Suppressing laughter, Merry cocked her head. “Well. I guess … it looks like dog food?”
“That was exactly his justification when I yelled at him for giving brandy-laced, fattened goose liver paste to a dog. This is why I hate the small-animal calls! Only in a backwater town like this would a large-animal vet get called in to tell a moron to stop giving his dog a fifty-dollar-a-pound purgative stuffed with black truffles.”
The aggrieved, long-suffering tone of Ben’s voice made Merry grin. “You know you love it here, Dr. Crankypants.”
He shot her an unconvincing scowl and she couldn’t help but smile.
He shook his head, loose wavy curls slipping into his eyes as he bent back to his task.
“Merry! Sweetie! Can you come here a sec?”
Jo’s voice echoed authoritatively through the quiet barn, and Merry couldn’t help it. She winced.
She’d wanted a closer relationship with the mother she’d been estranged from for most of her life—but maybe living together and raising baby Alex with Jo Ellen Hollister constantly looking over her shoulder and offering advice on everything from how long between feedings to when he should start crawling wasn’t the best way to go about learning to love her mother.
Checking on Ben, who appeared very absorbed in his examination of the sores she’d noticed earlier behind Oddity’s front legs, Merry blew out a steadying breath.
“Sure,” she called back, once she had her voice under control. There was no reason for Jo, or anyone else, to know that Merry was having a tough time figuring out how to be a good daughter.
I’m lucky, she reminded herself. I should be thanking my lucky, lucky stars with every breath. I have a home, and a family, and the most beautiful baby ever born.
“See you next week,” Ben called.
Merry glanced over her shoulder at the man in the shadows and felt another quiet shiver of warmth tingle down her spine, chasing the chill away. Nodding a hurried good-bye, she made her escape before he commented on whatever he’d seen with those laser-sharp eyes of his.
She had enough worries without falling prey to her old habit of obsessing over a guy. Especially one as harsh, sarcastic, and infuriatingly hard to figure out as Dr. Ben Fairfax.
Chapter Two
Ben laid a soothing hand on the mare’s warm, strong neck and watched Merry go. The way her round little behind twitched from side to side in those jeans ought to be outlawed.
He frowned. If he were in charge of the world—and he often lamented the fact that he wasn’t—he’d also make it illegal for Merry to ever exhibit that look he’d glimpsed when her mother called for her. It must be hard, trying to navigate being a new mother and having a new mother at the same time. And Jo, with years of regrets to make up for, was overloading Merry with attention and well-meaning advice. It was all there on her face.
She was so open, so expressive. Everything she felt was out there for the whole world to see, and it was a revelation for Ben. Sometimes even looking at her made him feel uncomfortably exposed. Had to be a sympathetic, mirroring emotion, because he knew for a fact that his own expression never gave anything away.
When he was a kid, he’d figured out how to turn to stone on command. It was a skill that had come in handy many times during his life. When he became Supreme Emperor of the Known Universe, he’d make sure it was taught in every elementary school.
But Merry, clearly, had learned a variation on it. She’d figured out that if she smiled big, she could fool most people into believing that everything was fine.
Ben wasn’t most people. Especially not when it came to Merry.
When he’d made that conversational misstep about her life choices, he’d read the shame and disillusionment in the lines of her body as clearly as if she’d burst into tears.
His best friend, Grady Wilkes, liked to say that with the way Ben watched Merry and with Grady dating her older sister, Ella, between the two of them they were the world’s foremost authorities on the Hollister women.
But as Ben let himself out of the mare’s stall and peered down the hallway toward the office, he knew there were limits to his understanding of what made the Hollister women tick.
That knowledge, plus the insatiable curiosity that had driven him into medicine in the first place, propelled Ben’s feet down the hallway.
Scuffing his boots in the fine red clay dust that filmed the poured concrete hall, Ben drifted close enough to the office doorway to hear the murmur of female voices inside.
Only for a second, he promised himself as his heart kicked into high gear.
He closed his eyes, listening, pretty sure he could pick Merry’s happy, bubbly tones out of a crowd of gabbling, chattering voices.
Although … he frowned. She didn’t sound all that bubbly right at the moment. She sounded uncertain and frustrated.
“I think … the books said this was the right way to start holding him now. We’re past the four month mark, and his head isn’t all wobbly anymore.”
“Well, sure, that’s fine.” Even Ben, not the most attuned to social cues, could plainly hear the soft doubt in Jo’s voice.
She tried to shake it off by being overly hearty about saying, “However you want to do it is fine! Kids are resilient—they’re basically made out of rubber bands at this age. Of course, Aunt Dottie always used to … but that’s not important.”
In the short pause that followed, Ben realized that he wasn’t going to be able to get his quick fix of Merry’s voice to carry him through the rest of his Merry-less week, and leave. There was something going on here.
Something he might be able to turn into an opportunity.
Merry sighed almost inaudibly. But her voice was calm and reasonable when she asked, “What would Aunt Dottie say?”
“Here, pass him over to me,” Jo said happily. “Oh, who’s a big boy? Who’s Grandma’s big boy?”
Ben shifted his weight carefully to line up his eye with the crack in the door just in time to see Merry do that quick, jerky wince he’d caught before.
And the expression on her face when her mother lifted the baby out of Merry’s arms and turned away slightly, cuddling him close … Ben narrowed his gaze in confusion as everything in his chest tightened in empathetic misery.
What did this all mean?
Fading back into the shadows of the barn, Ben felt his heart thundering in his chest the same way it had the day after the divorce, when he’d made the abrupt decision to leave his comfortable life and surgical ambitions in Richmond and move to Sanctuary Island.
A sense of possibility, exciting potential, raced over his skin and raised the fine hairs on the back of his neck.
It didn’t take a degree in psychology or a high score on the emotional IQ test to see that Merry Preston was in trouble. She needed help. She needed a hero.
Which was bad luck for her, because all she had was Ben. Who was no one’s idea of a hero—but for the chance to get the family he’d always wanted?
Ben could fake it.
*
Merry watched her mother holding her fussy baby boy the “right way,” and felt something inside her chest positively shrivel up into a dried-out knot.
Part of her wanted to grab Alex and stomp out of the barn. The other part of her was terrified that Jo was right.
Merry had no idea what she was doing.
A sharp rap on the wooden door frame behind them had Merry whirling to face Ben’s determinedly neutral expression.
He lifted one black brow. “Can I get a word?”
Jo gave him an easy smile, her face soft and handsome in the warm light of the barn office. “Sure, let me just—”
“Sorry,” Ben interrupted, lifting his chin. “I meant with the kid.”
Warmth spread through Merry’s insides, banishing the bad feelings. “I knew it!” she crowed, pointing at the vet. “You can’t resist snuggles with Alex.”
Pulling his mouth into a disgruntled line, Ben marched into the office and held out
his arms in an imperious gesture. Looking mildly confused, Jo handed Alex over with a swift glance at Merry.
But Merry didn’t have time to reassure her or explain what was going on, even if she were able to puzzle it out herself, because in the next instant, Ben spun on his heel and walked out of the office.
“Well?” Ben stuck his head back through the door, impatience sharpening his already razor-edged voice. “Are you coming?”
Merry jumped and gave her mother an apologetic glance. “Sorry! This will be fast, I’m sure, and then we can go home.”
Amused, Jo waved a hand and sank down into the chair behind her ancient desk. “You kids go on. It’s not as if I’m running low on paperwork.”
Merry hustled out into the hallway and paused, glancing up and down the wide, dark corridor. Moths banged recklessly into the floodlights set high in the rafters, and the horses they’d brought in from the paddock for the night sighed and shifted in their stalls. Other than that, the evening air was quiet.
That was when she realized that Alex had stopped making those little complaining cries that meant he was tired but would rather work himself into a full-blown screaming fit than sleep.
He’d been fussing off and on for the last hour, ever since his dinner, and no amount of holding and walking by either Merry or Jo had helped. In fact, Merry had needed to give herself a stern talking-to about the glimmer of gladness she’d felt when being picked up by Jo hadn’t immediately fixed Alex’s bad mood.
Now, as she spotted Ben down at the end of the hallway just inside the open double doors to the outside, Merry smiled. Looked like where she and Jo had failed, Ben had effortlessly succeeded.
Alex was completely silent in Ben’s arms, staring up at the man’s face with wide, fascinated blue eyes. As Merry walked up to them, Alex lifted his dimpled hand and made an uncoordinated grab for Ben’s granite-hard jawline.
When Ben didn’t jerk his head away, Merry noticed that he was staring down at Alex as if he’d never seen anything so miraculous. Seeing Ben’s normally shuttered gaze broken open by such tenderness tugged hard at Merry’s bruised heart.
The intensity of the look on Ben’s face kept her from teasing him any further about his interest in Alex. This man, who professed to care for nothing and no one outside of his veterinary practice, definitely cared about her son.
“What are you showing him?” she murmured, glancing past Ben’s broad shoulders to the dark night outside the circle of light spilling from the open doors. A brisk wind rustled through the evergreens that surrounded the barn, the whisper of pine needles almost drowning out the chirruping song of the frog who lived in the stable yard.
Ben hitched Alex in his arms so that the baby faced the night sky, his butt supported on Ben’s muscled forearm. Merry turned to look up, too, and caught her breath at the stillness and quiet, the velvety softness of the autumn night. A harvest moon glowed golden and bright, outlining the tips of the tall pine trees against the star-studded expanse of midnight blue.
“Nothing important.” Ben shrugged. When she looked up at him, his dark gray eyes were shadowed and searching. “You wanted to get out of there. So I got us out.”
A lump thickened in Merry’s throat, something like fear squeezing tight. This man saw too much, made her feel too much …
She shook her head, but she couldn’t deny Ben was right. Breathing in a gasp of chill night air, Merry felt as if she were sucking in the right amount of oxygen for the first time all day. It was enough to make her light-headed.
Ben was still watching her, studying her as if she were a specimen on a slide under his microscope. It made her want to squirm … but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
She shook her head. “I don’t … what are we doing out here?”
“You’re unhappy.” The blunt force of his words hit her like a hammer. “Living with Jo Ellen. You need to move out.”
Winded, it took everything Merry had to force a laugh. “That’s ridiculous. What gives you the right—”
“I have no right,” Ben said, looking impatient. “I know that. But someone has to say it, since you won’t.”
“I want a relationship with my mother,” Merry protested. “That’s the whole reason I came to Sanctuary. It’s why I decided to move here permanently.”
“No,” Ben corrected her. “You stayed for Alex. Because you want to raise him here, and you’re smart enough to take help when it’s offered.”
Merry had the feeling that this entire conversation was happening on multiple levels—but she could only follow one. “I guess that’s partly true, but—”
“And you didn’t expect help from Alex’s father.” Ben pronounced it like it wasn’t a question, but the way his searching gaze bored into her soul told Merry her answer mattered, for some reason she couldn’t fathom.
Still completely at sea, and definitely not wanting to get into the whole Ivan mess, Merry looked up and connected the dots of Orion’s belt to give her time to steady her voice. “Alex’s father is out of the picture.”
The words sent the familiar sharp stab of regret lancing through her. She knew what it was like to grow up missing a parent, and she hated the idea of Alex wondering what he’d done to make his father abandon him.
Giving a short, satisfied nod, Ben muttered, “Thought so. Good.”
“Good?” A roil of emotion choked her for a blinding instant. “You don’t think my kid deserves to know his father?”
Ben’s jaw tensed above Alex’s downy head. “Not if that father is a worthless loser.”
Merry’s mouth dropped open at the sheer, galling presumption. But before she could hiss that Ben didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, he sighed hugely and lifted Alex in his arms. Staring up into the baby’s cooing face, Ben muttered, “I’m saying this all wrong, aren’t I?”
Crossing her arms across her chest, Merry demanded, “What are you saying, exactly?”
Visibly gathering himself, Ben folded Alex in close to his chest, where her baby pressed his little face and rubbed a wet spot on the shoulder of Ben’s hunter-green thermal knit shirt. Merry struggled to hold on to her indignation while her heart melted into a puddle of goo.
Ben took a deep breath and met her gaze directly. “I’m saying, Alex does deserve a father. And you deserve the chance to build a relationship with your mother that isn’t mired down in feeling smothered by her constant attempts to help you. That’s just going to give you a case of the belated adolescent angst you missed out on during your teenage years.”
Merry sucked in a breath—this conversation passed inappropriately intimate about ten exits back—but Ben wasn’t finished.
“I’m saying I can help, with both of those things,” he said clearly, his deep, resonant voice rumbling out of his chest. Ensnared by the intensity of his tone, by the magnetic pull of his steely eyes, Merry held her breath.
“I’m saying…” Ben paused for a heartbeat, long enough that Merry had to gasp in air that seemed too thin to fill her lungs.
“What?”
Ben squared his shoulders and firmed his mouth, his stare never wavering. “Marry me, Meredith Preston.”
Chapter Three
Merry swayed on her feet, her face as pale as the sand on Sunrise Beach. Cursing inwardly, Ben juggled baby Alex onto one shoulder to try and get a hand free to catch her, if she was planning to topple.
But he should have known better. After one sharp, wheezing breath, Merry got her balance back, along with her voice.
“Is that a command or a question?”
“It’s a solution to your problems. It would get you out of Jo’s house, give you some distance so you and she can interact in a healthier way. Plus you won’t have to feel dependent on her good will, which will free you up to be the parent you want to be—and maybe the daughter you want to be, too.”
Her gaze sharpened on his, glittering in the moonlight. “So I should be dependent on you, instead. A man I hardly know, who barely seems able to
tolerate me for the length of a normal conversation, much less love me enough to marry me. What’s wrong with this picture?”
Maybe he’d made his move too quickly—it might have been smart to take the time to consider the best way to convince Merry. But Ben preferred not to wait for the iron to get hot when he could make it hot by striking. He saw his chance, and he was taking it.
So here they were, standing in the darkness of her mother’s empty barn. Hardly the romantic proposal women dreamed about.
Of course, he could fix that by telling her the truth—that she and Alex had unearthed something inside him that he’d buried years ago, that when she smiled it made Ben want to smile back, that all he wanted in the world was to keep Merry and Alex safe and try to make them happy.
The words clogged in his throat, choking off his air. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t open himself up that way, knowing Merry didn’t feel the same.
But this doesn’t have to be about romance, he reminded himself firmly. As far as Merry is concerned, it’s about practicality. And there was his angle, right there.
“Look, don’t get bent out of shape and emotional about this. I’m proposing a simple transaction, one that has occurred over and over between men and women since the dawn of time.” Ben kept his voice even and calm, rational. “You want independence from your mother and sister; I can give you that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “And what do you get in return?”
You and Alex.
The words lodged in his chest, a truth so deep he couldn’t force it to the surface. Clearing his throat, he said, “I’m from Richmond, originally. Have you ever lived there?”
Confusion dragged out her response. “Nooo. What does that have to do with anything?”
Come on, Ben, you’ve got to give a little to get a little.
Every word like pulling splinters out of a snarling dog’s paw, Ben opened up. Just a crack, but enough to make him feel uncomfortably exposed.
“The Fairfaxes of Richmond have been leaders in the FFV for generations. First Families of Virginia,” he clarified when she still looked confused. “It’s an exclusive set of Virginia society made up of folks who can trace their ancestry back to the original settlers of the colony. There’s a lot of prestige, a lot of tradition. A lot of ridiculous, meaningless, shallow posturing and backbiting and maneuvering for status.”
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