A Very Lusty Christmas (27 page)

“This is…this is something I never dared to hope have happen.” Kate didn’t know if she could continue to speak without crying. She wanted so very desperately to become Kate Benedict. The fact that she would have had to choose between marriage and her duty had been weighing heavy on her heart.

She’d been close to making that choice, and she would have chosen to follow her heart. She was so grateful that now, she wouldn’t have to make that sacrifice.

“This letter would seem to change things for us,” Gerald said.

“Yes,” Kate agreed. “So it would seem.” Kate couldn’t move. In fact she could barely breathe. She felt
so
aware of the men sitting on either side of her. She had no idea what the two of them were going to do next, but the tension she could feel in both of them spoke to her.

Not normally a very patient woman, she made herself simply wait.

She felt the caress of a hand under her chin, and when Gerald applied the slightest pressure, she relaxed and let him turn her head so that she faced him.

“We love you, Katherine Wesley, with all our hearts. We wanted to ask you some weeks back if you would marry us, but we held off actually proposing. When we learned about the regulations at that time, we knew you would be torn between what you wanted, and what you felt you had to do—your duty. We all three of us knew that our desire to be together had to be kept to the nebulous future.”

“As long as this war is going on, my darling, the future is
still
nebulous.” Kate had to, in good conscience, point that out. Any one of them could receive orders at any time, and it wouldn’t matter if they were married or not. As long as they wore their country’s uniform, orders would have to be obeyed.

Gerald treated her to a fast, and very appealing, grin. “True enough. But we can now marry you—well, at least in the fashion that Benedicts tend to marry. So now, dearest Kate, we can ask you outright, and in front of witnesses. Sweetheart, will you marry us?”

She hadn’t seen him move, but suddenly, he was holding open a small jeweler’s box that held the most beautiful ring she had ever seen. Two diamonds and two blue topaz. Two, one for each of her men. Four stones, in the shape of a star, for this state that would forevermore be her home. Oh, her men were going to be a handful and, she suspected, they would touch her heart again and again.

It was all she could do right then and there not to cry.

“Kate?”

“Yes.” She hadn’t meant to keep them on the edge, waiting for her answer. The ring, the moment, had simply stolen her breath. “Oh, yes. I want to marry you both so very much.”

The rest of the family broke into applause, and Kate felt her face heat. But she smiled and met the gazes of most of them in turn. These people, who so recently had become so dear to her, were genuinely pleased by her acceptance.

Patrick reached over and took the ring out of the box. She knew he could feel her trembling when he held her hand so he could slip the ring in place on her finger. But that was all right. She figured a woman was entitled to shake with emotion at such a time.

“Thank you.” He brought her hand up to his lips. “Thank you, my sweet angel, for being the answer to every single one of our hopes and dreams and prayers.” Then he leaned over and placed a too-brief kiss on her lips.

“You’ve made us the happiest, and the luckiest men in the world, sweetheart.” Gerald ran his hand down her back, and when she turned to him, he, too, kissed her.

“I’m the lucky one.” Her voice quavered, but that was fine. “I’m going to spend my life being loved by the two most wonderful men in all creation.”

“We’d like to be able to call you wife soon,” Gerald said. “Do you have a date in mind?”

Thanksgiving was still a couple of weeks away, and planning had already begun for Christmas. She looked from Gerald, to Patrick, and then let her gaze once more roam the smiling, familiar—
beloved
—faces around the table. When her gaze met Sarah’s, that gracious lady, her new grandmother, nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I do have a date in mind. I’d like for us to get married on Christmas Eve.”

* * * *

Patrick had the devil’s own time keeping rein on his emotions—and on his desire. He smiled all through the remainder of dinner, cheerfully accepting the congratulations of family, the hugs and kisses of the women and the hearty backslaps bestowed by the men.

All the while the only thing he wanted was to be alone with his brother and his woman. They were getting married in a little over a month, and he wanted very badly to celebrate that occasion with some completely uninhibited and totally unbridled sex.

It didn’t matter that they couldn’t be as unbridled or as uninhibited as he would like. Kate’s bedroom was away from the rest of the Home, true, but they still had to be somewhat circumspect in view of the residents who would be trying to sleep under the same roof.

Patrick had to bite back his annoyance when his father, Charles, corralled him, and asked him to step out onto the porch with him for a few moments.

Both of his fathers enjoyed an occasional smoke in the evenings. Neither he nor Gerald had ever cultivated the habit, but they’d both come to appreciate the time spent outside with one father or the other, or both. That had never been more true than that first weekend they returned from England.

Hell, that wasn’t all that long ago, when you think about it.
Patrick ran his hand through his hair and shoved his annoyance away.

“You feeling a little itchy, there, son?”

Patrick caught the humor in his dad’s tone and the laughter in his eyes. He wasn’t surprised, therefore, when the door opened and Gerald, followed by his other father, Sam, joined them.

Okay, clearly the dads feel they have some sage words of advice to pass on at this time.
All things considered, he figured they were entitled.

“Watching you propose to Kate took us both back, I think. To the day we proposed to your mother,” Charles said.

“It did. And for just a moment, I felt
our
dads right there with us,” Sam said.

“Yeah,” Charles agreed. “I felt that, too. They would have loved our Kate—just like we all do. You made a damn fine choice, there, boys.”

“Thank you,” Patrick said. His brother came and stood next to him, and he sensed the same tamped-down impatience in him as he felt inside himself.

“We may have more white hair than we’d like, and be semiretired,” Sam said, “but that doesn’t mean we don’t remember what it’s like to be young and in love. We were luckier, in that we had a few years with your mother and you before we had to leave and go over there.”

Patrick remembered then that neither of his fathers ever said much about what they’d experienced during their war. He and his brother had been small boys when they’d left home—he’d been five and Gerald had been seven—but he remembered.

He also remembered the day, over a year later, when they returned. He didn’t learn until he was older how the two men had stayed in upper New York State for a couple of months, long enough to ensure they didn’t have the Spanish flu, before returning home to their family. All he knew at the time was that his dads were back, and his world returned to normal once more.

“This war has already lasted longer than that one, at least for the two of you. You might not get a lot of time with Kate before your next orders come through. We know that,” Charles said.

“You said that she seemed to like the place,” Sam said.

Patrick understood he meant the house at the edge of town, the one that he and
his
brother had built for their bride.

“She did.” Thoughts of Kate and that house brought back memories of the afternoon they’d spent there and he tried, very hard, not to let that particular memory show on his face.

“You’ll likely want to redo it some,” Charles said. “Bring it into these modern times.”

“We had thought to do that,” Gerald said. “We haven’t discussed it much, because—well, because we were in limbo. We thought we couldn’t marry Kate until the war was over and who the hell knew when that would be? But now that we
can
marry her, and have a date set…” His voice trailed off. He met Patrick’s gaze and Patrick realized that neither one of them had given any thought to the fact that very soon, they
needed
to provide a house for their woman to live in.

She probably would, for the most part, stay at the Convalescent Home, but when he and Gerald were on leave, they’d want their space and their privacy.

“Well, hell,” Gerald said. “We don’t have much time, do we?”

Patrick met his brother’s gaze. “Especially when you take into consideration that we can’t get away to do anything.
Damn
.”

Charles and Sam both chuckled. “Yep,” Sam said, “kind of hard to think about the practicalities when other considerations take center stage in the brain—or should I say, the smaller brain.”

Patrick thought to deny the charge, true though it was, but Charles waved that off. “We remember,” he said. “Planning things out, taking care of the details, that’s what most women do so well. We men, well, we can be somewhat more simpleminded, and our goals not quite what you’d call long term.”

Patrick and Gerald shared a glance. “Thanks,” Gerald said, “for bringing the need to think of the practicalities to our attention. We seriously didn’t give them a thought.”

“That’s why you have us,” Charles said. “A man doesn’t stop being a father and taking care of his sons
just
because the sons can shave.”

“Damn straight,” Sam said. “And that’s not the only reason we called you boys out here. We wanted to let you know that we didn’t furnish the
entire
place for you, but there’s a table and chairs in the kitchen, a couple of chairs and a sofa in the parlor, and a bed and dressers upstairs.”

“Plumbing’s good, too, we checked it all, and there’re linens there, too,” Charles said. “We’ve also connected the electricity for you. You could move in tonight, if you had a mind to. The rest of the stuff—the painting and furnishing and landscaping—those can be done in time.”

“Now, let’s go in and make polite conversation for a little while. Then you boys gather your fiancée and head on over there,” Sam said. “We’re taking your mom and are going to relieve LuAnn at the Home for the night—and I believe that Rose and Chelsea are going to relieve
us
around noon tomorrow. No need to rush back.”

“Course,” Charles said, “there’s no Benedict-sized bathtub there yet, as the one we used to have had to be removed to our bathroom here when we moved in. But then, some things don’t necessarily need to be repeated, do they, boys?”

Patrick felt his face turn red and looked to his brother, wondering what they could say to these two men—the men who had loved them and raised them and did for them—and who never let an opportunity to rib them pass.

“Thanks, dads,” Gerald said. “But we’ve found the bathtub at the Home works well enough for now.”

The only uncomfortable moment came when his mother asked him what had the men all laughing as they came back into the house. But he was able to sidestep the question by telling her that he loved her, and giving her a kiss on the cheek.

He was proud of his brother and himself. They didn’t just grab Kate and rush her out the door with them, as they both very much wanted to do.

They must have waited at least
five
minutes after coming back inside before doing that.

“You’re both grinning a great deal,” Kate said as they escorted her to their car.

“We are,” Patrick said. “We’re anxious to be alone with you.”

“It’s early yet, darling. Most of the residents will still be up. We won’t be alone for hours.”

“We’re not going back to the Home. Mother and the dads are going there for us, instead,” Gerald said.

Patrick held the door for Kate, and when she’d slid across the seat to sit close to Gerald, he got in after her. Once the door was closed, he kissed her. “We have a surprise for you. If, that is, you want to be completely alone with us.”

“I want that more than anything,” Kate said. “To tell you the truth, I’ve felt anxious to be alone with you both for hours.”

“Perfect,” Patrick said. He picked up her left hand and kissed her finger, just above where their ring sat. “You are so damn perfect for us.”

“You are,” Gerald agreed. He’d started the car, but took a moment to kiss her, too.

“Drive, please. I don’t know where we’re going, and at this point, I really don’t care. I just want to be with you both.”

Patrick thought those were just about the most beautiful words he’d ever heard.

“I don’t know how I’m ever going to face your parents tomorrow.” Kate looked at the beautiful bed—a Benedict-sized bed if ever she’d seen one—all made up with fresh linens, just waiting for them.

“The name of this town
is
Lusty, I’ll remind you, almost-wife,” Gerald said. “Grandmother Amanda may have chosen the name, but I can assure you, our parents have done their very best to uphold it.”