Shoreline Drive (Sanctuary Island)

by Everett, Lily

“Okay.” Merry’s gaze flickered to Ben’s mouth for a bare instant, but it was enough to set off fireworks in Ben’s chest.

  “One last point,” he said, bending near to brush the words against her temple. “About the no-sex clause.”

  “Nonnegotiable,” Merry breathed, her blush intensifying. Hope kindled like a flame in the pit of his stomach.

  “I’m not arguing,” he assured her. “Merely stipulating an exception.”

  Suspicion crept into her tone. “What exception?”

  With the same care and precision he used with his frightened patients, Ben lifted his hands to her upper arms and skimmed the silken flesh there so lightly that he felt it when she shivered. “After we’re married, there will be no sex … until you come to me and ask for it.”

  Chapter Six

  “If your plan is to wait me out, Doc, you’ll be waiting a long time,” Merry declared. Well, she meant it to be a declaration, a firm and serious vow, but somehow it came out sounding all husky and needy.

  Ben shrugged, his dark brows scrunched in that grouchy way that made Merry’s fingers itch to smooth them out. “We’ll see.”

  “We will see,” Merry insisted, forcing herself to step back and out of the danger zone. “We need to be clear before this goes any further.”

  She paused. The blunt, brutal truth didn’t seem to want to leave her mouth, but it was too important—if she held back and he got the wrong idea, she wouldn’t be doing Ben any favors, in the long run.

  Merry tilted her head and looked him straight in the eye. “I know we haven’t talked about feelings much. It’s all been about what makes financial sense and what’s best for Alex, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, but Ben, I don’t love you.”

  She held her breath for his reaction, but his expression never even flickered. If anything, his grumpy scowl lightened up a bit. “I know that. I never expected you to.”

  “All right. That’s … good.” Knocked off balance, Merry couldn’t help poking at him to find out more. “But what if you fall in love with someone later on down the road? I wouldn’t want to stand in your way—we should have a plan for that.”

  “We can if you want,” Ben said indifferently. “But it’s not going to happen for me. I’m not built for it. I prefer a smart, sensible partnership with all the details spelled out ahead of time in a contract. I’ll take that over the mess and chaos of love any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.”

  His face, as usual, gave nothing away. But there was a rigidity to his stance, a brittle stillness in the way he held himself, that hinted at old pain and deep regret. Merry, who had more than her share of both, decided to back off and let this drop gracefully. For now.

  “Then I guess we’re in agreement.” Another thought popped into Merry’s head. She couldn’t believe she’d almost forgotten about it! “Oh, wait—I also want a trial period before we even think about starting adoption proceedings. A year.”

  Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Six months is all you’ll need. I’m going to be an excellent father figure.”

  “A year,” Merry insisted. “For you as much as for us. Being a parent isn’t fun and games all the time. We need to be sure this arrangement is working out before I make such a permanent decision about my son’s future.”

  Jaw clenching, Ben dipped his chin. “Reasonable. But I’m not going to change my mind,” he said, as if he’d heard everything she wasn’t saying.

  To her own surprise, Merry wasn’t actually all that worried that Ben wouldn’t be up to par as a dad—she’d seen him with Alex, and she’d felt the tenderness and care radiating off Ben whenever he held her little boy in his arms. They wouldn’t be having this conversation at all if she hadn’t.

  But she was worried—terrified—about what would happen if she and Alex grew to depend on that tenderness and care, and someday down the line, Ben left.

  She wouldn’t put her son through the lingering, corrosive heartache of abandonment. The fact that Ben couldn’t have kids of his own reassured her a little, in a sad way—Alex would be it, for him, and what mother wouldn’t appreciate that?—but she had to be cautious. This was her son’s future. She couldn’t take any chances.

  “One year,” Ben said, as if making a mental note and recalibrating his plans. “Starting from today?”

  So soon. Somehow, that one sentence made this whole theoretical discussion feel real. Merry swayed on her feet, a little light-headed with possibilities. “This … is actually happening, isn’t it?”

  “If you want it to.” Ben tucked a hand into the pocket of his white lab coat and drew out a tiny black velvet box.

  “Geez, count your chickens much?” Merry said faintly. “You must have been pretty sure I’d come around.”

  “I wasn’t sure, but I had hope.” Ben turned the box, so small in his long-fingered hands, and offered it to her on the flat of his palm, the same way he’d offer a sugar cube to a horse to keep from getting bitten.

  His instinctive caution made her smile, even as she shook her head and backed away until her hips bit into the edge of the desk. “We don’t need a ring—this isn’t that kind of engagement, remember? No romance required.”

  “It’s not romantic,” Ben insisted, gesturing with the box impatiently. “It’s part of the trappings. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. The whole point is to create a stable, normal environment for Alex. That means Mama gets a ring on her finger.”

  He shoved the box toward her, and Merry accepted it reluctantly. “I guess so,” she said, then gasped when she opened the box and saw the ring.

  Big and square, the diamond glittered in its old-fashioned setting surrounded by a constellation of tiny pinprick diamonds. The slim platinum band looked like two vines twisted into a braid. It was the most beautiful ring Merry had ever seen—not that she’d encountered a lot of engagement rings in her life.

  “No,” Merry said through numb lips. “I can’t accept this, it’s too much, too expensive—”

  “Relax.” Ben grabbed the ring from her nerveless fingers and slipped it into place on her left hand, where it winked at her seductively. “It didn’t cost me a dime. This ring has been in my family for generations. My grandmother left it to me, and I know she’d be glad to have you wearing it instead of sitting around collecting dust in a safe-deposit box.”

  Merry held her hand up, dazzled by the prism of light the ring threw off in every direction. “You make a good point. Something this pretty deserves a happy life.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Ben’s slow smile transformed his lean, saturnine face, and Merry felt a warning tingle of feminine awareness. Before that tingle could blossom into a full-blown heat, however, the sharp ringing of the office phone shattered the moment.

  Grateful for the distraction and the chance to get her head together, Merry grabbed for the phone. “Dr. Fairfax’s office! How can I help you?”

  Ben lifted his eyebrows. He looked impressed, and Merry preened a little. She did have an excellent telephone manner, if she did say so herself. Okay, so maybe she’d cultivated it during that brief period when she’d worked as a phone sex operator, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “Merry, honey, is that you?”

  Her mother’s tinny voice in her ear jolted Merry out of her contemplation of the many and varied jobs she’d held over the years. “Mom! Hi. What’s up, is something wrong with one of your horses?”

  There was a beat of silence where Merry could practically hear Jo deciding whether or not to ask what Merry was doing at Ben’s office, answering his phone. In the end, Jo went with ignoring it. “Not one of ours, but Ben does need to get out here as quickly as possible. Is he available?”

  “For an emergency, for you? I’m sure he is, but let me check.” Covering the mouthpiece, Merry glanced at Ben, who nodded and went into the exam room to grab his bag.

  “He’s on his way,” Merry told her mother.

  “Could you come, too?�
� Jo sounded stressed, in a rush. “I can’t take the time to explain right now but there’s a lot going on here, and I could really use another pair of hands.”

  “Of course. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” Merry hung up, worry already eating at her. Jo said it wasn’t one of the Windy Corner horses that needed help—so maybe she’d gotten word of trouble with one of the wild-horse bands that roamed Sanctuary Island?

  “She wouldn’t tell me what was up,” she said as Ben reappeared, bag in hand and brows lowered back to their normal Serious Business position.

  “Whatever it is, I’ll handle it.” Ben scowled over his shoulder when Merry followed him out the door.

  “Don’t even start,” she cautioned him. “If there’s trouble at Windy Corner, I’m coming with you.”

  “I can see how this is going to be,” Ben grumbled as he tossed his medical kit in his truck and climbed in. “You work for me now. That means you’re supposed to do what I say.”

  “I prefer to think of it as working with you,” Merry said loftily, and hopped into the passenger seat. She’d get her car later. “Marriage is a partnership, I hear. And that reminds me, we haven’t talked about our wedding vows yet. I don’t mind going with the traditional vows—I can tell you’re a bit of a traditionalist—but I’m telling you now, we’ll be rewriting that line about me obeying you.”

  “Sure. We wouldn’t want to start our married life with an immediate, obvious lie.” The truck engine turned over with a cranky cough.

  Merry beamed. “I’m so glad you see it my way! Now step on it, Doc.”

  Ben backed up with the smooth ease of a man more used to driving a truck with a horse trailer attached than without, and revved up the hill to the main road with a roar.

  “Don’t get any big ideas.” He slanted her a warning glance. “I’m not making vows about obeying you, either. I’m going fast because I want to and my job requires it, not because you told me to.”

  Rolling her eyes, Merry buckled herself in for a bumpy ride. “Enough wedding talk. We can negotiate who gets to be on top later. Just get us to the barn, Doc. Mom sounded bad—like she’d seen a ghost. I’ve never heard her like that.”

  “You’re worried. Don’t be. Whatever it is, we’ll get through it together.” Ben didn’t take his eyes off the road, all his focused intensity on pushing his old truck as fast as it could safely go.

  But his words pierced Merry’s soul as surely as if he’d taken her in his arms and whispered them into her ear.

  Together.

  She had a fiancé. A partner in life. From now on, no matter what happened, she wouldn’t face it alone.

  *

  Taylor squinted through the windshield of her lovingly restored and maintained VW Bug. What the heck was happening out at the barn?

  Parked out front and almost blocking the wide double doors of the big green-painted barn was a mammoth horse trailer, the kind that could hold up to a dozen horses at a time. No one on Sanctuary owned a trailer like that.

  She’d already planned to head over to Windy Corner as soon as school let out—she’d predicted, totally accurately, that after the first full day of classes she’d need the comfort and familiarity of Jo, the horses, and her barn chores.

  Taylor had spent the entire stupid day distracted by trying to track down Matthew Little to apologize. But for a tall, broad-shouldered guy, he was frustratingly adept at disappearing.

  Tomorrow, she promised herself as she pulled around to the back of the barn to park in her usual out-of-the-way spot. For now, it was time to find out what was going on to make Jo Ellen leave a tense, terse message on Taylor’s phone, asking her to get over to the barn asap.

  She dug her dusty paddock boots out of the trunk and swapped them for the black Converse All-Star sneakers she’d worn to school. Chucks were wonderful in many ways, but their white rubber-covered toes and soft canvas uppers weren’t the best protection against getting stomped on by big horse hooves.

  Hefting the newly oiled English saddle out of her backseat, Taylor balanced it on her shoulder and started the hike up the hill to the barn. Before she got more than three steps, however, a tall, familiar figure appeared in the doorway.

  Her mouth dropped open. “What are you doing here?”

  Matthew Little stepped out of the darkness of the barn and into the clear afternoon sunlight.

  Something flashed in his eyes—probably dislike—and had they always been that color? Almost eerily golden-green against his tanned skin and dark hair, his stare seemed to burn a hole through Taylor’s chest.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not here to bother you.” He sneered.

  “You’re not. I mean, you wouldn’t,” Taylor faltered, then cut herself off.

  Get it together, McNamara!

  The saddle on her shoulder slipped, and she jerked it higher, the weight of it pressing her down into the earth. Or maybe that was Matthew’s gaze. “I’m glad you’re here,” she told him firmly. “I tried to talk to you at school today. But every time I saw you, it was like you were running away from me, ducking into the boys’ room or turning a corner. Or surrounded by a bunch of girls.”

  She laughed a little, to prove how much she didn’t care, but Matthew didn’t laugh. He crossed his arms over his newly broad chest, making the muscles stand out distractingly under his tight T-shirt. “So?”

  “So … nothing.” Taylor gritted her teeth in annoyance as the damn saddle wobbled again. “What do I care if Dakota Coles and her posse of Goody Two-shoes cheerleaders want to drool all over … I don’t care, okay?”

  And she didn’t care. She absolutely didn’t have to fight the urge to stomp up to that giggling bunch of haters and snatch Dakota Coles bald-headed for having the utter hypocrisy to drape herself across the shoulders of a guy she’d made merciless fun of for years. Or to smack some sense into Matthew, who really ought to have better taste and sense than to be taken in by dum-dum Dakota’s perfect platinum-blond curls and bleached-white smile.

  “Okay.” Matthew shrugged and turned, like he was about to walk away.

  “It was annoying,” Taylor blurted, and he stopped, head cocked. He was still listening. Taylor swallowed hard, her grip going sweaty and slippery on the leather of the saddle. “It was annoying because I needed to talk to you and get this stupid apology over with, so I can forget about it and move on with my life.”

  “Apology, huh?” Matthew did an about-face and sauntered down the hill toward her, his face unreadable. But she thought she detected a slight softening around his jaw, as if he’d unclenched his teeth.

  That gave her the guts to ignore her jumpy nerves and lift her chin. “I am sorry,” Taylor said. “I was surprised—but I shouldn’t have called you that name. It was awful, a really crappy thing to do. I suck totally.”

  “Give me that.” He reached for the saddle. “And don’t go committing ritual suicide about it, or anything. You’re hardly the first person to call me names.”

  Taylor surrendered her heavy burden reluctantly. “But I don’t want to be that girl. Ever.” Shoving at the loose, flapping cuffs of her black flannel shirt, she frowned down at the frayed hem of her too-long jeans. “I know what it’s like to have people whispering and gossiping, acting like they know something about you when really, they don’t know you at all.”

  She felt the glance he darted at her like the brush of fingers against her cheek. “I guess you do,” he said quietly.

  “So, Matthew,” Taylor said, stressing his full name and curling her lips in a real smile for the first time all day. “Did you come out to the barn just to make me grovel?”

  “Just Matt is fine. And no—I’m here to help my mom’s cousin. He’s visiting from the mainland, and he brought some horses from his farm to—”

  From inside the barn came the shrieking whinny of an enraged animal, followed by the sharp bang of iron-shod hooves on the solid oak of a stall door.

  “Is one of them a demon from hell?” Taylor asked, eyebrows shooting
up.

  Matt grimaced. “Sort of. It took Sam, my mom, me, and my new stepdad to get Java into the trailer, and I came along to help unload him.”

  “New stepdad?” Even in the midst of her need to see the demon horse and find out why it was here in Jo’s barn, Taylor noticed that little nugget of info. Something bigger than a late growth spurt had happened to Matt over the summer, that much was obvious.

  There was an unfamiliar confidence in his step, in the way he held himself, to complement the new strength in his shoulders as he easily balanced the unwieldy weight of her saddle. Maybe this stepdad guy had something to do with it.

  “Yeah, my mom remarried.” Matt smiled a little, and Taylor had to blink to clear her head. “An awesome guy from New York. He’s got a motorcycle.”

  “So you’re not mad about it?” Taylor couldn’t help the question. It seemed like everyone in the universe had the same opinion about steps, from fairy tales to movies and books, as if every kid should be upset when a parent fell in love and added someone new to the family mix.

  But Taylor had adored Jo Hollister for years. She wanted nothing more than for her dad to make it official with Jo. And permanent.

  “No way! He’s great, and he makes her happy. No-brainer, at least to me. I was the one who told him to stick around and fight for her, actually. If I hadn’t stepped in, he probably would’ve headed back to New York and now they’d both be miserable.”

  “Grown-ups!” Taylor rolled her eyes. “Beats me why they’re automatically supposed to be in charge of our lives, when they can barely figure out their own.”

  “True.” Matt laughed, a deep sound that sent a tingle of excitement pulsing through Taylor’s stomach. “They’re kind of hopeless, sometimes. It’s like they forget what it’s like to be young and take risks.”

  She liked Matt. A lot. More than she’d liked anyone since … well. Since Caleb Rigby’s dad shipped him off to military school to get him away from Taylor’s “bad influence.”

  If she were smart, she probably wouldn’t do anything to make herself a bad influence on Matt Little—but with Dad coming down so hard on her about everything lately, what choice did she have but to embrace her inner bad girl?