by Skye Taylor
“Marine MP or civilian?” This was news and the last thing he’d expected to hear her say.
“Either.” Meg glanced up at him. A world of confusion swirled in her eyes. No wonder. The whole reason for the degree and being an MP had been aimed at a career in criminal justice.
“Do you have any idea what you do want to do?”
Meg shook her head.
“You know, you don’t have to work, in or out of the Marines. I make more than enough to support us without you finding a new career and heading out every morning. You could just—”
“But what would I do with myself? I’m not used to having nothing to do. And what does doing nothing say about who I am? Where’s the reward for doing nothing? What defines who I am?”
“I kind of thought being my wife and the boys’ mother defined who you are.”
“Does being my husband and the boys’ father fulfill you? What would you do all day if you didn’t have the kennels and the training programs and all those dogs?”
Ben studied her while his brain cranked out possibilities. What is she getting at?
“Those dogs put dinner on the table and buy shoes for the boys.”
“But they define you. You love dogs. Who is Ben Cameron if he isn’t the whiz who can train any dog to do just about anything?”
“That doesn’t define who I am. You do. You and the boys,” Ben snapped back. She was getting under his skin, getting him angry. It wasn’t a feeling he liked.
Meg snorted. “Right! You expect me to believe that? Being with your dogs is your whole life, Ben. It has been for our entire married life. Even before the kennel and the breeding facility were a reality, you were working toward creating it. It’s you. It’s who you are.”
Ben swallowed hard. Swallowed his frustration and tried to see his life’s work from her point of view. Could he give it all up if she asked it of him? She’d been having issues with the dogs. Their barking brought her out of a sound sleep with a look of horror on her face, and he’d seen her flinch during the daytime, too. Even Kip’s presence seemed to make her uneasy. He had no idea where the antipathy came from, but he’d thought it was temporary. And maybe eventually, she’d have been his right hand for the new project he wanted to start to help train and pair service dogs with troubled veterans.
“It’s who you are, Ben,” she repeated. “It’s your whole life, and you love it.”
“It’s a big part of my life,” he conceded, “and I do love it, but it’s not who I am. I’m just Ben Cameron. Sandra and Nathan Cameron’s son. I’m your husband, and I’m Rick and Evan’s dad, and I’d like to be a father again. I’d love to get you pregnant and try for a little girl. That’s who I am. And that’s what defines my presence here on this earth. I might love my work, but I love you more. I’ll give up the kennel if that’s what you need. If that’s what you want. But it’s the people in my life that make me who I am, not my career.”
Meg’s eyes widened. Surprise? Or maybe shock. The idea of giving up his dogs shocked him, too. But he would do it. For her. If it meant that much to her.
“My desire to have you in my life came long before the dogs did, Meg. What makes my life good is fixing breakfast for the boys in the morning and tucking them in at night. It’s having them hug me and tell me I’m the best dad in the world. It’s cheering for them at their soccer games even when they suck that defines me as their father. Not how I pay for the roof over their heads.
“It’s loving you and being your husband that makes life worth living. Caring for you and being there for you. It’s making love to you and knowing there is no other woman in the world who can make me feel the way you do. That’s what defines who Ben Cameron is. You want me to sell the kennel and move on, then that’s what I’ll do. But mostly I just want to do whatever I need to so I can help you figure out who you are and what you want. I just pray it’s still me you want around when you get it all straight in your head.”
Meg looked a little more than shocked by this speech, but she rallied quickly. “And what would you do with yourself if I said sell it?”
“Peddle used cars. Teach high school English. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. It matters because you’d be giving up the one thing you love most,” she shot back.
“You’re the one thing I love most,” Ben shouted. He shut his mouth, horrified that he’d raised his voice. Worse, they were arguing. And it was not a good argument. He sucked in a ragged, settling breath and tempered his words. “You are my life, Meg. And I just want to be yours. Wherever that might take us.”
Meg’s beautiful, expressive eyes widened, and a sheen of tears suddenly filled them. She hadn’t cried since she returned. Not about the nightmares. Not about the friends she’d lost. Not about the things she’d seen and experienced. But he’d brought her to it by telling her he loved her? Why should that make her cry? His heart shuddered in alarm.
“I don’t know, Ben. I. Just. Don’t—” Meg bolted off the ottoman and headed for the kitchen door. Kip scrambled to his feet and trotted after her. Ben stayed rooted to the chair, shocked into immobility.
The kitchen door rattled as Meg yanked it open, then slammed as she let herself out of the house. His life was crashing down around him. The love of his life had been home for weeks, and everything was supposed to be back to normal by now. But nothing was normal.
Not the way she yelled at the boys when they’d done nothing to deserve it. Not the stone wall she erected whenever he tried to talk to her. Not her reaction to the dogs. Not forgetting to call him when she was going to be late. And definitely not their love life.
He swallowed hard and thought back to her first night home when she’d come into the kitchen wearing nothing but that sexy red nightshirt. If he hadn’t already been as horny as a toad that would have done it. Making love to her on the kitchen counter had been the craziest thing he’d ever done. Well, if you didn’t count the back seat of that old Mustang, anyway. But she’d reveled in the abandoned lovemaking. She’d demanded more. Almost more than he’d been able to get himself up for. It had seemed, at the time, that their love life had picked up right where it had left off a year earlier.
Except it hadn’t. Meg had never been so desperately needy as she’d been since she returned from a war zone. He didn’t know why that should be, or why he hadn’t realized until this moment that her behavior wasn’t what he’d come to expect from her. God! He wished Philip hadn’t just deployed to some faraway place. He needed to talk to his big brother.
He needed to talk about a lot of things that weren’t the way they’d been before she left. Things he would probably never understand because he’d never been in the military and had never experienced the things she had. But what if it was worse than that?
What if she didn’t love him anymore?
Now he was the one with tears in his eyes. What if Meg had fallen in love with this guy John? What if she didn’t want to be married anymore? What then?
MEG MARCHED OUT of the house in long angry strides. She’d forgotten to grab her purse, or she’d have jumped into her car and driven somewhere. She had no idea where, but somewhere. Anywhere away from the unsettling scene that had just unfolded in her living room.
The fact that Ben had raised his voice had shocked her more than his offer to sell the kennel. Ben never raised his voice. Not to her or the boys. But she’d managed to drive him to it with her stubborn refusal to talk about what really ate at her. She’d built a wall between them that she didn’t know how to dismantle.
His declaration that she was still very much the center of his life. That she defined who he was stabbed through the careful layers of unfeeling she’d erected. He was trying so hard to understand and be whatever she needed him to be. And all the while she was being ornery, angry, and as closed in on herself as a hedgehog on the defense. All prickly spines
for Ben to get caught on and hurt.
There had been a world of hurt in his eyes when she’d shouted him down after he’d gotten control of himself and told her she was his life in an achingly gentle voice.
“I can’t be your whole life!” Meg whimpered as she marched through the ragged uncut grass beyond the manicured lawn behind the house and toward the dunes. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
The damp ground wet through her sneakers quickly. She hadn’t brought a jacket either, but she had been far from cold when she’d stormed out of the house. The fall air nipped at her. She hugged herself and marched on, eventually coming to the long wooden boardwalk that traversed the dunes and ended at the waterway.
She stepped up onto the boardwalk, noticing for the first time that Ben had replaced all the old boards. The fresh yellow wood was solid beneath her feet, and there was no longer the hollow clunk of loose boards hitting stringers as one walked over them. She wondered vaguely when Ben had found time between doing all her work and his own.
Not only had she insinuated that being his wife was not fulfilling her, but she’d said it knowing she hadn’t even been doing her job. Ben still fixed breakfast every morning and got the boys off to school. More than half the time he put them to bed and oversaw their homework when she got frustrated. She hadn’t swept the floor in days or dusted in even longer. The sheets on all the beds needed changing. Winter bedding needed to be hauled out and put into use now that fall was almost over. The pears Ben and the boys had picked never got put up, and the garden overflowed with weeds. There were a ton of things she could have been doing if she’d just looked around a little.
What had she been doing with her time? No wonder she didn’t feel fulfilled being a wife and mother. She wasn’t showing up for the job at all.
Meg reached the end of the boardwalk and stepped up onto the pier that extended out into the water whatever the tide.
I’m a mess. I’m useless. I pretend to be me, but I’m not. I’m no one.
At the end of the pier, Meg dropped down and shoved her legs over the edge. The tide was out, or she’d have pulled off her sneakers and dangled her feet in the water. Sitting here at the end of the pier, her feet soaking in the salty water eddying around them, had always been a peaceful place for her. But not today. Today, nothing was peaceful.
She shivered again as a gust of wind tugged at her shirt. Under-dressed and over-sensitive.
As she sat there, doing her best to wash her problems out of her mind, she became aware of a presence. Not the kind of presence that makes the hair on one’s neck stand up, but something else. Meg glanced around and caught her breath.
Kip sat just a few feet away, watching her through those intent yellow-brown eyes. The blond tufts above his eyes twitched. Then his nose. The rest of him remained totally still.
She’d gotten used to his resemblance to Scout, but her heart squeezed anyway.
The first couple days Kip had followed Ben everywhere, but at some point, he’d transferred his attentiveness to her. After Ben decided to let the dog sleep inside the house, she’d gotten used to seeing him curled up on the end of the couch. When she roamed aimlessly in the night Kip watched her. The dog had taken on the job of escorting the boys to the bus stop and meeting them at the end of their school day, but most of the time, he’d lurked in her vicinity. Watching her every move. Those intelligent yellow-brown eyes appeared to be looking into her soul. What did he see?
Her heart thudded and her head screamed in protest, but she stretched out her hand anyway and made a soft clicking sound in her mouth. Obediently, Kip got up and came over to sit beside her.
“What’s with you?” Meg asked the silent, watchful dog.
His ears slanted forward, and the bushy eyebrows twitched in recognition of her question.
Another gust of wind made Meg shiver again. Kip leaned toward her, his furry shoulder brushing softly against her bare arm. Almost against her will, Meg reached her arm about the dog’s neck and drew him closer. The heat of his big body seeped through the thick coat of fur and into her. Kip sidled in closer, leaning into her.
For one crazy, disjointed moment, Meg was back in Baghdad, leaning against Scout, drawing comfort from him in a place where nothing was familiar and everything was dangerous. Then Kip whined.
Meg scrambled to her feet. Kip stood.
“I know you mean well,” she told the dog, her heart banging painfully. “But I just don’t know if I can bear it.” Kip tipped his head. His eyes looked sad.
She turned away from the dog and retreated over the pier toward the boardwalk. Stepping back down onto the new boards Ben had installed, she glanced back. Kip still sat where she’d left him.
Meg wanted to leave him there, but she couldn’t. He didn’t belong to Ben or to her. He belonged to the Wilmington Police Department, and it wasn’t a responsible action to leave him out here not knowing if he’d chose to come back to the house or take off somewhere else.
She took a steadying breath. “Come,” she said, tapping her left thigh with the tips of her fingers.
Obediently Kip got up and came to her. He licked her hand briefly, and when she stepped out for home, Kip stepped out with her. It felt as though with that quick lick, Kip had offered her a truce. He wouldn’t intrude on her when she didn’t want him to, but he’d be there if she did. Somehow it didn’t seem as terrifying as it had been a moment ago.
Casually, she let her fingers ruffle though Kip’s fur. He glanced up at her and gave a brief wag of his tail.
She wasn’t being disloyal to Scout if she befriended Kip. And maybe Kip needed her more than she’d needed Scout. Maybe she could help give to Kip what she had not been able to give Scout. A new life. New purpose.
The heaviness in her heart eased, and she sighed. Kip whined softly as if he’d heard the sigh.
Meg stopped walking and Kip sat. He looked up at her, his yellow-brown eyes guileless and expectant.
“Okay, Kip. Here’s the deal. You need something. Maybe a new someone. I don’t think I’m that someone. I don’t know if I could even be that someone. Or for that matter how long you’ll be around. But maybe together we can figure out where we’re going next. Sound fair?”
Kip tipped his head and whined again. A soft, agreeable sound deep in his throat.
Meg dropped to her knees and gathered the dog into her arms. He licked her chin. She buried her face in his fur. And then, without warning, the tears she had not been able to shed since she came home began to slide down her cheeks and into the dog’s fur.
Chapter 15
MEG REHEARSED HER apology to Ben all the way home. She’d been a bitch lately. Maybe Ben couldn’t ever know or really understand where she’d been or what it had been like, but he was trying to understand. He was trying to put their life back together, but she wasn’t helping.
Considering everything he’d put up with over the years they’d shared, she owed him a whole lot more than she’d given him in the last two weeks. First she’d jumped down his throat over turning over her fair project to Anne Royko. He was a guy, and he’d never get it anyway, and Anne’s brother was one of his best friends. Ben was just too honest and faithful to see through Anne’s subterfuge. Even if he wasn’t married, Ben would never even think of going after another man’s wife, so he wouldn’t get it that Anne didn’t care if Ben was married or not. She wanted what she wanted, and a little thing like adultery wouldn’t get in her way, but Ben wouldn’t believe it of her.
Then there was the whole dog project Meg hadn’t given him a chance to explain. In spite of his exhaustion the day of the fire, a flare of excitement had lit his eyes when he started to tell her about it and why they needed to put a second mortgage on the house. The idea was important to him, or he never would have considered going that deep into debt. But she’d flat out told him she would never reconsider
without ever giving the project any careful thought. Never mind she hadn’t taken the time or interest to listen to his proposal, which translated into she hadn’t cared how he felt about it.
Every time Ben asked her what was wrong, she stonewalled him. Sucking back into herself like a snail, shutting him out. She’d even been using sex to avoid answering questions when they were alone at night, which wasn’t fair. Ben tried so hard to figure out what was bothering her and how he could help, and she just kept avoiding it.
When he declared that she was his whole life, she knew it was something most wives would give their right arm to hear their husbands tell them. So what had she done? She’d walked out on him. Bitch didn’t even begin to describe her behavior since she got home. Maybe her CO was right. Maybe she did need to see the company shrink and crank her reactions down a notch.
But first, she was going to start by telling Ben, I’m sorry. Maybe there were things Ben would never understand, but not telling him what bothered her didn’t give him a chance.
Rick and one of his Cub Scout friends were racing across the back meadow trying to launch a kite as Meg emerged from the path leading to the waterway. She waved, but Rick didn’t see her. He was focused on the bright green kite twisting and dipping at the end of its tether.
The boys were home. If Evan was tagging along on his father’s heels as was the norm, her apology would have to wait until after the boys’ bedtime. There were too many things to discuss. Things a little boy did not need to hear his mother talk about. But she could whip up Ben’s favorite coffee cake before she started in on supper.
Ben’s mother had given Meg the recipe along with a number of others Ben loved when they’d first married. Meg’s mother-in-law hadn’t suggested that the only way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, but she stood firmly by her belief that taking the time to prepare his favorite things didn’t hurt.
Meg should take a leaf out of Sandy Cameron’s book and go out of her way to do something nice for Ben instead of doing all the taking.