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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.
