Sanctuary Island

by Everett, Lily

  Pain shafted through Grady’s chest. “You wanted to stay here.”

  He’d been so close to having everything he wanted, and he’d ruined it.

  “I wanted to stay with you,” she corrected softly. “But I was hideously afraid of admitting it. Of taking that first step away from the security I worked really hard for, into a scary new life I never planned on.”

  “And now?” Grady could hardly breathe.

  She laughed and tipped her head back against the railing, exposing the slim, pale column of her throat, the tender hollow where her heartbeat sped. “I’m still afraid,” she confessed. “But if Merry can decide to raise her son on her own … if you can overcome years of fear … how can I be less brave?”

  Grady didn’t dare to hope. “What are you saying?” he demanded, needing to hear the words.

  Tipping her chin over her shoulder at the hole in the porch, Ella said, “The last time I took a first step this big, the world fell out from under me. But you dived in after me and pulled me up. And I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t know what life has in store for us, or exactly how we’re going to work out the details, but I want to take all my first steps from now on with you at my side. And I want to be the person who picks you up, when you fall.”

  Grady stood, heart thundering, and bent to grab Ella under her knees and arms. He hauled her up to his chest, holding her like a bride. She made one startled squeak, then twined herself around him like a climbing rose.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, as he marched down the drive toward his Jeep.

  “I need to do bad, bad things to you, and I’m not going to be able to do them in your mother’s house.”

  “And…” She frowned down at where they were pressed so tightly together. “Oh my gosh, you haven’t showered yet? Grady! You need to get warm and dry, I can’t believe you. You have to take care of yourself.”

  “The shower is an acceptable setting for the bad, bad things,” Grady allowed.

  Her smile was radiant, glowing brighter than the fading sun. Then she bit her lip and he almost dropped her as every drop of blood in his body rushed south.

  “After the shower and the … bad things,” she said hesitantly.

  “I’ll bring you back here.” He got them to the car and deposited her on her feet. “We’ll be gone an hour, tops. You’ll be back in time to take your turn with the crying baby and the midnight feeding, I promise.”

  “I love that you know what I was going to ask. But actually.” She backed against the side of the Jeep, keeping Grady from getting the door open. “Ben says after the work they did today, Merry and the baby will both probably sleep hard. And she’s got Mom there. She’s fine.”

  Thoroughly distracted, Grady wedged a leg between her thighs and made a cradle of his body, leaning into her. “Mom, huh?”

  “Just something I’m trying out—telling the people in my life what they mean to me,” Ella said breezily, her eyes bright in the blue light of dusk. “So far, it’s working out fairly well.”

  He stared down at her from inches away, close enough to share every breath—and still he felt himself straining toward her, wanting to merge as close together as possible. Wanting to become one.

  “Maybe a couple of hours,” he amended as his gaze dropped to her lips. “It’s going to take at least an hour for me to kiss every single inch of you.”

  “That doesn’t sound like such a bad, bad thing,” she said. He loved it when she went a little breathless like that.

  “Oh, it gets worse,” he promised, his heart stuttering into overtime. “Because after I kiss you all over, I’m going to tell you exactly how much I love you. That’s going to take … considerably longer than an hour.”

  Face shining with happiness, Ella beamed up at him. “I can probably find room in my schedule for such an interesting topic. How long do you think you’ll need?”

  Grady traced the delicate line of her jaw, pushing his fingers into her hair and cupping the shape of her skull in his palms. “I don’t know,” he said, mouth dry. “Pencil me in for the rest of your life.”

  Laughing softly, Ella looped her hands behind his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers.

  The taste of her was explosive, sweetness bursting across his tongue like the first bite of a late-summer peach. Before he lost himself to it completely, Grady dragged his head up to gasp against her cheek. “I don’t mean you have to stay here forever. I know you’ve got that job you love in D.C.—I can move there, or we can keep the cabin here and split our time, because with Merry and the baby and your mom and everything…”

  “Shhh,” Ella crooned, going up on tiptoe to kiss his lips closed. “That means—so much to me, Grady. Just knowing you’re willing to uproot your whole life like that … But for once in my life, I don’t want to plan exactly how this is all going to work. We’ll figure it out as we go. But whatever happens, we’re spending most of our time on Sanctuary Island.”

  His throat closing with emotion, Grady nuzzled into the soft, scented warmth of her neck. “Look at you, Miss City Mouse, talking about living out here on this nearly inaccessible backwater of an island.”

  “How could I not want to live on Sanctuary Island? This place changed more than my life, it changed me.” Ella surged against him like the tide. “I love it here. Almost as much as I love you.”

  *

  Jo dropped the cordless phone in its cradle and twitched the parlor curtain back into place. Briefly, she wondered what her aunt would think of all this.

  Knowing Aunt Dottie and the somewhat tumultuous history of the Hollister women, she’d be cackling in delight at having an unwed mother in the master bedroom and a canoodling couple in the driveway.

  Jo was too tired at the moment to work up a cackle, but the glow of satisfaction she felt at the way everything was working out went bone deep.

  She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life—too many to name—but somehow, through luck or grace, she’d been given a chance to make things right. And now that Ella was all but settled, her thoughts turned to Merry.

  Sweet, bright Merry.

  Wandering back to her bedroom, Jo leaned silently in the doorway and watched the way Ben’s face went soft and helpless when he looked at Merry and her baby cuddled on the bed.

  Merry seemed to have eyes for no one but her son. She’d counted every perfect finger and tiny, rosy toe. She’d inspected the whorls of his little ears, the dimples at his knees and elbows, and laughed over his shock of black hair.

  But she hadn’t named him yet.

  “I’ve been calling him Baby for so long,” she’d told them earlier, “I can’t think of any boy names! Xavier? Lancelot? Spike?”

  “Whatever you choose will be wonderful,” Ella had said loyally before exchanging a worried glance with Jo.

  Please, anything but Spike, Jo remembered thinking.

  Busying himself packing up his medical kit, Ben missed the way Merry’s gaze darted to follow him as he moved around the room. But Jo saw it.

  And she saw the way he stiffened when Merry spoke into the peaceful silence.

  “What’s your middle name, Doc?”

  Wariness dropped over Ben’s face. So wary, that one, always ready to fight. “Why?”

  Merry rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to steal your identity or something. Come on, answer the question.”

  “Alexander.”

  A thoughtful look crossed Merry’s face. “Alex. Ooh, or Zander. I like it.”

  “Like it for what?” Ben grumbled, bent over his canvas satchel.

  “For Baby,” Merry said placidly, smoothing her son’s hair so that it lay flat against the tiny skull for a moment before springing up into its natural Mohawk again.

  Ben froze, wrist deep in his satchel, his gray eyes wide and shocked. Jo had to smother a grin at the naked amazement on his face.

  “Alexander Hollister Preston,” Merry mused, and now Jo was the one dropping her jaw in amazement.

  Clearing
her throat, she stepped farther into the room, barely aware of Ben standing stock-still at Merry’s bedside, as if he’d been turned into a statue. “I like it,” Jo told her daughter.

  “I want him to know where he comes from,” Merry said, a slight frown creasing the space between her brows. “Even without his dad, he’s got lots of family. Plenty.”

  “More than enough, some people might say.” Ben went back to packing his med kit, bending his head down so that they couldn’t see his face. But Jo could hear the smile in his voice. “People who’ve met the Hollisters, for example.”

  Ignoring the sass, Jo sat on the bed beside Merry and leaned over to get a better look at baby Alexander’s buttoned-up eyes and stubby black lashes. “He does have plenty of family here on Sanctuary Island. I think he’ll even have an Aunt Ella around most of the time.”

  “Really?” Merry’s grin was tired but brilliant. “Yay!”

  “And while we’re dishing out good news,” Jo went on, excitement simmering under her skin, “I just got off the phone with Harrison. The bank will extend me a loan—we’ll get to keep the house.”

  Merry caught her breath, eyes shining. “Oh, Mom. That’s wonderful. And the therapeutic riding center will be such a great thing for the island!”

  “It’ll be a lot of work.” Jo tucked a lock of hair behind Merry’s ear. “But it’s work that’s worth doing. Especially if it means we can stay in the house that’s been in our family for almost a hundred years.”

  Outside, the storm had lifted and the call of birdsong could be heard in the trees. The conversation with Harrison had been good, and Jo felt a sense of new possibility unspooling before her like a ball of yarn.

  Alexander opened his little mouth in a big yawn that screwed up his whole chubby face. Eyes almost dropping closed with exhaustion, Merry sighed.

  Before her grandson could settle into a real squall, Jo picked up the precious, kicking bundle and said, “Here, let me. I’ll walk with him.”

  Grady and Ella would be home soon, and if Jo was any judge of attraction, there was more than bickering going on between Merry and Dr. Ben Fairfax.

  Walking over to the window, she stared out at the roofline of the stables in the distance, behind the pines. A new business, a new family, a new chance with the man she’d loved for a decade.

  And another generation of Hollisters would grow up at Windy Corner, on Sanctuary Island.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  SHORELINE DRIVE

  the next captivating romance from Lily Everett, available soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks:

  Rain lashed across the cracked windshield of Dr. Ben Fairfax’s ancient pickup truck as it roared over the pitted inland roads, churning up mud and gravel as he raced across Sanctuary Island.

  Ben raked wet hair out of his eyes and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. A single thought repeated itself over and over in his head.

  Get to her. Get to her. Get to her.

  He bared his teeth at the clash of thunder that rocked his truck, rattling the state-of-the-art large-animal trailer hooked to his back bumper.

  Go ahead and do your worst. Nothing’s going to stop me from getting to Windy Corner in time.

  The same cold wash of fear he felt when he got the call from Jo Hollister froze his belly again, but there was no time to fool around with doubts and worries.

  Meredith Preston was in labor. At least three weeks early, in the middle of the worst spring storm he’d ever seen roll in off the Atlantic Ocean. And according to Jo, her daughter’s contractions were approximately three minutes apart and lasted a full minute each.

  No time to get Merry to the ferry that would shuttle her the hour from Sanctuary Island to the big hospital in Winter Harbor, Virginia. No telling if the ferry was even running in this weather.

  No choice but to step up and do what he could to make sure both mother and new baby made it out of this alive.

  Which wasn’t all that different from Ben’s normal practice—he’d helped countless mothers deliver healthy newborns over the course of his seven years on Sanctuary.

  Of course, most of those newborn babies had been foals or calves. There was the occasional lamb or goat kid.

  Animals were easy. Even when things went wrong, they knew what to do—lie there and let Ben handle the situation. People were more annoying, which was why he tended to avoid them.

  Not an option tonight. He had to push everything aside and focus on helping Merry.

  Even though the last time Ben had been involved with a human birth was before he’d chucked it all to study veterinary medicine and he hadn’t been the attending physician. He’d been the father.

  Grimly beating back the dark surge of memories, Ben refocused his gaze on the road.

  I was better off when all I was thinking about was getting to Merry’s bedside.

  With that in mind, he pushed the grumbling engine as hard as he dared, making the half hour trip from his farm on Shoreline Drive to Jo Ellen’s big, dilapidated plantation house on the northeastern end of the island.

  Hauling his canvas duffel off the truck’s bench seat, Ben tore up the wooden porch steps, heedless of the rain. He swerved to avoid the ragged, gaping hole in the sagging boards and crashed through the front door just as thunder boomed overhead.

  Silence.

  Ben stood in the dim hallway for an instant and held his breath, listening. A soft murmur of voices from down the hall had his adrenaline pumping and instincts clamoring.

  Merry.

  Shoving down the terror and worry, Ben gritted his teeth. He had to get these … feelings under control. Merry’s life, and the life of her soon-to-be-born baby, depended on Ben keeping a clear, level, unemotional head.

  So what if Merry was pretty, and his body reacted inconveniently to being around her. He’d been attracted to women before. Sure, maybe never one as sweet, vivacious, and universally adored as Meredith Preston, but all that meant was that she was even less likely to ever think about a man like him that way.

  Rationally, he knew he needed to get over this ridiculous infatuation. And since Ben was a man who prized rationality, he would. End of story.

  Braced and ready, he opened the door. Meredith Preston paused in her pacing of the hardwood floorboards, one hand at the small of her no doubt aching back, the other arm hooked around her mother’s strong shoulders.

  “Up and walking? Good,” Ben said, moving to lay out his medical instruments on the dresser top.

  “I didn’t know what else to do.” Jo sounded more afraid and uncertain than he’d ever heard her, the tremor in her voice noticeable even for a man who did his level best never to notice other people’s emotions.

  “I’m fine. Oh,” Merry gasped out. Her pretty, even features tightened as a spasm of pain gripped her abdomen. With a clinical eye, Ben took in the hectic flush over her high cheekbones, the rapid throb of the pulse at the hollow of her throat. The bow of her back and the whiteness of her knuckles as her bloodless lips moved silently to count out the seconds of the contraction.

  Without conscious thought, Ben moved to her and nudged Jo gently out of the way just as the contraction released Merry. Exhausted, she swayed on her feet. Ben caught her as gently as he could, supporting her weight against his chest, and froze.

  He had his arms around Merry Preston.

  Shaking his head to rid it of the frustratingly persistent thoughts, Ben slanted a glance at Jo, wringing her hands a few feet away. “Can you boil some water for me? And we’ll need clean towels or sheets, a big stack.”

  Looking grateful to have a task, Jo straightened and leaped for the door. “Yes! Sure, only … Merry, honey, I hate to leave you.”

  Merry lifted a shaking hand to wipe her damp, dark hair off her sweaty forehead and attempted a smile. “It’s okay, Mom. Dr. Fairfax will take care of me.”

  But as soon as the bedroom door shut behind Jo, Merry pulled away from Ben. He tried not to notice how empty and cold his arms felt.


  Irrelevant.

  “Ready to get back in bed?” he asked mildly, hands out and ready to steady her if she wobbled. “You can walk some more, if you want.”

  “What I want is to get this kid out of me.” She panted for a moment, then looked up at him from under her dark, sooty lashes. Ben read the fear and nerves in her gaze as clearly as if she were shouting it in his ear. “You can do this, right?”

  Foregoing the usual sneer at anyone who questioned his incredibly overqualified competence, Ben still couldn’t quite force the gentle, soothing bedside manner they’d talked about in his residency program.

  There was more than one reason he’d dropped out of the surgical program and redirected toward veterinary medicine.

  “Yes,” he told her, giving it to her straight, no waffling. “I’ve delivered healthy babies in far worse conditions than a clean, dry, warm, well-lit room.”

  Not human babies, but he had enough sensitivity not to remind her of that. The brief flash of humor in her blue eyes said she hadn’t forgotten, but her only response was to climb up onto the high mattress and settle in the nest of downy white pillows.

  “Birth is birth.” Ben rolled up his shirtsleeves and went back to setting out his tools. “It’s the first clue we get that life is going to be messy and painful, but it’s not complicated.”

  “Unless there are complications.” She sounded calm, but Ben saw the way her fingers clutched, white-knuckled, at the quilted bedspread. “I’m three weeks early.”

  He wanted to tell her to stop worrying, the baby was done cooking and everything was going to be fine—but he wouldn’t say that until after he’d examined her.

  It was weird, almost like an out-of-body experience, to stare down at Merry’s pale, strained face and the taut, swollen line of her stomach. Sometime between entering the room and this moment, he’d made the switch in his head.

  Merry wasn’t a person right now. She wasn’t the woman who reminded him he was human and made him want to snarl and snap and avoid her for it. She wasn’t beautiful or sexy or funny or vivacious or stubborn or kind.