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“What sort of offer was that?” Marcus asked.
“One he readily accepted. Very shortly he will leave this great state of Texas, never to return.” Connor Talbot looked pleased with himself.
“Connor loved playing the bigger badder bad guy.” Admiration laced Mel’s tone. “He even scared me. It was awesome.”
Grandma Kate smiled. “Good job, gentlemen. Vance will be behind bars, unable to do a thing about his late great-aunt’s estate. And Brody Carp now believes that the entire episode was a game to draw Vance out, and since he’ll soon be out of the state, he’ll cease to be our immediate concern.”
Jenny was pretty certain that if Carp ever set foot in the Lonestar State again, the Lusty Town Trust, aka Grandma Kate, would learn of it.
Then Grandma Kate turned her attention to Jenny. “And aside from the fact that you now know who your mother was, and that there’s a lawyer in Austin waiting to speak with you, I think you learned something else, as well.”
Jenny met Kate Benedict’s gaze. How could she have known the one doubt Jenny had harbored about herself all these years?
“I did. Over the last several weeks I learned things about myself I never believed could be true.”
“Sweetheart?” Dale had his head tilted as he waited for her to say something.
“I guess I do have a bottom line after all—and that when I have to, I can stand firm. I can take control of my own life and my own destiny and make something happen. I’m not a spineless push-over, after all.”
“Aw, Jenny.” Just her name, on a sigh. Parker lifted one hand and kissed it. Dale repeated the gesture with her other.
“Sweet Jenny, Dale and I never had a doubt in the world, and we’ve never thought you were a push-over.”
“That’s true,” Jackson said. “Your men warned me that you wouldn’t be manipulated where you didn’t want to go. And that was a while ago.”
“No…I think I was a bit of a push-over, in the past. It’s kind of all tangled up in having been adopted, and the way I used to think about that when I was a child—and a classmate named Petra, who had also been adopted.” How odd that I might end up living poor Petra’s most cherished dream.
Jenny shook her head. She might only be twenty-four, but already she realized that life could be very strange. She looked around at the group of people, all of whom, in essence, had had her back. “So, what happens next?”
“That’s up to you, sweet girl.” Grandma Kate’s tone had softened. “If you like, we’ll get you in to see Robbie. Then, when those DNA results are in, we’ll make an appointment for you with that lawyer in Austin. But it’s up to you. It’s your decision.”
Jenny nodded. She looked at each of her men. Parker offered her a small smile, and Dale’s expression was one of encouragement. She knew that whatever she decided to do, these good men would back her up one hundred percent.
Jenny turned back to Grandma Kate. “All right. Let’s do that, and see where it takes us.”
Chapter Twenty
Sitting between her guys, Jenny felt her tension increase the closer the GPS said they were to their destination. Then Parker put on his right turn signal and pulled into the gated driveway. The gate was open, and there was no mistaking the house number welded to the black bars.
Both of her men whistled when the house came into view. “This must be the place,” Dale said. Parker put the truck in park and turned off the ignition.
Jenny sat forward for a moment, her gaze taking in the enormous house before her. Painted white, two-story, with eight pillars and a pretty porch, the house nearly took her breath away.
“It’s at least as massive as the Big House back in Lusty,” Parker said.
“It looks like it, doesn’t it? Remember, Mr. Mathers said it was built in the late eighteen hundreds, so it’s about the same age, too.” Jenny should have been prepared for this, for the size of it, the exclusivity of it. But she wasn’t, not even after her appointment yesterday afternoon with Rodney Mathers, the senior partner in the law firm of Mathers, Chambers, and Horne.
The truth was her mind was still swimming over the enormity of her inheritance.
