Snowflake Bay (20 page)

“They're rushing Fergus to the hospital. Hannah thinks it's a heart attack. I have to go.”

She looked past him to the snow and he saw her shoulders slump and her face go slack.

“I'll get you there,” he said. “I've got four-wheel drive and the roads can't be that bad yet. It's powder, not sleet or ice. Let me get dressed.”

“Ben—”

He stepped into the kitchen, closed the door behind him, and pulled her in for a fast, tight hug. “That thing you mentioned about being there for me? Well, that goes both ways. If you want to argue about it, we can do it on the way back to Pelican Point. Or—where is he?”

“They're transporting him to Pelican Bay Hospital.” She looked up at him. “And I wasn't going to argue.” She lifted up on her toes and kissed him square on the mouth. “I was going to say thank you.”

He didn't know what to say to that, or how to explain even to himself how it made him feel. He grabbed his pile of shirts and she turned to gather her coat from the floor.

“It was Annalise,” he blurted out as he pulled the layers back on again, then grabbed his heavier canvas coat from the back of the door. “On the phone just now. Her folks want to trot me out as a showpiece because of the
AE
piece and God only knows what Annalise wants. I don't plan to have any part of it, but I can't control what she does.”

“Why are you telling me that?” she said, as he led the way through the kitchen to the mudroom on the side of the house and the door that led directly to the cavernous four-car garage and workshop that had been built onto the house back when Ben had been in grade school.

He gestured toward the large, dark green SUV with Rhode Island plates. “That's mine. Go on around and get in while I pull up the door. The automatic opener hasn't worked in ages.” He dragged the door up, snow swirling in as it curved up along the ceiling tracks, then climbed in the truck and turned the key that was always left in the ignition when he was at the farm, and revved the engine a bit before backing out. He got out, dragged the door back down, then hopped back in the truck and buckled himself in.

One glance at Fiona and her expectant gaze told him she still wanted an answer to her earlier question. He wasn't sure how to explain it, as he hadn't planned on saying anything about Annalise, so he just told her the truth as he saw it. “Because I don't want any secrets with you. No games. No agendas, hidden or otherwise. We didn't have sex, and yet, what we just spent the past twenty minutes doing in the kitchen—”

“We were only talking.”

“I know. And it felt like the most intimate thing I've done with a woman, possibly ever. I know that sounds crazy, but—”

“No, no, it doesn't,” she said quietly.

Once he'd backed out of the garage, he glanced at her as he got the defroster going and the wiper blades switched on. “Okay. Then you should also know that I want to take you to bed, and sooner rather than later, after what we need to do for Fergus and your family, of course, but—”

“Okay,” she said. Simply. Directly.

He glanced over at her and she was holding his gaze just as simply, just as directly. Only it felt . . . monumental. “Okay,” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said again, then turned her attention to the long driveway that led to the main road. “Okay.”

To her frustration, Fiona spent most of the drive dealing with dropped calls, first with Hannah, then Logan, then Hannah again. The coastal area wasn't known for its superb cell service to begin with, and now the storm was taking what little reliability they had and wreaking havoc with it, as it was with the roads.

Even with four-wheel drive and few to no other drivers on the back roads, Ben was having to take it slow, and the wind-blown snow was reducing visibility to just a few feet in front of the vehicle. If it had been for any other reason than a family emergency, she'd never have gone out in it, and she certainly wouldn't have dragged anyone else out with her. She felt bad for doing that to Ben, but at the same time, she was grateful he was getting her to Fergus, so she let him focus on the road and she focused on trying to get an update on her great uncle's condition.

Fergus McCrae wasn't exactly her great uncle; he was a cousin of their grandfather's who had come over from Ireland when Fiona was twelve, intent on starting a new life and also lending a hand with raising his cousin's four orphaned grandchildren. Logan had always called him Uncle Gus, and he was all that to them and more. He'd been their sole patriarch now going on eight years since their grandfather had passed away.

He was short, stout, with a shock of white hair ringing his bald head, a thick beard he said was to prove he could still grow hair somewhere, and bright blue eyes that were twinkling more often than not. He loved them all like they were his own, and she and her siblings felt pretty much the same way about him. He was the youngest of a “passel of McCraes” as he'd called them, and so had always had a special bond with Kerry, the youngest of their clan. At seventy-five years of age, he'd run the Rusty Puffin pub for twenty years now. Hard to believe it had been so long, Fiona thought, but in other ways, it felt like forever and more.

“No luck?” Ben asked.

She shook her head, then realized he was paying attention to the road, and said, “No, I can't get through, and when I do, there's so much background static, I can't make out what they're saying. I've tried to text, but my messages keep bouncing back undelivered.”

“Try my phone,” he said, pulling it out of his chest pocket. “It's a different service from yours, I think, so who knows. I can usually get texts out even in crap like this. Logan has my number in his phone, so he'll know who it's from.”

She took it from him. “Thank you.” She turned it on and immediately saw the missed-call notice from Annalise. It made her thankful all over again that he'd told her, not because he owed it to her, though she supposed if they really were going to follow through on their mutual attraction, she'd expect him not to be following through, as it were, with anyone else.

There was also the fact that every time she heard Annalise's name, or even saw it pop up so intimately on his phone, she wanted to confront the wench and tell her to back off. Which, admittedly, helped to clarify where she stood on the subject of wanting Ben in her life.

All of that, however, was a big jumble of stuff she couldn't focus on at the moment, while all of her energy was directed at her family and making sure she wasn't about to lose another one of them. She did admit to a momentary stab of pleasure in deleting Annalise's missed call message, but hell, she was human. A quick glance at Ben showed he was focusing on the road again, so she found his messaging app and typed in Logan's number, which came up with his name after the first few numbers. She asked for an update and let him know it was her using Ben's phone, and that they were being slowed down by the snow, but that they would get there.

She hit
SEND
, and waited.

“Did Hannah say what happened exactly?” Ben asked. He'd left her to her attempts to reach her family since they'd been on the road, so this was the first he'd really asked about what she knew.

“She said he'd mentioned to Kerry that he had a terrible headache. He'd seemed a bit tipsy to her, which was odd, because when Fergus does indulge, it's never when he's working. And even when he does indulge, he can hold his liquor and is never tipsy. Still, she didn't really think anything of it. He works himself half to death, so when he told her he was going back to his office to sit down for a bit, do some of the ordering, and try to shake the headache, she left him to it and held down the fort up front.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, chilled despite the heater blasting on high inside the cab. It wasn't the kind of chill a heater could help. “It was busy for an afternoon, but with Thanksgiving and the storm coming, she thought maybe folks were trying to stave off the impending cabin fever for as long as possible. So, she wasn't really paying attention to the time, but when the place started thinning out before dinner she realized he'd been back there a long time. Even then, she figured he'd fallen asleep at his desk, wouldn't be the first time. When she found him slumped over his desk, she thought he was asleep. Only then she couldn't wake him up.” She shuddered and tried not to picture it, tried not to think about what must have gone through Kerry's mind, and failed in both areas.

Ben reached over and placed his wide palm on her thigh and squeezed gently, then rubbed a soothing hand back and forth. “That's rough,” he said. “I can't imagine if I'd found my dad like that. Either of my parents.”

“She called 911, then called Logan, and, well, the rest is whatever is happening at the hospital. His pulse was thready, Hannah said, but steady, so there's that. They thought it might be an aneurysm, because of the headache and dizziness, except those are usually catastrophic, but I'm sure they'll check that possibility out. And then, when Kerry told them he'd seemed tipsy and had a bad headache, the EMTs said those were classic signs of a stroke. Poor Hannah just went through all that with Calder's father. In his case, the stroke was mild, but the cause was a rather large brain tumor. He's had it removed, but the recovery has been slow.” She rubbed her arms again. “I hate that she's having to relive it all now with her own family.”

“I'm really sorry,” Ben said. “I know it's frustrating not being there, but Fergus has the whole rest of the family with him, and you know they're making sure he's getting the best care possible.”

Fiona nodded, wishing it made her feel better. She wasn't normally the kind who fell apart in a crisis. She was the kind who usually took charge and did what was needed to fix the situation. But unable to do that, she felt helpless, dry eyed, and hollow. There was a dull throb at the base of her skull, a tightening along her spine, and her heart didn't want to seem to slow down to its normal pace. She willed herself to try to relax and not get all knotted up, but that was easier said than done.

“How's Kerry?” Ben asked.

Fi was touched by the question, and thought again how thankful she was that she had Ben with her. Not just because she trusted him to deliver her to the hospital, but because he knew her family, so he'd understand that Kerry would take this all on herself. “She blames herself, of course. And I'm sure no amount of telling her otherwise is going to change that. It will take Fergus getting up and walking out of there unscathed for her to be right with everything again, and even then, she'll be hard on herself for putting him through that much.”

“She didn't put him through anything,” Ben said, but he was already nodding and rubbing her thigh again. “I know she believes that, but those symptoms could have meant any number of things. Barring any other health issues or previous scares, I'd never have realized Fergus was having a stroke. No one would. Hell, my mom had been seeing signs that something was off with my dad for months before she could finally get him to go to the doctor, and I never saw any of it.”

“You weren't looking,” Fiona said. “Your mom didn't tell you? That must have been hard on her.” She glanced at him. “I'm guessing you beat yourself up over that, too.”

“She was trying to spare me. And, I think, she was privately hoping she was wrong, and that there was some other reason, maybe, for the things she was seeing.”

“Were you mad that she didn't confide in you?”

“Oh yeah. And then I felt guilty as hell about that, too. Not that I told her that I was upset, but I'm sure she knew I was anyway. She even apologized, which pissed me off all over again.” He blew out a sigh. “It was a complicated time. We did our best to just be there for Dad and for each other, but I won't lie and say we didn't have our moments.”

“Something like that would never be simple or smooth. And I'm sure your dad wasn't making it any easier on either of you. He must have been so scared.”

“Still is,” Ben said quietly. “And yes, that is the hardest part. I mean, my dad could be the most stubborn, frustrating person on the planet, but he was like a rock when it came to being there for his family. So . . . yeah, it's a little terrifying to think of him as anything but being in complete control, of himself and everything around him.”

“Do you worry that your mom won't keep you truly informed about his progress? Or the progress of the disease?”

“No, not now, I don't. We have a solemn pact. And she made sure we were both co-executors of my dad's estate and personal well being, so we'll both be involved in seeing he has the best care as time goes on. My mom knows I'm there no matter what.”

Fiona found a smile for him. “I think that's a really good thing. I'm glad your dad has both of you. When will you see them again?”

“I'm thinking of going down and surprising them on Christmas Day. Though I'll probably have to tell my mom in advance, just to make sure it won't upset anything with my dad. I don't think it will at this point, but better safe and all that. The tree stands and the cut-your-own at the farm all close on Christmas Eve. I was originally planning to head back down to Portsmouth and use the holiday and weekend after to catch up on things there, but . . .” He let the sentence trail off.

“Christmas is a time for family. And you want to be with yours while you can, while it's good. No one is more aware of that at the moment than I am.”

He reached over and took her hand then, and held it in his for as long as he could until he needed to put both hands back on the wheel. She was surprised, she guessed, by the level of comfort there could be in such a simple gesture. She hated what was happening with his parents, both of whom she considered to be extended family, even if her contact with them in recent years had been reduced to seeing them at holiday time when she was home from the city. But, at the same time, she was grateful for any conversation that could distract her from her own troubles. Neither she nor Ben could do anything more than they were doing, so maybe talking about it was good for him, too. She hoped so.

She was holding his phone in her other hand and started when it vibrated. She looked down and read Logan's reply: Are you close?

A feeling of absolute dread and out-and-out fear went straight down her spine, and this time, the tears did rush to her eyes. She had to blink several times to see what she was texting back to him. “Yes,” she said out loud as she typed. “We're almost there.”

“What is it?” Ben asked as he glanced from the road to her, then back to the road. “What did he say?”

“He asked if we were close.” Her breath caught on the sob she was trying to keep in her throat.

“Come here,” he said. “There's a seat belt in the middle.”

“But you need to—”

“I need you right here. We're almost there, and now that we're in a bigger town, the roads aren't as bad. Come on. Huddle up.”

She didn't need to be asked twice. She couldn't recall ever being this scared. She'd only been three when her parents had died, and any real memory of that time was mixed up with all the stories she'd heard over the years. Her grandfather had been ill for some months before he passed, and so there had been time to adjust, and it had been a blessing when his time came, as it relieved him of suffering. The realization that she might never speak to Fergus again, never hear him laugh, never get one of his bear hugs, which were pretty much the best hugs in existence, caught at her throat.

Ben kept both hands on the wheel, and Fiona did as he'd asked. She huddled next to him, and just the feeling of his sturdy, solid frame bracketing hers helped to get her emotions back under control.

“Hold on,” he said, and she grabbed his thigh as they bumped over a plowed berm of snow and up into the hospital parking lot. “I'm going to drop you off at the emergency room door and go park.”

“You don't have to stay. I didn't mean for you to drive in the storm, either, I was just—I don't expect—”

He leaned down and quieted her with a kiss. It was gentle, but solid all at the same time. “I'll park and come in. I won't get in your way, but I'd feel better if—”

“Thank you,” she said, hearing the thickness in the words, knowing the emotion clogging her throat now was both her fear about Fergus and her gratitude for his solid, unwavering support. “I would, too.”

He pulled in under the covered entranceway and idled there. “You'll feel better when you see him,” he told her.

“I hope so.” She undid her seat belt, then realized she was still holding his phone. “Oh, here. Thank you. I'm just—I don't know where he is, so—”

“Go,” he said, taking the phone. “I'll find you.”

She leaned up and kissed him. “I'm glad you're here,” she said thickly, then scooted across the bench seat and let herself out of the truck, sliding carefully until her feet hit the salted, slushy pavement.