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

Chapter Two

F inding Scott’s place empty, Gray took a second to look around, and then moved his stuff into the clearly unoccupied bedroom before texting Scott to let him know he’d arrived.

He’d stopped for a case of beer on his way, and helped himself to one as he headed out the back door to the porch Scott had had built, separating the cottage from the sand, to get a long, healthy breath of ocean air.

The balmy, seventy-degree October air did not disappoint. If not for the dress attire he still wore, he’d have headed straight down to the water.

Better, anyway, that he wait to find out which cottage down the way belonged to Sage before venturing out.

Scott had assured him, during his initial sales pitch, that the cottages were all far enough apart to provide good privacy. They would have been since they’d been built to house the rich and famous in a more private setting than the resort’s hotel could offer. His friend hadn’t embellished that point a bit. Looking to both sides, he took in beach as far as he could see. Saw some people, but could make out only the most basic features.

Far enough away to give him back a small sense of personal space. Of freedom from hell.

A collie caught his attention to the right. She had a straight stance and kept perfect pace at the heel of the man who was heading down to the water. Gray watched as the two reached wet sand together. And then the girl was running and diving into a wave, as though she’d been born a dolphin. He watched, amazed, grinning.

And nodded when man and collie came out of the water together, to do it all over again.

With one hand in his pocket, he raised his full bottle to his mouth. Took a long sip. Scott had been right. Ocean Breeze was going to be good for him.

His text app pinged. Scott. Saying he was talking to Iris and would be right up.

Iris. A woman Gray was eager to meet. The gorgeous, platonic friend of the playfully womanizing confirmed bachelor Scott had become.

Gray had waited for months for Scott to admit he’d slept with the woman. But after three years of Scott and Iris being just friends , Gray was finally convinced his friend had no sexual interest in the woman, an anomaly given his flirtatious nature. Scott appreciated the female form even more than Gray did, if such a feat was possible.

Texting back, he told his friend to take his time. Thought about sitting back in one of the redwood porch chairs, but changed his mind. Standing tall, taking in long breaths of salty air, felt good. More right than anything had in too many months.

He noticed people come and go from various cottages, more like stick figures in the distance. He didn’t let himself wonder if any of them were Sage. Didn’t try to pick out her petite perfect form, or her long, wavy blond hair. Had no way of knowing if she was still as spritely as she’d been when he’d known her.

He saw Scott, though, coming up the beach. The man’s six-foot-three-inch height gave him away to Gray.

And was part of the reason the prosecutor, no matter how hard he tried, was likely never going to be a proficient surfer.

A woman walked with him. Not Sage. Inches taller than Sage. She’d once told him that her brother’s towering over her by a foot was a result of selective fetal growth restriction. Scott’s placenta had “hogged the womb,” she’d said with a grin.

Gray had had a womb all to himself, but at five-eleven he’d still ended up several inches shorter than his friend.

Two dogs ran up behind the pair. A miniature collie and Morgan, Scott’s corgi—Gray’s patient since her birth.

The miniature collie...would make the taller woman Iris. Gray nodded. Thought about going for a couple of beers, to have them ready when the two approached.

He turned, ready to do just that, when a little person came darting out across the sand—he assumed from one of the cottages.

A girl, judging by the long blond curls and pink frilly shorts and shirt. She must have called out to them, as the two stopped instantly and, as one, turned toward the child.

Expecting to see Scott falter, to step back and let his friend handle the child, Gray was shocked when Scott offered a hand to the little girl, and watched as the woman he presumed to be Iris did the same on the child’s other side.

Mouth open, Gray watched as the threesome continued toward him.

Did Iris have a child?

Tipping back another sip of beer, Gray smiled. There was one mystery solved.

Scott didn’t date women with children. And he didn’t sleep with women he didn’t date.

Still grinning, feeling lighter than he had in a while, Gray watched the trio, with the dogs darting around them. Picturing himself out on the beach, getting to know some of the many dog owners Scott had told him inhabited Ocean Breeze, Gray turned, thinking he’d change after all. Then another person appeared in the picture. Coming from what looked like a porch four cottages down. That far in the distance, he could see the building, but couldn’t tell much about the place—except that it had a small green area between it and the beach.

One of the places with a small lawn that Scott had mentioned when he’d first bought his place.

Gray didn’t pay much attention at first, when the person, in light-colored shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, approached the party. Scott had mentioned the unofficial dog owners club that fraternized regularly after work on the beach. Except that the blonde, a woman, who’d just joined, didn’t seem to have a dog.

She started walking—next to Scott—and Gray’s smile flattened. His entire being...flattened. Breathing flesh that didn’t think. Or feel.

And didn’t retreat.

He’d said he was on the porch drinking a beer. And he would be. Calm. Casual.

He’d have run into her sometime. At least from a distance.

Might as well get it over with.

He’d have liked more time, but he’d have liked a lot of things he didn’t get in life. He didn’t dwell on what he couldn’t change. He moved on. And worked damned hard to gain a lot more of what he wanted than he’d lost.

Telling himself he was fine, ready, he took an extra-long sip of beer. To solidify the reassurance. The choice to be okay.

And saw the little girl drop hands with Iris and Scott, to run to Sage, throwing her arms up.

Grabbing up the little body, Sage settled her on one hip—in a hold that could only be deemed familiar. A regular occurrence.

His heart skipped. As if caught in glue, he stood, watched as Iris and Scott stopped and turned to the woman and child. Of all things, he noted the stillness of the dogs standing with them.

Sage waved and turned. Heading back toward the cottage with grass from which she’d come.

With the child.

And he knew.

The Iris mystery wasn’t at all solved.

The child hadn’t been hers.

Sage had moved on, too.

Had gotten what she’d wanted more than a life with him.

She had a daughter.

Sage, his Sage, had become a mother, and Scott hadn’t said a word.

Gray had had no idea.

Bound in a moment he couldn’t escape, he watched her all the way to the cottage. And stared at the cheery-looking building even after Sage had taken her little girl inside.

Scott never talked about his sister, but being an uncle...that was something a guy might share...

Sage was a mother.

Gray was happy for her.

Genuinely happy.

For her.

But try as he might, he couldn’t escape the disappointment crashing through him. Had he really thought, when enough time had passed and she still hadn’t had the child she’d thought she’d had to have to be complete, that she’d someday settle for him?

Had he been willing to accept being settled for?

He was shocked. At himself, at the child, a vision of Sage as a mother, the knowledge that she’d become what he knew he didn’t ever want to be—a parent. Gray couldn’t just stand there.

Turning, he left his beer on the kitchen counter, got out to his SUV, and was partway up the drive before he stopped long enough to text Scott and let him know he’d be back in a bit.

That was all. He’d be back. Didn’t say where he was going. Or why.

He didn’t know where.

And the why? He couldn’t explain his change of plans.

Didn’t completely understand them.

He just couldn’t pretend that things were okay.

That he was.

Because they weren’t.

And he wasn’t.

Ten years without Grayson Bartholomew being mentioned in her personal life—and in a blink, he was on the premises.

Not in her actual cottage, but close enough.

Too close.

She hadn’t seen him. Hadn’t even glanced toward her brother’s cottage.

But she’d known he was there. Could feel his presence like fingers walking up her spine.

And back down again.

Horrible.

And...something out-of-the-real-world good.

Which was worse than horrible. It was disastrous.

She could not, absolutely never, allow herself to fall back into her own sexual weakness for the man. The first time she’d done so had knocked her to her knees.

Maybe almost killed her.

She wouldn’t have been on the beach at all. She’d taken Leigh inside the second she’d heard Scott say that Gray had texted that he was there.

At the time the text had come through they—the brother and sister duo—had been explaining to Iris—their closest mutual friend on the beach—just who Scott’s temporary roommate was to the Martin twins. As opposed to who he was in the news, which Iris had already known. A friend from high school. One Scott had been in touch with on and off over the years. No mention that the man had once been more than a friend to Sage.

As soon as Sage had heard her brother read the text aloud, she’d gathered her daughter and had taken her in. But Leigh, watching the dogs out the back window, had seen them heading up the beach with Scott and Iris and, crying “I wanna walk with Uncle Scott,” had run out.

She knew not to leave the house, ever.

Unless Uncle Scott and Morgan were on the beach. And then she had to get her mother’s permission first.

Sage had gotten them safely back in the house with the five-foot-high lock latched on the beach-side door, something she’d had installed when she’d first moved in. She’d refrained from disciplining Leigh about waiting until Sage replied before running out. She needed time to calm herself down first, to make certain that she didn’t let any of her own angst shower upon her little girl.

At bedtime, they’d had a brief talk about waiting until Sage said okay before Leigh followed through on her announced intentions.

And then they’d read a story. They’d cuddled.

And the four-year-old bundle of energy had fallen asleep with her head on Sage’s shoulder.

Sage had tried to work after that. Couldn’t get into the applications she’d been going over. None of them excited her.

Which was probably her answer.

But before she turned away a possibly stellar applicant, she needed to get outside her own drama and take one more look.

Just to be sure.

At the office. In the morning.

Sitting at the desk in her home office, she opened a contract that she’d be presenting to a client the next afternoon.

She had a lot invested, emotionally and mentally, in the client and the project. She figured it would get her mind out of the past and back into her own space. Except that she’d been over the contract for a final time that afternoon. There was nothing there to grab her.

Already on her computer, she clicked to the internet. Figured she’d look at how the market had closed for the day. Something she did every night before bed.

And had her attention immediately caught by a headline on her home screen news feed.

GB Animal Clinics had permanently closed.

The news was a couple of weeks old. No reason to be showing up that night.

A sign to her?

More like a product of the artificial intelligence that tracked previous searches.

Because, yeah, she’d looked up Grayson Bartholomew’s business when the news of illegal drug trafficking had first hit the headlines.

Months before.

And had kind of been following bits and pieces.

Because of talk around the office.

She’d never let herself read fully.

Couldn’t take a chance that some inner, younger part of her would turn traitor on the mature, happy woman she’d become and latch on to his woes.

Want to help him.

Or worse, feel for him.

But hearing her twin read a text, telling her that Gray was right there on the beach, that very minute, in her brother’s house...

She felt.

Too much.

Had to sort it all out.

And so, she did what she’d learned to do to survive all those years ago. She went into her head. Tackled life cerebrally.

She opened a news source she’d vetted enough times to trust its reporting. Typed in her search parameters. And beginning with articles from five months in the past, Sage started reading.