Shoreline Drive (32 page)

“Wasn’t really thinking.” She felt him shrug under her cheek. “Just moving on instinct, I guess.”

“It’s weird,” Merry observed, her mouth pressed to his shoulder. “Part of me wants to yell at you for putting yourself in danger. But the rest of me just wants to thank you.”

“Go with the rest of you,” Ben suggested. “No yelling. That’s what got us into this in the first place.”

“What do you mean?” Merry struggled to sit up and get a clear view of Ben’s face.

“Nothing.” His mouth went flat and expressionless. “Put your head back on my shoulder, that was nice.”

Merry obeyed easily, since it was what she wanted to do anyway. “In case I wasn’t clear before, thank you. For saving my life and keeping Alex safe. Again.”

“Again?” She heard the frown in his voice and hid a smile in his shirt. So like Ben, not to keep track of the ways he’d been heroic—but maybe he didn’t think of it as heroism.

Just instinct.

“The night Alex was born,” Merry reminded him. “You rushed through a storm to help me through hours of labor in less than ideal conditions. And you got us both through it in one piece—just like today. So thank you, Ben Fairfax. That’s two I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything. I didn’t do it, any of it, to make you feel indebted.”

“I know that.” Reacting to the seriousness of Ben’s voice, Merry sat up and scooted around to look him in the eye. “Ben. I do know that. I’m sorry, it was only a figure of speech.”

The lines bracketing his mouth smoothed out a bit, although the shadows remained in his eyes as they searched her face and scanned over her body and Alex’s as if double-checking for injuries, stealth blood spurts or secret broken bones. “When I saw that horse coming for you—”

He broke off, his throat clicking with the movement of his Adam’s apple as he looked away.

Merry’s heart picked up speed. “We’re fine,” she said again, palming Alex’s downy head and shuffling closer to Ben. “But feel free to examine us for yourself.”

Ben didn’t move, so Merry did. Knee-walking between his spread legs, Merry matter-of-factly picked up Ben’s heavy arms, one at a time, and draped them around her. The moment she was in his embrace, Ben’s arms tightened, pulling her gently, carefully against him, ever watchful of the lump of Alex snuggled in between their chests.

Letting out a long sigh, Merry fit her head into that perfect curve between Ben’s neck and his shoulder. “This is nice. I’ve missed this.”

“So have I.” Ben whispered it, like a secret confession, and Merry let the words wash through her.

Perfectly content for the first time in days, she murmured, “It sucks that it took poor Java having a fit out of nowhere for us to get here.”

Pressed as tightly together as they were, Merry couldn’t miss it when Ben went rigid.

“What?” she asked.

Ben didn’t answer, but another voice did. “He doesn’t want to say.”

“Ivan!” She’d completely forgotten about him. He went to the bathroom so long ago, and she’d been a little distracted by nearly getting trampled. But still, guilt tugged at her until she sat up to stare at him. “Did you see what happened?”

“Oh, I saw it.” All his habitual cocky charm was gone, subsumed into a depression she’d only seen on him once or twice in the year they’d lived together. Self-loathing curled his upper lip and firmed his jaw. “What your husband is too stand-up a guy to tell you is that it was all my fault.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Your fault!” Merry pulled out of Ben’s arms, leaving them feeling cold and a little useless. He dropped them to rest on his knees as she moved away. “How could it be your fault?”

“It wasn’t,” Ben interrupted firmly. “Or if it was Ivan’s fault, then it was equally mine. We were talking, and it got a little … heated.”

“I yelled.” Ivan crossed his arms over his chest, his hunched posture making him look smaller. “Even though you told me about that horse, you warned me not to make loud noises or sudden movements, but when I got mad, I just forgot all of that and I yelled, and you and the kid almost got crushed to death.”

This opening brought back memories. Ivan was in full confessional mode. In a minute, he’d admit to every tiny wrongdoing he’d been feeling guilty about, offloading the whole lot in a giant dump with a sigh of relief and the happy expectation of imminent forgiveness.

When they were together, it had worked on Merry pretty much every time—all the self-blame and brutal honesty was attractive, and it felt good to be able to pet Ivan and forgive him. Making him feel better about himself had made Merry feel good, too.

Looking at him now, Merry had to hold in a sigh. She was about to let him off the hook again … but this time, it was because she wanted him to go away and let her get back to whatever was happening with Ben.

“Ivan, it’s fine. We’re okay, no one was hurt. You made a mistake, but honestly, you couldn’t even have shouted all that loudly—Mom and I didn’t hear it. It’s only that Java was abused, we think, by a male owner, so he’s sort of attuned to masculine voices raised in anger.”

But there was no stopping Ivan in confessional mode. He was determined to get through this part to the petting and forgiveness. “I should never have even come here—I’ve done nothing but cause trouble.”

Merry bit her lip and cast a sideways glance at Ben. That much was absolutely true, and she wouldn’t contradict it. But to her surprise, her rational, reserved husband’s eyes burned with outrage. Anger pulled every muscle of his body taut, jerking him to his feet like a marionette.

Hopping back a step, Ivan’s face went ashy. “Hold on, man! I’m trying to come clean and apologize.”

Wait. What else did Ivan need to confess?

“Just shut up,” Ben snarled, with a quick glance down at Merry, still sitting on the ground.

She was starting to feel at a disadvantage down here, at eye level with everyone’s knees. “Ben, help me up. Come on, heave.”

He grasped her wrists and pulled her off the ground, steadying her until he knew her knees would lock into place. “Maybe you should take Alex up to the office and put him in his playpen, see if he’ll nap. He’s had a lot of excitement this morning already.”

Pulling away to stand on her own, Merry looked back and forth between her husband and her ex. Something was going on here. “No. I want to hear what Ivan has to say.”

Even though, for some reason, Ben didn’t want her to hear it.

Something flashed through his gaze, too fast for her to catch, but he ignored her stiffness and put his arm around her shoulders, standing with her as they faced Ivan together.

“Okay.” Ivan sniffled, digging the toe of his Doc Martens boot into the grass. “The truth is, life’s been kind of crazy, you know—I lost my job, I was running out of money—and then these rich people showed up.”

Merry went cold all over, as if someone were cycling out her blood and replacing it with ice water. “Ben’s parents,” she said through numb lips.

Ivan nodded, shamefaced. “And they offered me money—like, a lot of money, enough to cover rent for a year—to come here and see my kid. And I was curious anyway! It’s not like I really never wanted to see you again, and I had plans to look you up as soon as things turned around for me, so when they said they’d write me a check if I came and asserted my rights … it was like, perfect.”

Perfect. Merry had almost wrecked her marriage fighting for her son’s relationship with a man who thought it was “perfect” that he’d had to be bribed into seeing him.

“You are unbelievable.” She barely recognized her own voice, it was so shaky and enraged. “Get out of my sight, Ivan, I can’t even look at you right now.”

Ivan’s big brown cow eyes went round with surprise. “But … I’m sorry! I want a chance to make it up to you!”

“This time, that’s not enough,” Merry told him, clenching her jaw. “And honestly, I don’t care what you want. I have to think about my family first.”

And find out exactly how Ben knew what you were about to say.

Understanding settled slowly over Ivan’s even features as he glanced from the inflexible look on Merry’s face up to Ben. “Oh. Right. Um, I’ll just … is there a place in town I could get some food? I’m kind of starving, and the next ferry isn’t for a while yet…”

“The Firefly Café,” Ben said briskly. “Corner of Main Street and Wildflower Bend, right across from the library. Tell Penny we sent you, she’ll take care of you.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll just…” Ivan gestured behind him, all his usual smooth charm evaporating like the morning frost melting off the grass.

Merry turned her back on him, barely aware of the halting sound of his boots retreating up the path to the barn. All her attention was for Ben, now. Ben, who stared down at her with shadowed eyes.

“You knew,” she said, cupping her arms reflexively around Alex. “Since when?”

He sighed. “About five seconds before Java got loose. Something Ivan said when we were arguing—that I’d have to offer him twice as much to get him to leave.”

“Oh.” Merry felt sick all over again.

“But I didn’t put it together until he was standing there spilling his guts. I’m sorry, Merry.”

“You!” She shook her head. “What are you apologizing for?”

His mouth twisted wryly. “For being born to Tripp and Pamela Fairfax? I want to say I can’t believe they’d do something like this, but the truth is, I can. So maybe I’m apologizing for not figuring it out sooner and stopping them.”

Ben tucked a lock of Merry’s hair behind her ear, the brush of his fingers sending shivers skating down her neck. “Or it could be that I’m sorry for the way this is hurting you.”

Merry turned her head to press a kiss into the palm of Ben’s hand. “I wasn’t the only one who got hurt. I know you felt pushed aside when I let Ivan in. I regret that, so much. But there was more going on than I was ready to deal with.” She paused, unsure she’d even be able to get the words out.

“I felt guilty,” she admitted, her voice a thread of sound. Ben tilted his head down until their foreheads were almost touching. “Because I’ve been so angry at Ivan for leaving me, for refusing to take responsibility—but I was almost as bad. When I found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t happy. I was terrified. I didn’t know anything about being a mother—I barely even remembered my mom from when I was a kid—and my whole life was about to change. I thought really seriously about ending the pregnancy.”

“Shh,” Ben said softly, pain pulling his mouth into a frown. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to—”

“I do, though.” Merry sucked back the tears that wanted to overflow. “I need you to understand. I honestly thought there was no way I’d be able to care for a child, that any kid of mine would have a disaster of a mom who ruined everything. But when it came right down to it, something stopped me. I just couldn’t go through with it—even though, rationally, it was nuts for me to have a baby on my own, no job, no way of supporting myself. But it was the right choice for me. And when I think about it now, it stops my heart every time, how close I came to never having Alex at all.”

“I know.”

Merry jerked back, shattered. “You know?”

“Ivan told me.” Ben tipped her chin up with his fingers and forced her to meet his gaze when it was the last thing she wanted to do. “In the middle of our fight. Ivan threw it at me like a punch, as if he expected it to change anything about what I feel for you.”

Breathing hard, Merry said, “And? Did it?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way.” Ben cupped her jaw and gazed lovingly into her upturned face. “But you’re an idiot.”

That was it. Merry laughed and sobbed at the same time, emotion welling out of her in an uncontrollable fountain. She threw her arms around Ben and hung on for dear life.

“I just wanted,” she said, her words muffled by his chest. “I wanted so badly for Ivan to be exactly what he said he was: regretful, eager to have a relationship with his son. I thought, what could be wrong about Alex having three parents who love him?”

“I get that.” Ben’s voice was so tender, it made Merry’s heart ache. “I do. And I wish I hadn’t been such an ass about it. You’re right—the more love in Alex’s life, the better off he’ll be.”

But that wasn’t enough. From the beginning, Ben was the one making all the concessions, putting aside what he wanted and letting Merry dictate the terms. This time, she was going to make damn sure he got everything he wanted and deserved—and that included her and Alex.

“Take me to the Firefly,” Merry said, scrubbing her face dry, determination giving her new energy. “I want to catch Ivan before he leaves the island.”

Resignation and acceptance settled over Ben like a worn, comfortable jacket. “Okay. Might as well put the dumb kid out of his misery and tell him he’s forgiven.”

“Oh, I will,” Merry said as they started up the hill to Ben’s truck. “Ivan
is
a kid, an immature child who’s been spoiled by all the people in his life catering to his every whim and indulging his moods—but he didn’t mean to endanger us with his tantrum. The bribery, though.”

She paused, still a little gutted by the fact that she’d so misread the situation.

“My parents can be very persuasive,” Ben said grimly.

“I’m sure it didn’t take much. You heard him—he was offered money to do what he already had a half-formed desire to do anyway. In Ivan’s world, that’s a win-win, no downside. In his mind, I’m sure he wasn’t even lying about his motives for being here. But I don’t think I can forgive him for what he almost did to our marriage—at least, not yet.”

“Then why are we going to the café? So you can tell him off again? Not that I’m arguing.” Ben opened the passenger side door and helped Merry transfer Alex to the baby seat in the back.

“No.” Determination flooded Merry in a strengthening tide as she climbed onto the bench seat and waited for Ben to go around to the driver side. “You and I made an agreement, and I should never have endangered that. No matter what you say, you are the one who’s always there for Alex when he needs you. Screw genetics—you’re his father. I’m going to tell Ivan I want him to sign away his paternal rights, so you can officially adopt Alex as your son.”