twice removed.

Veronica’s parents had never bothered to spell out the exact relationship to her and she’d consequently grown up believing that Kate was her great-aunt. She frowned, thinking that it was just another one of her mother’s small affronts directed at a side of her husband’s family and its matriarch, who she didn’t approve of.

Grandma Kate sat in the front seat of the helicopter, chatting with her grandson, and occasionally looking into the back, where Veronica was trying to keep it together. She didn’t like telling people about her anxiety triggers, one of which was flying, because she didn’t want people to view her as weak. The plane trip from Montana the day before had been exhausting enough, as she’d struggled to hold herself together. She’d anticipated using a vehicle wherever they needed to go while she was in Texas. But no. Kate insisted a helicopter was faster and since the family had one, the least they could do was make use of it.

Her stylus flew on the tablet screen as she made notes.
Floating. The sun reflects off of the tinted window glass, warming me but not blinding me. My eardrums wobble as we descend, coming closer to our destination.
She assumed their destination was in sight because she was too scared to look out the front windshield.

Back home, they’d already had several snowfalls, but in Texas, everything was still green. No snow on the ground, at least not that she could see with her occasional glimpse out the window beside her. She’d tried to be brave a couple of times, to be blasé and gaze out the window like any other seasoned traveler, but the truth was it made her dizzy and slightly nauseous.

Kate turned in the seat and softly said, “Can you hear me, sweet girl? Am I interrupting your work?”

They were wearing headsets that gave them the ability to communicate over the noise of the helicopter, which was good since Kate was up front. Veronica nodded in answer, then shook her head, then smiled when Kate chuckled. “Yes, I can hear you.”

Kate said, “We can talk privately.”

Veronica stroked the locks of hair framing her face and said, “Sure. What would you like to talk about?”

“We should be arriving at the Divine Creek Ranch in about ten or fifteen minutes. You doing okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, still focusing on the backlit screen of her tablet, the fingers holding her stylus still shaking over the on-screen keyboard.
Faker
.

“Then can you tell me about the bruise on your cheek?”

Veronica made direct eye contact with Grandma Kate and knew she hadn’t fooled her at all. She’d thought the layer of foundation and powder had disguised the fading bruise at the engagement party. She was pretty sure Cord and Jackson hadn’t noticed the fading mark but leave it to eagle-eyed Grandma Kate to notice the slightest changes. She normally didn’t wear much foundation and Kate undoubtedly remembered that.

It’s in the past. No point in stirring things up. In the end, nothing will change what happened. The important thing is that he should be packing and moving out right now.

“You know how klutzy I am, Grandma Kate. I tripped on an electrical cord.”
Yup, you sure did, right after Brent slapped and pushed you.

Grandma Kate chewed her lip for a second and then nodded and faced front again. Veronica
hated
lying to Grandma Kate. Hated it. It was such a betrayal of their relationship. Kate had never asked hard questions so Veronica had never had to lie before.