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

Chapter Four

S he hadn’t been waiting for him.

She’d been going to meet someone...?

The lipstick.

Another man.

Sage had a lover somewhere in the building and had been going for a quick tryst before meeting up with the ex-lover who’d walked out on her right before their wedding.

The potential facts laid out before him as though in huge letters on a movie screen as he followed Sage into her impressively windowed, decent-size office.

Her high-heeled pumps making no sound on the plush beige carpet.

She had a view of the ocean in the far distance.

And a lover in the building.

Which was a good thing, it occurred to him as he sat in the leather armchair she offered in the conversation seating at the opposite end of the room from her desk. A current lover was just the stake he needed in the heart of whatever nonsense had struck him the night before.

Seeing her on the beach.

With that cute little kid on her hip.

Her daughter’s father...

Where was the guy?

Did he work in the building? Had the lipstick been for him?

She offered Gray a bottle of water and at his “I’m good, thank you,” proceeded over to her desk.

The farthest spot in the room from him.

She picked up a folder.

Was she planning to address him from there? While standing behind her desk?

Like he was a recalcitrant schoolkid in class?

He turned his focus on the view in the distance. The ocean.

Whatever she needed him to sign, agreeing to keep his distance from her, he’d sign. Probably some form of unofficial restraining order, that would become official somehow if he disavowed it in any way.

If he couldn’t be near her, it meant that she couldn’t be near him, either. Or she’d give him just cause to disobey the order. He might not be a hotshot lawyer, but he held a doctorate degree just like she did. He knew things.

And could figure out others.

He watched the city move in the nearer distance down below. The birds flying against an azure-blue sky. She hadn’t started her spiel yet.

He kept his hands relaxed on his thighs. Intending to show her that he had no skin to lose where she was concerned.

She was sharp. If he allowed her to call the shots, following her lead, she’d get it.

Quickly, he hoped. He was a little unclear just how much time he could give himself before he started to show some obvious tension.

By politely asking her to get on with it so he could get the hell out of there.

He smelled her perfume before he heard her approach. Glanced her way long enough to see her settle on the couch, but focused on the paperwork she’d set down on the table.

Not one folder.

Several.

A yellow pad, blank, lay across the top of her skirted knees.

What the hell?

Were they going to negotiate, line by line, what they could and couldn’t do over the time he was on Ocean Breeze?

He leaned forward, his hands planted firmly on the chair arms. Ready to stand and let her know he’d find another place to stay.

“I think I have a pretty good understanding of what you’re facing here.” The voice, so not anything he’d ever heard from Sage, had him settling back in his chair as his gaze lifted straight to her eyes.

They were looking right at him.

But not as though she was seeing him—the guy he’d been to her.

She was treating him like a stranger.

Her tone had been kind. And completely, 100 percent impersonal.

Not at all confrontational.

Or...

Had she just said he ? What he was facing?

Not them?

Was she trying to tell him that she knew he’d been thrown for a loop, seeing her again, but that she was completely unaffected?

Because of lipstick man?

As he continued to stare at her, she started talking again. Laying bare the atrocities that had imploded his life and consumed most every one of his waking thoughts over the past months. Stripping him, fact by fact, until he felt completely bare, raw, sitting there, alone with her, in her office.

He’d never, ever have pinned her as a cruel person.

But she’d done him one favor, at least.

He might be allegorically naked, but he no longer had even a hint of a hard-on.

The morning was one disaster after another. Not following the plan in any way.

Floundering in her huge fail, trying to stay afloat, she just continued to do what she knew—lawyering.

And making matters worse.

She was supposed to have offered coffee, which she’d planned to have already brewed, but she’d had a case of nerves, he’d come early and seeing him in that suit...seeing him in person...she’d lost all ability to think straight.

To remember the plan.

Instead of a kind hello , a polite it’s nice to see you , issued with a nonchalance that would show that the past didn’t matter to her—that she was long over it—she’d walked in silence and dropped her lipstick on his shoe.

In her office, hoping that the atmosphere would set her straight, she’d stood behind her desk having a hint of a panic attack.

Had forced herself to take deep, calming breaths while the silence strangled her.

Finished with her initial summary, she looked at the man she intended to help and saw...

A man she’d once loved so deeply—and been so devastated by—she’d sworn off getting that close to a partner ever again.

“What I need next is for you to fill in the details that weren’t in the news. Files. Contracts. Employee statutes. Access to account records...” Her voice faltered as his frown grew from confused to...something more.

He shook his head. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to help. I’m a corporate attorney. A damned good one. This is my area of expertise...”

The man swung a suited arm like a model at a car fair, showing her the expanse of his chest, as he said, “This is far above my pay grade. My assets are frozen.”

He glanced pointedly at the table filled with files, which she’d told him were all from his case. The reading she’d done the night before. Which had included the frozen asset information.

And then looked up at her. Did he think she was some kind of lovesick girl who’d had to glom on to the suitor who’d said he loved her but then rejected her?

Gritting her teeth for a second, she held his gaze. Took a deep breath. “I apologize for my abruptness.” The words came out, feeling...okay. “I’ve purposely stayed away from news of your case,” she admitted then. “But when Scott told me why you’d be staying with him, I spent the evening familiarizing myself with the details.”

“To make sure your brother wasn’t harboring a criminal?”

She shook her head. Frowned. His response had been...personal. “Of course not. Scott’s a stellar attorney. He doesn’t need my expertise. You do.”

There. If he wanted to be personal, she could put it right out there. “Your assets are frozen, your attorney can’t represent you, personally, because he has to represent the corporation, GB Animal Clinics. You’ve been completely exonerated, but your business is permanently shuttered. Your image has taken a huge hit. And at some point, your personal finances are going to start showing some pain.” Other than that last assumption, the rest was textbook.

With a bit of a shrug, accompanied by that nod of his head that she used to love, he said, “I’m aware.”

He hadn’t accepted her help. Or thanked her for the offer, even.

She wasn’t going to beg. Had been recalcitrant about getting involved at all. Just... “With you staying close...and us, our past... I just thought it best if our association was a business one.” She blurted the truth she’d meant to utter to no one.

Because it acknowledged that she had a problem with him joining their small private neighborhood. Even briefly.

Which made it look like she wasn’t completely over him.

Opening her mouth to assert her claim, since she’d opened the door and had to get it slammed shut immediately, her words were cut off when Gray said, “Maybe you should hear the details that aren’t in the news before you solidify your offer.”

She stared. He was accepting her plan? At least preliminarily? Giving them a way to coexist without the past seeping all over them? “That’s fair,” she told him.

And then thought of his initial statement. The expanse of chest that had been revealed as he’d motioned around her office. “And I’m offering to take on the case pro bono,” she told him, quickly continuing. “The firm’s bylaws state that every partner must take on a certain percentage of pro-bono work—part of a give back to the community mandate—and I’m under the gun here to choose a project.”

Project. What the hell? She saw his eyes harden as she said the word.

“I apologize,” she told him with heartfelt sincerity, looking him straight in the eye. “It’s a term used internally to designate all non-money-generating work we do. We have a general project board, and we each have project lists. For instance, the most pressing project on my list right now is to hire a new associate...”

She heard the rambling. Let it attempt to save her.

Or him.

She wasn’t really clear which. Just knew that she’d blundered and had to make it right. Gray grew up in an apartment complex that the city had called the projects. Had been born to a single mother who’d dropped out of high school to have him. And who’d eventually left him with his aging grandmother when she was killed in a car accident.

Sage’s words had faded. Her gaze locked with Gray’s as he nodded. “It’s okay, Sage,” he told her.

And her body flooded with a warm, almost liquid, sensation that felt like an old friend. Sage. First time she’d heard her name in that way that melted her in a long, long time.

“I’m not eighteen and have nothing to prove anymore.” His gaze left hers to fall down toward the files on the coffee table between them. “Not to myself, anyway.”

“And not to a lot of others,” she said, glancing at the top file. “You have a slew of clients—pet owners—who vouch for you. Those testimonies—used in a way that I vet fully, every step of the way, to make certain that there isn’t even a hint of anything that could come back to bite you in a legal sense—can help you to rebuild your image. But first, we need to get a new corporation registered, draw up bylaws and practice procedures, with a solid, legally binding vetting process that allows you to hire and fire at the least infraction—for you, to ease your mind and any mistrust this experience might have caused you to have, but also for your customers. We’ll put out a statement regarding the vetting process for each employee on your staff...”

His smile stopped her. She stared.

He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “Vetting. Veterinarians...”

Reminded her of a glasses joke she’d heard while representing a firm of ophthalmologists...and she smiled, too. Glad to see that Gray still had his sense of humor.

Through his own turmoil.

But in her presence, too.

Vetting. Veterinarians. As plebeian as it was, it had made them both smile.

For the first time since she’d heard her twin mention Grayson Bartholomew’s name on her porch, she had hope that she was going to get through the unexpected, and wholly unwelcome, reunion just fine.