Mulberry Moon

by Catherine Anderson

  He strode to the door and opened it, flipping on the rarely used porch light as he did. She looked so cute standing on his doormat—cute but very stressed-out. He guessed that he’d gotten his point across. For the very first time since he’d met her, she wore a dress. Her heavy winter parka, a fluffy blue thing, detracted from the outfit’s impact, as did her thigh-high cast, but, to Ben, no woman on earth had ever looked quite so beautiful as she did, bruised face and all.

  “I expected you to just call.”

  Her large blue eyes dominated her features, and they were filled with anxiety. “I—um—didn’t think it was a good idea to ask you to marry me over the phone. Marilyn gave me a ride.”

  Ben stepped back to invite her inside. After closing the door, he helped her take off the parka. The dress was silky black and skimmed what was, to him, a perfect figure.

  Finn was so happy to see her that he wiggled from head to toe, but he didn’t jump up. Sissy had called it right. The pup seemed to realize that he couldn’t be his usual rambunctious self around her now. Sissy bent to rub Finn’s back, ruffling his fur. “Hi, sweet boy. I’ve missed you, too.” She straightened and said to Ben, “I’ve missed you even more.”

  Before he could take her coat to the closet, she plunged a hand into the right pocket and drew it back out in a fist. He suspected that she’d just retrieved her engagement ring. Despite what he’d said to her on the phone, he intended to be the one who slipped it back on her finger. But first, he’d let her sweat a little.

  She glanced beyond the entry hall into the huge living room, which Ben had created by taking out two bedrooms, leaving him with five after he knocked out a couple more walls to create a huge master suite with a walk-in closet and bathroom.

  “Oh, Ben, your house is lovely. Compared to this, I live like a pauper.”

  “After you propose to me, I’d like to raise a houseful of kids here.”

  She turned to look up at him with those fathomless eyes. It was like staring into the clear blue water of a lagoon. “Ben, I’m so sorry for how I’ve acted.”

  “Actually, I did what you suggested and looked up mental illness. I read some pretty scary stuff and sort of get where you were coming from.” He couldn’t help but smile. “But you treated me awful. I love you with all my heart, and I felt like you were cutting me out of your life with a surgical scalpel. No emotion from you. Hell, until you officially ended our engagement, you wouldn’t even speak to me while we worked together.”

  She nodded. “I couldn’t talk to you. I knew, if I opened that door, I’d lose my resolve and throw myself into your arms. I realize how wrong it was now—to end things between us over something I wasn’t even sure was true. But at the time, it seemed like the only thing I could do without being completely unfair to you.”

  “Well, if you expect me to marry you, you’d better be ready to go with the flow and take whatever comes. I think the term is for better or worse.”

  Her eyes went bright with tears. “I felt that I fell into the ‘worse’ category, that you deserved so much more.”

  “More.” Ben tasted the word as it rolled slowly over his tongue. “More? You’re it for me, Sissy, my one and only. There isn’t anyone who can offer me more.”

  A single tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it away, as if impatient with herself. “Do you realize that I never, ever cried before I met you? It’s embarrassing to me now, how easily I cry.”

  “Do you know why that is?” Ben asked softly.

  “No. If I did, I’d fix it.”

  “Crying washes away all the pain. It’s healing. That’s why you’re suddenly crying a lot, because inside where no one can see, you’ve been badly wounded.”

  “Yes, I guess I have.”

  “I had to get to know you to see behind the mask. At first, I only caught glimpses of the sweet person you really are. Otherwise, you came off as a cold, haughty witch.”

  She smiled and made a face at the same time. “A cold, haughty witch?”

  “Hey, if the shoe fits?”

  “It does, and I’ll wear it. At first, you scared me to death.”

  “Are you scared now?”

  “No, not at all. Well, sort of. If I ask you to marry me, you may say no.”

  “Try me and find out.”

  She smiled and took a deep breath. After exhaling, she asked, “Ben Sterling, will you please become my husband? For richer or poorer. In sickness and in health. For better or worse, whether or not we’re genetically flawed, crazier than loons, or predisposed to have any kind of cancer?”

  She unfolded her fist and presented her open palm, upon which sat five thousand of his hard-earned dollars and his heart. “I’ll never let you down again. I’ll never cut you out of my life. If you get leukemia, I’ll take care of you and pray the treatments work. If they don’t, and you die, I’ll want to die with you.”

  Ben closed the distance between them. “If I say yes, will you have unprotected sex with me tonight and risk getting pregnant?”

  She kept her gaze fixed on his. “Yes. Afterward, I’ll even lie flat on my back with my hips propped on pillows so your swimmers have every opportunity to make a home run.”

  Ben plucked the ring from her palm. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  “Then, yes, Sissy, I’ll marry you.” He lifted her left hand and slipped the diamond back on her finger. “For better or worse, and if my swimmers hit a home run, which is a mixed metaphor, by the way, I’ll be the happiest man alive.”

  * * *

  Being back in Ben’s arms was, without question, the happiest moment of Sissy’s life. As he trailed kisses down her flat belly, she hoped, even in the throes of passion, that he planted his seed in her womb.

  Moments later, when he impaled her without protection, she loved the feeling of being flesh-to-flesh with him, with nothing separating them from being truly one.

  “Oh, dear God.” He groaned out the words. “This is beyond fabulous. I’ve never been with anyone like this.”

  “Me, neither. Oh, Ben. I love you.” Moments later as he went taut above her and pumped heat deep into her center, she clung to him and cried out with the unimaginable pleasure of it as she climaxed with him. “Oh, my God!”

  Afterward they lay skin against skin, with only her cast to hamper them. Ben’s muscular arms cradled her against his chest. She found that special place in the hollow of his shoulder that she believed had been designed especially for her head to rest.

  Drowsy with indescibable contentment, she murmured, “At the Halloween party, I thought that I’d finally found a home. But I was wrong.”

  “How’s that?” he asked in a voice thickened by recent arousal.

  “Home isn’t a town or building.” She kissed his neck. “My true home is right here, Ben, in your arms.”

  “And mine is in yours,” he murmured. “Don’t ever run away from home again, Sissy. I swear I’ll track you down.”

  She giggled even as tears of gladness slipped down her cheeks and pooled on his sweaty skin. “Promise?”

  “I’ll swear it before God and witnesses. You’re mine, and I’m yours. And don’t feel wimpy because you’re crying. It’s time, sweetheart. You’ve gone through so many things that wounded you. They’ll cleanse your heart.”

  “I hurt you,” she whispered. “You’re not crying.”

  Ben tightened his arms around her, buried his face in her hair, and replied, “Oh, yes, I am.” His voice went even thicker. “I thought I’d lost you. Don’t ever do that to me again.”

  Just then, one of Ben’s tears slid off his chin and plopped on her eyebrow. “I won’t. I swear to you and to God that I won’t.”

  And Sissy meant it with her whole heart.

  Epilogue

  At their evening wedding on the Mystic Creek Bridge during the full moon of Septemb
er, almost exactly a year since her chickens had paraded up Main Street, Sissy could barely wait to say the vows that would bind her to Ben for the remainder of her life. Her maternal uncle George, a successful Portland attorney, was giving her away. Sissy had tears in her eyes as he guided her up the long and steep ascent to the crest of the natural bridge where her groom waited. She was walking, step by step, toward the only man in the world she would ever love, and she knew, without a doubt, that marrying him was the best decision she’d ever made in her life.

  All of Ben’s family were present, but Sissy had a crowd from her side as well, people who’d known of her existence all her life and had greeted her with open arms when she had visited Homesville many months ago. She’d met amazing, well-adjusted people, and for Sissy, it had been a healing experience. Since that visit, she and Ben had returned to Homesville several times to get better acquainted with her family, and they had come to Mystic Creek as well, making Sissy very glad that Ben had such a large house. Her relatives had been comfortable at his place, and Sissy, who’d moved in with Ben, had been able to spend much more time with them than she could have if they’d stayed at a motel.

  Sissy’s mom stood on the bride’s side with her family and Doug’s, and, more important, with her boyfriend, a great guy named Greg who’d lost his wife to ovarian cancer five years ago. He still mourned for her, but he also felt ready to move forward now. Doreen, whose first marriage had given her a wealth of knowledge, told Sissy that Greg’s lingering sense of loss was one of the things she loved most about him.

  Greg was a math teacher from Homesville who had applied for a teaching position in Mystic Creek for the current school year and had been hired to replace a retiring educator. He had relocated because he wanted to be with Doreen, who had invested a large sum of money into remodeling the Cauldron to become Sissy’s partner. Together, they had planned the downstairs alterations, which were completed, and now they were gutting the upstairs to turn it into a private, reservations-only dining area, complete with an elevator. Sissy had developed a close relationship with her mother now and was extremely proud of her. Like a phoenix, she had risen from the ashes of her life with Doug, and, by putting one foot in front of the other, had become the woman she always could have been if given the chance. With the talents she had garnered during her culinary arts education, she was teaching Sissy to be an even better cook.

  Sissy no longer worked full-time at the café. She and her mother had hired plenty of help so they could both enjoy their personal lives. Sissy treasured every moment of her time off with Ben. Over the last many months, they’d been able to actually date, going to see movies, dining out, and driving the curvy mountain roads around Mystic Creek to have romantic picnics at incredible viewpoints. Ben still invaded the café kitchen occasionally to help with meal prep. In turn, Sissy often helped him at the ranch. She particularly enjoyed the horses, but she liked the cows, too. She’d also taken over the ranch bookkeeping. Ben hated the computer accounting software and had often called Sissy into his office to help him make sense of it. It made her feel good to take that responsibility off his shoulders.

  Though she and Ben used no form of birth control, she still hadn’t gotten pregnant. Sissy wasn’t worried. If she didn’t conceive soon, they could both get checked out. She’d take fertility drugs if necessary, or Ben could take medication to help him create more swimmers. If everything failed, they had agreed to adopt. Ben had grown up in a large family, and he wanted six kids. Sissy, who’d never had a real family, couldn’t wait for the first one to arrive. When she worked at the café, she’d take their baby with her.

  Patches, who’d relocated with Sissy to Ben’s ranch, loved living there. Ben had built a huge network of protected outdoor kitty tunnels, and the cat enjoyed going outside, even when it was snowing. Kate had made him waterproof boots so the cold wouldn’t make his stubs ache.

  Sissy had hoped for good weather for their wedding, but bits of snow drifted down onto her veil as Ben stepped forward from the pinnacle of the bridge to grasp her hand. The rush of the water below them sang in the chilly evening air, a magical, romantic song, which seemed fitting.

  Ben led Sissy to stand in front of her paternal grandfather, Otis Bentley, an ordained minister. He smiled often and had a gentle manner about him. He also had the Bentley bump on his ear. His wife, still teaching English, grieved over her youngest child’s sentence to twenty years in prison, but both she and Otis seemed to accept that Doug’s problems weren’t their fault. Their son’s alcoholism, combined with drug use, had altered his personality, turning him into someone they didn’t recognize.

  Sissy sighed as she glanced up at the sky. The mulberry moon, streaked with pink and crimson, was a replica of the mulberry moon a year ago that had first brought her and Ben together. As Sissy stood beside Ben, saying that she would honor and cherish him for the rest of her life, she couldn’t help but wonder if the ancient Native American legend, about two people being destined to fall in love if they stood together beneath a mulberry moon, was only a hokey story, after all.

  She and Ben had stood together during a mulberry moon, and now they would share a love for each other that ran so deep it would last a lifetime.

  It had taken Sissy twenty-six years to get here, but she finally believed in happy endings. How could she not when she’d met and fallen in love with the man of her dreams?

  Don’t miss the upcoming new romance from New York Times bestselling author Catherine Anderson, available in hardcover from Berkley in October 2017!

  When recently widowed Maddie McLendon relocates to Montana with her son and her grandson, the family quickly faces hardships during the construction of their new residence. To make matters worse, Maddie immediately gets off on the wrong foot with her extremely prickly next-door neighbor, Sam Conacher, who’s persevering through a heartbreak of his own. Sam was once a beloved pillar of the local community, but he’s pushed all of his friends away with his disagreeable attitude. Meanwhile, Sam’s and Maddie’s grown children, Kristen and Cam, are falling for each other while their parents’ run-ins grow ever nastier. As the holiday season approaches, the residents of the Bitterroot Valley go out of their way to make the McLendons feel welcome, and the two feuding families will need to decide whether it’s really worth continuing to battle one another at every turn. If the McLendons and the Conachers can let down their emotional defenses when an accident arises, they might just discover they don’t have to face their burdens alone.

  Keep reading for a preview of the first book in the Mystic Creek series,

  SILVER THAW

  available now.

  A brisk November night breeze lashed the pines and bushes that surrounded Amanda Banning’s front yard. It caught at the strip of pink paper between her upraised fingers and whipped it away, tumbling it into the darkness. Amanda likened releasing the strip to sending messages in a bottle, only hers were sent on the wind, a practice born a month earlier out of isolation and the relentless silence after her six-year-old daughter, Chloe, had gone to bed. Amanda couldn’t afford a television, and the clock radio she’d purchased at Good As New on West Main had lousy reception. Amanda doubted the problem was with the device; rather, she suspected it was that her home was surrounded by too many trees. Occasionally, when atmospheric conditions were just right, she could find a station and enjoy some music that didn’t crackle, but mostly she picked up white noise.

  The nightly silence had grown oppressive, driving home to Amanda just how alone in the world she was. Sending messages on the wind gave her a sense of connection with others, and a way to express her thoughts and yearnings instead of keeping them pent up inside.

  She smiled and pulled her flimsy jacket close to hold the cold at bay. She didn’t really care if anyone read her notes. No one would ever know who wrote them, after all, and that was liberating. She could write anything she wanted, no matter how silly or serious. It helped, writing them.
She wasn’t sure why, but it did.

  Tonight her messages had been goofy. She’d recently walked with Chloe into the town of Mystic Creek and gotten a library card, which allowed her to borrow storybooks for her daughter and romance novels for herself. Why she felt drawn to love stories, Amanda didn’t know. She hung on the words written by authors such as Jodi Thomas, Susan Wiggs, Emilie Richards, and countless others. Nearly eight years in a nightmarish marriage should have forever banished romantic notions from her head. Maybe, she reflected, it was true that hope springs eternal in the human breast, because there remained within her a deep, aching need to be loved and cherished.

  So tonight she’d written, I wish I could meet a man as kind and wonderful as the hero in one of the romances I love to read, someone who’d be a fabulous father to my little girl and make both of us feel safe. Normally Amanda wished for far more practical things, like enough money to pay her electric bill, but she was halfway through a story, and she was falling madly in love with a character named Jake. Amanda’s only question was, do men like that really exist? Her rational side always answered that question with an unequivocal no, but she couldn’t deny her yearning to think otherwise. Dumb, dumb, dumb. She’d be better off to believe in Santa Claus and strike the word man from her vocabulary. In her experience, man usually became manhandle.

  Sighing, Amanda looked at the sky, hoping to see stars, but it was too overcast. Probably snow clouds. So far, she hadn’t found a snow shovel at any of the three secondhand shops she’d searched. She and Chloe would have to wade through the white stuff until she found an affordable scoop. Problem: Chloe had no waterproof boots. Why hadn’t she checked out the winter weather in Mystic Creek before she picked this town as their hiding place?