“Sounds like a blast.” Merry shook her head, a frown creasing her pale brow. “I’m still not seeing the connection.”
“I’m an only child,” Ben told her, thinking quickly. “And my parents are getting on in years. They’ve been after me to settle down, and I know the one thing that would please them more than anything would be if I were to provide them with an heir. I don’t see why that heir can’t be Alex.”
“But,” Merry stammered, eyes wide and bewildered. “He’s not yours.”
The words seared through Ben in an unexpected rush of bitter pain, but other than firming his hold on the wriggling baby in his arms, he didn’t react. “I know that. But I could make him my legal heir, all the same.”
Not that adopting Alex and giving him the Fairfax name would actually please Ben’s parents. Blood will tell, he’d heard them say to each other with significant eyebrow arches over the morning paper, whenever some family outside their set did something of which they didn’t approve.
But a legal heir was better than nothing, Ben reasoned. It was the best they could hope for from Ben, so surely he’d be able to convince them to play along.
Merry shook her head, and when she reached out her arms for her son, Ben handed the kid over. Reluctantly, and with a pang for how empty his arms felt without Alex’s soft weight, but he said nothing.
“No. I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. No! I’m sorry, I’m not marrying you just to give your parents a grandkid.”
“To be clear,” Ben said, “there’s an inheritance involved.”
And that was a miscalculation. Ben realized it the instant the words left his lips and Merry stiffened as if he’d shoved a speculum somewhere uncomfortable.
“I don’t need your money,” Merry snapped. “Alex and I are doing just fine, thank you very much.”
Cursing himself silently, Ben stepped back. But he wasn’t ready to admit defeat yet. “This could be the answer to both our problems. People have gotten married for far stupider reasons. Love, for example.”
He held his breath, counting off the solid thuds of his heartbeat. Was that the right tactic? To leave emotion out of the equation? It certainly felt safer to Ben—and since he knew Merry barely liked him, let alone loved him, it felt smart. If she said yes, it wouldn’t be because she expected hearts and flowers and candlelight.
Please say yes.
Down the hall, the light in Jo’s office clicked off, casting Merry’s face into further shadow. He couldn’t read her expression anymore, although he caught the slight tension in her shoulders when Jo called her name.
“Coming, Mom,” she called back, her opaque gaze never leaving Ben’s.
He swallowed down a plea and forced his tone to a firm command. “Tell me you’ll at least think about it. Alex deserves the best. Between the two of us, we can give him everything—two parents, a stable home, the best schools and opportunities in life.”
Merry curled her arms tight around her son. “I’m sorry, but it’s too crazy, even for me. And I’ve practically made a career out of leaping before I look when it comes to men. I promised myself I was done with that part of my life.”
She took off down the hall toward her mother, whose pickup truck was parked out back behind the barn. Ben watched her go, his heart aching in his chest. When she paused, that stupid heart leaped—until she said over her shoulder, “But thanks for the offer, Doc. It means a lot to me, for Alex’s sake.”
Ben’s heart dropped back into his rib cage where it belonged, beating a steady rhythm of hope.
For Alex’s sake.
That’s what it came down to, Ben knew. And that was his ace in the hole. This was a chance to ensure Alex’s future. Merry wasn’t going to pass that up.
He hoped.
*
Merry blanked all thoughts of Dr. Ben Fairfax out of her brain. She was good at that—selective memory loss was one of her special talents, and it had gotten her through a lot of tough times. She wasn’t about to abandon it now, when even a stray, curious question from Jo wanting to know what she and Ben had been talking about in the barn could cause a hot flush to flood Merry’s body.
She’d deflected Jo’s questions and focused on Alex during the car ride home—which was easy, since he remembered his earlier determination to have a bad night the instant Merry walked him away from Ben. Alex sobbed the entire way back to Jo’s house as if his little heart were breaking.
Hoisting her precious bundle of blanket-wrapped baby higher on her shoulder, Merry skirted the hole in the porch—they had to get that fixed before Alex learned to crawl—and struggled to open the front door with the two free fingers from her left hand.
The rest of that hand was lugging the unwieldy diaper bag that was her only accessory these days, and she clenched her jaw against a curse when the process of turning the brass knob had her nearly dropping the heavy bag. She managed to get it under control and keep her balance without jostling Alex too badly, and breathed out a long sigh of relief as she stepped into the foyer.
The house settled around her, creaky and old and welcoming. After only five months, Merry already felt more at home here at Windy Corner than she had anywhere since she was a kid.
What was wrong with her that she couldn’t be content with that?
“Honey! You should let me get the door for you,” Jo chided her, the screen door banging shut behind her. “I’m here to help.”
Merry actually felt her shoulders hitch up, tension pulling her spine straight. “I was fine. Thank you, though.”
Jo paused and uncomfortable silence descended for a moment. It lasted long enough for Merry to wish her sister, Ella, were on the island instead of back in D.C. with her new boyfriend, local handyman and noted hottie Grady Wilkes, packing up her apartment and dealing with the ramifications of taking a leave of absence from her high-powered real estate firm.
Ella was a pretty good buffer, and she had the added bonus of always being completely on Merry’s side, ever since they were little. Merry was as well adjusted as she was because of her older sister.
Not that Merry was going to win any medals in the Life Skills Olympics, but she’d be willing to bet she’d be a lot bigger mess if the only mother figure she’d had while growing up had been her actual mother.
She pursed her lips against the surge of resentment. Thoughts like that had been creeping in ever since she woke up the morning after Alex’s birth and realized that this tiny, helpless scrap of humanity was entirely dependent on her. Hers to love, hers to protect … hers to screw up.
From that vantage point, it was suddenly a lot harder to look back at the choices Jo had made throughout her daughters’ early lives and feel quite so forgiving.
But you forgave her months ago, Merry reminded herself firmly. You were the one who wanted to end the estrangement, you were the one who wanted to get to know our mother. You were the one who decided to move to Sanctuary for good.
So suck it up, buttercup. This is the bed you made, and if it’s not quite the soft, easy rest you thought it would be, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Which, of course, reminded her of that insane conversation with Dr. Ben Fairfax back at the barn. What an impossible man he was. For the life of her, Merry couldn’t get a handle on what made him tick. Any man who would propose marriage, out of the blue, to a woman he didn’t even like was an enigma.
Not that Merry had ever been great at understanding men. At least, not at understanding more than the fact that they seemed to like her brightly dyed, punky hair and tendency to wear skintight leather pants.
Considering how long it had been since she’d felt sexy enough to pour herself into those leather pants, or to bother to do more to her hair than give it a whack with a hairbrush, maybe it wasn’t such a surprise that Ben didn’t like her very much.
Not that he seemed to like anyone at all, other than Alex. Which was another crazy thing, but one that gave Merry a warm glow deep in her chest.
&nbs
p; Of course it was nuts, in this day and age, to even consider marrying someone to secure an heir—what was he, the king of England?—but Merry couldn’t fault Ben’s taste.
“What are you smiling about?” Jo asked, an eager answering smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Hope shone clear as day in her blue eyes—the same blue eyes Merry saw every morning in the mirror—and Merry felt a pang of guilt.
None of Merry’s newly discovered angst was Jo’s fault. Except in the sense that Jo was the one who’d been a raging alcoholic when Ella and Merry were little, who’d chosen whiskey over her family and allowed her husband to move across the state and take their children with him.
But that was nearly two decades ago, and Jo had gotten clean. She’d reached out, she’d apologized—she’d done everything right. Back when Merry and Ella first arrived on Sanctuary Island last spring, Ella had been the one who struggled to find a way to forgive.
Merry had done what she always did. She put on a happy face, ignored the past, and shoved determinedly forward into the future.
The fact that she was having second thoughts now was seriously unfair, to everyone involved. Because since Alex’s birth, Jo had been nothing but supportive and helpful.
It wasn’t Jo’s fault that every time she tried to help these days, Merry had to bite back a protest.
In her arms, Alex squawled fretfully and made a snuffling push against her shoulder. He was ready for his bedtime snack, and Merry said a silent prayer that tonight would be one of the nights he dropped off to sleep immediately afterward.
She was lucky. For the most part, Alex slept straight through from feeding to five-thirty or six the next morning—but there were a few nights here and there that made Merry worry he’d inherited her lifelong insomnia.
And of course, after a full day of mucking out stalls, helping tack horses for the riding lessons Jo gave to local kids, revising the cover letter for her latest attempt at a grant application, and that shocking conversation with Ben, tonight was one of Alex’s bad nights.
He cried. And cried. And screamed, and then cried some more until Merry was on the point of bursting into tears herself. If she walked him up and down the stairs, he’d calm down for a few minutes, but if she tried to lay him down in his crib …
After the fourth unsuccessful repetition of this maneuver, Jo said from the doorway of the nursery, “I know it’s hard. But when you pick him up, you’re just teaching him that if he cries, you’ll magically appear and make everything better.”
Merry stared down at her son, on his back in the white crib Grady had built for him. Alex’s tiny face was screwed up tight, angry squawks issuing from his rosebud mouth as he waved his legs and fists in furious demand.
“I want him to know that I’m here for him,” Merry said through the numb daze of exhaustion.
“But he has no incentive to stop crying,” Jo said with maddening calmness. “You need to let him cry it out. He’ll go to sleep eventually.”
Merry reached down to touch the fleecy square of blanket Alex had managed to twist around himself like a pretzel. “He’s so little. The world must seem like a huge, cold, terrifying place to him. I can’t leave him all alone in it. I won’t.”
The harsh intake of breath behind her made Merry replay what she’d said. Turning suddenly, she surprised a look of pain on her mother’s face.
“I didn’t mean—” Merry broke off uncertainly. Because maybe she did mean it.
After all, Jo Ellen had abandoned her daughters in every way that mattered before they even learned to walk.
“It’s fine,” Jo said at once, brushing it away with a graceful sweep of her hand and a determined smile. “And of course, Alex is your son, you raise him the way you think best. I know parenting styles have changed a lot in the last twenty-five years.”
Alex let loose with a particularly piercing shriek, and Merry, pushed beyond all resistance, leaned back over the crib and swooped him up into her arms. When he clutched at the cotton of her T-shirt with both sticky hands and mouthed wetly at her neck, Merry’s heart throbbed and expanded until it pressed painfully at her rib cage.
“It’s late,” she said, giving Jo a tight, apologetic smile. “And tomorrow’s coming fast. Why don’t you go to bed, I’ve got this.”
“No, I’m not tired at all!” Jo’s protest was somewhat undercut by the fact that she yawned hugely in the middle of it. Making a face at herself, she said, “Really. I can stay up and keep you company.”
The need to be outside, out of this house and away from Jo, seized Merry by the throat. “That’s okay—I’m going to try the car.”
Sometimes Alex could be soothed by being strapped into his car seat and driven slowly around the island. Something about the vibration of the engine beneath him or the sound of the ocean waves through the open car windows—Merry didn’t know, but it was like magic.
“Our little future Nascar champ.” Jo smiled faintly. Backlit by the gentle glow of the hall light, she looked more than tired—she looked old, her face lined with the cares and regrets of more than fifty years.
Jo felt the strain and distance that had been growing between them, too—Merry knew she did.
Feeling guilty, ashamed, exhausted, and annoyed at herself, Merry attempted to put some real warmth in the smile she gave her mother. “More like Formula One. Aren’t they the guys who just go around and around the track? That’s what Alex likes best—driving in circles.”
One hour and three full circles around the island’s paved roads later, Alex was asleep.
But Merry was wide awake, her thoughts as circular as the route she’d taken to lull her son into slumber.
Tell me you’ll at least think about it.
In the still darkness of the deserted country roads, cutting through pine woods and over salt marshes, Merry was at the mercy of her thoughts.
And all of them centered on Dr. Ben Fairfax and his proposal. Which might be the craziest thing she’d ever heard … but somehow, she couldn’t get it out of her mind.
Sighing, Merry turned down the road that would lead her back through the center of town to Windy Corner and all the problems she’d left behind when she escaped from the house tonight.
It was so late, the gas street lamps that lined Main Street were dimmed to dark blue flames. No one in this little early-to-bed-early-to-rise island town was up and about this late except desperate single moms.
But as she drove slowly past the grassy town square, Merry caught movement in the shadows of the white-latticed bandstand in the middle of the park.
Her heart clutched into a fist in her chest.
What on earth was that?
Chapter Four
Taylor wandered across the dewy grass of the town square toward the dark bandstand in the center.
It was weird how creepy everything looked at night. She stuck her hands deeper into the pockets of her jeans and hunched her shoulders against a shiver.
That pack of cigarettes better still be there, or this whole curfew-breaking escapade was a pointless waste of time and energy. Either way, though, she’d needed to get out of the house after that fight with Dad about restoring her computer privileges.
Hack one little school-system Web site, and get banned from the Internet for life? Unfair. It had been literally years since she’d used her techie powers for evil. But did Dad give her any credit?
No, it was all, “I see you pulling away again, pulling into yourself, just like after Mom died, and it scares me.”
Please. Sure, Taylor wasn’t ecstatic about life right now, but that didn’t mean she was about to do a swan dive off the deep end into juvenile delinquency.
Her father’s paranoia had the opposite effect he was probably hoping for, anyway. As soon as the light winked out under his bedroom door, Taylor had her window open and was shimmying down the old magnolia tree to retrieve her long-lost pack of cigarettes from the park.
At the edge of the gazebo, Taylor crouched down and wiggled the loos
e board at the back of the steps up to the stage, feeling around in the dirt.
Completely focused on the search for a nicotine fix she hadn’t craved in months, Taylor didn’t hear the steps behind her until a guy’s voice said, “Hey there. Did you lose something?”
Taylor would deny it with her last breath, but she let out a frightened squeak and whipped upright, whirling to face the tall boy staring down at her.
Silhouetted against the flickering light of the old-timey street lamp behind him, his face was cast in shadow. Taylor’s heart raced out of control as she realized she didn’t recognize him.
On an island so small that the entire high school only had two hundred students, that was a big deal. Taylor had been in classes with basically the same sixty-two kids since kindergarten. By the start of junior year, you’d think she’d know every single one of them well enough to recognize them even in the pitch-black dark.
Not so much.
Feeling like she’d swallowed a clutch of tadpoles and they were all swimming around in her belly, Taylor tossed her blond hair over her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Who wants to know?”
The guy put his hands on his lean hips. Big hands, she noticed with a nervous thrill. Broad palms, long fingers, bony at the knuckles like he was still growing into them. But at five foot nine, Taylor was one of the tallest girls in school—and this guy already towered over her by at least four inches.
She racked her brain for which guys from school were taller than her when they finished sophomore year last spring. But lots could happen over the summer—nobody understood that better than Taylor.
“You really don’t recognize me.” The guy ran his fingers through the short spikes of his buzz-cut hair. “Who would’ve thought getting contacts and a haircut would make that big a difference.”
Shoreline Drive (Sanctuary Island) Page 4