Outcast

Ben intended to keep it that way, which was why he was so careful to conceal the nightmares and all the rest of the crap he was dealing with these days. If his family got an inkling he was having trouble coping with a world not at war, they’d be in his face wanting to help.

He envied the Black Sheep, who had just said no, and his two brothers, who had good excuses to be absent tonight. Carter was serving with the marines in Iraq, and Nash was out of the country doing whatever secret work he did for the president.

“Ben! You’re here!” his thirteen-year-old sister Camille squealed as he stepped into the circular domed foyer of his father’s Chevy Chase mansion with Waverly on his heels.

“I’m here,” he replied, putting a smile on his face and opening his arms to catch Camille as she leapt into them.

“Ben! You came!” his seventeen-year-old sister Bethany said, her long blond curls bouncing as she hurried toward him.

As if he’d had a choice. He hugged Camille before setting her down, then wrapped an arm around Bethany’s shoulder.

“Ben! You need a shave!” Bethany’s twin sister Amanda said as she wrinkled her nose.

Ben grinned as Amanda put her hands on either side of his bristly face and leaned forward to kiss him on each cheek, in the continental style she must have learned in the exclusive Swiss boarding school she and Bethany attended.

“Girls! Give Ben a chance to get in the door.”

His half sisters stepped back to allow their mother to embrace her stepson. His father’s second wife wasn’t conventionally pretty and she’d never been thin. But Patsy had hazel eyes that warmed to a golden brown every time she smiled.

When he hugged her back, he did it with all the love a son gave to his mother.

“Wave!” a female voice shrieked.

Ben watched a blond streak go flying by and laughed as Julia threw herself into Waverly’s open arms in much the same way his youngest half sister had flown into his. Except Julia followed the hug with a long, lascivious kiss.

Ben was pretty sure his mother would have been appalled to see her only daughter behaving like a hoyden. And equally sure that Julia would have found a way to charm her mother out of any rebuke for her behavior.

Ben turned back to his stepmother, urging her and his sisters toward the living room as he said, “I can’t believe you got that uppity Swiss school to let the girls come home for a wedding.”

“Mom didn’t give them any choice,” Amanda interjected.

Ben had long ago realized his mother and his stepmother were equally strong women in their own ways. He just saw a softer side to Patsy that his mother didn’t possess. Or had never shown to him.

“Where’s Dad?” he asked as his stepmother herded everyone toward the living room.

“Reception at the Argentine embassy,” Patsy said. “He’ll be here later. I mostly wanted to give you kids a chance to catch up with each other before the wedding.”

Ben found his youngest brother sitting on the arm of a silk-covered sofa, flirting with one of the caterer’s helpers who was passing canapés. Rhett’s job was made easier by his incredible good looks. His parents had produced five sons—Darlington, the fourth boy, had died at age four—and with the fifth, his mother had produced a perfect male specimen. At least, every girl who’d ever crossed Rhett’s path seemed to think so.

“Welcome, Ben. Hi, there, Waverly,” Rhett called as Ben entered the room with his entourage of females and the groom.

Rhett rose and whispered something in the helper’s ear that made her duck her head and blush, then crossed to Ben with his hand outstretched. Ben started to shake Rhett’s hand, but his younger brother used his grip to pull Ben close. He wrapped his other arm around Ben’s neck and gave him a hard hug.

“How the hell are you?” Rhett asked. “You’ve been slipperier than a fish lately. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

Away from all of you, Ben thought. So you don’t find out the truth about me. “I’ve been working,” he replied. “How’d you get away from West Point?”

“You know Mom,” Rhett said with a grin. “She had a word with the senator who had a word with the commandant.” He opened his arms wide. “And here I am in the middle of the week.”

Yes, my two mothers are very much alike, Ben thought. Both women had no qualms about going around the rules if the rules didn’t suit them. The result of being indecently wealthy all their lives, he supposed. Patsy’s family had land in Texas swimming in oil.

“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.”