by Unknown
‘No more city stuff?’ he said, ignoring her.
‘Ben...’
‘Would you like to see my favourite place?’ he asked. ‘Somewhere I go to chill. When I have a business deal I need to clear my head from? Where I go to turn off?’
‘That sounds like a bar.’
‘It’s not a bar,’ he told her. ‘Have you heard of the Adirondacks?’
‘I... Yes,’ she said. ‘I mean...I guess I know it’s a park of some kind.’
‘A park,’ he said, and snorted. He glanced out the window. ‘Central Park’s a park. I’ll show you a park!’
‘Isn’t it...miles away?’
‘You won’t have to walk an inch, I promise. It’s an amazing spring day, one out of the box. Let’s take advantage of it. Okay, Mary Hammond, drink some juice and eat some toast while I do some phoning. Adirondacks, here we come.’
* * *
And two hours later, courtesy of a helicopter whose pilot greeted Ben like an old friend, Mary saw the Adirondacks.
First they flew over them.
‘How can there be such a place so close to New York?’ she breathed, looking down at what seemed endless mountains, rivers, lakes.
‘It’s our best-kept secret,’ Ben told her through the headphones. ‘It’s bigger than almost all the country’s national parks combined, enshrined in the constitution as a wilderness.’
At their landing place there were kayaks and a couple of burly men to help launch their craft. One kayak. One set of paddles.
‘Because you’re not paddling today,’ Ben told her. ‘This is your day of rest.’
‘I can kayak.’
‘It’s pretty much floating. Give it a rest, Mary. Let me take charge.’
By which time she was flabbergasted. This was so far out of her league she was speechless.
‘Just shut up and enjoy it,’ he told her, so she did. This was another world. Ben’s world. She wore one of Ben’s big, warm jackets that smelled of him. She sat in the front of the kayak while Ben paddled behind and there was nothing to do but soak it in.
Ben paddled with the ease of a man who’d done this all his life. That made her feel...like she didn’t know how to feel.
He took her along the Sacandaga River, into wilderness. There seemed to be no soul for miles, except for loons and ducks, and deer standing still and watchful on the river bank. When she saw a great bald eagle soaring in the thermals, even Ben seemed stunned.
‘The eagles disappeared from here by the early sixties, but there’s work to reintroduce them,’ he told her. ‘At last count we had twelve nesting pairs. It’s a privilege to see them.’
She heard his awe and knew that for Ben this was indeed special.
‘How often do you come here?’
‘Often. Whenever I need to be alone.
You’re almost always alone, she thought. Surrounded by people, you’re still alone.
But she said nothing. This was not her business.
‘I’m betting you help fund these wildlife projects,’ she guessed.
‘The company does fund wildlife projects,’ he admitted, but he sounded brusque and she wondered why. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to admit to being passionate about something.
But the more they paddled in this amazing place, the more the feeling of him as a loner intensified. What he’d told her of his family left her cold. Poor little rich boy.
He was a man in control. He was a financier, a commando, a billionaire.
Whatever, he seemed more alone than she was.
He paddled for miles, with strong, sweeping strokes that sped them along the calm surface of lakes and the streams that joined them. He must know where he was going. All she could do was trust him. All she could do was sit back and soak in the majestic mountains rising on either side of the banks, and the utter stillness, broken only by bird calls, the honking of geese and the weird calls of the stunningly marked loons.
The smell of the pine filled her senses. The sun was on her face and Ben was paddling with ease.
He did this often. Always alone? She guessed yes, and wondered if this was his only escape from the financial pressure he lived under.
Why did she keep coming back to his loneliness? Wasn’t she the single mum? She should be worried about herself but, instead, the more she knew of this man the more her heart twisted for the isolation she sensed inside him.
She thought suddenly she’d vowed never to depend on a man. What if a man could be persuaded to depend on her?
It was a crazy thought but it shifted something inside. Something was changing. The defences she’d built up over so many years seemed to be cracking and she wasn’t sure how to seal them again.
Ben was just...Ben. The man she’d held in her arms. A man she could hold in her heart?
It was a crazy thought, unthinkable, but against all reason the thought was there. What if...?
But the what-if stayed unspoken. Indeed, there seemed little need to speak at all. It was as if the wilderness itself was ordering them to be still.
Stop overthinking this, she told herself. Ben’s a loner and he always will be. He’s chosen his own course. Stop thinking and soak this in, because reality started tomorrow.
Alone for both of them.
* * *
This was make-believe. Time out.
Jake would approve, he thought. He was drifting through the most beautiful scenery in the world, with a beautiful woman...
Yep, it was playing make-believe, only it wasn’t. She was a restful woman, his Mary. He could tell already that she loved this place. When he came here he could bring her...
Yeah, well, that was fantasy as well. His? She was a loner like himself. She wouldn’t be his and he wouldn’t be hers.
But they drifted on and the farther they went the more his plans came together.
This could work. He just needed Mary to think about it dispassionately, without emotion. There were two types of responsibility, he thought. One was tangible, the responsibility for keeping someone secure and protected. He could do that.
The other responsibility was emotional. His mother had demanded her children make her happy. He’d never ask that of anyone, neither would he expect the demand himself. Emotion needed to be set aside.
The problem was that for some reason, right now, emotion was everywhere.
The sun was on their faces. There was a rug stowed with a picnic hamper in the stowage area of the kayak. They could pull into shore, find a bed of pine needles and...
And not.
Today he had to be dispassionate. Today he needed to map out a sensible future for both of them.
Including a baby?
For all of them.
* * *
They ate lunch on the banks of the river, and the magnificence of the surroundings took her breath away.
Not enough, however, for her not to notice the lunch the guys at the landing place had handed them as they’d launched the kayak. Everything was in elegant, boxed containers, carefully labelled. Tiny bread rolls. Curls of golden butter. Crayfish, broken into bite-sized pieces. Tiny tomatoes, slivers of lettuce, radish, carrot, celery and a mouthwatering mayonnaise. Quiche in a container that had kept it warm.
Éclairs filled with chocolate and creamy custard. Strawberries, watermelon, grapes.
Wine if she wanted, which she didn’t. Two types of soda. Beer for Ben.
It should have been cold. They’d been drifting on fast-moving water from the spring thaw, but today...today it was summer.
Today was a day she’d remember for the rest of her life.
She ate the last éclair she could possibly fit in, stretched back on cushions—cushions!—and gazed up through the massive branches of a pine to the sun glinting through.
‘This has been magic,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you so much for bringing me.’
‘I could bring you once a month,’ he said. ‘Every time I come.’
It was said matter-of-factly, like a neighbour offering to share a shopping run. Once a month, take it or leave it.
‘So you’d pop an airline ticket in the post for me once a month,’ she managed when she got her breath back. This was fantasy. Maybe it was time they got out of here.
‘I want you to stay.’ He hesitated and then he said it. ‘Mary, I want you to marry me.’
* * *
As a breathtaker it was right up there with the feeling she’d had when she’d looked at the blue line on her pregnancy-testing kit.
Maybe it was higher. She’d suspected she was pregnant. This had come from nowhere.
She’d been almost asleep, sated with the beauty of the morning, the food, the feeling of being with a man she felt instinctively would dive to her protection if a loon suddenly swooped to steal her éclair.
She wasn’t asleep now.
I want you to marry me.
She glanced sharply at Ben, expecting to see him just as dreamlike, making an idle joke that could be laughed off. Instead, she saw a man so tense there might be an army of loons lined up for attack.
‘Wh-what?’ She could barely get the word out. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve spent twenty-four hours thinking about it,’ he said. ‘It’s the only logical thing to do.’
She nodded, forcing herself to sound practical. Nurse humouring lunatic. ‘Logical. I can see that.’
‘Can you?’
‘Um...no.’
‘You won’t be permitted to stay here unless we’re married,’ he told her. ‘American immigration isn’t welcoming to single mothers with no visible means of support.’
‘Right.’ She should sit up, she thought, but that’d mean taking his proposal seriously.
It didn’t deserve it.
‘I wasn’t aware,’ she said at last, ‘that I wanted to live in America.’ She glanced around and felt bound to add a rider. ‘It’s very nice,’ she conceded. ‘But it’s not home.’
‘Where’s home?’
‘In Taikohe, of course,’ she said, astounded.
‘Are you happy there?
‘I have a job. I have neighbours. I have Heinz.’
‘I’ve enquired about Heinz. We can get him over almost straight away.’
‘To, what, live in your flash apartment?’ This was the craziest conversation she’d ever had. ‘Ben, what are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about us,’ he said, and his voice said he wasn’t crazy at all. His voice said this was a serious proposal. He’d put all the pieces of some weird jigsaw together and come up with a fully formulated plan. ‘Mary, I’ve spent most of yesterday thinking this through. I would like to help you raise this child.’
Raise this child... That sounded mechanical, she thought. It sounded like following a recipe for making bread, or shifting a wreck off the ocean floor. Raise this child...
‘How?’ she managed, and apparently he really had thought about it.
‘We’re loners,’ he told her. ‘Both of us. We need our own space. That’s a problem in that we need to raise this child together, but it’s also good in that you have few ties to New Zealand. I’ve been trying to figure out how you could move to New York. I’ve run through the options, and the only one that’ll work is marriage.’
‘I...see,’ she managed, but she didn’t.
‘You won’t get a green card unless we do.’
‘Why would I want a green card?’
‘So you can stay here,’ he said patiently. ‘So I can have a say in raising this baby.’
‘Will you stop saying “raising,”’ she snapped, shock suddenly finding an expression. ‘It’s like building with Lego blocks. Producing something. A technical procedure. This is a baby we’re talking about. A little person. You don’t have to stand above and pull.’
‘But it’ll be work,’ he said, refusing to be deflected. ‘You can’t want to bring it up by yourself.’
‘I have Heinz—and my baby’s not an it.’
‘He—or she—will be my son or daughter, too.
‘But you can’t make me stay.’ A niggle of fear suddenly grew much bigger. Had it been a mistake to tell him? He was a Logan. He had the world’s resources behind him.
‘I won’t make you stay.’ His voice gentled, as if he sensed her sudden terror and was backing off. ‘How could I force you? But I want you to think about it. It could be good for both of us.’
‘How would it be good?’ she snapped. ‘I know no one. I don’t know if my nursing qualifications are acceptable. I have nowhere to live. I have nothing.’
‘You could write,’ he said, and shoved a hand into his pocket and produced a folded piece of paper. He handed it to her and then sat back and waited for her to read it.
She glared. She stared at the paper as if it contained explosives.
‘Read it,’ he said, gently, and she had no choice. And the letter took her breath away all over again.
Hey, Ben.
I’ll admit I was pissed when you pushed me to read this so fast but now I’ll admit to being impressed. This is raw talent and it’s good. The story needs work but we could really take this places, especially if you’re prepared to back us with publicity. It could be huge. Tell her to finish it and we’ll go from there but if the end’s as good as the beginning, we have a goer.
And then:
PS Her hero’s sounding a lot like you, Ben, boy. Made me chuckle. She’s good, your lady.
It was an email, dated late last night. From a publisher whose name was known throughout the world.
The words blurred into a black and white fuzz.
If the end’s as good as the beginning, we have a goer.
She thought back to the cave, sitting writing what she loved. Using the time out. Writing Ben into her story.
He’d read it. He’d told her he’d read it.
Some time yesterday he must have copied it and given it to a publisher to read.
She should be thrilled, but...why did it feel such an invasion? Why did it feel he was almost taking over life?
‘So here’s my plan,’ he said, before she could get her breath back. ‘My apartment’s huge. We won’t need to stay this close long term but until you get your green card we need to live in the same premises to prove we’re married. I’ll get an architect in. We’ll split the apartment so you have your quarters at one end, we’ll put in a space for a nanny, and we can meet in the middle. It’ll need to be arranged so partitions can be set aside in case we have a visit from Immigration, but with a nanny, and me to take a role as well, you’ll be free to write as much as you like.
‘You can train Heinz to be an apartment dog—the park’s just over the road. This could work.’
‘You want me to live in your apartment.’ She was having trouble speaking.
‘You need help,’ he said gently. ‘I can’t bear to think of you facing the future alone.’
‘But marriage...’
‘It’s not exactly your standard proposal,’ he said ruefully. ‘We’ll need a strong pre-nup agreement, but I’m trusting you.’
‘Th-thank you?’
‘I guess you’d be trusting me as well,’ he said, smiling slightly. ‘But I won’t sue for half of Heinz.’
‘You’re thinking I’d sue?’
‘It’s not a real marriage but it’d work. It’d give you and the child security. It would mean I could keep in contact.’
‘Why would you want to keep in contact?’
‘Because this is my child.’
She was struggling to get h
er head around this. Struggling hard. He wanted to raise her child. He wanted to organise her writing. He wanted...what else?
‘So you’d want to read bedtime stories and go to school plays? You’d want to change diapers and take sides when she faces school bullies?’
What was she gabbling about? she thought wildly. She was talking school plays? But the marriage thing was too big to consider. Marriage. Waking up beside this man, every day for the rest of her life.
But that wasn’t what was on offer. What was on offer was assistance and control. This man didn’t do close. Even the thought of the practicalities of child-rearing had him drawing back.
He’d really never thought of himself as a father? How lonely was he?
If the end’s as good as the beginning...
The phrase from the publisher was suddenly front and centre.
She thought back to the cave, to holding each other, to mutual need. To the moment this baby had been conceived.
That had been the beginning. A joining of two people.
He was offering her an ending that was no such thing.
‘The child-rearing would be over to you,’ he said faintly. ‘If you have a nanny, you should have time to cope with the odd diaper.’
‘You don’t want to share?’
‘You keep your personal space and I’ll keep mine.’ He hesitated, then continued, but less sure, ‘But, Mary, there is this attraction between us. Maybe we could keep that—if we both wanted.’
‘With you living at one end of the apartment and me the other.’
‘We could have visitation rights, to be decided as we go.’
He was joking?
He wasn’t.
He’d plotted her future. She’d sit and write and care for their baby. Logan money would launch her book, which he’d organise to be published. Her book. Even her fantasy would be his. She’d be Mary Logan, author, promoted by the resources of the Logan empire. She’d live in New York and she’d have a nanny.
And she’d have a husband—with visitation rights to be decided as we go.