“Rain check, snow check, middle-of-the-day check.” He did put his hands over her thighs when she went to shift back away from him. “You never told me why you stormed up here in the first place.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “Oh yeah, that.”
“That.”
“It’s all Logan’s fault. And yours.”
“I’m sure it is.”
She looked at him as if trying to decide whether he was teasing. “He wants you at our house tomorrow for Thanksgiving. I was given the task of dragging you back by your shirttails if necessary.”
He stared down at his bare torso. “I guess we’ve made that a little challenging.” He liked the way she laughed, and the way her eyes flared as she slid her gaze over his chest. “Why you?”
She looked back up, met his gaze. “Something about the way you looked at him when you told him I shut you down.”
He’d had no idea what her response was going to be, but that was about as far from it as he could have imagined. “Him meaning Logan? What the hell—?” Then he paused, recalled the basketball game. “He told you that—?”
“You talked about me? Not the nitty-gritty, no. He grilled me, too, so don’t go all Neanderthal on him.”
“Grilled you about what?”
“Not what, who. You.”
“Me? Why?”
“The kiss,” they said at the same time.
“Yeah,” Ben went on. “He might have mentioned he heard about that.”
“And you with no black eyes. Impressive restraint on both your parts, really.”
He grinned ruefully at that. “He asked, I was honest. He gave some mixed signals, but ultimately I didn’t think he was exactly a proponent of my proceeding, so I’m not sure why he’d send you as emissary. Unless it was to kick my ass into never laying a hand on you again.”
“And we can see how well that worked out,” she said dryly. “What did he say? Why did you think he warned you off?”
“He told me he trusted I’d do the right thing.”
“Ouch.”
“Exactly. That’s what I told him. Why were you so pissed off when you got here?”
“Because I felt like some kind of pawn in a game where the rules kept changing. One second I thought Logan was warning me away, the next he was shoving me at you. Then I find out the two of you are in cahoots—”
“There was no hooting, ca or otherwise.” He raised one hand. “Boy Scout’s honor.”
She snorted. “You and Logan were Boy Scouts for about five seconds. Right up until you learned that you had to do more than camp, fish, and build stuff.”
“I still stand by my belief that young boys shouldn’t have to raise livestock.”
“You’re just mad because Logan got to raise the cute little pygmy goat, and you got stuck with that nasty duck.”
“That, too,” he said, with an unrepentant smile. “I still have scars from that beast.”
“Be that as it may, when the two of you hook up, you are still your own troop of two, and I wasn’t particularly thrilled with any part of my future being decided without me being consulted first.”
“He just wanted me to come to dinner. Unless there’s something else you’re not telling me.”
“No, no, that’s it. Only that’s never it. If he really just wanted you there, he’d have made it happen. He wouldn’t have enlisted me.”
Ben ran his hands up her thighs. “So, are you saying you think we have his blessing?”
She batted his hands away. “No, I’m saying that it’s not up to Logan to bless us or otherwise.”
“Well, it would be nice to know I’m not risking permanent physical scarring every time I put my hands on you.”
She very pointedly picked his hands up and removed them from her legs. “And I’m saying the only person you need to concern yourself with in regards to getting physically damaged by putting your hands on me . . . is me.”
“Yes, come to think of it, I do still have a pretty nasty scar on the back of my head where you beaned me with that piece of ice.”
“You’re still holding that against me? We were what, six and ten? Besides, I didn’t actually think I’d hit my target. I mean, have you met me? But the fact that I did, well . . . you deserved it. Even the fates knew it, and gave me a one-time perfect pitch.”
“I don’t even remember why you threw it, but yeah,” he said, grinning, “you’re probably right.”
“So, you’re coming to dinner tomorrow whether you want to or not. You can use our house as home base for any organizing you’re doing between the farm and tree stands. It’s only for a couple of hours, and you don’t officially open until Friday anyway.”
“Will you wear the Hall of Sexy Knits sweater?”
“Don’t bargain with me, Ben Campbell,” she warned, but her cheeks had turned that nice shade of pink again, and her eyes were twinkling.
He didn’t think he’d ever seen anything or anyone more beautiful.
Both of their phones chose that moment to go off, startling them.
“The real world beckons,” she said. “Probably Logan wondering if I followed orders. He’s such a cop sometimes.”
Ben palmed his from his back jeans pocket, and frowned, then went to slide it back in his pocket, unanswered.
“It is Logan.” She didn’t pick up her call either, and looked at him expectantly.
“Nothing important,” he replied, because the last thing he wanted to talk about with Fiona was why Annalise Manderville was calling him.
She stared at him a moment longer, then shifted so she could slide her legs out from between them, but he beat her to it and framed her hips to help her off the counter. Only he didn’t let go of her once she was standing again.
“Why don’t you go call back whoever it is you don’t want to talk to in front of me, and I’ll check in with Logan on my way back home? I should get out of here before the snow starts.”
“I’m not sure that’s—”
He broke off when Fiona’s phone rang again. “Now it’s Hannah.” She looked up at him for a moment, and he could see a dawning awareness that something might be wrong.
“Take it,” he said, urging her to answer. “I’ll go check the weather status.”
He reluctantly let her go as she touched the ACCEPT button, but had stepped out onto the back porch before he overheard anything that was said. He didn’t even debate calling Annalise back. He had nothing more to say to her. He rubbed his arms as the frigid wind cut through the screen and right into his bare skin. He didn’t need to stand out there more than a second to see where they were on the weather front. Snow was falling thick and fast. The ground already had snow on it from previous storms, but there was fresh powder twinkling in the light emanating from the spotlights nailed to tall wooden poles, helping to light the grounds between the main house and the outbuildings.
He was just thinking he was sure hoping whatever was going on back in the Cove didn’t require Fiona’s immediate presence as she met him in the open doorway to the porch.
“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.”
Chapter Fifteen
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.”
Snowflake Bay Page 18
