Shoreline Drive (Sanctuary Island)

by Everett, Lily

  “Oh, sorry. Was I unclear?” Sarcasm layered over Ben’s voice as thickly as the buttercream frosting on their monstrosity of a wedding cake, but he couldn’t stop it. “When I said you showed up at our wedding uninvited, I should’ve said you crashed our wedding reception. The wedding itself is over and done with, legal and official and nothing you can do about it. So you may as well head home.”

  Beside his father, Ben’s mother closed her eyes at the news, one perfectly manicured hand pressed delicately to the pale pink lapel of her ladies-who-lunch suit. “Oh, Benjamin.”

  Fine tremors ran through Merry’s entire body, and Ben ground his back teeth, wishing he could spare her this. You made me call them, he longed to say, like a child refusing to take responsibility. But none of this was Merry’s fault.

  Ben forced himself to calm down. If he could behave like a rational adult, maybe the example he set would convince his parents to follow suit. “Since you’re here … Mother, I’d like to introduce you to my wife. Meredith Preston Fairfax.”

  Merry flinched again, but this time, Ben thought it was more due to surprise. It was the first time he’d said her married name aloud, and he was surprised himself at how much he loved the sound of it. She recovered quickly enough to say, in a high, tense voice, “I’m pleased to meet you?”

  His mother pressed her lips together, looking sad and torn. But his father didn’t even bother to acknowledge Merry with so much as a frown—he stared straight at Ben and said, “You are determined to ruin this family.”

  Ben felt the shock that ran through Merry’s body before he strode down the gazebo steps to go toe-to-toe with his father. “That’s it,” Ben snarled. “You don’t get to come here and pass judgment and be disapproving. I’ve lived just fine without your approval for a long time. I didn’t need it when I left Richmond and moved here, or when I started the animal hospital, and I certainly don’t need it now that I’ve found Merry and Alex.”

  “Benjamin!” Pamela sucked in a shocked breath. “How can you talk like this? How can you do this to our family?”

  It was harder than he expected to ignore the genuine hurt in his mother’s voice, but Ben couldn’t afford to back down. “If you think I’m ruining your family, fine. Disown me. I’ve got a new family now.”

  Something flashed in his father’s steely gray eyes, pain mixed with a grudging respect. Tripp shook his head. “Don’t be so quick to cast me off, son. I’ve given you everything you’ve ever had, including the time and space to form this ill-advised attachment—and I can take it all away, just as easily.”

  “All you’ve ever given me is the knowledge that no matter what I do, I can’t live up to the idealized image of me that exists in your head.” Ben lifted his chin. “Face facts, Dad. There are some things in life you can’t control. I’m one of them.”

  “I’ve never wanted to control you.” Tripp pinched the bridge of his aquiline nose. “Such dramatics. I merely want you to live up to your full potential. Is that such a crime?”

  Sincerity rang through his father’s words, and Ben steeled himself against it. He knew his dad truly did want the best for him. But Ben’s idea of what was best differed dramatically from Tripp’s.

  Still, in the interests of providing positive reinforcement, Ben backed down from his battle-ready stance. “I know, Dad. And I appreciate the opportunities you gave me when I was younger. But at some point, you have to be willing to acknowledge that I’m not a child anymore. I get to choose the life I want to live.”

  Tripp’s gray eyes hardened to stone. “Not when you prove yourself unable to make rational choices.”

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” Merry said, causing the entire Fairfax family to stare at her in surprise. Her shoulders drew up nervously, but she continued on, undaunted. “I’m sorry you’re not happy about us getting married. But I think you should know that we have been totally rational about this decision. This marriage is not something we’ve entered into lightly or, or blinded by emotion. Honestly, it’s more about practicality than anything else.”

  For the first time, Tripp Fairfax’s gaze settled on Merry, drifting down to rest for a moment on the quilt-swaddled baby squirming in her arms. Ben felt everything inside himself gear up to jump down his father’s throat the moment he uttered a single word to make Merry feel like crap.

  Showing the self-control and diplomacy that stood him in good stead as the chairman of the board of the largest, most profitable hospital in Virginia, Tripp said, “Ms. Preston, I don’t doubt your motives. From your perspective, of course this marriage makes sense.”

  It was fairly mild, for Tripp Fairfax, but Merry stiffened all over, a flush burning across her cheeks. “Think whatever you want; call me a gold digger if it makes you happy, but while you’re at it, you might consider the fact that without this marriage, your son won’t get the one thing he wants—and that he says you want, as well. A son to carry on the family name.”

  Tripp tilted his head to one side, scrutinizing Merry with curiosity. “How do you figure?”

  Merry marched down the gazebo steps like an avenging angle, all flowing hair and righteous wrath. Ben watched her, transfixed. When she was close enough, she hissed, “How can you be so insensitive? I’m talking about the fact that Ben can’t have biological children of his own!”

  Ben winced as his father’s eyes filled with comprehension.

  Uh-oh.

  “You think Ben is incapable of fathering a child?” Tripp mused, all but stroking his beard as he glanced between Ben and Merry. “How interesting.”

  “We’re done here,” Ben said, sidestepping quickly to reach his wife and put his arms around her trembling shoulders. “Mom, Dad, it’s been lovely as always, but you missed your window to mess up the wedding, so it’s time for you to go. Now.”

  “It’s a public park,” Tripp pointed out. “You can’t force us to leave.”

  “Oh yes we can.” Grady stepped up beside Ben, burly and intimidating. He was joined by Harrison McNamara and his teen daughter, Taylor, brandishing a punch ladle, along with huge, intimidating Sam Brennan, flanked surprisingly by Andie Shepard in her tan sheriff’s uniform.

  One by one, the townspeople of Sanctuary Island, Ben’s adopted home, came forward to stand with Ben and Merry—Miss Emily crossing her thin arms over her withered chest threateningly, old Mr. Leeds pulling a growling Percy by the leash.

  They ranged themselves around the newlyweds and faced down the leaders of Richmond society with raised chins, clear eyes, and no hesitation.

  “You’d better leave,” Ben told his mother, softening his voice with an effort. “You don’t belong here.”

  “Neither do you!” Pamela exclaimed, blotting at her damp eyes to keep her mascara from running.

  “Yes I do.” As the words left Ben’s mouth, he realized they were completely true.

  He belonged on Sanctuary Island. The people of this community accepted him for who he was, grumpy and antisocial and utterly dedicated to keeping their pets healthy. These people were ready to defend him, no questions asked.

  “This isn’t over,” Tripp warned him, straightening his striped tie with a snap of his wrist. “We’ve taken a room at a waterfront inn across the channel in Winter Harbor, and we’ll be staying until you come to your senses. Your mother and I aren’t giving up on you, even if you appear to have given up on yourself. Come along, Pamela. Let’s leave these people to their … hoedown.”

  He turned on his heel and stalked back to the car with Pamela tripping along at his side.

  Ben let out a long breath. At his back, he felt the tension ebb out of the assembled mob of townsfolk.

  “They’re gone.” The relief in Merry’s voice clutched at his heart. “I can’t believe it. Thank you, everyone!”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Ben echoed, slapping Grady on the back and showing a smile around the crowd, but it was hard to keep it up, even as everyone around them cheered.

  This felt like a victory, but it wasn’t.
Not really. He knew his father better than that.

  “They’re gone for now,” he said, tamping down on the dread in his heart while the rest of the party went back to partying. “But not for good.”

  Merry held herself carefully, as if a single wrong word might shatter something. “That’s fine. I needed them to get out of here and leave us alone for the night, at least, to give me the chance to ask you a question.”

  Ben’s heart dropped into his gut. “And I promised to answer your questions.”

  “You did. So here it is.” She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself, and narrowed her vivid blue eyes on Ben’s.

  “What did your dad mean when he asked if I thought you were incapable of fathering a child?”

  There it was. The crack in the wall behind which lurked every dark thing in Ben’s past, every memory he’d banished, every emotion he’d successfully repressed.

  Momentarily speechless, Ben stared down at the take-no-prisoners look on his new wife’s face, and did the only thing he could think of: he told the truth.

  “Technically, there’s nothing to prevent me from fathering a child. I let you think there was, because I wanted to avoid this exact conversation.”

  Merry went white, with either fury or hurt. Ben couldn’t tell, but he hated it either way. “God, Ben. Maybe your parents are right. This marriage was a mistake.”

  Ben reached for her hand. He had to stop her from leaving like this. “No! It wasn’t a mistake.”

  But Merry kept shaking her head—in fact, all of her was shaking. “What was I thinking, marrying a man I barely know?”

  “You know me,” Ben assured her through the ache in his throat.

  She looked away. “I thought I did. But it turns out I’m missing some pretty key pieces of the puzzle.”

  “Give me a chance to make it right,” Ben demanded, not relinquishing his grasp on her cold fingers. “I promised to answer all your questions and, this time, I swear I won’t leave anything out. No matter how much I hate talking about it.”

  Merry’s mouth was turned down in an unhappy curve, but she’d stopped trying to pull away from him. “Ben…”

  Sensing her weakening, he pushed forward. “One thing, though. This is a conversation we need to have at home.”

  “Why?” Her voice rose in suspicion. “So you can weasel out of it again?”

  “No.” Ben tried for a smile, but it felt all wrong on his face. “Because I don’t want to cry in front of the entire assembled population of Sanctuary Island. They wouldn’t be scared of me anymore, and I’d have to be extra mean to make up for it. As a thank-you for helping scare off my parents, let’s spare them that. What do you say?”

  Concern lit a hesitant glow in Merry’s eyes, and Ben could admit to himself that he was glad to see it. If she could still worry about him, there was hope. At least enough to make it worthwhile to dig through the worst memories of his entire life.

  “Fine.” Merry glanced away. “I’ll wait until we get home.”

  The simple fact that she still called the house at Isleaway Farm “home” beat back some of the darkness in Ben’s brain. He smiled, and Merry wrinkled her nose at him.

  “You get a reprieve, but all is not forgiven, and certainly not forgotten,” she scolded, switching Alex from one arm to the other, the way she did when she’d been carrying him for too long.

  “Understood,” Ben said, reaching tentatively with both arms. It was an undeniable relief when Merry handed over the baby without hesitating.

  She rolled her shoulders and pinned Ben with a challenging stare. “Really, you deserve to be punished. And I think I have just the punishment.”

  Ben braced himself. “What?”

  “You have to let Taylor take wedding photos of us feeding each other cake. And then you have to dance with me.”

  The vindictive satisfaction in her voice and the twinkle in her eyes, along with the warm weight of the boy in his arms, filled Ben with a rush of disbelief so overpowering, he nearly staggered under the onslaught.

  “Brutal,” he managed. “But I notice you’re punishing yourself, too—you’ll be choking down that cake right alongside me, and you’re the one whose toes are liable to get broken when I step on them on the dance floor.”

  “I figure I’m partially responsible for this situation,” Merry said as she led him over to the table that held the towering white cake. “You offered, before, to tell me about your first marriage, but I didn’t want to hear it. Stupid.”

  “Don’t call yourself stupid,” Ben growled without thinking.

  Merry smiled faintly. “Don’t worry, this time I won’t let anything stand in the way of hearing the whole story. If we stand any chance of making this marriage work, we have to be honest with each other. Even when it hurts.”

  Swallowing down a spurt of unease, Ben nodded. Merry pressed a quick kiss to Alex’s head, and Ben inhaled a swift, surreptitious breath of her fresh apple scent before she set off to find Taylor.

  Honest even when it hurts.

  Ben wasn’t sure he could promise that. There were some truths that were never meant to be spoken aloud, and some that Merry might never be ready to hear.

  For instance, the fact that Ben was fairly certain he was head over heels in love with his wife.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “In spite of everything,” Merry said, sighing as she kicked her sore bare feet up onto the polished wood coffee table, “we managed to have kind of an awesome day.”

  The party had lasted long into the evening. Merry and Ben had eventually handed Alex off to be cooed over by a revolving rotation of relatives and friends, while they made the rounds. She’d added “thanking every single person individually” to Ben’s punishment roster, which he’d taken with as good a grace as could be expected—i.e., a minimum of scowling and grumping, and only a few cutting asides when he was forced to deal with some of his more troublesome (or, in Ben’s words “idiotic”) clients.

  Merry had ruthlessly suppressed her laughter, and wondered exactly when the sharp side of Ben’s tongue had started to tickle her funny bone.

  Now they were home, Alex was sleeping the sleep of an infant who’d endured more squeezing, dandling, and cheek pinching in one afternoon than in the entire four months of his life, and Ben was making tea in the kitchen.

  “You have a gift,” Ben told her, handing off a steaming mug that wafted minty steam.

  “We said no gifts!” Merry groaned, struggling to sit upright in indignation. “I didn’t get you a wedding present.”

  Ben laughed and settled onto the other end of the couch. “That’s not what I mean. You have a gift for happiness. No matter what happens, you seem to come through it with a smile.”

  “Oh.” Merry made a face and blew a cooling breath over her fragrant tea. “My sister’s the one who went through therapy—and I say ‘went through therapy’ as if it were an ordeal, but I’m pretty sure if she ever gets married, her ex-therapist will be one of her bridesmaids—but even I know that ‘gift for happiness’ is another way of saying I tend to hide from the bad stuff in life.”

  “Is that such a bad thing? Personally, I find repression to be an effective coping mechanism.”

  Merry snorted. “That doesn’t surprise me after meeting your parents, the king and queen of the WASPs.”

  “It’s true, my family isn’t big on openness and communication. Or, you know, feelings.” Ben stared down into his mug as if lost in thought.

  There wouldn’t be a better opening. Merry took a cautious sip of her tea, even knowing it would burn her tongue, to buy time to pluck up her courage. This man she’d married was a mystery, an enigma, a Rubik’s Cube of contradictions. She wanted to get to the bottom of him, to plumb his depths and learn his secrets—and that meant bringing up things he clearly didn’t want to talk about.

  But after today, and the threatening way his father talked about taking this life away from them, Merry needed to know.

  “So … abo
ut that promise you made at the reception,” Merry began, cringing inside at her own tentativeness. Why was this so hard?

  Maybe because she was already in deeper with Ben, emotionally speaking, than she’d ever thought possible when she agreed to their so-called simple business arrangement.

  He blew out a breath and planted his feet in the deep-piled rug, curling his toes into the cream wool. Merry found her gaze drawn to those masculine feet. They were sort of stupidly sexy, poking out from the frayed hem of the jeans he’d changed into the minute they walked through the door.

  “Right,” Ben said, pulling her away from her embarrassing sudden-onset foot fetish. “Any question you want to ask. Go.”

  Merry, who’d been thinking about this off and on for hours, knew exactly where to start. “What were you going to tell me about your relationship with Ashley, when it came up before and I shut you down?”

  “Straight for the throat, no warm-up, huh?” Ben leaned over the mug cupped between his agile surgeon’s fingers, his elbows braced on his spread knees. Shooting her a glance from under the thick fall of wavy brown hair over his forehead, he said, “You sure you wouldn’t rather start small, work your way up?”

  More than anything else, Ben’s reaction told her she was tugging on exactly the right thread to start unraveling his past. “Start talking, Doc.”

  “I used to hate it when you called me that.” He smiled slightly, returning his gaze to the fascinating stretch of rug between his feet. “Now I kind of dig it.”

  “Ben…”

  “No, you’re right. No more messing around. So, Ashley. We met at a hospital fund-raiser during the first year of my residency. My father is on the board, and I realized almost immediately that he’d orchestrated the whole thing—but for once, I didn’t mind his interference, because Ashley was … perfect.”

  Perfect. Merry drew her legs up onto the sofa cushion under her and took a soothing sip of tea.

  “She was blond and cool, not like most of the giggling, ex-sorority-girl daughters of my parents’ society friends. Ashley is smart—she’s the head of development for a local nonprofit fund that subsidized working artists. My mother loved her because she came from a good family; my father wanted to attract Ashley’s father to donate money for a new hospital wing; but I didn’t care about any of that because I was in love.”