This is bonkers. What am I even doing here?
Before her feet could get any colder, she swung open the door and marched into the vet clinic.
It wasn’t the first time Merry had visited the office—she’d dropped off the payment for the weekly bills Windy Corner Stables racked up a couple of times. Both times, she’d handed the check off to a sweet-faced woman wearing glasses, a messy bun, and a harried expression, and both times, Merry had considered asking the poor woman if she wanted to grab a drink after work. For sure, being Dr. Crankypants’s office assistant would drive anyone to alcohol. But since she’d been pregnant at the time, she hadn’t done it, and now look—the woman had quit several weeks ago, and she’d taken every last vestige of organization and efficiency with her.
Haphazard piles of paper littered the desk by the door, cascading from the overflowing black metal in-box and onto the floor. Three of the four drawers in the corner file cabinet were pulled open, with color-coded manila folders sticking out of them at random. As Merry stood in the doorway, eyes wide, the phone on the desk started a shrill pattern of ringing that clicked almost immediately over to the answering machine. Glancing down at it, she saw the red light blinking, frantically signaling that the answering machine tape was almost full.
“Whoever you are, go away! Unless you’re here about the job, in which case, pick up the damn phone and get to work.” Ben’s shout was muffled through the door of his exam room, but Merry could clearly discern his impatience. Not a subtle guy, her future husband.
If he was in the exam room, he might be with a patient. Of course, she wouldn’t put it past him to be hiding in there with a cup of coffee and his paperwork, keeping his head down and hoping the mess out here would magically disappear.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, Merry rubbed her damp palms on her thighs and decided to wait. But the only chair in Ben’s completely inhospitable waiting area was the one behind the receptionist’s desk, and it was buried under a mountain of paper.
Merry sighed. It might be a long wait, and she’d been on her feet since Alex’s predawn wake-up call. She marched over to the chair and started sifting through the bills, prescription pads, advertisements for new medications, and payment notifications. But once she had the chair cleaned off and ready for duty, it no longer matched the rest of the disaster area of an office. And what the heck, she already had several piles going for later filing, so she just kept adding to them and adding to them, until finally she looked up and realized that she’d tidied up the entire desk.
Rolling her shoulders to stretch out her stiff neck, Merry jumped in surprise when the exam room door opened and a retriever with a plastic cone around his fluffy neck bounded out. In the next instant, Merry had a cold, wet nose in her crotch and her hands full of soft, curly fur the burnished gold color of the leaves falling off the maple tree out front.
Crouching down to the dog’s level as two people followed him out, Merry ruffled his silky ears. “Oh now, who’s a good boy? I love your new collar, such a fashion statement, very avant-garde. All the lady retrievers are going to be all over you.”
“That collar isn’t decorative,” Ben said from above her. “It’s a cone of shame, to keep Bosley from licking himself raw.”
“Oh, Doctor,” an old lady’s voice quavered. “Don’t call it the cone of shame. I hate for him to feel we’re laughing at him, even if he does look silly. Bosley, the girl dogs will love it!”
Ben snorted. “Trust me, Bosley doesn’t care if he’s a hit with the ladies—why should he? When his tongue can reach his own—”
Merry stood up so quickly, all the blood rushed from her head. “Hi, Mrs. Ellery. Great turban.”
Mrs. Ellery blinked the slow, lazy blink of a woman who’d had an extra good time in the sixties. She smiled and the tiny bells sewn into her purple paisley head scarf tinkled merrily. “Meredith, honey. How’s your mama? And that sweet little boy of yours. He was getting so big when I saw y’all at the playground last week.”
This, right here, was why Merry was determined to bring Alex up on Sanctuary Island. The warmth and welcome she’d received was beyond anything she’d ever imagined—especially since she’d shown up in this tiny town five months ago as an unwed mother.
But no one here batted an eye. Maybe Merry was automatically accepted as one of the Hollister women, who’d been living on the island for generations. Or maybe it was that Sanctuary Island was home to a variety of misfits and oddballs who followed the golden rule about their neighbors’ quirks.
Merry smiled back. She liked the way Mrs. Ellery always called her by her full name. “They’re both good. Thanks for asking. And I hope Bosley will be up to playing by next Saturday! Alex will sob his eyes out if he doesn’t get to pull on poor Bosley’s ears at the park.”
With plenty of fluttering and wispy hand wringing, Mrs. Ellery promised to see Merry and Alex in the park, got her marching orders from Ben on patient care—“Don’t let him lick himself. Use a squirt bottle if you have to, or he’s going to get an infection in a really nasty place”—and bustled out of the clinic with her faithful companion padding along beside her.
“You didn’t have to do that.” Ben crossed his arms over his chest, making Merry notice the muscles in his biceps and shoulders, the solid strength of him. The wide planes of his chest narrowed to a lean waist that made Merry’s palms itch to touch, to see if it was as hard and ridged with muscle as it looked.
“Hello?” Impatience snapped in Ben’s tone as he waved a hand in front of her face, and Merry jumped, heart racing. Crap, she’d been staring.
Desperate to distract herself from the heat pooling low in her body, Merry grinned and arched a brow. “I know Mrs. Ellery is a woman of the world—heck, she probably had more sex than you and me in our whole lives put together during the Summer of Love alone—but that dog is her baby. And trust me, no mama wants to think about her little boy doing the nasty to himself.”
“I wasn’t talking about your morality policing,” Ben said, glowering down his nose at her. “I meant all this. The office.”
“Oh!” Stupidly, Merry felt the urge to apologize choke up into her throat, but she swallowed it down. She had nothing to apologize for.
“This place is a hot mess,” she said instead. “What have you been doing since your assistant left? Throwing your bills and diagnostic notes onto her desk and waiting for the elves to come at night and file them by magic?”
Ben rocked back on his heels while his eyes did a funny, shifty squint. “No!”
Merry laughed. “Oh, for the love of … that’s exactly what you’ve been doing. Doc, come on. Just hire someone new.”
“I tried,” he growled. “You think I like living this way? I’m going out of my mind, and I’ve interviewed what seems like every empty-headed bimbo on the Eastern Seaboard to find a replacement, but now the agency won’t send me anyone else.”
“I wonder why.” Merry studied the thunderous scowl on his handsome face. It was enough to scare the bejeebus out of any poor college kid looking for a summer job. “Have you thought about doing phone interviews?”
Grabbing a big black binder off the desk, Ben started flipping through it. “I need to get to my next appointment. If I can figure out what the hell it is. You got something to say, spit it out. I assume you didn’t come over here to clean my office and critique my interview style.”
Merry’s mouth went bone-dry. Licking her lips, she fought to keep her head up and her tone as straightforward as Ben’s. “No. I’m here to talk about your offer.”
Ben paused his riffling through the appointment calendar, his gaze trained stubbornly on the page in front of him. “My proposal, you mean.”
His sudden stillness communicated a level of nerves that, perversely, put Merry at ease. Hopping up to sit on the edge of the desk she’d cleared, she swung her booted feet and leaned back on her hands. “I thought about what you said, and you made some good points. So here’s my counteroffer.”
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That got Ben to look at her. “I’m no expert, but I don’t think that’s how marriage proposals usually go.”
“Tough bananas. If you want somebody who’ll smile big and bat her eyes and agree with everything you say, propose to someone else. And I recommend you actually take her out to dinner first, at least once. Most girls would prefer you pop the question after a little courtship.”
Ben’s gaze sharpened thoughtfully. “Dinner! I should’ve taken you to dinner. Is the Firefly Café good enough, or would it have to be that fancy French place in Winter Harbor?”
“Don’t be a dummy. There’s nothing better than the Firefly Café,” Merry told him. “But that’s beside the point, because you didn’t ask some other woman to marry you—you asked me. And I don’t need any of that courtship crap, because if we do this thing, it’s not going to be a regular marriage. It’s more of a business deal. What’s the phrase? A marriage in name only.”
She held her breath, because that was essential—a deal breaker, in fact. Merry Preston had slept with plenty of guys for reasons that turned out to be pretty stupid, in retrospect, and she was through with it. Sure, Ben was hot—it would be impossible not to notice. But she’d fallen for good looks before, and she knew better now. That part of her life was over—she had more important things to focus on these days, like Alex.
“That sounds like you’re saying no sex,” Ben said, with his usual bluntness.
Taking that as her cue to be equally blunt, Merry laid it out for him. “If you’re going to expect sex from me in return for financial stability … there’s a name for a woman like that, and it’s not a label I’m willing to carry. So I want it understood up front. If we get married, I’m never going to have sex with you. Ever.”
*
To the casual observer, Ben would bet he looked calm and collected, unconcerned at the fact that the woman of his dreams was offering him everything he wanted in one hand, and taking back a big chunk of it with the other.
But Ben was a master at weathering emotional whiplash—he’d been told that as a fairly complicated, uneven-keel person, himself, he’d inspired plenty of it in others—and the important thing was to keep his eyes on the prize.
She was close to saying yes. A qualified “yes,” to be sure, but this first “yes” was only the first step of a much longer journey. And without it, he had no chance at getting anything he wanted.
So Ben shrugged instead of arguing, and said, “Makes sense. I wouldn’t want you to do something you’re uncomfortable with.”
That had the added benefit of being true—Ben’s dream was not, in any way, to coerce Merry Preston into sharing her life and herself with him.
He needed her to want him back.
Her eyes went wide, and he could tell he’d surprised her. Not very flattering. “Seriously?” Merry blinked. “Oh-kay … great.”
“Good.”
“Hold up.” Merry shook her head. “For serious now, you get what this means, right? I’m okay with you … seeking comfort elsewhere. That’s only fair.”
“Fine.” Ben shrugged. It was easy to agree to a contingency he never planned to take advantage of.
She threw her hands up. “Ben! Now who’s not thinking it through? Let me spell it out. If we stay married, you will never father a child with your wife. Are you really willing to give up all hope of a legitimate heir?”
The words rocked Ben on his heels like a slap across the face. Merry couldn’t know how close she’d cut to the bone, how much fathering another child was exactly the eventuality Ben hoped to avoid. “It’s not a matter of giving up hope,” he said starkly. “There’s no chance of me fathering a child, legitimate or otherwise. Ever.”
He would never take that chance again, with Merry or anyone else.
“Oh!” Red suffused her cheeks as her eyes went wide and moist with sympathy. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize … I didn’t mean to bring up something so painful and personal. But it’s important we’re on the same page about this, because it’s a deal breaker for me.”
“We’re good. Is that your only deal breaker?” Ben asked abruptly, tightening his fingers on the appointment book until the plastic squeaked in his hands.
“Anxious about what else I might come up with?” Merry flashed a smile and her booted heel hit the desk leg with a rhythmic thud-thud-thud. “Don’t worry, you’ll like this next one. I’m willing to agree to the trust fund for Alex—I can’t pass up the chance to give my son the best chance at life.”
“Excellent.” Fulfillment flooded Ben for a blissful moment … until he noticed the determination firming Merry’s lips.
“But,” she said, holding up a hand. “The trust should be in Alex’s name only. I want a third party we both agree on to be his trustee. Someone good with money and with Alex’s best interests at heart should hold the purse strings until he’s old enough to take over.”
“I nominate you,” Ben said immediately. A huge part of the point of this was to make sure Merry was taken care of.
“No. I don’t want your money. And I wouldn’t know what to do with it, how to invest it and keep it safe for Alex. I was thinking somebody like Harrison McNamara would be a good choice.”
Harrison McNamara wasn’t only Jo Ellen Hollister’s main squeeze—he was also the manager of the local bank, and a smart, savvy businessman. Ben was unwillingly impressed with Merry’s pick, even as he realized she was determined to deny him the satisfaction of taking care of her the way he’d imagined.
“That makes sense,” Ben admitted grudgingly. “But look, don’t be a stubborn idiot about the money. I’ve got more than I need—you don’t. If we get married, we share it. That’s how it works.”
“Your money is yours.” Merry set her jaw, and Ben hated that he noticed how beautiful she was in her righteous determination. “This isn’t nineteen fifty. It’s not your job to support me. In fact, if we do this, I’ll want to contribute to the household. Which means getting a job outside of working at the barn.”
Ben pounced. “What about Alex? Are you going to let me hire a nanny to look after him? Because the chances of you finding an employer other than your mother who’s happy to babysit? Virtually nil. And if you’re going to keep working at the barn, too—”
“I have to,” she interrupted. “Mom needs all the help she can get, setting up the new facility for the changeover to therapeutic riding, and I need to see it through with her. It means a lot to me.”
As it happened, the planned Windy Corner Therapeutic Riding Center meant a lot to Ben, too—enough to have him volunteering his time and considerable skills as the on-call veterinarian—but he still marveled at the easy, open way Merry put it out there. As if she had no fear that revealing what mattered to her meant that it would be taken away.
“I was going to point out that a job in addition to working at the barn means long hours away from Alex.” And me. “So maybe you should rethink that point. It’s not like I need your help with the bills.”
“I get it, you’re Richie Rich.” Merry shrugged helplessly. “But can’t you see that I have to do my share and pay my own way, or all I’m doing is trading dependence on my mother for dependence on you?”
Ben had to look away from the plea in her blue eyes, or he was going to crumble under the pressure. His gaze landed on the tidy surface of the desk, with its neat piles of paper.
“You’re right,” he realized, snagging a page off the top of the nearest pile. “I do need help with the bills. And the filing, and keeping up with my appointments and stocking the supply closet.”
“What do you mean?”
Ben raised a brow. “I know exactly where you can work, for good money and flexible hours. And I can guarantee the boss won’t mind when you bring your baby with you to the office.”
Merry slid off the desk, eyes huge in her shocked face as she stared wildly around the office. “No! What? I don’t have any qualifications, my work history is spotty, at best. This is a bad idea.”
“It’s a great idea,” Ben told her. “In spite of your frankly terrible interview technique. And you had the gall to criticize my interviewing skills! Anyway, you’re hired. I’m looking at the new office manager for the Sanctuary Island Veterinary Clinic.”
Just as he was congratulating himself on finding the perfect loophole, Merry recovered enough to narrow her eyes and poke a stiff finger into the center of his chest.
“And you’ll pay me exactly what you paid your last receptionist, right? No more, no less. No special treatment.”
“Fine, take all the fun out of it,” he grumbled. “And don’t worry about special treatment. You’ll have to learn on the job, and I need you up to speed fast. So you’ll need to start as soon as possible.”
“As soon as … an hour ago, when I cleared off this whole desk?” She smirked up at him, so full of mischief and loveliness, it caused a physical ache in Ben’s hands that he wasn’t supposed to reach for her.
He gazed into her eyes for a long, silent heartbeat. Ben yearned toward her as if she’d magnetized his insides, an almost uncontrollable force pulling him in her direction. But she’d said she didn’t want that, didn’t want him, and Ben would never force her.
She’d said she didn’t want him … but a sudden flush painted her cheeks and the tips of her ears red. Her pearly skin showed every change in body heat, Ben knew, and as they stood there, mere inches apart, the flush spread down her neck. Her breathing hitched quietly, and when she swallowed, he was close enough to track the movement of her slender throat.
Her chest rose with an inhalation and her lashes fluttered slightly, but she didn’t step away. Ben stared down at her, so close, so touchable, and he smiled.
He’d never force her … but he could tempt her.
“It sounds like we’ve got a deal,” he murmured, very aware of the thickness of his voice. “All points agreed upon, all details hammered out. I’ll get my attorney to draw up a contract, so you can look it over.”
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