Leanne Banks - Her Forever Man

Her sophisticated appearance was at odds with the casual room. The oak dining-room table and chairs had served the Logans for at least three generations and bore crescent marks from teething babies, scars from forks jabbed into the surface, and though the table still gleamed, the polish wasn’t as shiny as it once had been due to countless spills of milk and juice. Currently it was set with stoneware plates and bowls, stainless flatware, napkins and a pot of coffee. With her cashmere dress and golden champagne hair, Felicity clearly didn’t belong here.

Brock watched Chuck suck in his gut while Tyler stepped across the room and offered his arm. “Please join us. I’m Tyler Logan. You must be Felicity Chambeau. We’re delighted to have you.”

Brock nearly barfed at his brother’s enthusiastic greeting. “Why doesn’t he just get down on his hands and knees and howl?” he muttered.

“If he doesn’t, I will,” Chuck said, his gaze still fastened on Felicity.

Brock exhaled in disgust. “You would think you two hadn’t ever seen a woman.”

“I haven’t seen any that looked like her in a long time,” Chuck retorted. “Just because you’re dried up, disinterested and bitter doesn’t mean the rest of us are.” He stepped forward and tipped his hat. “Howdy, ma’am. I’m Chuck Granby. Pleasure to meet you.”

Felicity smiled at both men, then looked at Jacob, Brock’s painfully shy son. “You must be Jacob. Bree told me about you this afternoon. She said you can already rope a calf.”

Jacob stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “My dad taught me.”

Grudgingly appreciative of her attention to his son, Brock glanced down and ruffled Jacob’s hair. “Bree would speak for all of us if you gave her the chance.”

“Oh, she did.”

Brock could just imagine the family secrets his daughter had spilled. “Great,” he muttered darkly.

“Don’t worry,” Felicity said. “She could easily be a PR person for the Logan family and the state of Texas. She’s determined to teach me how to speak Texan.”

“Maybe we can make a permanent resident of you,” Tyler said with a teasing grin. “You might like it here so much you want to stay.”

“Great,” Brock muttered under his breath as he thought about wrapping Tyler’s tongue around his throat.

His tall, sturdy housekeeper carried a steaming pot into the dining room. “Well, are y’all gonna stand around the table and look at it or sit down and eat?” She glanced up at Felicity. “You must be Miss Chambeau. I’m Addie, and I’ll warn you I don’t do much fancy cooking like you’re probably used to in New York. Seems like these men want the same ol’ thing every week or so.”

Brock approved of Addie’s brusque tone. She wouldn’t be bowled over by a pretty woman in a pink dress.

“It smells delicious, Addie,” Felicity said.

“Let me help you with your chair,” Tyler smoothly said at the same time as Chuck pulled one out from the large table. After Felicity had murmured her thanks, the two men sat on either side of her like adoring bookends.

“What brings you to Texas?” Chuck asked as Addie served the beef stew.

Felicity glanced uncertainly at Brock. “I—uh—”

“She’s here for a short visit,” he said. He didn’t want the whole crew to know she was a silent partner. He preferred that the crew not know she existed.

“She’s silent partner of the Triple L,” Tyler announced.

Brock fixed a glare on his brother and Tyler plastered an innocent grin on his face.

“A silent partner,” Chuck echoed in amazement.

“Very silent. I’m so silent I couldn’t tell the difference between a dairy cow and a steer,” she emphasized as if she sensed Brock’s displeasure. She was intuitive, Brock had to grant her that much. “One of my great-great-grandfathers had a little agreement with one of Mr. Logan’s great-great-grandfathers. The only thing I’m entitled to is a place to sleep when I visit.”

“A silent partner,” Chuck murmured again, grinning from ear to ear. “A knockout from New York City, no less.”

So get over it, Brock thought. He cleared his throat. “What do you do in New York?”

She hesitated. “Not as much as I would like, but I’ve been working on that.”

“How?” Tyler asked.

She swallowed a bite and took a sip. “You’ll laugh,” she said to all of them. “Everyone does.”

Brock took in the little signs of her discomfort, her slight wiggle in her seat, the way she dipped her head. He wondered how she managed to look appealing when she was being evasive. “I won’t laugh,” he said.

Her expression said she didn’t believe him. She glanced at Chuck and Tyler. “I think that every person has a purpose on this earth and if you find your purpose and perform it, then you will be happy and the world will be a better place.”

Brock nodded at the philosophy. He agreed. He just would have stated it differently. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

Felicity’s lips twitched. “In this case, woman.”

“No argument there,” Chuck murmured.

“I’m in an unusual position,” Felicity continued. “My family has a history of being fortunate with their investments.”

“She’s loaded, too?” Chuck asked.

Tyler muffled a chuckle.

“Cut it,” Brock said.

Chuck stuffed a bite of stew in his mouth.

“Now that my parents are gone, I have to make decisions,” she said, sadness clouding her eyes. “My family has been fairly generous with charitable causes, but I think it’s my purpose to take that charity a step further.”

“In what way?” Tyler asked, no more curious than Brock was.

“I want to give away a significant portion of my inheritance,” she said. “I want to give the money to a worthy cause.”

Silence followed, and all three men stared at Felicity as if she’d spoken in Swahili.

Brock stifled a sigh. God save him from crazy women with more money than sense.

She gave a low chuckle. “Well, you didn’t laugh, but you look just like my financial advisors did the first time I told them what I wanted to do. I’m not clinically insane,” she assured them.

“Why don’t you want to keep it?” Chuck asked.

Brock watched the world-weariness tug at her wry smile. “Because the only thing the money is doing right now is accumulating. For what? There are better uses for it.”

“If you need a worthy cause,” Tyler said, “the hospital where I practice needs—”

“—Tyler,” Brock interrupted before his brother could get too wound up.

“If she wants to donate it to a worthy cause, we could use—”

“Miss Chambeau is a guest in our house. We don’t badger guests for money,” he said in the quiet, but rock-hard voice he used when he pulled rank. “Even for good causes.”

Tyler sighed impatiently, but dug into his stew.

Chuck shook his head. “I never heard of that one. So your job is to give away your money. Why don’t you want to keep it for your husband and kids?”

“I don’t have a husband and children,” she said in a crisp voice.

“Yeah, but some lucky guy’ll get a ring on your finger—”

Felicity shook her head. “I’m not getting married. Right now, my appeal to men is my inheritance. As soon as I give half of it away, my appeal will disappear.”

Half of it! Her statement was like another little bomb exploding. Brock stared at her in silence. Surely the woman knew she possessed more attractions than her endless supply of dead presidents.

Tyler cleared his throat. “You might bump into someone who can change your mind about that,” he said in a mild voice that bordered on flirtatious.

Felicity appeared to ignore the hint of flattery and firmly shook her head.