“It’s not only that. My parents—they’re very busy people. Both doctors, both active on the boards of hospitals and charities. They never had much time to spend at home.”
Pulling out the chair across from Ben’s, Merry perched on the edge and leaned her forearms on the table so she could give him her undivided attention. “And you felt … neglected? Unloved?”
“No, my parents love me.” Ben allowed himself a slightly ironic smile. “In their own unique ways.”
Merry frowned. “As a parent myself, the only way I can imagine loving my kid is with everything I am and everything I have. I love everything about him.”
“Ah, but that’s just it.” Ben shrugged. “It was never about me. My parents love me … but not the real me. It’s more like the idea of me they each carry in their heads, the way they wanted my life to turn out. Their love for me is a reflection of their own ambitions—my actual presence is not required in their lives. In fact, they’re happier when I’m not around. When I talk to them, well, the reality of me doesn’t mesh with their fantasy of Benjamin Alexander Fairfax the Third, noted surgeon and scion of the wealthy Fairfax family.”
Merry pressed her lips together, something sparking in her blue eyes. “Personally, I prefer Dr. Ben, small town veterinarian and noted crank.”
It was the perfect response. Ben felt a pressure he hadn’t even noticed release from around his rib cage, and he grinned across the table at his fiancée. “I’m not bitter about it. My parents are fine people, they gave me every opportunity in the world. I had it a lot better than most. I know that.”
“But it would be nice to feel as if your family knows you, through and through, and loves you anyway,” Merry finished.
A lump formed in Ben’s throat, but he managed to say, “Exactly. There’s nothing like having someone in your life who gets you.”
That made Merry smile, a slow, sweet stretch of those pink lips, until happiness seemed to shine from every pore of her perfect skin. Wordlessly, she held the cell phone out to Ben, and he took it.
“Okay, I’ll call them. But we’re not holding up the wedding long enough for them to clear their schedules and get here,” he warned, closing his fingers over the cold edges of his phone. “No more delays.”
They’d waited two weeks only because Jo shrieked at the notion she could organize a buffet dinner for the whole town in less than seven days. And because Merry had wanted to give her father a chance to see if he could get enough time off to make it to the wedding.
He hadn’t managed it. Or hadn’t tried, Ben wasn’t sure what Merry believed. All Ben knew was the resigned set to her sad face when she got off the phone with Neil Preston.
Neither of them was exactly batting a thousand when it came to their families.
“They don’t have to come to the wedding,” Merry said, “but I want to meet them. Alex should get to know his grandparents. All of them.”
Impulsively reaching for Merry’s hand, still extended across the table to him, Ben clasped her slender fingers and brought them to his mouth. He pressed a kiss to her palm and felt the way her fingers trembled. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She pulled her hand away, but it was a slow movement. Almost as if she were as reluctant to let go as he was. Encouraged, Ben watched Merry retreat to the guest room to put Alex down for the night, then went out to the front porch and made the call he’d been dreading.
Shivering in the frosty chill of a late September evening, his butt going stiff and numb at first contact with the cold porch swing seat. Yeah, that felt like the appropriate setting for dealing with his parents.
“Son.” Tripp Fairfax’s deep bass voice boomed into Ben’s ear, hearty and grating. “To what do we owe the honor? Your mother and I are on our way out to a function.”
If Ben closed his eyes, he could picture them perfectly. Standing on the antique Persian rug in their chandeliered foyer, his father was tall and lean in his black-tie duds, with a dignified receding hairline in tasteful steel gray. Pamela Fairfax would be at his side, pulling on a pair of cashmere-lined gloves and arching a quizzical, perfectly plucked brow at the delay.
As a kid, Ben had snuck out of bed nearly every night to peer through the banister railing of the wide staircase and catch a glimpse of his beautiful, poised parents sailing out the massive front door to one of their “functions.” Charity benefits, political fund-raisers, ballet galas, art gallery openings, hospital donor meet-and-greets … Tripp and Pamela Fairfax kept a busier social calendar than the heads of state of some of the smaller European nations.
“I won’t keep you long,” Ben said through a throat gone oddly tight. Damn, he shouldn’t have talked about his family with Merry, should’ve kept it shoved down and buried like he usually did instead of letting those emotions surface. “I know how busy you are.”
“Yes, well, we have obligations, Benjamin,” Tripp said sharply, as if he’d heard something critical in Ben’s tone. “Our position in society—”
Duty, honor, appearances … and, of course, the all-important sanctity of the Fairfax family name.
Already tired of this conversation, Ben cut through the bull. “I’m calling to let you know I’ve decided to get remarried.”
There was a moment of silence broken by a static thump or two, and when the breathless voice came back on the line, it was Ben’s mother. “Really? Oh, darling! That’s wonderful! Tell me everything. How did you meet?”
Ben stiffened against the eagerness of his mother’s tone and the onslaught of questions she was sure to ask. The edges of the phone dug into his palm. “She came to the island to stay with her mother, who owns the stables here.”
“The horsey set,” Pamela Fairfax said, a touch of disdain twisting the words into a sigh. “So athletic and dull, always inviting one to fox hunts and keeping packs of dogs. Ugh. Well, I suppose it could be worse. What’s her name?”
“Meredith Preston.”
“Preston,” Pamela mused. “Who are her father’s people? I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“You don’t know them,” Ben said, impatience making his words terse. “They’re not FFV.”
His mother’s voice went soft and hurt. “There’s no need to take a tone. You behave as if we’re terrible snobs, and we’re not! We don’t expect everyone in our circle to be on the First Families of Virginia register.”
Guilt scored over Ben’s nerves, even as he silently grimaced at the blatant lie. He’d personally heard his parents rip a new surgeon at his father’s hospital to shreds after learning of the man’s “low” antecedents. In high school, Ben had been expected to choose his dates from a strict list of white-gloved debutantes, all from the very best families, every single one of whom could trace her lineage back to the wealthiest early colonists to settle in Virginia.
But Pamela and Tripp Fairfax, snobs? Certainly not!
“Sorry,” Ben said tautly, “and I’m glad you don’t care about Merry being FFV, because she isn’t. She’s not a Daughter of the Confederacy, either. She wasn’t a debutante, and she doesn’t own a string of pearls. Her baby’s rattle isn’t even sterling silver.”
“A baby! This woman has a baby? You mean … she’s divorced?” Pamela hissed, sounding ridiculously scandalized for a woman on the phone with her own previously married son.
“I never said she’d been married,” Ben pointed out. “But yes, Merry has a four-month-old son. Whom I’m planning to adopt, legally and officially, once we’ve been married a year.”
His mother gave a thready, high-pitched noise that made Ben roll his eyes. “Come on, Mom. Try to be happy for me. I might not have chosen one of your pale, colorless society girls, but Merry makes me happy. And, bonus, she comes complete with the grandson you’ve always wanted.”
“That’s not what has your mother so upset, and you know it.” His father had clearly commandeered the phone when Pamela wilted in shock. “How could you do a thing like this? I realize you have never had the proper
care and concern for what’s expected of a Fairfax, but this is beyond anything I ever expected, even of you.”
Ben’s breath caught as if he’d been gut punched. It didn’t matter how old he got, how hard he worked to convince himself he didn’t care about his parents’ weighty expectations—it still hurt to come up short.
This time, though, he didn’t even understand what he’d done that was so unacceptable.
He’d assumed his parents would be surprised, perhaps even dismayed by Merry’s situation—they could be ridiculously feudal and eighteenth-century about things—but he hadn’t been prepared for this level of dismay.
Hardening his voice, he shot back, “I thought I was expected to carry on the family name, above all else. And when Alex becomes my son, he’ll be Alex Fairfax. Your legacy is secured. Even if you can’t be happy for me, I thought you’d at least be pleased about that.”
“Pleased.” The word strangled out of Tripp as if he were choking on it. “That our only son plans to bestow the Fairfax name—a name that has been synonymous with good breeding since before our ancestors left the court of King Charles the Second!—on a nameless bastard child, with God only knows what sort of people in his background.”
The phone creaked as Ben’s fingers clamped tight. “Do not. Call. Alex. A bastard.”
The absolute ice in his voice stopped his father’s angry tirade. Tripp sighed in Ben’s ear, low and weary. “Son. I know how much you enjoy throwing the opportunities your mother and I provided you back in our faces. We’ve been patient with this latest rebellion because, as much as you might not like to believe it, we do understand that what happened with Ashley and the baby … that was difficult. You needed time to hole up and lick your wounds. We understood.”
Ben swallowed, his finger hovering over the button that would end this call. But Tripp moved on hurriedly, his voice going even gruffer. “Now, do I wish you’d manned up and stuck it out with Ashley? Yes.”
“You made that perfectly clear when she filed for divorce.”
“And I won’t apologize for that! She was grieving, she wasn’t in her right mind, you should have fought harder—but that’s over and done with. She’s moved on, and for the last several years your mother and I have been waiting to hear that you were through sulking and were ready to come home and take your proper place in Richmond society.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Ben argued, struggling to keep the pleading note out of his voice. “I may not be moving back to Richmond and the life you wanted for me, but I am moving on. Here on Sanctuary Island, with the family I’ve chosen. There’s no other place I belong.”
“My God, you’re serious about this.” The disbelief in his father’s tone rasped along Ben’s raw nerves. “Please tell me there’s still time to change your mind. And that you’re making this woman sign a prenup!”
“Oh, she signed it,” Ben said with relish. “We wrangled around about the terms for days, but she did finally sign on the dotted line.”
“Thank the good Lord.” Tripp sighed. “So at least your money is safe from this golddigger and her bas—child.”
His father’s near slip of the tongue fully justified Ben’s bitter satisfaction at what he got to say next. “Oh, the money is safe, all right. Tied up nice and tight in a trust fund for Alex, to be administered by his mother and myself, with the help of the local bank manager, until he comes of age. And by the way, the wedding is in a week. If you can’t smile and make nice, you’re not invited.”
Ben didn’t wait to find out if his father would recover enough command of his tongue to be able to do more than gurgle “A week!” Instead, he mashed his thumb down on the end button and collapsed forward.
Staring down between his knees at the worn wood of his farmhouse’s front porch, Ben rested his head in his hands and systematically got his breathing under control. Best to avoid a rage coma right before one’s wedding.
A tap on the windowpane to his right brought Ben’s head up. He stowed his phone in his pocket and ran his hands through his hair as he mustered up a smile for Merry’s concerned face through the glass.
She disappeared from view, and in the next instant, the front door opened to reveal Merry giving him worried eyebrows as she cuddled Alex against her shoulder.
Mother and child glowed in the warm golden light spilling out of the house, like some ridiculously corny portrait representing “homecoming” or “welcome.” Or “love.”
Ben stared at the two of them and felt his throat close around a lump of emotion too big to name.
“He wouldn’t go down,” Merry said. Nerves thrummed through her soft voice, and when she pressed a quick kiss to the baby’s downy cheek, Ben saw the tremor she tried to hide. “I think he wanted to wait up for you.”
The last week had also been a crash course in what it meant to live with an infant. Basically, a lot of crying, eating, voiding from both ends, and sleeping. Rinse and repeat daily. But there were peaceful moments, too.
Ben had learned to treasure the particular clutching fussiness Alex exhibited when night fell—the way the baby made fists and rubbed his eyes, tiny mouth furled like a rosebud. The way he arched his back and kicked his legs until Merry or Ben lifted him out of his playpen and brought him up to be soothed against a steady heartbeat.
“I’m glad,” Ben said, pushing to his feet as the swing creaked and swayed behind him.
Merry stepped out onto the porch and immediately shivered.
“It’s cold out here!” Ben waved at the open door. “Go back inside where it’s warm. I’ll be along in a minute to help with Alex, I promise.”
“Thanks.” But Merry hovered, still, halfway over the doorstep. “Did it … not go well? I thought you said your parents would be pleased.”
The fear in her voice brought all of Ben’s early acting skills to the forefront. He smiled widely at her. “No, it did! They’re thrilled, and of course they can’t wait to meet Alex.”
“Oh, good! I thought … you looked so upset. Ben, if this marriage isn’t what your parents want, if it won’t get them off your back like you thought, it’s not too late to change your mind.”
“What?” Ben sat up straight, alarm ringing through him like a bell. “No. I promise, they’re happy.”
“Okay. So why aren’t you happy?” She was close enough now for Ben to smell the milky, powdery baby scent that clung to her. He breathed in deep and let it fill him with borrowed peace.
“My parents confirmed it. They won’t be able to come to the wedding,” Ben told her, perfectly truthfully. They couldn’t come, because they hadn’t been invited. “It … hit me harder than I thought it would, I guess.”
“I know what you mean.” Merry’s sympathetic smile twisted in Ben’s gut, his conscience screaming at him about using her own paternal disappointment to distract her from asking about his. “There are some things you can’t prepare for, no matter how much you tell yourself you’re supposed to be a grown-up now.”
“No matter what happens,” Ben said, the words burning at the back of his throat with how deeply he meant them. “I’ll always be there for Alex.”
Merry swayed toward him, just slightly, like a reed in the breeze. Shifting on her shoulder, Alex made a fretful noise and twisted to reach a chubby, imperious arm out to Ben. Heart in his throat, Ben gave Alex his index finger to practice his fine motor skills on.
“I know that,” Merry said, with a certainty that rocked Ben down to his bones. “Why do you think I’m marrying you? I’ll tell you this much, it’s not for your recordkeeping or your accounting system.”
She grinned, and just like that, the September night didn’t feel quite so chilly.
I’m marrying you.
It was actually happening. Ben Fairfax was about to get more than he’d ever thought he could have, and nothing was going to happen to get in the way.
He smiled back and opened his arms to receive the squirming bundle of baby boy. With Alex happily grinding snot
into the collar of Ben’s shirt, Ben felt confident enough to put a friendly, nonpressuring arm around Merry’s shoulders.
She leaned into him as they went back into the bright, warm house together, and shut the door against the cold.
Chapter Fourteen
In the midst of one of the most beautiful, clear, sun-dappled autumns coastal Virginia had ever seen, the day of Ben and Merry’s wedding dawned gray and dismal. A chill fog lay over the island like a shroud, turning the winding roads and wild fields into a dangerous maze of blind curves and hidden sinkholes.
“Good,” Ben said, glancing out the window over the kitchen sink as he rinsed out his coffee mug. “Maybe everyone will stay home and we can get married in private.”
Merry shook her head, fighting a smile. She didn’t want to encourage Ben’s grumpiness, but it was hard when she was bubbling over with a hectic mixture of nerves, excitement, anticipation, and last-minute plans.
In fact, she was on the phone with her mother at that very moment, half tuning out the recitation of who was bringing the flowers and where they’d be placed, the potluck items she’d been promised by various townsfolk, and what Jo had still to bake before meeting Merry and Ben at the courthouse at eleven.
Covering the mouthpiece with her fingers, Merry watched as Ben sat down to continue his grand experiment of introducing Alex to solid foods. In this case, mashed sweet potatoes Ben had boiled the night before.
After the phone call to Ben’s parents that Merry had insisted on and then regretted when it seemed to make Ben so sad, they’d gone back in the house to put Alex to bed. Of course, once he’d gotten his way and had both Merry and Ben hovering over his crib, tucking him in, Alex went down without a fight.
Hesitant to bring up the whole parents-and-family talk again, but not quite ready for the evening to be over yet, Merry had followed Ben out of the guest room instead of turning in.
She was still glowing from the promise Ben had made, to be there for Alex. The words that were engraved on her innermost heart as her deepest wish, and he’d plucked them out of thin air and handed them to her.
Shoreline Drive (Sanctuary Island) Page 14