“Practical as well as beautiful.”

“Stop.”

“Stop what?” Without thinking, Ben pushed back the curl that fell into her face.

Heather willed her knees to return to their previous solid state and concentrated on the words and not the butterflies that were materializing.

“That,” she said thickly. “You don’t have to say nice things to me.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to say nice things to you?”

Words floated away from her brain like so many shards of ice, melting into nothingness. She shrugged. “You don’t have to.”

“Why don’t you leave that decision to me?” he suggested.

Before she could answer, before she could even draw a single breath into her suddenly grossly oxygen-depleted lungs, Ben was framing her face with his hands, mingling her space with his own.

And then, just like that, there was no space left between them at all.

Dear Reader,

Well, by now you must have realized that I hate letting go. The last book in this series was supposed to be the last book. However, a reader wrote and asked me what happened to Shayne’s brother, Ben, the man who in effect was the reason behind the series in the first place. I never had any intentions of giving him his own story—until I was faced with saying goodbye to Hades permanently. And then, I began to think that this might be a perfect way to end the series, to bring it full circle to Ben, whose flight from Hades was the reason for his brother eventually finding the love of his life. So here now is Ben, an older, wiser, contrite Ben, back after all this time to make amends because he, like that little girl with the scarlet shoes ahead of him, has come to realize that there’s no place like home and nothing like family.

I wish you all much love in your lives,

Marie Ferrarella

The Prodigal M.D. Returns
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author has written over 150 books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.

To Katherine Orr,

with thanks.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter One

The warm, late-June breeze ruffled Ben Kerrigan’s dark-blond hair as he raised his hand to knock on the door of the rustic, two-story house that stood just outside of the town of Hades, Alaska. This was the house where he had grown up. The house he had abruptly left early one morning seven years ago.

He’d been standing on the porch for the past few eternal moments, and he’d already raised his hand twice. His knuckles had made no contact with the weathered wood either time. Instead he’d dropped his hand to his side, as if all the energy had drained out of it.

Cowardice was something new for him.

For most of his thirty-four years, he’d sailed swiftly and happily through life. He’d had so much zest, it all but oozed out of him. Yes, there’d been mistakes, a whole host of them. God knew he would be the first to admit that, but somehow he managed to continue sailing because somehow, almost magically, difficulties always managed to get smoothed over.

A rueful smile twisted his lips as he stared at the door. In large part, the “smoothing over” had been due to Shayne, his older brother, the brother who had watched out for him, who’d raised him from the time their parents had died. Shayne had been the one who’d worked like a dog to put Ben through medical school so that when he graduated, he would return and work alongside him in the tiny medical clinic that was the only one of its kind within a hundred-mile radius. It was Shayne who had always been there to pick up the slack, the pieces, to fix whatever it was that needed fixing for him.

He hadn’t seen Shayne for seven years now.

Hadn’t seen Shayne or heard from him. Not since he had left town with Lila when she’d unexpectedly told him that she’d marry him, but only if they left Hades. That was seven years ago.

So he left with her. He’d run off, leaving Shayne to cope not just with the myriad of patients at the clinic, but with the two children that his ex-wife’s recent death had deposited on his doorstep—two children he hadn’t been allowed to see since almost infancy.

Then there was the woman that Ben had asked to come up to Hades. To marry him. That had evolved almost without his realizing it, at a time when his relationship with Lila had seemed impossible. The woman had written to him, commenting on an article he’d written in a travel magazine. He wrote back. One thing led to another and it turned into a love affair rooted in words. Photographs had been exchanged, but they had never laid eyes on each other before he’d proposed and she had accepted.

Looking back, he knew he’d been impetuous, but that was the way he’d always conducted himself. That word, more than any other, best described him. Impetuous. He’d tried to work on this in recent years. Especially this past one, after Lila walked out on him again.

The back of his neck prickled and he rubbed his hand over it, shifting uncomfortably, but remaining where he was. In front of the door. Knowing he had to knock, yet not being able to quite get himself to do it.

Having Lila walk out on him had taught him that being impetuous sometimes carried with it undesirable consequences. Waking up alone in their house had accomplished what years of Shayne’s lectures hadn’t. It had brought home the fact that he needed to become a little more responsible.

Hell, a lot more responsible. And he had, as time went on. Remaining in Seattle, he’d managed to attach himself to a very lucrative medical practice.

Working there with four other partners soon gave him everything he’d ever wanted.

Everything except a feeling of satisfaction.

Satisfaction continued to elude him, and this bothered him no matter how much he told himself it didn’t.

As each month passed, his feeling of emptiness became stronger.

And the women who passed through his life didn’t seem to matter. Sadly, they became interchangeable, their faces never leaving an impression on his mind. On his soul. Something else gnawed away at him. Something that went beyond primal appetites. He realized that there had to be more to life than this.

Ben began to think of himself in terms of the main character in Coleridge’s epic poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Though his outward demeanor never changed, inside was a different story. Inside he needed to atone for what he had done. He needed to find peace.

And then one evening, it came to him. He understood the source of his unrest. And, quite possibly, saw the source of his eventual healing.

On one of the public stations, there’d been a week devoted to Mother Nature’s natural disasters. Leading off had been a story about cave-ins. One of them had lasted perhaps a whole ten seconds and had occurred in Hades, his hometown. It wasn’t even a recent cave-in, just part of some old footage captured by a local station about mine cave-ins around the country and how they still occurred with more frequency than anyone was happy about.

That night, as he sat on the edge of his chair, recalling events from his childhood, he thought of Shayne. Shayne, who’d undoubtedly been in the thick of it, working madly to help with the wounded. Shayne, battling to make things right, the way he always did, and doing it almost single-handedly. Because that was the way Shayne was, a little larger than life and working for the good of others.

Ben had switched off the set and sat in the dark, thinking. Wrestling with his conscience. Shayne had always been there for him. It was time to be there for Shayne.

On the trip from Seattle to Hades, the last leg of which had been on a private plane he’d managed to hire for the drop-off, Ben had gone over this scenario more than a hundred times in his mind. He would appear on Shayne’s doorstep, knock and then be enveloped in a reunion. He figured there’d be an initial awkwardness, quickly followed by his own heartfelt apology and Shayne’s swift forgiveness. Shayne had forgiven him before.

He’d been confident that things would go back to the way they had once been.

But now that he was standing here, with the sun still casting shadows on the ground despite its being close to nine o’clock at night, he wasn’t so confident anymore. The cheerful, devil-may-care attitude that had been the hallmark of his entire life had almost entirely deserted him. In truth, his confidence had been in rather short supply this past year, although he’d done his best to hide it.

Ben stared at the door. Damn it, he should have remained in contact with Shayne over the years. He should have sent a card that first Christmas, a card with a lengthy apology for having left his brother with such a mess to deal with. He’d been almost narcissistic then. He wasn’t now.

Yet hindsight didn’t change the past.

And each year that he hadn’t sent that card or made that apology had made it that much harder for him to reestablish contact. Under normal circumstances he might not be making this attempt now.

But that cave-in program had brought things home to him in large, glaring letters and, what was more important, he now had a sense of his own mortality. A month ago he’d almost become a statistic. Another statistic in a lengthy list of traffic fatalities. He had been in the same kind of accident that had claimed the lives of his parents all those years ago. He felt as if someone or something was putting him on notice. He had allowed too much time to go by and wanted to spend the rest of his days with the only family he had: his brother, Shayne.

He needed to set things right. If that meant crawling, so be it. He’d crawl. Shayne had earned it.

Taking a deep breath, Ben raised his hand, and this time he knocked. Knocked hard. Before his courage fled again, before his arm returned to the consistency of overcooked spaghetti.

He heard a noise on the other side. Shayne, he thought. He hoped he hadn’t woken him up. Shayne was prone to grabbing catnaps whenever he could. There were huge demands placed on the town’s only doctor.

A fresh wave of guilt swept over Ben. I’ll make it right, he vowed. Shayne wasn’t going to have to shoulder this alone anymore.

As the door opened, Ben’s mind suddenly went blank. He searched for the right words that would put the past behind them and allow them to move forward. And yet, he couldn’t form an appropriate greeting. Especially when Ben found himself looking not at his brother but at a woman. A slender, petite woman with long blond hair, lively blue eyes and a heart-shaped face that seemed to exude warmth. The breathtaking sight nudged at something buried deep within his memory banks. But at the moment he couldn’t capture the elusive fragments.

“You’re not Shayne,” he heard himself say rather dumbly.

Sydney Elliott Kerrigan stopped drying her hands and stared at the man standing rather uncertainly on her doorstep. Strangers were not a common occurrence in Hades. The town and its surrounding area were not exactly on the beaten path. Outsiders did not usually trickle in unless to visit a relative.

Yet, as she looked at him, some vague familiarity fluttered along the perimeter of her memory, softly whispering that this man was not a stranger. She knew him. But from where? When? Seattle? No connection sprang to mind. She replied, “No, I’m not Shayne,” to his surprised statement. Her smile widened as she struggled to place his face in the pages of her memory. “Are you looking for the doctor?”

Ben made no answer and wondered if he had the right house. He took a step back to glance at the front of the house, even though he knew in his soul that he hadn’t made a mistake, hadn’t lost his way.

But if this was still Shayne’s house, who was this? She wasn’t anyone who’d been living in Hades when he’d left town.

Sydney drew in her breath as her memory clicked into place.

The tall man standing before her, now slightly older and more sober looking, had been in the photograph she’d held in her hand as she’d gotten off the plane seven years ago. She’d come to Hades looking for a new life. Looking for happiness. On the strength of his letters and his proposal, she’d quit her job, terminated the lease on her apartment and packed all her worldly goods into a moving van to send them off to Hades.

Her heart stopped for a moment as recognition took hold. This was the face of the man who’d wooed her to come out here and be his wife.

The face of the man who had not been here to meet her plane or her.

She needed one final verification. “Ben?”

How did she know him? Had Shayne mentioned him, shown her a picture? “Yes, I—”

And then Ben stopped, his eyes widening ever so slightly as, out of the blue, his mind made a connection.

“Sydney?”

But even as he asked, he knew who she was. Sydney Elliott. He’d seen exactly one photograph of her. She’d sent it to him in one of her long, eloquent handwritten letters. Curiosity outweighed his guilt. What was she still doing here after all this time? He had just assumed that Shayne would have met her plane the way he’d requested, explained the situation to her and then sent her back home with airfare and apologies.

Before he could speak further, Ben found himself enveloped in the woman’s warm embrace. Stunned, his breath caught in his throat before he awkwardly put his arms around her.

Had she been waiting here all this time for him?

No, that wasn’t possible. That went beyond the patience of Job and slipped straight into the realm of pure fantasy. There had to be some kind of explanation.

Maybe he’d made a mistake.

“Who is it, Sydney?” Shayne Kerrigan called out to his wife as he walked into the living room from the kitchen. Dog-tired after the hours he’d put in at the clinic, he sincerely hoped that this was a social call instead of someone needing his professional help.

Loosening her embrace, Sydney stepped back and looked at Shayne. “Have we got a fatted calf we could put on the spit?”

He dearly loved his wife, but he wasn’t in the best of moods right now. Frowning, he came forward, crossing to the door. “What are you talking about, woman? What—”

Shayne stopped dead, staring at the man who was standing beside his wife. He felt as if he’d just seen a ghost.

And was still seeing him.

“Hello, Shayne.” Ben flashed a broad smile at his brother. His insides felt like Jell-O. He supposed it was a sign that he’d grown up. He was no longer ignoring the consequences of his actions. And he certainly didn’t feel himself to be the center of the universe. Though he wanted to shake his brother’s hand, he found himself unable to move.

Shayne squared his shoulders, his face darkening. “What are you doing here?”

“Standing in our doorway,” Sydney replied cheerfully. She obviously wanted to be the peacemaker. Hooking her arms through Ben’s, she drew him across the threshold and into the house. “Come in, Ben.” Releasing him, she closed the door behind her brother-in-law, acting as if there was no history, no awkward past to overcome. “Have you eaten? We finished dinner a couple of hours ago, but there’s plenty to—”

Shayne had not moved an inch since recognition had set in. “Get out,” he ordered, his voice low, his lips barely moving.

Sydney’s head jerked around in Shayne’s direction. Bad blood or not, she seemed stunned to hear her husband’s inhospitable words. Shayne had been a taciturn man when she’d first arrived, as warm as one of the intricately carved totem poles that could be found dotting the harsh terrain. But beneath the hard exterior, she had discovered the soul of a man who cared, who was there for his neighbors and his patients, giving more than he ever thought to get back.

Locked within himself at an early age, Shayne had never been able to express his feelings in any way verbally other than what amounted to a monosyllabic growl. His caring came out in the way he tended to the sick and the wounded. Sydney had been the one who had helped him out of his self-made prison, who had helped him bond with the two children who hardly even knew their father.

During the seven years that she had been married to him, Shayne had slowly become more at ease with himself. While no one could have accused him of exactly being warm and toasty, his enormous capacity for compassion was no longer a matter of question but of record.

She frowned at him now. “He’s your brother, Shayne.”

Shayne looked at his wife in surprise. “He’s the man who ran out on you, Sydney—on both of us—with nothing more than a note.” His anger growing, he glanced at his younger brother. “One lousy note and nothing more. Not in seven whole years,” he emphasized, moving closer to Ben. Cutting Sydney out of his line of vision. “What’s the matter, Ben? Are you in trouble? Do you need money? Is someone after you? Some woman you promised the moon to and who isn’t satisfied with being left behind like some discarded tissue?”

He had that coming to him, Ben thought. That and a great deal more. And if Shayne gave him a chance, he’d say so. He’d apologize in every way he knew how. Life was too short to leave things the way they were.

“No, I just wanted to see you. To tell you I was sorry.”

Shayne gave no indication that the words made any impression on him. His brother continued to glare at him. “And then what?”

Ben felt as if he was standing at the very edge of a cliff, overlooking choppy waters. Any moment he could lose his footing and fall off. But he hadn’t come here to play it safe. He’d come here to make amends.

“That’s up to you.”

Shayne snorted, shaking his head. Unconvinced. He knew Ben could turn on the charm and let it flow like others turned on a faucet. He’d seen his brother do it over and over again, avoiding penalties for his actions from the time he was old enough to widen his soulful eyes.

“Very tender, Ben, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

“Shayne.” Sydney tugged on his arm.

“Damn it, Sydney, this is the man who jilted you. Who treated you as if you were just so much disposable dirt.”

“This is the man who’s responsible for the greatest happiness I’ve ever known,” she informed Shayne firmly. “If it hadn’t been for Ben, I would never have come up here. I would never have been in a position where I couldn’t just pick up and go back to what had been my home. If not for Ben, I would never have met our two beautiful children, never been blessed with having them in my life.”

Her eyes held his. “If not for Ben, I would never have met you.” Her voice softening, she laced her fingers through his, her eyes never leaving his face. “I would never have given birth to our daughter or been as sublimely happy as I am right at this very moment.”

The news hit Ben like a ton of bricks. The town’s men outnumbered the women seven to one. Given Shayne’s personality, he’d never thought his brother would get married. Ben’s jaw dropped as he looked from the petite woman to his brother. “You married my brother?”

“Seemed like the thing to do at the time,” Sydney said with a laugh that warmed the room. “Shayne was very lost.”

Originally, she’d intended to remain until her furniture arrived. She was going to tell the movers to turn around and take everything back to Seattle. But by the time her furniture came, she had lost her heart to the stern doctor and his two motherless children. There was no way she would ever have gone back.

“And he definitely needed a woman’s touch, because he wasn’t doing all that hot on his own,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes.

“I would have been fine,” Shayne informed her, softening despite himself. “In time.”

She slid her arms through her husband’s and leaned into him. “There’s not that much time available in the whole world,” she teased. And then, feigning a look of innocence, she asked, “Can he stay, Shayne? Please?”

The anger was already fading. When it came to Sydney, Shayne found he had trouble saying no. Even when he felt he should.

And when he allowed himself to admit it in the secret places of his soul, he had missed his brother a great deal. Worried about him and wondered what he was doing and where he had gone. It was like a wound that had refused to heal. Not knowing, not having any answers, had kept it that way.

“Yeah,” Shayne mumbled grudgingly, his eyes still only on Sydney. “He can stay.”

Chapter Two

“What are you really doing here?” Shayne asked as he closed the door to his den. Shayne had brought Ben into the small room, sealing them away from the rest of his family. He looked at him now, waiting for an answer.

Taking a seat on the creased dark-brown leather sofa, Ben looked around. And remembered.

The somewhat cluttered rectangular room, smelling of lemon polish and wood, hardly looked any different from when they’d played “fort” years ago, huddling beneath the scarred oak desk, pretending they were manning a fortress against some mysterious enemy. Back then the room with its stone fireplace had been their father’s den and had smelled of cherrywood, the pipe tobacco their father favored.

Ben glanced at the wall adjacent to the fireplace. The floor-to-ceiling bookcase was jammed with books. His parents’ library had been augmented with the medical books they both had pored over in school. His eyes came to rest on one shelf near the bottom. Instead of technical manuals or the classic literature that had belonged to their parents, the shelf housed what appeared to be a host of well-handled children’s books.

His brother’s life had a good balance to it, Ben thought. Unlike his own.

In his opinion, the last hour or so had gone rather well. Better than he’d anticipated when he’d first walked in. The children, Shayne’s son and daughter from his previous marriage and the five-year-old product of his present union with Sydney had all taken to him.

Granted, the two older kids had been a little wary at first, and he could see they had their father’s cautious approach when it came to people and trust. But the little one was different. She had climbed up onto his lap almost immediately, winning him over faster than he could win her. By the time he’d finished eating the meal Sydney had insisted on placing before him, Ben felt pretty certain he had been welcomed back into the family fold.

By everyone except the man he’d wounded most.

Crossing one ankle over a thigh, Ben selected his words with care. He’d made peace with the fact that a great deal of effort was needed before Shayne would believe his sincerity. Before Shayne would stop looking at him warily, as if waiting for him to bolt.

But that was okay, Ben thought. He was prepared to go the distance. If Shayne wanted him to jump through flaming hoops, he’d jump through flaming hoops. He owed Shayne that much. And more.

“I already told you,” Ben replied amiably. “I came back to apologize. And to make amends,” he added. He watched as Shayne paced about the small room, never taking his eyes off his older brother.

“Suppose, for the moment, that I were to believe you.” No clue in Shayne’s voice let him know which way he was leaning. Turning sharply on his heel, he pinned Ben with a look. “Just how would you go about doing that?”

Ben met his gaze head-on, never wavering. “By staying here. By doing what you originally planned and working beside you at the clinic.”

The words struck a faraway chord, nudging at memories that had belonged to the idealistic man Shayne had once allowed himself to be before seeing how foolish that was. He’d since made his peace with reality, striking an acceptable middle path. And then had become incredibly surprised when Sydney had come into his life and he’d discovered that life actually had more to offer. But this wasn’t about him; this was about Ben. And Ben was about irresponsibility.

Shayne’s eyes narrowed as he glared at his younger brother. He wasn’t going to be taken in so easily. “When was the last time you practiced medicine?”

An easy grin slipped over Ben’s lips. “I don’t have to practice, I’ve got it down pat.” Seeing the exasperated look on Shayne’s face, Ben immediately raised his hands in complete surrender to ward off any words or rebuke. “Sorry. I could never resist that line.”

Shayne’s face darkened. “Medicine’s not a joke, Ben. Especially not here.”

Ben’s expression sobered. “No, it’s not. You’re absolutely right. And to answer your question, last week.” He saw Shayne raise an eyebrow quizzically. “That’s when I last practiced medicine. Last week. Wednesday.”

Shayne waited for the punch line. When it didn’t come, he provided it by recalling Ben’s old tricks. “Playing doctor with a willing woman—”

“Has its rewards,” Ben concluded freely. “But I wasn’t playing, Shay,” he insisted. “I was part of a medical group in Seattle. My specialty is pediatric care.” He didn’t add that it was a very lucrative practice. That by coming here he had walked away from an income that totaled almost half a million dollars a year. Shayne was not impressed by statistics like that. To Shayne it had always been about the healing, nothing else. “There were four of us in the partnership,” he explained. “Andrew Bell specializes in orthopedics, Will Jeffries is an internist and Josiah Witwer is a cardiologist.”

“And your specialty is children,” Shayne repeated.

Ben couldn’t tell if Shayne was interested or just going through the motions. He did know, though, that he’d missed Shayne. Missed him more than he’d ever realized. Missed, too, how good Shayne’s nod of approval had made him feel. He needed that nod again.

“Yes,” Ben answered, then added, “We’d all overlap, taking over if someone was away. But mostly we stuck to our fields of expertise.”

Shayne nodded, his expression stoic. “Pay’s good, I imagine.”

There was no point to lying. “Pay’s great. But this isn’t about the pay, Shay,” Ben insisted. “This is about coming back. About finding a place for myself.”

No one knew better than Shayne how persuasive Ben could be. His charm had gotten him out of many sessions of detention, out of well-deserved punishments. He had a glib tongue and a Teflon body. There was no place for either in his clinic.

Reaching for the decanter of brandy he kept on his desk, Shayne poured a small glass for Ben and then one for himself. “We don’t need someone who wants to put on a hair shirt for a week and then take off—”

“I’m not going to take off,” Ben said, interrupting him. The smile on his lips had faded just a little. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I’m good, Shayne. You know that. I’ll do whatever you need.”

Shayne sat down on the edge of the desk and sipped his brandy slowly, watching his brother over the rim of his glass.

“What happened?” he finally asked.

Ben shrugged carelessly. “I grew up.”

“I mean to Lila.”

Ben took a breath, as if to brace himself against the words. Against the memory. “She left me,” he said simply. Raising his glass in a silent toast, he took a healthy sip before lowering it again. “That was part of the growing process.”

“Left you,” Shayne said slowly, as if digesting the information. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.” It still felt incredibly painful, more than a year later. It had taken him a year to get his act together, to take his feelings out of deep freeze. “One morning I rolled over in bed and reached out for her, but she was gone.” There’d been just the shortest of notes to say that they were different people now and she was leaving because she was bored.

Shayne watched him for a long moment. He couldn’t help feeling just the slightest bit vindicated. “Hard being disappointed in someone you thought you could count on, isn’t it?”

He had that coming, Ben thought. But even so, he couldn’t help the defensive response that rose to his lips. “I’m sorry that I hurt you, but you should have known better than to count on me back then. You were always the stable one.”

Being the stable one was a quality that, though expected, was so easily taken for granted. At times, he felt like a roof, there to give shelter and never to be noticed. Not like Ben. “And you were the one everyone doted on.”

“And the one nobody took seriously,” Ben said. He took another long sip of brandy. The guilty feelings that had haunted him, that had brought him here, refused to be sublimated.

Shayne laughed shortly. “You didn’t want to be taken seriously.”

That was the boy he’d been. But he wasn’t a boy any longer. “I do now.” Putting down his glass, Ben looked his brother in the eye. “Whatever it takes, Shay. Whatever it takes,” he repeated with feeling. “I want to stay in Hades.”

Shayne gave no indication as to whether or not he welcomed his brother’s presence. The suspicious glint in his eyes remained. “Someone suing you for malpractice?”

Ben shook his head. He had that coming, too, he supposed. That and a lot more. Time and again, he’d taken Shayne’s trust and abused it. But he was here now and he was going to prove himself. No matter how long it took. “I’m a good surgeon, Shayne. A good doctor.” His record was without blemish. Whatever else he might have been, he was always dedicated to his profession. “You could use the help.”

“I have the help,” Shayne countered. He poured himself a little more brandy, topping off Ben’s glass. “Since you’ve been gone, I’ve taken on a nurse practitioner and she lured her brother to come settle here. He’s a heart specialist. Jimmy Quintano.”

Silence wove its way around the corners as Ben absorbed what his brother had just said. He’d never thought that anyone would actually come here. When he was growing up, everyone wanted to leave Hades. Everyone but Shayne and his friend Ike.

“Then the answer’s no?” Ben finally asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Shayne said, warming the glass between his hands. “You can join me at the clinic. But we go by my rules.”

Ben felt the way he had as a kid in the dead of winter when he finally saw a ray of sunshine slicing through the eternal darkness. He grinned at his brother. “Whatever you say.”

“The first thing I ‘say,’” he told Ben, finishing his drink, “is that the clinic opens at seven.” He received the expected response from Ben, who looked properly sobered by the piece of information. “Something you’d like to say about that, Ben?”

Ben gave him a completely innocent look that didn’t fool his brother for a moment. “Yeah, can I catch a ride with you?”

Shayne snorted. “Seeing as how you’ll be sleeping in the guest room tonight, I don’t suppose that’ll be a hardship.”

Unable to contain his enthusiasm, Ben rose to his feet and embraced his brother. Shayne endured the contact, neither returning the embrace nor moving back to terminate it.

“It’s good to be back, Shayne.”

“We’ll see, Ben. We’ll see.” The look on Shayne’s face as they separated told Ben that his older brother was far from being won over yet.

But he would be, Ben promised himself silently.

He’d never been a morning person. Ever.

The two cups of extrastrong black coffee that were now infiltrating his veins, attempting to jolt his bloodstream into some semblance of attention, helped a little but not nearly enough. The swaying of the Jeep as Shayne drove them into town the next morning was all but lulling him back to sleep. It was a struggle to keep his eyes open.

When he realized that his lids had shut, he jerked his head up, but not before Shayne spared him a look. “I can still turn around and drop you off back at the house, Sleeping Beauty.”

Ben shifted in his seat. “Nope, I’m fine.”

Shayne laughed. “Yeah, for a zombie.”

Busted, Ben yawned and stretched, rotating his shoulders. “Just takes me longer to come around, that’s all.” Shayne had always been just the opposite, getting up in what amounted to the middle of the night as far as he was concerned. Like the marines, his brother got more done before eight in the morning than most people accomplished all day. “Besides, I’ve always done my best work after twelve.”

Shayne gave him a knowing look. “Yeah, I know.”

For once he wasn’t referring to anything that had to do with the fairer sex. He was being serious. “You know what I mean.”

Shayne merely slanted a glance at him before pulling his Jeep into the first parking space located directly at the rear of the clinic.

They were here. He hadn’t even realized it, Ben thought. Shayne had taken the shorter route, not through the town but the back roads, and they had approached the whitewashed, single-story building from the rear.

Getting out, Ben took in the building with its fresh coat of paint. The paint wasn’t the only thing that seemed new. He followed Shayne up the back stairs as he unlocked the door. “Is it my imagination or—”

“We’ve added on,” Shayne told him. “A couple more exam rooms,” he specified, “and an O.R. for minor surgery. Anything major we still send them on to Anchorage General.” That was one of the reasons he and Sydney had a single-engine plane, so that patients could be flown to the city if need be.

“More exam rooms,” Ben echoed. “Is the town really growing?”

“Some,” Shayne allowed. Walking in first, he waited for Ben to cross the threshold, then shut the door again. The clinic was almost eerily quiet. “We’ve had some new blood come in.” Shayne went into his office. He took out his lab coat and put it on. As an afterthought, he reached in for his spare one and held it out to Ben. “And fewer people leave.”

Ben slipped on the white coat. Almost like old times, he thought. “That new blood, is it responsible for the restaurant and emporium I saw when I was driving through?”

Shayne smiled to himself. By regular standards, the town was almost standing still. But as far as the citizens of Hades were considered, they were experiencing a building boom. An actual firehouse had been constructed less than a year ago, joining a renovated movie theater and a very small hotel.

“In part. Ike and Jean Luc have been investing in the town and adding buildings here and there.”

“Ike? You mean the bartender at the Red Dog Saloon? Your friend, Ike LeBlanc?” Growing up, Ike and Shayne had been friends. He remembered the man as being outgoing and gregarious, while his cousin, Jean Luc, had been the quiet one. He couldn’t picture either as entrepreneurs.

Shayne nodded, straightening the collar on his lab coat. “He’s branching out.”

Following Shayne into the main reception room, Ben shook his head. He never thought progress would come to Hades, a place that had seemed frozen in time when he’d lived here. “I’ve missed a lot, haven’t I?”

“Yeah, you have. But you can catch up.” Shayne realized that he shouldn’t count on his brother so soon. Ben had a long way to go before he proved himself dependable. “If you’re serious about staying.”

“Very serious.” Whatever else Ben was going to say was temporarily placed on hold as he looked out the window that faced the front of the clinic. He saw a willowy-looking blonde holding on to two little girls. The twosome seemed determined to pull as far away from each other as possible, taking their mother with them. He glanced at his watch again. A shade before seven. “Looks like you’ve got patients.”

Shayne glanced at the appointment book that Alison had left opened for him on her desk. Right beside it was a computer tower holding the exact same information. Sydney teased him and called him her lovable dinosaur, but he’d always preferred paper and pen. It made him feel more hands-on and in control of a situation. Software could whimsically swallow up all the information just when he needed it most.

“That would be Heather and her two girls, Hannah and Hayley,” Shayne told him.

“Heather?” The instant he repeated the name, bits and pieces of memories came flying back to him. Memories he realized he had all but forgotten. Memories that made him smile.

She looked thinner, he thought. And prettier, although definitely more harried.

“Heather Kendall. Ryan,” Shayne clarified. He couldn’t remember if Ben had left Hades before or after Heather had married Joe Kendall.

Ben stepped away from the window but continued to look at the woman and her daughters. All three were unaware that they were being observed.

“I know who she is.”

Ben’s quiet tone caught Shayne’s attention. He vaguely recalled that there’d been something between Ben and Heather, but then, at one point or another there’d been something between Ben and every female under the age of fifty in Hades. Never mind that the men outnumbered the women in Hades by seven to one and any woman had her pick of men. Every female Shayne knew of had chosen Ben at one time, and he had chosen them.

About to unlock the front door, Shayne paused, looking at his brother. “You okay?”

Ben shook off the memory of one exquisite night by the lake and skin softer than silk.

“Like I said, I’m fine.” He flashed a grin. “Nothing more coffee won’t help.”

“Coffeemaker’s in the back,” Shayne told him. “Feel free to pitch in. Alison hates making coffee.” Flipping the lock, he opened the double doors and smiled down at the two energetic little girls. “Hello, Hannah, Hayley.” He looked up at Heather. “You’re early.”

As she struggled with her daughters, who were now tugging harder, not just to avoid each other but to get away altogether, Heather offered Shayne a smile that was just a little weary around the edges.

“I know. Lily’s giving me the morning off, but Beth just called me to say that she’s not feeling well and won’t be coming into the restaurant. That leaves Lily juggling the breakfast crowd on her own.” Lily had been good to her, coming to her rescue when Joe was killed in the cave-in and offering her a job. She’d been the world’s worst waitress, but Lily had stuck by her. Leaving her in the lurch was not the way to repay her. “I hate doing that to her.”

Shayne shook his head. “If I know Lily, she’ll get Max to wait on tables.”

Max Yearling was Hades’s lone law enforcement officer. He was also Lily’s husband. Like Jimmy Quintano, Lily had come to Hades by way of Alison, who in turn had found her way to Hades because of Luc. Luc had gone to Seattle on vacation and on his first day there, had come to her rescue when someone had attempted to mug her. It was because of Luc she’d learned about Shayne and his clinic. Eager to make a difference, she’d come up to the tiny town to work. Her siblings had come to visit. And one by one, each had lost their hearts, not just to the land but to the people bound to it.

Shayne smiled to himself. In a way, the town’s history was like one long, intricate nursery rhyme, with one family member following another. Hades now boasted of four Quintanos, three of whom were married to Yearlings, while Alison, who had come to him originally to become an accredited nurse practitioner, was now married to Jean Luc.

“I’d rather she didn’t. I need the job,” Heather told him, only half joking.

Hannah, her six-year-old, was struggling to break free and make a dash for the front parking lot. “I don’t want a shot,” Hayley protested vehemently, her lower lip quivering as tears began to fill her eyes.

“No shots today,” Shayne promised. “Just a check-up to see if that nasty rash you and your sister have been passing to each other has finally cleared up.”

“A nasty rash?” Ben repeated in mock disbelief as he came forward. He looked from one girl to the other, appropriately wide-eyed. “You two girls don’t look as if you’d have a nasty rash.”

“We did,” Hayley, the more outgoing of the two, declared. She pointed a finger at her older sister. “Hannah got it first because she was playing in the bushes Mama told her not to.”

Fear faded as Hannah took offense, embarrassed in front of the stranger. “Was not.”

Hayley fisted her free hand at her waist the way she’d seen her mother do. “Was, too.”

Ben got down on one knee, refereeing. “I bet that old bush just jumped up at you and grabbed you, didn’t it, honey?”

The excuse clearly appealed to Hannah, who nodded her blond head vigorously, sending her curls bouncing up and down. “Uh-huh.”

“Gotta watch out for those magical bushes,” Ben agreed. “They’re fast. Where did it grab you?”

Hannah never hesitated. She pushed her sleeve up immediately, exposing her right arm. She pointed to an area that had been an angry pink only a couple of days ago. “Right here.”

Still on his knee, Ben examined the area carefully. “Looks like it’s gone to me.”

“Mama rubs this yucky stuff on us,” Hayley told him, moving aside her own sleeve to show him that her skin was clear as well.

“That’s because she loves you.” Ben looked up at Heather. “Right, Mama?”

Heather forced herself to nod her head, her eyes almost glued to the man talking to her daughters. Her voice had deserted her around the same time that the temperature in the room had gone up twenty degrees and the lights had suddenly dimmed to the point where she had to struggle to keep from slipping into darkness herself.

She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, its cadence echoing the refrain that kept repeating itself in her head: He’s back.

Ben’s back.

Chapter Three

“Looks like both your girls are doing very well,” Shayne told Heather. Or the woman that had been Heather until a couple of minutes ago, Shayne thought as he glanced at the shell-shocked expression on her pretty face. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who’d been caught off guard by his brother’s sudden reappearance in town. “Heather,” he added for good measure.

When the girls’ mother gave no indication that she had even heard him, he repeated her name, a bit more forcefully this time. From all appearances, Ben had lost none of his magnetic pull nor any of his effect on women.

Shayne shifted until he was directly in front of her. Almost amused, he passed a hand in front of her face. It was a beat before she even blinked.

“Heather,” he deadpanned, “how long have you had this hearing loss?”

It took all she had to pull herself out of the mental abyss into which she’d unexpectedly sunk. Shaking off the mental cobweb as best as she could, Heather looked at Shayne.

“What? Oh, I’m sorry, Doc Shayne, it’s just that, well—” Words deserted her.

“Yes,” Shayne said, glancing toward Ben, “he has that effect on all of us.” There was only the slightest hint of sarcasm in his tone.

“No, no, I mean—” Flustered, Heather struggled to get a hold of herself. “I’m just surprised to see—to see Ben back, that’s all.” Trying to address Shayne, her eyes were still drawn to Ben as she spoke.

Damn, she was doing it again, tripping over her own tongue. But then, as her mother had enjoyed pointing out, she’d never been one of those women for whom composure was second nature. Composure wasn’t even remotely residing in her neighborhood at the moment.

Heather made another attempt to collect herself. She wasn’t that wide-eyed twenty-three-year-old Ben had made love with by the lake that last summer before he abruptly disappeared. She was years older than the seven that had passed. Life’s requirements had done that to her. They had made her a mother twice over, as well as a wife, then a widow.

These days she found herself being a caretaker, her mother’s keeper, in addition to being the sole support of her little family. Most of the time, she was also her mother’s chief source of money, as well.

Her mother.

Oh, wow. Martha Ryan was going to have a lot of choice things to say once word of Ben’s return reached her. Even if she said nothing to her mother herself, and she didn’t really intend to, the woman would find out. Word always spread in Hades.

Anticipation coursed through her veins. Her mother had never liked Ben. Whenever she did mention his name, Martha Ryan always compared him to the husband who had first deserted her and then divorced her through a lawyer he’d retained in Wichita, Kansas. As she grew older, Heather ceased to hold her father’s disappearance against him. Instead she began to understand why he’d gone. It had a great deal to do with self-preservation.

She felt Ben’s deep-green eyes on her and did her best not to squirm. Not to react at all. She succeeded marginally. But then, she’d heard that stone statues reacted to his gaze.

Heather cleared her throat. “Are you back?” she managed to ask, fervently praying she’d sounded at least a little aloof.

Her cool demeanor, if attained, was spoiled by Hayley’s very plaintive and accusing wail. “Mama, you’re squeezing my fingers off.”

Heather instantly loosened her grip. “Sorry, baby,” she murmured under her breath. Even as she uttered the words, she could feel several shades of pink dash up the sides of her throat. The colors spread even more rapidly to her cheeks.

“No need to hold on to her so tightly,” Ben told her genially. He looked down at the younger girl. “She’s not going anywhere, are you, Hayley?”

Hayley, like every female over the age of twelve months, instantly responded to both his tone and his smile. She shook her head madly from side to side, her eyes never breaking contact with his.

“Uh-uh.”

The next moment she was tugging her hand away from her mother’s grasp. The second she was free, she slipped her hand into his, accompanying the action with a huge smile aimed directly at him. Unknown to her five minutes ago, the man had suddenly become the center of her universe.

That’s the way it usually was, Heather thought ruefully. Every girl she’d gone to school with had a crush on Ben.

He didn’t remember her being this pretty, Ben thought. Or this silent. For a moment he forgot that Shayne was her doctor. “Do you have time for a thorough exam?” he asked her. When he saw Heather’s eyes widen in surprise, Ben realized that he had left off a few crucial words that might make the difference. “Of the girls,” he added. “Just to put your mind at rest.”

Beside him, he heard Shayne’s impatient intake of breath. He’d stepped on toes again. But no one else was in the clinic and there was time to be thorough. What he recalled most about practicing here with Shayne was that they’d always been rushed to see as many patients as they could within the space of a day.

“That’s okay. You don’t need to bother. The rash was only on their arms.” It took everything she had not to turn and run, clutching her daughters to her. Her own voice sounded almost breathless to her as she answered.

C’mon, Heather, get a grip.

Heather tamped down an onslaught of erupting nerves. She needed to calm down before she made a complete idiot of herself.

Very carefully Ben examined the arms of first Hannah, then Hayley before making his pronouncement. He addressed his conclusions not to Heather, but to her daughters, who appeared to absorb his words as if they were tiny little sponges. Their eyes shone at being treated like adults.

“I’m happy to tell you girls that there’s no rash here now. Guess the yucky medicine made it go away.”

“Guess so,” Hayley agreed, solemnly nodding her head.

Hannah said nothing, only looked at him with her wide green eyes. When he returned her gaze, she suddenly turned shy, shifting closer to her mother. Though part of her face was buried in Heather’s shirt, Hannah kept one watchful eye on him.

Heather pasted a smile on her lips as she turned to Shayne. “I guess this means I’m not going to be late after all.” She glanced at her watch. “If I hurry to get the girls back home.”

“Need a ride?” Ben offered. He was aware of the sharp look that his brother gave him. But it was too late to gracefully rescind his offer.

Heather was already edging her way over toward the front door, drawing Hannah with her. Hayley was another story. “I have my car.”

“I’ll go with him,” Hayley volunteered eagerly, her eyes all but lighting up.

Shayne interceded. Without looking at Ben, he squatted down to Hayley’s level. “Sorry, honey, but I need him here. He’s a doctor,” Shayne told her.

Hayley’s perfectly shaped, tiny golden eyebrows knitted themselves over her nose as she pondered what Shayne had just told her. Looking up at her new hero, she asked, “You’re like him?”

Shayne placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder as if for the little girl’s benefit. “He’s working his way up,” he responded before Ben could say anything.

Ben flashed a grin at his brother. “And I’ve got a long way to go.”

“But you’re bigger,” Hayley pointed out in earnest, looking from one man to the other.

Amused, Ben assured her, “Size doesn’t matter in this case.” Glancing toward Heather, he noticed that Hannah was now burying her face in the fold of what there was of her mother’s skirt.

Heather had a great pair of legs. But then, she always did have. He remembered watching her practice cheerleading moves on the field while he and his friends were supposedly listening to the coach give orders. He allowed himself a moment to appreciate the view. For old-time’s sake.

“Is there anything else while you’re here?” Shayne asked her.

Heather shook her head, a little emphatically in Shayne’s estimation. “No. Thank you.” She felt behind her for the doorknob. Finding it, she held on as if it represented her ticket to freedom. “I can pay you around the middle—”

Shayne waved away her words. “Follow-up care. See you girls later.”

“Um, yes. Thank you,” Heather stammered. With a quick nod at Ben, she turned on her heel and left the premises. She had to almost drag Hayley in her wake. The latter, her gaze intent on Ben, waved madly as she disappeared down the front steps of the porch.

Shayne waved back even though he knew that the attention was centered exclusively on Ben. The door closed and he turned to face his brother.

“Looks like you’re a hit with the under-three-foot set,” he commented. Glancing at the day’s appointments, he saw that the next one wasn’t scheduled for another half hour—provided there were no emergency phone calls.

He knew better than to count on that. But he did need a caffeine hit.

Since Ben had neglected to take his blatant hint about making coffee, Shayne made his way to the back room and the barren coffeepot. Of late, at a very minimum, he found himself averaging a cup an hour. It was an unabashed intent on his part to stave off exhaustion. The feeling seemed to haunt him more and more these days, though he kept that to himself. Given Sydney’s penchant for reading him like a book, he knew it was only a matter of time before his “secret” was out. Hopefully, by then his energy would make a reappearance of its own volition.

“Not entirely,” Ben replied, following him into the back. He leaned against the doorjamb, watching Shayne move about the cramped area. With a discarded dinette table in the middle, surrounded with four chairs, the room wasn’t big enough for both of them to move around, and he didn’t want to crowd Shayne. “Her older girl looks as if she’s afraid of me.”

“Hannah,” Shayne said. “Hannah’s shy. She’s always been the quiet one in her family. She was born without making a sound.” He smiled. “Heather used to bring her in, concerned because Hannah didn’t cry. I told her to be grateful. Once Hayley was born, she realized she’d had a good thing with her firstborn.”

Ben nodded, only half listening. Another question had occurred to him. Try as he might, he couldn’t see the petite, delicate Heather married to Kendall, a big, burly man who looked far more at home handling steel beams than holding something as fragile as Heather in his arms. “How’s Joe Kendall doing? Is he still a miner?”

“Not these days,” Shayne told him dryly. Putting the filter in its proper place, he measured out several heaping tablespoons of coffee and then added very little water. The pot began making noises as it heated the water. “He’s dead.”

“What do you mean, ‘dead’?”

“The usual definition,” Shayne responded mildly. He replaced the plastic lid on the can of coffee and put it back into the tiny refrigerator Sydney had given him. “Not breathing. Body decomposing, or in Joe’s case, already decomposed.” He turned from the coffeemaker and glanced at his brother. “Did you sleep through the basic course in medical school?”

“I mean dead how?” Ben pressed. “How did her husband die?”

“Cave-in at the mines.”

The words were recited without feeling, but Ben knew better. No one cared more than Shayne about these people. Whenever there was a cave-in, Shayne was the first there to help with the wounded. To go into the bowels of the earth if need be. Shayne coped by keeping a tight rein on his feelings. Just the way he had when their parents were killed.

Ben thought back to the special he’d watched last month. The one that had triggered his decision to return home. Maybe the footage he’d seen on the Alaskan cave-in had even been of the one that had claimed Heather’s husband.

Small world.

He realized that Shayne was holding a cup out to him. Taking it, he looked down at the pitch-black, almost-solid contents. “You know, you should offer to coat the walls at the mines with this stuff, Shay. They’d never cave in again.”

“Starbucks is approximately a hundred miles due east,” Shayne told him, pointing in that general direction. Just as he took a sip of the dark brew, they heard a bell ring in the front. It was swiftly followed by a low, resonant greeting.

“’Morning!”

“That would be Jimmy.” Rather than leave the cup behind, Shayne topped it off then headed out of the small room. “C’mon. Time to make introductions.”

The coffee jolted through Ben’s system. He’d forgotten just how strong Shayne’s coffee could really be. He smiled to himself as he followed behind his brother. It felt good to be home.

Heather had no recollection of the short drive home from the clinic. She didn’t remember getting into the car, didn’t remember strapping the girls in, didn’t remember starting the car or turning on the radio. As she paused to glance into the back, she was surprised to see the girls were each in their car seats where they were supposed to be. She vaguely became aware the radio was on only when she heard the deejay, Preston Foster, launch into his stale routine. It hadn’t changed very much since he’d cut his teeth on the radio station in high school.

Staring ahead again, she gripped the steering wheel so tightly that had it been frozen, she would have succeeded in snapping it in two. Not to mention she was moving slightly faster than a snail suffering from a bout of the flu.

It was a preventative action because she didn’t want to hit anything. The fact that Hades had no traffic seemed to have escaped her. At given times of the day, there would be only one, possibly two vehicles on any of the three streets that led in and out of the town. A traffic jam was declared whenever three vehicles all headed in the same direction.

“Faster, Mama, faster,” Hayley urged. The girl waved her feet back and forth quickly, as if that would help propel the vehicle a little faster. “I’m gonna miss Celia Seal.”

Trying not to think about the man in the clinic, Heather pressed down on the accelerator. The speedometer on the dash rose to a racing twenty-five miles an hour.

“We’ll get there,” Heather assured her younger daughter.

Hayley was unconvinced. “Shoulda let the doctor drive,” she said, pouting.

Should have never come in today, Heather thought. “Maybe next time.”

Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw that Hayley’s face had lit up as she strained against her restraints. Lack of enthusiasm had never been Hayley’s problem. “Really?” she asked eagerly.

“No, not really,” Heather told her quietly, struggling to tuck away the frayed ends of her nerves. “He has other things to do.”

For now, Hayley dropped the subject and bounced on to another. “Do you like him, Mama?” she asked. “I like him. He’s cute.” She punctuated her declaration with a giggle, then tried to muffle the sound with both hands across her mouth.

Heather sighed, shaking her head. Like mother, like daughter. Except that she’d learned the hard way just what a fool she was. She fervently prayed that Hayley would never meet someone who would shake her world up so completely.

Looking again in the rearview mirror, she said to her older daughter. “How about you, Hannah?” Hannah had lapsed into her customary silence while they were still at the clinic. Heather had tried to gauge the little girl’s reaction to Ben, but she couldn’t detect anything one way or the other. “Do you like him?”

Hannah turned her small face toward the window at her side. Small shoulders rose and fell, as if she hadn’t thought about it and now found the topic not crucial enough to consider.

Hayley’s legs waved even faster. “Hannah doesn’t like anybody,” she declared.

“Do, too,” Hannah protested.

And they were off, Heather thought. But at least they were home, she comforted herself. Turning the wheel, she pulled up right in front of the small two-story house that Joe had built for her with his own hands. It was a labor of love. Every time she looked at it, she could feel a smattering of guilt assail her. Joe had loved her a great deal. And she had rewarded that love with deception.

Not going to do you any good, dwelling on that. You did the best you could. For everyone.

Knowing that didn’t make it right.

“Don’t fight, girls,” she said, turning off the engine. “You know how it bothers Gran.”

“Everything bothers Gran,” Hayley responded with a wisdom that was far beyond her four years.

She had that right, Heather thought. As far back as she could remember, her mother had something disparaging to say about almost everyone and everything. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen her mother smile, and couldn’t. The woman’s face had all but frozen in a permanently sour expression. It made her appear years older than the date on her birth certificate.

Heather stifled a sigh as she got out of the car and opened the rear door directly behind the driver’s seat. She undid first one child seat, then the other, her fingers moving mechanically; she’d done this a thousand times.

Life was funny. At eighteen, when she’d imagined herself at thirty, she would have thought that she would be at least half a continent away from both her mother and from Hades. She’d wanted to do something different, something important with her life.

Instead, hers had turned out to be a very old story, almost as old as time itself. Nursing a crush from the time she was ten, she had fallen under the spell of a handsome local one fateful night. Leading with her heart instead of the brains that God had given her, she had one wonderful experience and then very quickly found herself pregnant. With no one to turn to, she was trying to work up her nerve to tell the man who had captured her heart that he was about to be a father when she discovered that he’d abruptly left town. Leaving her emotionally stranded.

Not that he had done any of this on purpose. He had no more clue that she was pregnant than her mother did. It wasn’t as if they’d been going together before that night. They had run into each other, she walking off the effects of another awful argument with her mother and he coming back from a trip to Anchorage. She was walking along the road by the lake, and he’d slowed down his car to ask her if she wanted a drive home.

Home was the last place she’d wanted to go and said so. But he hadn’t wanted to leave her alone out there, so he offered to keep her company. They’d sat in his car and talked. About his plans. About hers. And then, somehow, magic had happened. Magic that had nothing to do with her mother or the woman he was supposedly engaged to, or the woman he’d been writing to who he’d invited to come out here to live. It was the first time she’d ever seen him looking anything but decisive. But he was having doubts about the future.

They both took shelter in the present. In the moment. In each other.

And soon after that, he left Hades. Left because Lila Montgomery had changed her mind. Lila Montgomery who’d once bragged that she could have any man. And she had wanted Ben.

Opening her front door, Heather realized that Ben had never answered the question she’d asked him at the clinic. He never said what he was doing back. Or how long he intended on staying. Was this just a visit or the beginning of something permanent?

She had no idea which she was rooting for.

Shepherding the girls in front of her, Heather entered the house. “Mother, we’re back.”

She heard the floorboards creak as the wheelchair slid over them.

“Did you remember to pick up my medication?” Martha demanded sharply as she propelled her wheelchair into the room.

Heather felt her stomach drop another notch.

Chapter Four

Please, please, let me get out of here without an argument.

Mindful that the girls would pick up any exchange of heated words, Heather hoped her mother would just drop the matter, even though she knew better. Martha Ryan let nothing drop until she was good and ready.

One hand on each little girl, Heather shepherded them toward the kitchen. She’d left snacks for them in the refrigerator.

“Sorry.” She tossed the apology over her shoulder. “I’ll pick it up on my way home.”

Heather didn’t have to look to know that her mother was glaring at her. She could feel it.

“If you don’t forget.”

Heather kept her voice upbeat and cheerful. “I won’t forget.”

“You forgot this morning,” her mother accused.

“I was in a hurry,” Heather pointed out.

It wasn’t easy keeping the irritation and frustration out of her voice. She certainly hadn’t forgotten her mother’s medication on purpose. Seeing Ben had knocked every thought out of her head. Besides, it wasn’t as if her mother was down to her last dose. There was enough for several more days. And yet, forgetting the medication was just another “failing” to upbraid her for. Her mother never cut her any slack. She’d even taken her to task for some minor oversight the day of Joe’s funeral.

“And tonight you’ll be tired,” Martha declared as if it was a foregone conclusion.

“I’ll go and pick your medicine up during my lunch break.” She saw her mother open her mouth for another go-round. Sometimes she thought that the woman lived for arguments. “Mother, I have to go.”

Heather deliberately turned her back on her mother, hoping that was the end of it. Bending down, she kissed first one girl and then the other. She didn’t think she would have been able to stand it if they weren’t in her life. Hannah and Hayley were what kept her going. What kept her sane.

She hugged them both quickly. “You two be good today and be sure to help your grandmother, okay?”

Hannah made no protest. She merely nodded as a little sigh escaped her lips. In many ways, Hannah was more like her than Hayley was.

“Okay.”

Hayley appeared far less bound to the request, even though she made no protest. Instead, she shrugged her small shoulders and Heather had the impression that her daughter was flinching off the request with the same minute motion.

“Sure, Mama.”

“That’s my girls.” Heather smiled at her daughters. She rose and slid the straps of her purse back up onto her shoulder, then headed toward the front door. “See you tonight.”

“How’s their rash?” The question came across like a demand for information as Martha propelled her wheelchair, following Heather into the living room.

“Gone.” Heather hoped the one-word answer would satisfy her mother. She should have known better.

Martha made a disparaging noise. “I could have told you that and saved you some money.”

“Shayne didn’t charge me.”

“That’s probably because he overcharged you to begin with.”

Heather struggled with a flash of temper, which happened more frequently the longer she took care of her mother. Knowing it would lead to an exchange of words she didn’t want her girls overhearing, Heather banked it down.

“He didn’t overcharge me to begin with, Mother.” Her tone turned frosty. She hated that her mother turned her into a person who was less than compassionate, less than kind. She didn’t like to think she could be stripped of these traits, but her mother always sapped everything out of her. “I’ll see you tonight.” Looking back toward the kitchen, she raised her voice so that her daughters could hear. “Bye, pumpkins.”

To her surprise, just as she turned to make her escape, her mother caught her arm. “What’s wrong?”

She refused to believe that her mother could see through her. That would take some sort of bond, some sort of connection, and they had never had one. “I’m going to be late, Mother, that’s what’s wrong.”

But Martha continued to hold on to her wrist, apparently not satisfied with the answer. “You’re shaking.”

Heather extricated her wrist from her mother’s grasp. She needed to get to work and get a grip. Her mother prevented her from doing both.

“Not enough sleep last night,” she lied, hoping that would be the end of it.

“What do you have to keep you awake at night?” Martha asked. “You’re not the one who’s stuck in a chair, looking up at people all the time. The object of everyone’s pity.”

Heather was tired of being made to feel guilty for something that had never been her fault. And if she stopped to give her mother a pep talk, the way she had countless times before, she would make herself late.

“No, I’m not, Mother. But I have to go to work. We can discuss this later.” And with that, she hurried out the door, closing it quickly behind her. She could still hear her mother’s voice as she went down the porch steps.

With effort, Heather found she could block out the words, if not the sound.

She knew that part of her mother’s bitterness stemmed from being felled by myasthenia gravis, the disease that rendered her legs nearly useless. Heather couldn’t help feeling guilty at wanting to escape, guilty because she hadn’t the time or the inclination to remain a few extra minutes, trying to placate the woman. Her mother was not to be coaxed out of that dark place this morning. There were times, like today, when her mother seemed to enjoy wallowing in self-pity.

Once in her car, Heather started it up and backed away from the house. She hated leaving her girls to witness this. But school was out for the summer and the day care center that Shayne’s wife ordinarily ran was closed this week. Sydney was taking a well-deserved rest, and Heather could hardly blame her. At the same time, it did make things very difficult for her.

She hated asking her mother for favors, any kind of favor. And her mother had grumbled when she’d asked her to keep an eye on the girls this week. One would think that she’d welcome the company instead of remaining alone the way she normally did for a good part of each day.

Heather sighed. She’d given up trying to figure her mother out. Not to mention trying to brighten the woman’s life as best she could. Some people preferred living inside a cave, enveloped by darkness. Her mother was one of those people.

It was only going to get worse.

Heather pressed her lips together. She did not look forward to her mother learning about Ben’s return. Martha Ryan had never had a good word to say about him. Ben’s charm left her cold, perhaps because it reminded her so much of her own husband.

Though she’d idolized her father, Heather couldn’t remember John Ryan ever being nearly as charming as Ben. Or as intelligent, for that matter. Ben didn’t have just street smarts, he had a mind that quite simply left others, including his own brother’s, in the dust. He always seemed to absorb things more easily and quickly. That was why at the age where other students were just graduating college, Ben was graduating from medical school. It had never even occurred to him that he had done anything out of the ordinary.

She sighed as she came to a stop at Hades’s only traffic light. There she went, being his advocate. Why? He didn’t need her taking up his cause, even silently. The very last thing she needed right now was to clutter up her mind with thoughts of Ben. She was years beyond that young girl with the hopeless crush. The girl whose very breath stopped in her lungs whenever he looked in her direction. That had been an entire lifetime ago.

She and Ben had nothing in common now.

Nothing but Hannah, she thought.

Except that Ben didn’t know about that. No one did, not even Shayne, who’d delivered her baby.

Finding herself pregnant had been the scariest period of her life. And then Joe Kendall had come to the rescue. Poor, dear Joe, her lumbering giant who had loved her with the complete devotion of a puppy. Who’d told her that he would work and slave to provide for her, pledging the rest of his life and undying love if only she would agree to marry him.

So she had. What choice did she have, really? Hades was not a condemning community, but being an unwed mother was a stigma she wasn’t willing to endure if she could avoid it. She especially didn’t want her baby coming into the world without a father’s name.

And even if no one ever said a word to her about it, never even appeared to give it a second thought, she knew that her mother would make her life miserable because of her momentary transgression. Worse, her mother would make the life of her unborn child miserable. So she had said yes to Joe and silently vowed to be the best wife she could.

For a while, their marriage had gone well. Joe gave no indication he ever suspected that Hannah wasn’t his. And when Hayley came along, exploding like a fire cracker almost from the moment she was born, Joe had been beside himself with joy.

Heather eased her car toward the north side of town. She could still remember the look in Joe’s eyes when he told her how happy he was. And how grateful he was to her for it.

That was the night before the cave-in.

At least he died thinking she loved him. And in her own way, she had. But she had loved Joe the way she would have loved a beloved friend.

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