Sanctuary Island (35 page)
“Birth is birth.” Ben rolled up his shirtsleeves and went back to setting out his tools. “It’s the first clue we get that life is going to be messy and painful, but it’s not complicated.”
“Unless there are complications.” She sounded calm, but Ben saw the way her fingers clutched, white-knuckled, at the quilted bedspread. “I’m three weeks early.”
He wanted to tell her to stop worrying, the baby was done cooking and everything was going to be fine—but he wouldn’t say that until after he’d examined her.
It was weird, almost like an out-of-body experience, to stare down at Merry’s pale, strained face and the taut, swollen line of her stomach. Sometime between entering the room and this moment, he’d made the switch in his head.
Merry wasn’t a person right now. She wasn’t the woman who reminded him he was human and made him want to snarl and snap and avoid her for it. She wasn’t beautiful or sexy or funny or vivacious or stubborn or kind.
She was his patient, and she was in pain. Nothing else mattered.
The next hour passed in a blur. Merry showed a surprising amount of backbone and determination for someone who generally faced the world with a smile and a twinkle in her eye. She battled her own body and the forces of nature to bring her son squawling into the world.
Hands moving on automatic, the dance of his fingers and muscles a response choreographed by hours of practice and an unswerving instinct, Ben was there for all of it. For Merry’s heaving breaths and near-silent cries of pain to her exhausted, incandescent smile when he laid the naked, squirming infant on her quivering stomach.
No matter how many times he witnessed it, Ben knew he’d never get tired of the rush he felt at the awe-inspiring spectacle of birth. What he’d told Merry was true—it was painful and messy, for sure.
But it was also the closest a man like Ben was ever going to get to touching pure joy.
There was a lot of confusion and chaotic happiness, Jo Ellen crying and her older daughter, Ella, rushing in dripping rainwater all over the floor with Ben’s best friend, Grady Wilkes. Lots of hugging and explanations and chatter, and Ben didn’t bother to follow any of it. He’d get the details from Grady later.
In the meantime, Ben would do his damnedest to allow the peace of the moment to wash through him like a wave over the beach. And like the ocean, he couldn’t help coming back again and again, just to make sure Merry and the baby were still there, still breathing, still okay.
When the conversation turned to names, Ben busied himself with packing away his medical kit. He didn’t want to hear Merry talk about the baby’s mysterious, absent father.
Not because it bothered him. It was more that it was boring. Predictable. Merry had fallen for an asshole—any guy who let his beautiful, sexy, very pregnant girlfriend traipse off without him was, by definition, an asshole—but if he ever showed the least bit of interest in her and the baby, she’d probably go running back to him. Statistics didn’t lie.
Except it turned out that she didn’t intend to name her son after his father.
“What’s your middle name, Doc?”
Her voice was awfully chipper for a woman who’d been holding back screams for the last two hours.
“Why?” Ben countered.
Merry rolled her eyes. “I’m not planning to steal your identity or something. Come on, answer the question.”
Ben paused, debated. Couldn’t come up with a reason not to tell her. “Alexander.”
She got that thoughtful look on her bright, open face.
And that was it. Merry’s son was named Alexander Hollister Preston.
Preston, which meant she wasn’t giving him the biological father’s last name. Hollister, which meant she wanted him to have a connection to her mother’s family.
And Alexander—nicknamed Alex within an hour of being born—for Ben.
He really didn’t know how he felt about that.
At some point after Grady and Ella cleared out to let Merry get some much needed sleep, Jo excused herself to take a phone call in the front parlor, leaving Ben to watch over her daughter and new grandson.
“Thank you.” Merry sighed, eyelids fluttering as she struggled to stay awake with her son lying on her chest under the sheet.
“You said that already,” Ben reminded her, but his usual sharpness was blunted around the edges. He felt … softened. By exhaustion—now that the adrenaline was draining out of his system, he was aware of every ache and pain—but even more, by the simple happiness glowing in the depths of Merry’s bright blue eyes.
Propping his hip on the edge of the bed, he tried to let the unfamiliarity of wanting to be nice settle in his chest. “Besides, the hard part was all you. You did very well.”
Merry gave him a slight smile. “You’re not as much of a dick as you want everyone to think you are.”
“No, I really am,” he told her honestly. “Doesn’t mean I can’t give credit where it’s due.”
Beneath the sheet, baby Alex snuffled against Merry’s breast and made a sound that was like nothing so much as a piglet rooting for its mother’s milk. Merry winced as he latched on, an odd expression on her face.
“Hurts?” Ben stood up, ready to dig through his canvas bag for … what? He didn’t exactly keep plastic nipple guards in human sizes on hand.
“A little. It’s weird.” She let her head fall back against the headboard with a muted
thunk
, stars in her eyes. “But kind of satisfying.”
You’re going to be a good mother, he wanted to say. Ben clamped his lips shut stubbornly. Sentimental idiocy. There was no guarantee Merry would be any better at parenting than anyone else.
The only guarantee was that she’d mess up that kid the way all parents messed up their kids, even the loving parents. Maybe especially the loving parents.
But at least she’d have the chance to try and get it right.
A familiar ache swelled and bloomed under his breastbone like a spreader inserted between his ribs, cracking him open wide.
Dr. Ben Fairfax stared down at Merry Preston nursing her baby for the first time and, all of a sudden, he knew exactly how he felt about having that kid named after him.
He liked it.
But it wasn’t enough. He wanted more.
Merry yawned, a real jaw cracker, without a trace of self-consciousness, her deep blue eyes hidden under the sweep of long lashes a shade or two darker than the roots of dyed-pink hair over the pillow. Alex was an impossibly small, perfect bump under the sheets.
Ben stood there and let the wave crash over him.
I want Merry and Alex to be my family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lily Everett
grew up in a small town in Virginia reading
Misty of Chincoteague
and
Black Beauty
, taking riding lessons, and longing for a horse of her own. Sadly, her parents gave her a college education instead—but she never forgot what the world looked like from the back of a horse. She currently lives in Austin, Texas, where she writes full-time.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
SANCTUARY ISLAND
Copyright © 2013 by Lily Everett.
Excerpt from
Shoreline Drive
copyright © 2013 by Lily Everett.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
eISBN: 9781466808089
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / August 2013
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Don’t miss Lily Everett’s Billionaire Brothers novella trilogy—an eBook exclusive!
The Firefly Café
The Summer Cottage
Island Road
