Outcast. Joan Johnston

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “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 СКАЧАТЬ