Maybe that had been true once, Ben thought as her words pricked his skin, but that wasn't who he was now. He'd changed, he realized. And she needed to know that. "You had no right to make that assumption."
"When it comes to Hannah, I have every right."
"And what about me?" he asked.
Chapter Fourteen
Heather stared at him, confused by his question. "What about you?"
"What about my rights?" he asked.
The impact of having a child was still hitting him, penetrating his consciousness by layers. He'd played with her daughters, gone with them on outings, had a makeshift picnic in Heather's living room when the rain had washed away their plans for holding one outdoors. But it wasn't the same thing as knowing that the child was his own. His own flesh and blood.
"What about my right to have been there when she took her first step, said her first word? When she needed someone's hand to help her up because she fell down? I missed all that, Heather." And suddenly he felt incredibly cheated. "All because you didn't see fit to tell me."
She struggled to hold back the tears. Struggled not to fall into his arms and cry her heart out. If he only knew. But she raised her head and somehow managed to keep her voice steady.
"You were the first person I wanted to go to when I found out. I was very naive back then," she admitted with a barely suppressed sigh. As if that would have changed anything she had gone through back then. "But you'd already left, and nobody in town knew where you'd gone. Not even Shayne. Only that you'd run off with Lila, leaving him to deal with the woman who was coming out to marry you."
A bittersweet expression played on her lips. She hadn't been naive back then, she'd been a simpleminded idiot who was in love with him. Heather shrugged, looking away. "I would have had to be third in line. Third never wins."
He didn't argue with her. There was no point. The past couldn't be resurrected to replay events.
"And Joe?" he asked. "How did he fit into all this?"
Her heart twisted a little with guilt, the way it always did when she thought of the man. "Joe was a very sweet man who'd asked me to marry him once before. When he asked again, I jumped at the chance." She looked at Ben. "I did it to make sure that the baby I was carrying under my heart wouldn't be known around town as Ben Kerrigan's bastard."
He had that coming, he thought. Even so, it hurt. His eyes remained on hers. "Did you love him?"
Heather glanced away as the thorns of guilt grew larger. "None of your business."
He took hold of her shoulders, forcing her to turn toward him. To look him in the eye. "Did you love him?"
She shrugged out of his grasp and pulled away, moving to the far end of the corridor. Her voice echoed through the empty clinic. Darkness had finally settled in around the building. "Why would that matter to you? You've loved a whole legion of women."
"No," he said sharply. "I've made love to more than a few women—although not a legion—"
"Obviously math was never your strong point."
He continued as if she hadn't said anything because he wanted to get his point across to her. "But I've only been in love, or thought I was in love, once." He held up a single finger to emphasize the point.
"With Lila."
He dropped his hand to his side as he nodded. "With Lila." It occurred to him, as he told Heather this, that the ache was gone. That ever-present, saber-sharp ache in his gut when he thought about Lila, about losing her, was gone.
And Heather was responsible for pushing it away.
"What about Sydney?" she asked. "She came out here to marry you."
There was a fondness pervading him as he recalled that segment of his life. Six months spent in correspondence because of an article he'd written about Alaska. The article Lila had read and sought him out to comment on. His now-sister-in-law had turned out to be a singularly wonderful woman, every bit as unique as she seemed in her letters.
"What Sydney and I had was on paper, from another era. I think we each filled a void in the other at the time." Sydney had been getting over a bad relationship and he'd been secretly hurting over one of his own. "Mine revolved around Lila and when she came back…" His voice trailed off as he lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. "I'm not defending what I did."
"No?" She forced herself to dwell on his negative attributes, knowing that otherwise she would melt into his arms. And they'd both be lost.
"No," he replied firmly. "I'm explaining. I know it wasn't right, and I've tried to make amends to Sydney—and to Shayne—any way I know how." Of the two, Shayne had been the harder to win over. Sydney had absolved him from the first. But Shayne was only coming around just now.
"Lucky for you that turned out well for both of them." She smiled enviously as she thought of the couple. "I'm not sure I've ever seen two people more genuinely in love than Sydney and your brother."
Her breath froze in her lungs as he stepped closer and took her hands in his. "I think we could give them a run for their money."
For more than a beat she stood there, speechless. Wondering if she was hallucinating or had fallen asleep by Hannah's bed. But she could smell the musky scent of his cologne, feel the heat of his hand as it held both of hers. That meant this was real. Didn't it?
Heather blinked. "I'm sorry, the shock of this morning—I think I've lost my hearing."
He grinned that engaging grin, the one that always sent her pulse soaring. "You didn't lose anything, Heather. You heard me. I think we could give Shayne and Sydney a run for their money."
"How?" The single word squeaked out. Concentrating, she drew air into her lungs before she passed out. She wasn't going to make a fool of herself, certainly not before he delivered the punch line. She was positive there had to be a punch line.
"Because I love you, Heather. And I have a very strong feeling that you still love me, so—"
Breaking the connection, she took a step back, away from him. "So," she said, emphasizing the last word he'd said, "you're delusional, Ben. And I don't really know what you're up to, or if this is some kind of amusing way to pass the time on your part, but—"
He took hold of her wrist to keep her from moving away any farther and broke through her barrage of rhetoric. "Marry me, Heather."
Silence swallowed up the words. Even the sound of their breathing. If he only knew how many times she'd daydreamed this very sequence of words….
With her last ounce of strength, she summoned her flagging courage. "No. You're asking for the wrong reasons."
The refusal rocked him. A moment ago, he'd been so sure he could break through her resolve. Been so sure that no matter what Heather pretended to the contrary, she loved him. "I'm asking because I love you."
She didn't believe that for a minute. "You're asking because you feel guilty or because you think it's the right thing to do or because you want to try playing husband." The tension in her voice grew. This wasn't what she wanted, but it was what she knew was right. "I don't know which it is, but you're not asking me because you—" She shook her head as he reached for her again. "No, I won't believe you."
He was completely dumbfounded and bewildered. "Why? Why is it so hard to believe me?"
She threw up her hands. "Because you're Ben Kerrigan. Because you've said the L word to half the women in Hades. Because it comes too easy for you."
He hadn't told half the women in Hades that he loved them. Not in the way it counted, he amended. But to argue the point with her seemed futile right now. "Love should be easy."
"No," she countered fiercely, "love is hard. Love is pain. Love is doing what needs to be done instead of what you want to do." She thought of her love for her daughters. "Love is sacrifice and being there in the middle of the night when everything is falling apart." She pressed her lips together as she looked at him. Heather slowly shook her head. "You have no idea what love is."
"So teach me. Show me." Though she resisted, he took Heather's hand and placed her fingertips over his heart. "Feel that?"
>
It was all she could do to keep her knees from buckling. She loved him. She had for a long time and she always would. But that wasn't enough and she knew it. "Yes."
"It's yours, Heather," he told her. "Yours to do with what you will."
"All right." Taking in a deep breath, she took her hand away. "Then I give it back to its owner."
The next second she was turning on her heel and hurrying back into the exam room where Hannah lay sleeping. Reaching the room, she shut the door with unsteady hands.
Leaning her head against the door, she fought to regain some kind of composure. She prayed that Ben wouldn't come into the room after her because she only had so much strength to turn him down.
She had to think of the girls. Even though Ben might mean what he was saying—or think he meant it—for the moment, as certain as the sun was going to rise tomorrow, his attention span would begin to wander.
Or Lila would come waltzing back into town, crook her little finger and take him away again.
She couldn't put the girls through that. Couldn't have the girls love him and then watch as he left them. It would be too awful for them.
Never mind what she would feel.
* * *
The sound of a door creaking caused Heather's eyes to pop open and her body to tense moments before she was fully conscious.
Daylight streamed through the back windows, but that hardly meant anything. Daylight arrived at an ungodly early hour in the summer and remained unfashionably late.
Squinting, Heather tried to make out the numbers on her wristwatch. Six-thirty. She'd intended to keep vigil all night, but obviously she'd fallen asleep. Every bone in her body was now protesting the indulgent slip. The chair she sat on was uncomfortable enough when it came to sitting. As far as sleeping went, it was a modern-day equivalent of a torture rack.
Shifting, taking care not to pull a muscle, Heather looked over her shoulder. She'd expected to see Ben and was surprised to find Shayne entering the room.
Crossing to the bed, Shayne nodded at Hannah, who was just beginning to stir. "How was her night?"
"She slept right through. Not a peep out of her." She was certain she would have heard something if Hannah had woken up. Her mother instincts, honed when the girls were first born, were too keen not to.
He smiled at the little girl. Color was returning to the thin cheeks. And her eyes looked a lot brighter. "Well, Hannah looks a lot better for her night's sleep." Picking up the chart to make a few notations, he said offhandedly, "You, however, look like you should go home. I could call Max to take you." He knew the sheriff wouldn't mind.
Heather rose on legs that felt just this side of wobbly. Maybe she should go home to get a little sleep now that everyone was returning to the clinic.
"No. No need to bother anyone. I can drive myself home." And then she hesitated.
Shayne saw the question in her eyes, knew that pride was stopping her from asking it out loud. He was well acquainted with pride. Pride had turned him into a stubborn, almost reclusive person until Sydney unlocked his prisoner door. "He's not here."
Heather squared her shoulders. "I didn't ask."
"No, but I thought you should know."
And then she read between the lines and realized what Shayne was actually telling her. She could feel her heart constricting in her chest.
Your own fault. You sent him away, remember?
"You're not talking about just the clinic, are you?" Each word tasted bitter on her tongue.
"No," he replied quietly. Then with more feeling he added, "He said he had to go to Seattle for a few days, to see about some things. Asked me to check on Hannah." He looked across the room. The girl was dozing again. "As if I wouldn't without being asked."
The smile on her lips was only a token response to his last sentence. "Everyone knows that you're the very best there is, Shayne." And then, even though she told herself not to, she heard herself asking, "Did he—did he say why he was going?"
Shayne shook his head. Ben had come to him almost in the middle of the night, knocking on the door until he came down the stairs to open it. He'd never seen Ben look that way before, as if he'd been up all night, wrestling with something that was bigger than he was. He'd listened in silence, at first condemning Ben, then realizing that his younger brother was hurting and trying to deal with it the best way he could.
"He told me he didn't want to go into that just now. But that he'd be coming back."
Sure he will. Just before the Second Coming. She blew out a breath. "Do you believe him?"
"Yes." Shayne looked at her. Her feelings were right there, in plain sight. "But you don't."
She slid her tongue along her lips before shaking her head. "No."
And then Shayne did what he'd thought he would never do. He became Ben's advocate. "Ben's changed since he got back, Heather. He's tried very hard to prove himself to me. And to himself, I suspect. To prove that he isn't the same carefree Ben Kerrigan anymore. That he has finally grown up."
She supposed she couldn't expect Shayne to say anything else. After all, Ben was his brother. She shrugged, trying her best to seem unaffected. And probably failing miserably, she thought. "So now he proved it to himself and he's moving on."
Shayne surprised her. He ceased playing along. Instead he turned her face toward him. She could feel his eyes scrutinizing her.
"What happened here last night?" She pressed her lips together harder, to keep the tears from springing to her eyes. "It won't leave this room," he promised. "You can ask Sydney," he added with a soft chuckle. "I drive her crazy because there are things I can't tell her." His eyes held hers. "Things that are just between a doctor and his patient."
"I'm not your patient," she reminded him.
Instead of saying anything, Shayne took a tongue depressor out of his pocket and held it at the ready. "Say 'ah.'"
Confused, she did as she was asked. Tilting her head back, she said, "'Ah.'"
Shayne went through the motions of looking down her throat. Satisfied, he tossed the tongue depressor into a wastepaper basket. "Okay," he informed her, "now you're my patient."
She smiled and shook her head. Shayne meant well, but she just couldn't talk about it. But when she opened her mouth, somehow the words came tumbling out. "Ben asked me to marry him."
That surprised him. But then, the proposal was in keeping with the "new" Ben. And it meant that he'd been right. "Then Hannah is his."
Her eyes widened. "You knew?" How long? Had he known right from the start, when Hannah had been born? Who else knew?
She looked shaken, and he wanted to comfort her. But he knew this was something she had to work out for herself.
"Only that Joe was the wrong blood type to have fathered that girl." He kept his voice low, even though they were on the opposite side of the room. Neither one of them wanted Hannah overhearing. This was something that had to be told to her the right way. "And I knew what Ben's blood type was."
"How long have you known?" Her voice quavered.
"Just since yesterday—and not for certain until just now." He paused for a moment, searching her face again. "I take it you didn't say yes when Ben asked." She shook her head. It didn't make any sense to him. He'd seen the way she'd looked at Ben. The woman was clearly in love with him. And Ben with her, if he was any judge of the human condition. "May I ask why?"
She knotted her hands before her and looked down at them. "When Joe asked me to marry him, I knew he loved me. Ben was asking because he felt he had an obligation." She raised her head, tossing it as she looked at Shayne. "Ben doesn't love me. And I'm not about to take advantage of the situation."
"You did when Joe asked you. You didn't love him," he said. She glanced back up at him, clearly taken aback by his assessment. "When a woman is carrying the child of the man she loves," he elaborated, "she acts in a different way than you did. There was a discomfort, a guilt in your eyes. I always thought it was just because you didn't love Joe, that you'd married h
im to help you take care of your mother. I didn't realize you'd married him because you needed a father for your baby."
"I made it up to Joe," she said defensively. Old memories rose up, bringing with them old guilts. Demons she'd wrestled with time and again. "I was the best wife to him that I knew how to be. He knew I didn't love him the way he loved me, I never tried to hide it." It was there, unspoken but understood, like a white elephant in the living room. "But I did love him," she protested. "I loved him for his kindness, for his generosity of spirit…."
He knew that wasn't enough for any man. And it wasn't fair to either one of them. "You could have come to me," he pointed out gently. "I would have helped you. You didn't have to marry Joe."
"Thank you, but I couldn't have come to you. I don't take charity," she told him proudly. "Besides, I wasn't going to have people whisper behind their hands about Hannah. No," she informed him firmly, "my way was better. My way Joe had a family and Hannah had a father. Everyone was happy."
He looked at her knowingly. "Except you."
The shrug was careless, dismissive. This was the greater good for the greater number. "I love my daughters. That's enough."
He got down to the salient point. "Why are you so sure that Ben doesn't love you?"
That was very simple. She wished it wasn't, because then maybe she would have missed the truth. But there it was in front of her in neon lights.
"Because he didn't ask to marry me before he knew about Hannah. And then, suddenly, a proposal was popping out of his mouth. No." She shook her head, struggling with tears all over again. Damn it, wasn't that ever going to stop? "He was just trying to do 'the right thing.'" She tried to sound philosophical. "Well, so am I. I don't want Ben to marry me out of a sense of obligation. I don't want to look at him in a year and see that he's miserable because he wants to be somewhere else and can't because he's anchored down by a family."
The Prodigal M.D. Returns Page 15