Shoreline Drive (Sanctuary Island)

by Everett, Lily

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  There was nothing like the relaxation of well-used muscles, Ben reflected with bone-deep satisfaction as he pulled himself back up into the truck after closing the last driveway gate behind them.

  Unless, maybe, it was the relaxation that would come with finally telling Merry he loved her. The words were always on the tip of his tongue, a tickle in the back of his throat, but something was holding him back.

  Mostly likely, the sure and certain knowledge that it was too soon.

  Merry smiled at him as he settled back behind the wheel, her curvy form curled in the middle of the bench seat so she could lean her temple against his shoulder while he drove slowly through the stand of trees that screened his property from the road. The trusting tilt of her head squeezed Ben’s heart. He dropped a quick kiss on her dark hair and shifted the truck into gear.

  Oh sure, Merry liked him fine. Enjoyed the way their bodies fit together. Cared about him, even, and was beginning to invest in the idea of a shared future together.

  But love? Ben was under no delusions about that. It would take longer than the six months or so that they’d known each other to turn Merry’s initial dislike into the strong, true, abiding love Ben hoped for.

  Hope. The last time he’d hoped for something, wished and prayed for it, been willing to do anything for it, he was hoping for a cure for Justine. And that had been a doomed wish right from the start, because there was no cure for a chromosomal abnormality.

  Doomed or not, Ben had been unable to stop himself from hoping.

  This time, however … Ben’s hope didn’t seem entirely pointless and self-punishing. There were signs, new indications every day, that Merry’s feelings were growing, deepening.

  And even though part of him wished he could speed that process up, like a time-lapse video of a rose budding into bloom, he knew if he waited and worked at it, eventually that flower was all his. He just needed time.

  The truck crested the last rise before the house came into view, and Ben frowned down at the sight that greeted them. Automatically slowing to accommodate the flock of excited animals that rushed to greet the familiar truck, he stared at the sleek black Town Car parked in the circular drive in front of the house.

  “Uh oh.” Merry sat up straight, tugging nervously at the chest strap of her seat belt as if it were trying to strangle her. “They’re back.”

  The Town Car’s doors opened, and his father got out of the driver’s side. No chauffeur this time, apparently. Ever the gentleman, he came around to open Mom’s door for her. But Ben’s glare narrowed on the door behind the driver’s side, and the strange man who unfolded himself from the back seat to crack his neck and stretch his shoulders.

  “And they brought a friend,” Ben muttered, a bad feeling percolating in his midsection.

  The bad feeling morphed into full-on dread when he glanced at Merry and found her sheet-white and shaking, her chest hitching with quick, shallow breaths.

  “What’s wrong?” Voice sharp with alarm, Ben threw the truck into park and focused on Merry.

  “What. What is he doing here? Ben…”

  There was a complex welter of emotion throbbing through her tone, and she hadn’t taken her eyes off the stranger.

  The guy wore a battered leather bomber jacket open over a white undershirt, and jeans tight enough to endanger his circulation. Ben was reminded in a flash of the rocker-chick style Merry had sported when she first hit town. Even thirty-five weeks pregnant, she’d favored shiny, pleather leggings and band Tshirts stretched over her rounded belly.

  Rocker Boy was about Merry’s age, too, Ben noticed, and he had the swoopy, spiky blond hair and self-consciously gym-toned body of a wannabe model or actor. Ben pretty much despised him on sight.

  But it was nothing compared to the fiery hatred that consumed him when Merry closed her eyes and said, “That’s Ivan Bushnell. Alex’s father.”

  *

  Merry moved through a soupy fog of numbness, only the dull roaring in her ears telling her she was still conscious.

  The jarring collision of her ugly old life with her shiny, oh-so-fragile new one was enough to send anyone spinning, but Ivan’s sudden appearance also brought back a flood of memories she’d done her level best to squash down into the deepest recesses of her brain.

  Ivan’s face, pale and freaked out, nearly in tears as he shouted accusations and questions. How did this happen? You’re supposed to be on the pill. Is it even mine?

  That hadn’t been the worst of it.

  The truck jounced over a rut at the bottom of the drive, jolting Merry from her ugly memories. “This is crazy. I can’t believe he’s here.”

  “I can. I should’ve expected something like this.” Ben glared grimly out the front windshield, his profile all sharp lines and angles. “My father would never simply retreat and accept defeat. He knew he couldn’t do anything about the marriage itself, so he struck at the weakest point in our arrangement.”

  “The adoption,” Merry realized, heart turning to lead.

  “It’s not finalized, and won’t be for eleven months and ten days.”

  Merry blinked. But there was no time to say anything more, no time to formulate a plan or a defense or even to work out how she felt about it all, because they pulled up beside the Town Car and Ben slammed out of the truck. He stalked around the front of the car to confront his father.

  Scrambling to undo her seat belt and follow him, Merry kept her eyes on Ben. She was half afraid he’d haul off and slug his father in the mouth—that was how pissed Ben looked. Even his mother took a swift, stumbling step back from the force of his anger.

  “What are you trying to do here, remind me that I’m not Alex’s biological father?” Ben’s voice was low and icy, somehow all the more frightening because he wasn’t yelling or snarling. “Believe me, I’m well aware of that.”

  “Don’t blame me for the fact that you failed to spot the obvious flaw in your plan to acquire a family to replace the one you lost,” his father replied, unruffled.

  A pang burst through Merry’s soul at that—it struck at the core of one of her deepest fears about Ben, that she and Alex were no more than a replacement family, a place holder in a heart still consumed with love for his first wife and dead daughter. But she shook it off. Her insecurities could wait.

  Merry hurried to Ben’s side and slipped a tentative hand around his strong, hair-roughened wrist. The sturdy bones flexed under her fingers as he tightened his fist, then abruptly relaxed. Ben glanced down at her, and for a heartbeat, she couldn’t read the look in his stormy eyes. Then he said, “Merry, you have a visitor.”

  Unwillingly, she turned to stare into the face of a man she thought she’d never see again. “Ivan,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  Ivan looked the same as he had when they dated. “Dated” wasn’t really the right word, though, was it? Unless going to punk clubs every night and moving in together a week after meeting counted as dating. It had been a whirlwind relationship based almost entirely on sex and a similar taste in music, but Merry had truly thought she was in love with Ivan, at first.

  At least, she’d wanted to be in love with him.

  It struck her that her relationship with Ben was almost the exact opposite—they’d known each other for months before moving in together, they’d gotten married before sleeping together. And she’d never wanted to be in love with him.

  Maybe that was why everything with Ben felt so different.

  Ivan blinked his big brown eyes at her and nervously flipped the soft fall of blond hair off his forehead. “That’s not real nice, Mare bear. I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

  Against her will, part of Merry yearned toward those words. The belief that when she left town, Ivan hadn’t even noticed except to be relieved—that had stung deeply. And now here he was, all handsome boyband features and slim, muscled body, giving her his best appealing gaze.

  She’d seen him turn that
same expression on female bartenders to get a free drink, on bouncers to skip to the head of a line, on club managers to get backstage access. And now he was using it on her.

  Merry narrowed her eyes. “Seriously, Ivan. What do you want?”

  His gaze flickered, sliding sideways for a moment, as if this wasn’t going down the way he’d expected.

  Oh, Merry could easily picture what Ivan had expected. He thought he’d find her the same sobbing mess she was when he left her in their dingy disaster of an apartment, never to return.

  Straightening her shoulders, Merry tried to imagine what Ivan saw when he looked at her now.

  She’d mostly shed the baby weight, although there was a lingering softness to her hips and a fullness to her breasts that she kind of liked. Her hair was bouncier than ever, as if it enjoyed being its natural dark sable color.

  Instead of her D.C. uniform of tight pants and Tshirts, she was wearing dark jeans liberally streaked with red clay dust and brown saddle-leather stains, and a thick gray and white plaid flannel button-down over a black thermal.

  And when Ivan’s glance dropped to her hand, Merry remembered the biggest change … her wedding rings.

  To her surprise, a look of genuine sadness tightened Ivan’s mouth for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was quiet with real regret. “I’m here to see you—I hated how we left things. And…”

  Merry heard the click of him swallowing.

  “And he wants to see his son,” Tripp Fairfax finished firmly. “Which he has every right to do.”

  “Stay out of this,” Ben growled. “You’ve done enough already, bringing him here.”

  Ivan flushed, his mouth going sulky at the corners. “Screw off, man. The old guy’s right. I do want to see the kid. And I’m his dad, so, like, I do have rights.”

  “Where have you been for the last year, then?” Ben demanded, his lanky frame rigid as steel. “When Merry needed you, when Alex was born…”

  Flinching back from the lash of Ben’s scorn, Ivan burst out, “Hey, she left me! Skipped town without a word, left me holding the lease … I had to leave my apartment, sell some of my stuff.”

  “How awful for you.” Ben’s flat voice contained no sympathy whatsoever, and Ivan bristled. He never could stand it when reality intruded on his version of events.

  “Now just a minute,” Merry interrupted. Anger flooded her, replacing the shock and disbelief of the last surreal ten minutes with a cleansing tide of strength. “We weren’t together long, but it was long enough for me to know you have a habit of rewriting history. And as I recall, you were the one who slammed out of the apartment and didn’t come back. I waited for two days, Ivan. Crying my stupid eyes out and hoping you’d change your mind. But eventually I had to wake up and realize that you meant it when you said you never wanted to see me again.”

  The memory still had the power to hurt her, even after more than a year and a lot of growing up. She paused to keep her voice from wobbling, and was grateful for Ben’s warm, supportive hand on her shoulder.

  Into the brief silence, Ben’s mother, Pamela, cleared her throat delicately. “Ben, darling. I think we ought to let these two talk in private, don’t you?”

  “I’m not leaving my wife alone with this loser.” Ben spat the words as if he hated the taste of them.

  “Don’t be paranoid.” Tripp rolled his eyes. “This woman is the mother of his child, I’m sure she’s perfectly safe with him. And they have lots to discuss, none of which concerns us. It’s really a family matter, wouldn’t you say?”

  Merry’s heart clenched at the expression on Ben’s drawn face. Tripp had scored a direct hit with that one. She grabbed for his hand as it slipped off her shoulder, but he stepped away from her.

  “Enough.” Pamela’s demure, ladylike voice could be sharp as a whip when she wanted it to be. “Regardless of anyone’s feelings on the matter, the fact remains that Mr. Bushnell and Merry do have issues of a private, personal nature to discuss. Ben, I’m certain that Merry would prefer not to do so in front of your father and me. The only polite thing to do is to leave them to it—so please show us into your home and offer us a beverage. I raised you better than this.”

  “The nanny raised me,” Ben muttered, but Pamela waved that away.

  “Semantics,” she said. “You know I’m right.”

  Much as Merry hated to admit it, she couldn’t help but agree that the conversation she needed to have with Ivan was definitely not one she wanted to undertake with Tripp and Pamela Fairfax listening in. But she couldn’t bear the slightly lost look at the back of Ben’s eyes.

  “Stay,” Merry said, pasting on a smile. She reached for Ben’s hand and twined their fingers together determinedly. “I mean it, it’s fine. There’s nothing I could say to Ivan that you all can’t hear.”

  Ben returned the smile, but it was like a copy of a copy—faded and unconvincing. “No, she’s right. My mother is always right about the polite thing to do.”

  Tugging to draw him a little bit away from the group, Merry muttered, “I don’t care about politeness, I care about you. It is a family matter, and you’re my family.”

  Heat flared between them, and Ben’s smile deepened enough to pop the dimple in his cheek. He lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to the backs of Merry’s knuckles. “That means more to me than you know. But I’m fine. Let me get my parents out of the way so you can find out what Ivan is really after.”

  “It’s a plan.” Merry felt better, knowing they were still in this together.

  Ben nodded. “Call me if you need me. I’ll be right inside.”

  Glancing over her shoulder to where Ivan stood, slightly apart from the Fairfaxes and shifting his weight from foot to foot like an anxious kindergartener, Merry said, “I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay. Who knows? Maybe this is a good thing. A chance to clear the air, so we can all move forward.”

  “Yes, clearing the air.” Darkness slid over Ben’s shuttered face as he followed her gaze. “I’m sure that’s exactly what my father had in mind when he tracked down Alex’s birth father and brought him to Sanctuary Island.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  With the tips of two fingers, Ben twitched the living room curtains aside and peered through the glass.

  “Come away from that window,” his mother said. “You look ridiculous, peeping at them like that.”

  “I’m checking on my wife. They’ve been out there a long time.”

  Ben clenched his jaw, hideously aware of how defensive he sounded, but for once neither of his parents called him on it. They were probably exchanging significant glances behind his back, communicating in the silent shorthand they’d developed over years of attending crowded benefits and society dinners together. He’d learned to ignore that a long time ago, and it was even easier now, with all of his attention lasered in on the other conversation he couldn’t hear or be a part of.

  This was one of those times when Ben wished he’d made more of a study of body language. But that was the sort of soft, fuzzy science he tended to avoid, so he refused to make too much of the fact that Merry had led her ex up onto the porch and sat beside him in the swing. They were close enough that their shoulders brushed occasionally when Merry kicked out a heel and pushed the swing into gentle motion.

  The glass was cold, soothing, against Ben’s forehead. He braced one arm above his head and watched as Ivan said something apparently funny. Merry laughed, tucking a wing of hair behind her ear, and even from a distance, Ben could tell her blue eyes were bright with tentative happiness.

  “It sounds as if things are going well out there,” Tripp observed neutrally.

  Ben curled his lip at his own reflection and put his back to the window. “Depends what you’re hoping for as an outcome.”

  Tripp spread his arms along the back of the couch, like a king lounging on his throne. “I’m hoping to reunite a father with the child who was ripped away from him by his emotional, impulsive lover.”

  Be
n controlled his reaction to the word “lover.” It had been a while since he’d been forced to call on his early training in the art of hiding emotion, but it turned out to be more muscle memory than anything else.

  The trick was distance. If you pushed the emotion away, outside yourself, then your reaction to it wouldn’t show on your face. “I don’t concede your premise that Merry was the one at fault. If Ivan Bushnell wanted to be a father, he had ample opportunity to take his place by Merry’s side. If you haven’t noticed, we live in the digital age and getting in touch with her would’ve been as simple as sending her a Facebook message.”

  “No one is assigning blame,” Pamela insisted, with a quelling glance at her husband. “I’m sure it was a very difficult time for both of them. And Mr. Bushnell admits he made mistakes. But he is so very young, Benjamin. Well. They both are.”

  “She’s twenty-three, Mother. Hardly a teenager.”

  Pamela raised her ruthlessly plucked brows. “She’s closer to her teens than she is to her thirties.”

  Ben swallowed. He’d never thought much about the age difference between himself and Merry. But seeing Merry and Ivan together, Ben was forced to concede that they sort of … matched. For lack of a better term.

  He knew Merry had lived a life with its share of difficulties and problems—but somehow, there was still something pure and unsullied about her. Innocent. And as much as Ivan was no innocent, there was a youth and softness to him that Ben knew he himself had shed years ago. If he’d ever had it to begin with.

  “Merry is old enough to know her own mind, and to take responsibility for her actions,” Ben said hoarsely. “She decided to raise that baby on her own, without any help from its father.”

  “And that was very brave.” Pamela widened her eyes. “But now that her baby’s father wants to be a part of their lives, she won’t have to be on her own any longer.”

  “Merry is not on her own. She hasn’t been for a long time.” But even as Ben said it, a shaft of doubt slid between his ribs. “She has her mother and sister, and all our friends on the island. She has me.”