Shoreline Drive (24 page)

Her lips were swollen and slick, her breath panted out in staccato bursts, but her eyes were clear. Hot. “Oh, I’m ready, Doc. Feel free to examine me, if you need to be convinced.”

But Merry’s slender fingers went to work on Ben’s buttons, not her own, and when he raised his brows at her questioningly, she grinned. “It’ll be a mutual examination.”

“You want this,” Ben said. It wasn’t a question, exactly—but he searched her face for her answer.

It came in the softening of her wicked grin, the lazy hooding of her midnight-blue eyes. “I want you,” she said, throaty and steady and sounding very much as if she knew her own damn mind and body.

Right. That ought to be enough for anyone’s conscience.

And as Ben stripped off his shirt and bore her back onto the couch, her legs wrapped around his hips like ivy vines and her body soft and yielding, it was more than enough.

It was everything.

The moonlight turned her pale skin to cream, pure and perfect in all its supposed imperfections—the heaviness of her breasts, the slight roundness of her belly, the lushness of her hips and backside. Merry’s body was a banquet, and Ben savored every morsel.

He memorized her sighs and low, throbbing moans, the way she moved and the bright, greedy pleasure she took in every touch. If Ben could have made it last forever, he would have. But as dawn broke outside the windows, heralded by his ancient rooster Philbert’s earsplitting crow and a wavering cry from the baby monitor, Ben dropped one last kiss on Merry’s slack, drowsy mouth and let her sleep.

Dragging the quilt off the back of the couch, he covered the luminous skin he’d tasted and caressed, and snagged his jeans off the floor. His foot slipped on an empty condom wrapper as he struggled into his jeans, and he nearly fell back on top of Merry.

Finding his balance, Ben checked his wife. Still out cold, although her eyelids flickered at the sound of another staticky cry from the baby monitor. Better get a move on.

He padded swiftly and silently down the hall to the guest room, stopping short in the doorway. Alex had given up on crying, and instead appeared to be entertaining himself by rocking back and forth on his back until slowly, while Ben watched, the little genius rolled over onto his belly. Kicking excitedly, Alex made the jerky swimming motions that Ben knew were helping him prepare for crawling and scooting in the coming weeks.

Proud enough to bust the buttons of his shirt, if he were wearing one, Ben moved to stand over the crib. “Oh, kiddo. You are going to be into everything once you start being independently mobile. And you know what? I can’t wait.”

At the sound of his voice, Alex cooed and banged his hands against the crib mattress. Grinning, Ben reached over the railing to lift the kid into his arms, sleep-warm and bright-eyed.

“You slept through the night,” Ben told him. “Excellently done. For that, I think you deserve canned peaches in syrup for breakfast. Don’t tell your mom, she’ll worry about the sugar. But we know a little sugar will only make you sweeter, right, buddy?”

One of Alex’s hands gripped the hair behind Ben’s ear, tight and secure. “Da da da da,” he said distinctly.

Ben’s heart clenched with happiness. Rationally, he knew Alex didn’t mean anything by it—at eighteen weeks, he hadn’t yet assigned meaning to the random syllables his tongue was beginning to form—but even if “Dada” wasn’t actually his first word, it would be a word Alex used eventually. And the meaning he assigned to the name would be Ben.

He held the boy close and allowed himself to remember a tiny, frail baby girl who hadn’t lived long enough to call him anything.

For the first time in years, the memory was soft and sweet, tinged with melancholy, yes—but not a sharp, jagged knife between the ribs. Talking about Justine, telling Merry about her, had helped.

And although Alex could never take Justine’s place, holding the sturdy little boy close and hearing his high, piping voice helped, too.

An unfamiliar feeling of contentment, pure and satisfying, poured through Ben like warm honey. The emotion had a name, and here in the quiet of dawn after a night of passion, Ben allowed himself to say it out loud.

“I didn’t think I could have this—but here you are. We’re a family now,” he told Alex, who pulled his hair enthusiastically in response. “I love you. And I love your mother. But that’ll be another little secret, okay? Mama’s not ready to hear it yet. But someday … maybe sooner than I thought.”

*   *   *

In the living room, Merry absently drew the quilt closer around her shoulders against the morning chill, and stared down at the baby monitor in her hand.

Chapter Nineteen

“And now everything’s different, right?” Ella’s voice carried the standard older-sister tone of all-knowingness.

Merry hated to admit it, but sometimes she actually found it comforting. It helped that once Ella discovered the love of her life on Sanctuary Island, she’d mellowed out quite a bit from the uptight, controlled workaholic Merry grew up with.

“Yes, but not necessarily in a bad way.” Merry shrugged to settle the straps of Alex’s baby carrier more comfortably on her shoulders before hooking one booted heel over the bottom rung of the paddock.

Inside the ring, Jo was putting the demon stallion, otherwise known as Java, through the slow, painstaking exercises Sam had written out for them before he headed back to his horse rescue operation on the mainland.

He’d worked with Java before he left, enough to get the stallion past the point of attacking anyone who entered his stall, but they still had a long way to go before Java would even be reliable enough to turn out in a pasture with Jo’s other horses … much less for someone to get on his back and hope to stay there.

Jo currently had the dark horse on a thirty-foot longe line, encouraging the nervy, stamping stallion to travel in simple circles at the end of the rope, with Jo at the center giving quiet clicks of the tongue. Every time Java moved slowly past their section of fence, Merry saw her sister’s grip on the top slat go white-knuckled.

When they first got to Sanctuary, Ella had actually been afraid of the horses, but with Grady and their mother’s help, she was coming around.

“He’s not going to bolt,” Merry said comfortingly. She pointed to the end of the line, folded over itself in Jo’s hand. “Mom’s got him under control. And anyway, we’re outside the paddock. He can’t get to us.”

“I know that.” As if realizing how defensive she sounded, Ella rolled her eyes at herself and appeared to make a conscious effort to relax. “I don’t know how you can be so calm. That’s the horse who gave your husband a concussion!”

“You can’t hold a grudge against an animal acting out in the exact way he’s been conditioned to behave.” Merry followed Java’s slow, halting progress around the circle with a keen eye. He’d filled out a bit in the weeks since he arrived at Windy Corner Stables, and his gait had improved. The gleaming sheen to his clean, well-brushed coat only made the multitude of scars in his hide stand out more clearly, but he looked a lot better. “Besides, Ben is completely recovered. He’s out on an emergency call on the other end of the island right now.”

“Anyway,” Ella said, determinedly steering them back to the point. “I would think it doesn’t suck to find out that not only is the man you married good in bed—he’s also head over heels in love with you.”

“Who said ‘head over heels’?” Merry demanded. “No one said ‘head over heels.’ In fact, no one said ‘in love,’ either. He could’ve meant, like, family love. Affection and fondness, caring about each other. That would be nice, too.”

“Sure. The kind of family that’s so fond and affectionate, you spent hours kissing and caressing every inch of each other’s bodies.”

“I never should have told you any of this,” Merry moaned. “I regret everything.”

“Everything except marrying Dr. Ben Fairfax and riding him like a pony on your living room sofa.”

“Gah!” Giving up on getting anything useful or helpful out of her sister, Merry made a tactical retreat back to her desk in the tiny, dusty barn office.

Rolling her shoulders in relief—Alex was getting so big, it was quite the workout to lug him around in the baby backpack all day—she settled into her squeaky chair with her baby happily gumming on a teething ring in the playpen beside her.

One grant application, four IRS forms, and a phone interview with yet another occupational therapist later, Merry resurfaced to see Taylor trudge past the open office door.

The teen’s shoulders were rounded, and she kicked angrily at the sawdust covering the floor as she walked.

“Taylor?” Merry called. “Is everything okay?”

Taylor popped her head in the door. “Fine,” she said, unconvincingly.

“Listen, I still feel bad about snitching on you to Mom and Harrison,” Merry began, but Taylor shook her blond head.

“No, you had a lot going on, important stuff. I get it.”

Merry frowned. “You’re important, too. And maybe I lost my chance to be someone you could turn to when you’re in trouble, but I want you to know—I’m still here. I’ll do whatever I can to help you. Whether our parents figure their lives out and get married or not.”

Taylor shrugged, but Merry thought she looked pleased. “Speaking of getting married,” she changed the subject breezily. “How’s married life treating you?”

“Oh, you know.” Merry felt her cheeks heat but tipped up her chin to brazen it out. There was no reason to be embarrassed! Stupid fair skin. “Just spending my Sunday trying to talk a therapist into moving to a tiny island in the middle of nowhere.”

Brightening with interest, Taylor leaned on the door frame. “Hey, Sanctuary is an okay place to live.”

“You and I know that, but it’s been tough to convince the outsiders I’ve talked to. Plus, it’s a very small pond I’m fishing in already. We need a licensed occupational therapist who’s familiar with equine-assisted therapy practices—or maybe a hippotherapy specialist—and that person needs to also be willing to step up and help us staff out the rest of the therapy program, because I’m really not qualified to be hiring…” Merry cut herself off before her spiraling anxiety could choke her.

“Sorry,” she said, grimacing at the wide-eyed look on poor Taylor’s face. “You don’t need to hear about all that. Suffice it to say that there are quite a few bottlenecks on the way to turning Windy Corner into a therapeutic riding facility.”

“No, I do want to hear about it,” Taylor protested. “I want to be involved. If there’s any way I can help…”

Touched, Merry smiled at the girl everyone in town thought was such a hellion that she’d never care about anyone but herself. “Oh, don’t worry, Taylor. We’re going to need you and your expertise with the horses, once the therapy clients start showing up. You’re a part of this—we’re in it together.”

“It’s a really good thing Ella thought of,” Taylor said abruptly, standing up straight. “I never said, after our … misunderstanding about the plans. But I’m glad we’re doing this. It’s important, and we’re going to help a lot of people.”

“Misunderstanding” was a nice word for what ensued after Taylor poked around this office and unearthed Ella’s discarded plans to turn their mother’s stately home into a bed-and-breakfast. Taylor had used the plans to make trouble between Ella and Grady, who was very much against the idea of tourists tramping all over his secluded island haven, but everything had turned out all right in the end.

Once everyone saw Ella’s real plans for the therapeutic riding center, the bank had extended a loan and they’d gotten down to the hard work of turning Ella’s business proposal and sketchy drawings into reality. Until they were up and running and actually bringing money in, however, any penny they could pinch helped.

“I’ll tell Ella you said so,” Merry said. “She’ll like that.”

Taylor made a face. “Ugh, I guess I should tell her myself. Being a grown-up sucks a lot of the time, doesn’t it?”

Shifting in her chair sent an echo of remembered pleasure throbbing through muscles sore from lack of use. Merry felt a smile curve her lips. “You’re doing a pretty good job at it, from what I can see. And there are a few compensations.”

“Yeah, like being allowed to talk to a boy outside of school.” Taylor kicked moodily at the battered wood of the doorway.

“Ah, man troubles. My favorite kind!” Merry kept her voice as light and easy as she could. She and Taylor had come a long way from the open hostility of those early days on the island, and the last thing she wanted to do was scare the girl off. “Come in, come in, and tell me all about it.”

“I’m supposed to be mucking out stalls.” Taylor glanced down the barn hall behind her, clearly reluctant.

“Sure, if you’d rather shovel horse poop than dish about boys…”

That decided Taylor. In seconds, they were installed on the battered couch against the far wall of the office and Taylor was saying, “See, there’s this guy. Matthew Little. I like him, and I think maybe he liked me, for a minute—but I screwed it all up.”

“Yeah, I guess a trespassing and underage drinking charge can put a damper on a fledgling relationship,” Merry said sympathetically. “No judgment—I got into way more than my share of trouble when I was your age. And even older and supposedly more mature.”

Taylor’s mouth twisted in a wry grin. “Thanks. But actually, I don’t think it was the trip to the sheriff’s station that turned Matt off. I think it was my dad and all his overprotective bull about how boys always lead me astray.”

“Your dad is kind of scary, in a tall, dignified way,” Merry pointed out. “Maybe Matt just needs to be around him more, and they’ll each learn to tolerate the other.”

Taylor’s sulky gaze dropped to the floor. “Well,” she said, drawing the word out like stretching taffy. “It might not be only Dad’s fault that Matt won’t return any of my texts…”

“Ah, now we’re getting to it.” Merry leaned in. “Come on, spill.”

“I told my dad—in front of Matt and the sheriff and everyone—that we weren’t dating, that we were just friends.” Taylor tripped over her own story, the words were tumbling out of her mouth so fast. “But right before the sheriff showed up, I think we were about to kiss. Maybe. I don’t know! But Dad was so mad about me breaking my promise not to talk to boys outside of school, and I’m already such a huge disappointment to him, it just popped out. And now I can’t take it back. But even if I could, I’m still not allowed to date! It’s just a mess.”