"What are you doing here, Doc?" Ursula asked, giving Ben the once-over as she walked into the house. "Why aren't you at the party?"
Same old Ursula, Ben thought. The postmistress acted as if everything fell under her purview. It never occurred to her that someone might not want to share their business with her—and the entire town.
"Because I wanted to first stop by here and ask these lovely ladies—" this time both girls giggled "—if they wanted to go to the Salty Saloon with me."
"Of course they want to go with you." Ursula looked at him as if any other conclusion was out of the question. "If I was forty years younger and not being courted by this young stud, here—" she nodded toward Yuri with a wicked grin "—I'd want to go with you."
Jan had moved over toward Martha and now took her hand, kissing it. "Good evening, Mar-ta. You are looking lovely tonight."
Martha sniffed, but she obviously adored the attention and Jan's old-fashioned courtliness. "So I've already been told." As she spoke, she struggled hard to suppress a pleased smile.
"By someone with very good taste, no doubt," Jan asserted. Moving behind her wheelchair, he took hold of the handles. "You are ready?"
"Of course I'm ready," she returned, but only half as gruffly as she ordinarily did. "What are you waiting for? The party will be over before we get there."
"But the guest of honor, he is standing in your house." Jan indicated Ben. "I know you do things differently here, but not that differently, yes?" He looked to Ursula and his cousin for confirmation.
Heather paused to lean over the wheelchair and whisper in her mother's ear. "Can you sheathe your tongue just a little, Mother? You don't want to be driving this one away."
"What I want or don't want is my business, not yours," Martha hissed back at her in what was less than a stage whisper. Even so, her expression was a little uneasy as she twisted around to look at her "driver." Looking down at her, Jan smiled. Relieved, Martha settled back in her chair. Her eyes narrowed just a little as she looked at her daughter. "Well, what are you waiting for?" she asked. "Christmas?"
One last bit of hesitation lingered. Heather glanced from Hannah to Hayley, both of whom were bright-eyed. "You girls aren't too tired?"
"The girls'll be fine," Ursula assured her before the chorus of protests could begin. "Matter of fact, when we get there," the woman continued, looking from one small face to the other, "I want you little ones to hang out with me."
"Why?" Hayley asked.
Ursula wrapped one arm around each little girl. "Because it's been a while since I had little people around me. I've got two grandbabies on the way and I'm out of practice."
Hayley's animated face scrunched. "But they're gonna be littler than us."
"Not for long, honey." Ursula raised her eyes to Heather's. "Not for long," she repeated meaningfully. "Seems like only yesterday, April, Max and June were little like you. And now look." The last sentence was accompanied with a sigh.
"Max?" Hannah echoed, her eyes growing wide. "The sheriff?"
Ursula nodded her head solemnly. "Yes."
"The sheriff was little once, too?" Hannah seemed to have trouble with the concept.
Delighted, Ursula laughed and then gave Hannah a big, warm hug, holding her for a moment to her ample bosom. "See why I love them so much?"
It seemed to Heather that Ursula's rhetorical question was not only addressed to her but to Ben, as well. As if the postmistress was trying to get a message across to both of them.
Heather shifted. It wasn't a message she figured Ben appreciated hearing so she glanced at him uneasily. But if he felt uncomfortable, he gave no indication. His expression was nothing short of genial, as always.
"Can we go, Mama?" Hannah asked. Unlike Hayley, she didn't automatically assume that everything would always go her way. Hannah was her thoughtful one.
Placing her arm around the girl's shoulders, she drew Hannah to her for an abbreviated hug. "I guess, for a little while."
"Great. I've got the four-by-four waiting outside," Ben told her. After having to borrow a car from either Shayne or Sydney, he was glad finally to be behind the wheel of his own vehicle. Heather and her girls had been the first ones he'd taken for a spin.
"Of course you do, silly," Hayley declared, her green eyes dancing. "It's too big to fit in the house."
The simple, innocent observation tickled Ben. "Smart as a whip, these two," he told Heather.
Warning bells went off in her head. The girls enjoyed riding around in Ben's truck way too much. Maybe she needed to ease a separation between them, starting now.
"The car seats are in my car," Heather pointed out to him.
"They can be transferred." He led the way out to his vehicle, which was parked right beside Heather's in the driveway.
"We don't need car seats," Hayley protested as Ben opened the door to Heather's car. "We're big girls."
"And nobody hits anybody with their car." Hannah parroted something she must have overheard.
They'd had this debate before. Heather eyed Ben, expecting him to side with the girls. They both seemed able to twist him around their little fingers whenever they wanted.
But instead, Ben surprised her.
"You do like being safe, right?" He looked from one little girl to the other, and they both nodded. "Well, you just never know when a moose might come running by and decide to butt the car. You'll be safe in your car seat if it ever does." He paused, waiting.
"Okay. We'll sit in the car seats," Hayley reluctantly agreed.
"Yeah, okay," Hannah added in her vote.
Heather's heart ached a little as she saw her older daughter gaze at Ben with adoring eyes.
What would you say, honey, if I told you that was your daddy? What would you both say?
Heather wondered this as her eyes swept over Ben and Hannah. He handily removed first one car seat from her vehicle, then the other, and placed them inside of his. He seemed to care for them as a father would. There was no use thinking about this since she would never tell Ben.
She strapped Hannah in while Ben did the same with Hayley. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed him checking to see if Hannah's belt was secure. He'd done it, she knew, purely because he hadn't wanted Hannah to feel he was neglecting her. The man had radar when it came to knowing what women wanted. Even short women.
"That seems like a huge waste of time," she commented, referring to the transfer as she climbed into the front passenger seat. "I could have easily followed you in my car."
Securing his own seat belt, Ben started up the engine. He spared her a glance. "Yeah, but then I wouldn't have had you next to me like this. Or the girls in the back seat," he added for good measure, knowing that his every word was being monitored by an audience of two.
Just before he pulled out of the driveway, Ben lightly brushed his hand across her knee, as if to reinforce his point.
Heather did her best to steel herself. She wouldn't let him get to her, she silently swore. Not again. She wasn't going to be left standing alone at the top of the hill, looking down into the lake's waters, thinking her life was over when he left.
The way she had the first time.
Not get to her? a small voice in her head mocked the words, the sentiment. Too late.
And then, mercifully, the sound of her girls laughing at something Ben had just said drowned out the voice. For now.
* * *
By the time they arrived, the Salty Dog Saloon teemed with people. Ursula and the others had taken off before them and Heather saw that the woman's dark-green vehicle was parked on the very outskirts of the filled-to-capacity lot. She tried to picture her mother inside the establishment. It wasn't easy.
The noise coming from inside the Salty could be heard more than two blocks away. The joyful noise only grew louder as they approached. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she could see her daughters growing progressively more excited. Unlike some of the other children in Hades, Hannah and Hayley had never been to t
he saloon before. The Salty Dog was more than a hundred years old, originally established by a British expatriate who'd built the place along the lines of an English Pub. Families were just as welcome here as single miners trying to brush away the dust of the day from their souls.
"Will there be games?" Hayley asked, raising her voice to be heard.
"Probably not," Ben guessed. He doubted Heather would let either of the girls try their hands at darts. "But there'll be other kids."
"I want you to stay close to me, girls," Heather cautioned as Ben brought the truck to a stop, parking the vehicle across the street.
"Judging by how packed that place is, they might not have a choice," he commented. Not that there was anything to worry about. Outside of an occasional poacher, and one very determined Native American who periodically destroyed traps and set captured game free, there was next to no crime in Hades. Certainly none that would concern a mother. Everyone watched out for everyone else here, especially the children.
The second the girls were out of their car seats, they bolted across the street toward the saloon's door.
"Hannah, Hayley," Heather called after them, her voice all but lost in the din.
"Girls!"
Ben's voice was lower than Heather's, but somehow seemed to carry above the noise. The girls stopped in their tracks just shy of the front entrance. Both looked over their shoulders, waiting.
"You're going to have to teach me that trick," Heather said as they hurried across the street to join the girls.
"Looking forward to it." He laughed as he said the words very close to her ear.
She was having some very unplatonic reactions, Heather thought as goose bumps rose and marched along her skin. At the same time a warmth spread itself through her inner core.
"Your mother asked you to stay close," he reminded the girls. Hannah seemed immediately penitent. Hayley just seemed eager. "Okay, girls, you ready?" Two heads nodded vigorously. He pulled open the heavy wooden door. "Let's go in."
"Here he is, the man of the hour," Ike declared the moment Ben entered. He took in the three Kendall females. "Flanked by women as usual. So what else is new?"
Standing at the long bar, Shayne looked at his watch as his brother joined him. "An hour. That's about right. That's all it takes to put Hades behind you. An hour by car. Less by plane."
Ben refused to be baited. The way he saw it, Shayne had a great deal to get off his chest and he deserved every snide comment. Eventually, though, Ben promised himself, his older brother would come around. He had to because this was his home. It had taken him a long time to realize that.
Ben accepted the beer that Ike sent his way along the highly polished mahogany counter. "Trying to get rid of me?" he asked his brother with a laugh.
There was no humor in Shayne's expression as his eyes met Ben's. "Seems to me that there was no trying involved the last time."
Ike leaned over the counter. "Let it go, man," he advised, a steely note underlying the friendly tone of his voice.
"I second the motion," Sydney said, joining her husband and her brother-in-law. She nodded at Heather as she raised her own mug of beer.
Jean Luc, Ike's young, far more soft-spoken cousin, pressed a mug of ale into Heather's hand while Ike's wife presented Hannah and Hayley each with a glass of dark soda pop. The girls looked very happy to have their own drinks, just like the grownups.
"To Ben," Ike declared, raising a finely carved tankard that had been in his family for several generations. "Welcome home."
"For however long that is," Shayne murmured to himself.
Ben caught his brother's words and flashed him a broad grin. "Until you tell me to leave."
They both knew that would never happen. Shayne had done everything in his power to make life easy for Ben to get him to remain in the first place.
"And if I hold you to that?" Shayne raised his eyes now to Ben's.
"I'm counting on it." Ben never flinched, never moved a muscle.
"All right. To my brother, the wandering doctor. Welcome home." Shayne raised his glass this time, sealing the toast.
The last part of the sentiment was echoed many times over. Only Shayne and Heather were left to wonder how long the stay was for this time.
The food served and savored had come courtesy of Lily. The good time came thanks to Ike and the rest of the people crowded in at the Salty.
Heather watched quietly as woman after woman, young, old and in between, stopped to talk and reminisce with Ben. And flirt. What surprised her most was that even when Jennifer Simon tugged on his arm, trying to get him to come away with her to a more private corner of the saloon, Ben never left the table he shared with her and the girls.
A corner jukebox was fed a steady diet of change. The barely audible music blended pleasantly with the mingling voices. The result was an oddly harmonious blend that evoked a feeling of well-being and belonging for one and all.
Heather noted several times that her mother appeared to be flirting with Jan. Martha Ryan looked younger, happier than Heather could recall ever seeing her. Her mother had certainly never looked this way when she was married. Heather always thought her father had been a saint who had finally been driven away by his wife's moods.
But maybe it hadn't been all one-sided. Maybe there was more to the story. She had no way of knowing. Right now she was glad to see her mother with something other than a frown on her face, her shoulders slumped in abject bitterness and defeat.
As the evening began to wind down and the energy level of her daughters dwindled, Ike's wife, Marta, came over to their table.
"I'm stealing your girls for the night," the woman informed her. "My girls want to have Hannah and Hayley at the house for a sleepover."
"Which means no one sleeps," Ike commented dryly. But he was accustomed to that kind of thing. Five years ago he had taken in his younger sister's infant daughter when Juneau had suddenly died. His own daughter had been born nine months to the day that he and Marta had gotten married. That placed both of his daughters around the same age as Heather's. They were all fast friends.
"Is it all right?" Marta asked, not wanting to push too hard.
"Please, Mama, please," both girls chorused in almost a single voice.
Ben grinned, coming to their aid. "How can you say no to those pleading little faces?" he asked her.
She couldn't.
She didn't.
And as a reward, Heather found herself being smothered with tiny butterfly kisses.
Chapter Eleven
She watched as Hannah and Hayley were gleefully herded off with the LeBlanc girls. It was past her daughters' bedtime and they showed no signs of fatigue as they made their way outside with Marta and their little friends.
Someone got in her way and Heather leaned over in her chair, trying to watch the girls for as long as she physically could.
"They'll be all right."
Ben's voice pulled her away from her concerns and back to the center of the Salty Dog. "What?"
"The girls." He nodded in the general direction they had taken. "They'll be all right."
"How did you know?"
Smiling, he rose and took her hand, coaxing her to her feet. He had a desire to be away from all these people.
"It's written all over your face. First time they've been away from home?" he guessed.
"First time they've been away from me," she corrected. "And me from them," she added softly.
He nodded, guiding her toward the front entrance. "I'd say that it's good for all of you."
With her girls gone for the night and her mother showing no signs of wanting to go home, she supposed this was a good time to catch a little alone time for herself. She couldn't remember the last time that had happened. But now that she was faced with the prospect, it didn't seem all that attractive to her.
She liked having her spaces filled up, she realized. Liked not being alone.
"Is that your professional opinion?" she asked as they edged clos
er to the door.
"If you like." Holding the door open for her, Ben saw the smile that curved her mouth. Felt himself responding to it. There was something about the woman that still got to him. Just as it had that night. Back then he'd thought it was just a fluke. Now he wasn't so sure. "What?"
She shook her head. "Nothing. Just the way you put it, that's all." Heather pushed her hands deep into her pockets. There had to be a thousand stars in the sky tonight. Summer nights took a long time before they finally arrived, but they were well worth the wait. "I'd like a lot of things."
Taking her hand, Ben crossed the parking lot, heading across the street to where he'd left his vehicle. The party behind him was still going on, but he doubted if anyone would really notice that the "guest of honor" had left. He was just the excuse they'd used to throw a party.
"Such as?"
"Such as a secure future for the girls. I'd like to work a little less and enjoy them a little more before they're all grown-up and think they know better than me."
Heather paused for a second. She was being unusually talkative tonight. Maybe it was the beer she'd had. Granted it didn't have much of a kick, but she wasn't accustomed to drinking at all. Whatever the reason, the words seemed to pour out of her.
"And I'd like for them to know what it's like to have a father." A wistful sigh accompanied her words. "They were just babies when Joe died. Hannah hardly remembers him and I know that Hayley doesn't. He's just a man in a photograph to her."
Reaching his car, Ben turned toward her. "Plenty of men must have asked you." Given the scarcity of women in the area, he found himself wondering why she hadn't married again.
She shrugged, looking away. "There've been a few."
Taking her chin in his hand, he gently brought her face toward his. "But?"
But none of them were you. "I'm waiting to feel the earth move. To experience an eclipse of the sun. To stand in the center of the aurora borealis." Was that so much to ask? To have that wonderful rush again? More than that, to feel as if every day was a wonderful gift?
He couldn't quite reconcile what she was telling him to what he knew had already taken place in her life. But then, he supposed everyone was different. Still, he had to ask. "Is that what happened with Joe?"
The Prodigal M.D. Returns Page 11