Her Christmas Wish (The Cottages on Ocean Breeze #1)

Chapter One

T he smile left Sage’s face. Wiped away by the serious, and slightly worried, expression her twin brother was wearing.

He’d been smiling, too. Laughing out loud, even, as he’d walked over to her porch from the beach just a couple of feet away. The concerned look in his eyes was clearly for her.

Which would have been understandable if she had anything troubling on her plate. Scott could read her better than most.

As she could him.

Filling with terror, she sat up, her gaze swinging out at the beach to make sure that Leigh, her whole life, was still there. Laughing infectiously. Throwing her entire pudgy four-year-old body into the game of catch she was playing with Scott’s corgi, Morgan.

It was a game doctors had never thought the little girl would be able to play after her premature birth. Leigh’s chances hadn’t been good.

“Iris is good with her,” Scott said, sitting on the edge of the second high-backed rocker on Sage’s newly built wooden porch. His gaze followed hers out to the foursome just yards away.

Tall where Sage was short, her brother leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he watched the longtime Ocean Breeze resident—a well-known professional photographer—playing with Leigh and Morgan, and her own canine companion and sole housemate, Angel. A miniature collie.

He was stalling...

“What’s wrong?”

Glancing over at her, his blue eyes identical to her own, Scott almost as quickly glanced away.

Sage set down the applications she’d been going over. As the newest partner in Bryon and Bryon, the corporate law firm with which she’d been employed since passing the California State Bar ten years before, one of her duties was hiring new associates.

It was a task she was taking as seriously as she took everything in life.

Watching her twin, another shard of fear shot through her. “Tell me, Scott. Is it your health? Something go horribly wrong on a case?” As lead prosecutor for the county, there were any number of things that could have popped up in that arena.

All of them manageable.

Her brother was straight up. No way he’d be involved in anything illegal.

Scott looked at her again. “It’s not me,” he said. “Well, not directly. I kind of made an offer, but I need your okay first.”

The hard grip on her stomach softened a little. “You’ve got it, whatever it is,” she told him. “What are you buying?”

A surfboard was her immediate, albeit silent, answer to herself. A wannabe star surfer from the time he could walk, her brother bought boards. The best. Determined to master the sport. But never did.

He was too tall. Too lanky. And just not a good enough surfer to make the boards wise investments. Which wasn’t why he’d be coming to her. He knew she worried about the damned thing flying up and conking him on the back of the head.

“I’m not buying anything,” he said. “I offered my spare bedroom to an old friend in grave need...”

Sage threw up a hand, shaking her head. “Then offer it,” she said, cutting him off. “You don’t need me to tell you that. Or need my permission...”

Her own soliloquy broke off midstream as an early October breeze off the ocean rustled Scott’s thick blond hair, and he didn’t immediately reach up to run his fingers through it. Something he’d been doing as long as she could remember. As though being out of place drew attention to the unconventionally longish strands.

Unconventionally long for a county prosecutor—and for their father’s son, when they’d been younger. Not at all long compared to California standards.

“Who is it?” she asked, after studying him silently. But she knew.

Understanding floated over her first. Then started down, slowly flowing around her, but not touching anywhere she could feel.

As though she was being prepared from afar.

“He has to stay local, sis. He’s innocent and is fighting to get his life back. To open a new clinic. Affordable vet care is too hard to come by these days and animals are suffering because of it. Owners are either opting not to get regular care for their pets, or just plain can’t afford to do so. He’s changed hotels numerous times. The press, and clients who’d trusted and felt betrayed, continue to hound him. He has nowhere else to go.”

He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. She was a corporate attorney. The news of the local chain of veterinary clinics being shuttered after an employee veterinarian was caught writing hundreds of fraudulent prescriptions for people over a period of years was fodder for gossip all over the firm. Not because Grayson Bartholomew and GB Animal Clinics were clients. They very purposefully, she was sure, were not. But because attorneys all had to ask what they’d do if a client was found in a similar situation.

It was human nature to be shocked. To talk about it. To theorize.

Scott hadn’t just told her anything she didn’t know. But he also hadn’t told her who he was talking about.

He hadn’t needed to.

Her and Grayson’s broken engagement had been the one major disappointment Sage had inadvertently given her and Scott’s millionaire, very strict, powerful father.

Taking a deep breath at the thought of a powerful man gone too young, reminding herself that she was her father’s daughter, Sage found a pretty decent smile for her brother. Mostly by glancing out at Leigh and letting her adopted miracle completely fill her focus. “I’m fine if Gray stays with you, Scott. It’s been ten years. And I’ve got the life I always wanted.”

When she was sure she could trust herself to put oomph from inside her to the words coming out of her, she turned the smile on her brother. “When’s he moving in?”

Scott didn’t return her smile. He studied her instead. Intensely. And then, still watching, said, “As soon as I call him and tell him it’s okay.”

Her heart flipped and then flopped. A perfectly normal reaction considering she hadn’t seen the man in a decade.

Residue from the past.

Muscle memory from a time when she’d thought her heart, her ability to trust in love, had been irreparably broken.

“He knows I live here?” Her twin had sworn to her that the few times he and Gray met up at various functions, neither of them ever mentioned her.

Didn’t mean the man couldn’t have done a search on property records.

“He does now.”

Scott’s look was forthright.

“You told him.”

Her brother nodded. “Right after I blurted the only offer that made logical sense—that he come to stay on Ocean Breeze. He knows I live in a renovated cottage on a private beach with a gated entrance at the only, very steep, road in.”

“Everyone who’s lived in Rockcliff more than a minute knows about the cottages on Ocean Breeze,” she said laconically. “And since Gray grew up in town...”

She was forestalling the information that was trying to hit her brain. And then it was there. “Gray knows you’re asking me.”

“Yep.”

That one word shaped her right up. Stiffened her spine. And, as she glanced at Leigh, her confidence and intent. “Then by all means, call him. Let him know he’s welcome. I don’t blame him for choosing lifestyle over family. On the contrary, I appreciate the fact that he came clean before the wedding. Granted, it would have been nice if he’d figured things out before all the invitations had been sent out. Or, before he asked me to marry him. But still, he could have waited until after we were married, then have cleaned up in the divorce and saved himself years of hard work to earn the kind of life he craves...”

She shut up before Scott figured out she was rambling, rather than giving a viable, thought-out argument. As a good lawyer would do.

Her brother didn’t stand, as she wished he would. Instead, he sat with her.

Pressure built up inside, creating butterflies in her stomach and itching under her skin. Causing her to reach out a hand, laying her fingers on the back of his tanned skin, and say, “Seriously, Scott, call him. I’ve been following the case. He’s a good man and doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him. Not on any level. It’s a good thing, you’re helping him.”

The words came forth, giving her brother part of the truth mixing with the rest of the equally accurate tumult that had been brewing inside her since the news of GB Animal Clinics’ legal woes hit the airwaves.

All of which slid to dark recesses when Leigh’s excited pitch hit her. “Mama, look!”

The four-year-old, curly-haired blonde, ball in hand, reared back her right hand and threw with what looked like a world of might. So much so she stumbled and almost fell.

The ball, which hadn’t been released until her palm was facing downward, hit the ground and rolled a couple of feet in front of her. At which time, Morgan and Angel raced each other to reach the prize first.

“Good job, sweetie!” All the joy within Sage tumbled out at the words.

“Angew got it!” Leigh squealed then, clapping her hands together and bending over with glee as she giggled. “Did you see that, Mama?”

Without waiting for a response, the little girl was off stumbling across the sand as quickly as her feet would take her and grabbed the ball again.

“It’s Morgan’s turn now!” she called out to Iris, rolling her r ’s in the babyish talk that caught at Sage’s emotional strings every single time.

With her heart overflowing, Sage was able to look her brother straight in the eye and say, “I’ve got what I’ve always wanted right here.” She glanced out at Leigh, at the cottage behind her and at him. “My own family and a home filled with love. Call him. I’ll be fine.”

And in that moment, she fully believed she would be.

Grayson wanted to move into a cottage bedroom on Ocean Breeze about as badly as he wanted to live his recurring nightmare of waking up naked in court.

Temporarily bunking at the home of the attorney who at one time had been his best buddy in the world had seemed like a dream come true when Scott had first made the offer. Gray had never, for one second, considered that Scott would do such a thing unless there was no chance of Sage ever visiting him there, even for a second. Gray’s failed relationship with the man’s twin sister had effectively diminished their friendship.

Something that had been slowly building again, as years passed, first with chance meetings, then with the surf lessons like the ones that had drawn the two of them together as teenagers. Gray being a better than decent surfer, and Scott just...not. But determined to keep trying.

They’d been meeting up for beers every now and then, too, over the past couple of years. Sharing travel and women stories. The latter mostly embellished, of course. One-upping each other.

Bragging about work accomplishments.

Real ones.

All possible with the unspoken caveat that Sage’s name was never mentioned, nor was any reference to her existence ever made. Period.

Including that day, when the two men had met for lunch and Scott had offered Gray a place to hide out. Gray had already had his luxury SUV loaded with hanging clothes and the couple of suitcases he’d figured he’d need for an extended stay on the beach, had been about ready to lock up his lovely cliffside home and speed by what paparazzi were after him that day, when Scott had called to tell him to hold off heading to Ocean Breeze. He’d had a confession to make first.

When Gray had found out that Sage also owned one of renovated cottages in the row—what used to be, fifty years ago, part of a luxury resort—he’d told Scott not to bother. He’d continue to move from hotel to hotel, until the rabid social-media hounds got bored with trying to go viral with footage of him.

After his ex-associate’s case went to trial and the press moved on to other hot news, putting an end to one faction of the months-long nightmare.

Scott’s response had been almost a challenge to Gray’s ability to be around Sage. Telling him he was certain Sage had moved on so completely that having Gray in the vicinity wouldn’t create an issue. Which was why he’d given the invitation without even thinking about Sage’s reaction. But if it was going to be a problem with Gray...

Of course, he’d had to insist that it would not be.

And was fairly certain he was right. Just...seeing her again, with eggs splattered all over his face, his great life he’d left her to have in a shambles. Not quite the way he’d ever envisioned the moment.

But as he pulled up to the gated entrance, typed in the code Scott had given him and headed down the steep road to Ocean Breeze, the small beach neighborhood he’d only seen from a distance, he had to nod. Scott had been right. The chance to get some peace—and have private beach access—was just what he needed.

He’d just avoid the part of the beach where Sage lived. Staying away from her shouldn’t be a problem. In ten years’ time, they’d never sought each other out.

Not even when her overbearing, way too strict father had followed his submissive wife to the grave thirteen years after she’d died of lung disease. Scott had called Gray the night after the funeral. Asking him if he wanted to meet for a beer. The man had talked about the rigidity with which he’d grown up, the hard times, but the way he’d loved the man, too, as he’d slowly sipped a couple of beers. But he’d never mentioned his twin. Not in the stories from childhood, nor from the funeral.

And as hungry as Gray had been for word that she was coping, he hadn’t asked. At one time, he’d have been privy to every single emotion and word Sage had to share.

But he wasn’t the guy she’d needed.

And by that same token, she hadn’t been the woman for him, either.

No matter how much he’d tried to give himself time, to convince himself otherwise.

They’d fit so perfectly in so many ways. Outside the bedroom, too, which had been quite a stunner for him. Both career-driven, getting doctorate degrees, wanting Rockcliff to be their permanent address, in a luxury home with an ocean view...

Both caring that their work benefited others, not just themselves.

Even just chilling in front of a movie...he’d enjoyed life more when she’d been around.

Until he hadn’t.

They’d wanted so many of the same things. And she’d wanted more. Things he didn’t want at all. The pressure had been too much.

He’d kept hoping that she’d see him, understand that while she’d had every opportunity growing up, he’d had none yet. He needed the chance to explore those opportunities and make them all possible for himself. He wanted her to love him enough to change her life’s dream just a little bit.

Or love him enough not to need more.

He’d wanted her in his life so badly, he’d held on to the possibility until the very last minute...

That last moment had come and gone. Long ago.

Parking in the slot next to Scott’s snazzy red sports car, Gray grabbed his two bags from the trunk and rolled them up to the cottage’s back door.

He’d worked too hard for too long to give up on the life he’d built. The life he’d always wanted. And if hanging on—while he figured out how to rise up out of the ashes in the most expedient and cost-efficient way—meant he had to share a private drive with Sage Martin, then that was what he’d do.

He’d already faced the hardest challenge of his life.

With great success.

He’d moved on without her.

And somewhere along the way, he’d gotten over her, too.