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

Chapter Fourteen

U sing her newfound closure to get her through the meeting with Gray, Sage shut her office door behind him the second he exited. Sagged back against it.

Why hadn’t he told her?

The question had been ripping at her heart for the past hour.

Even as her brain had focused on the business at hand.

Gray had spent his entire childhood having had his possessions sold out from beneath him—his toys even?

As shocking as that was, the fact that he hadn’t shared the experience with her...

Sage made it back to the couch. Sat. Felt the start of tears and didn’t stop them. Instead, she buried her face, holding her forehead with her fists, and rocked.

Trying to assimilate. To be then and now.

To understand. How could she have loved the man as completely, as wholeheartedly, as deeply, as she’d thought she had, and not known ?

She’d asked about the surfboard. He’d shrugged her off. She’d let him.

Why had she let him?

Sitting up, she stared at his empty chair.

And remembered her conversation with Iris on the beach four days before.

He’d said a few times that he didn’t get the whole family thing. That he wasn’t sure he’d be a good father. Things like that. Never with any explanation, you know? Even when I asked why he’d say those things. He’d just shrug.

And she let him. She hadn’t pushed.

Worse, she couldn’t remember needing to know more.

She’d simply accepted that he was different from her and that that was okay. She hadn’t judged. Or worried. Hadn’t tried to make him more like her.

She’d accepted the man he was. Loved him for who he was.

There was no doubt in her mind about those things.

And yet...what he’d just told her...

It was like, in the space of five minutes, the man she’d known since she was eighteen was no more. He’d morphed into...more.

So much more.

Standing abruptly, filling with anger, she strode to the window. Was pretty sure she could pick out his SUV leaving the parking garage so far down below.

Didn’t matter that there were hundreds of SUVs that looked identical to his on California roads.

How could he say he loved her and wanted to marry her, but hadn’t even shared himself with her?

How humiliating to have blabbered every thought, every emotion, every want and fear all over him, only to find that he’d withheld even basic facts from her? And not just innocuous stuff, either. What he’d just told her...that was life-shaping information right there.

Why hadn’t he told her, dammit?

Leaving the window, she went to her desk, reminding herself of the paying clients who were waiting to hear from her yet that day.

She had the work done. But the calls were equally important.

Communication was the key to trust.

And...he hadn’t trusted her.

He hadn’t trusted her?

Why hadn’t he told her?

She could ask herself a thousand times and she wasn’t going to get the answer. She didn’t have it. Gray did.

So why hadn’t she pushed? Tried harder?

Why had she let him just shrug her off?

Deflated, Sage flopped down into her chair. Slouched back, staring at...nothing.

She should have tried harder.

Like Iris had with her Sunday on the beach. People needed coaxing sometimes.

And sometimes they needed to know that the place was safe for revelations. Iris had made her feel safe. Letting Sage know that she saw her friend in need of support and was willing to offer only that.

Had she somehow failed to give Gray that same sense of support?

She sat up straight.

Did the fact that Gray had confided in her that day mean that he felt safe with her in the present, when he hadn’t in the past? Was her offer to help him, her ability to come through on that offer, building a trust in him that hadn’t been there in the past?

She hadn’t meant to take his hand a bit ago. And definitely hadn’t had any thought about squeezing it. She’d moved on reflex.

From an open heart brimming with more than ten-year-old love.

She’d seen his hard-on. The way he’d been sitting, legs spread to lean forward...she’d glanced down, needing escape from the sudden depth of emotion flowing between them.

She’d seen.

Felt an instant, answering pool of warmth flooding her.

They’d both pulled back so quickly, she grabbing files, he covering his lap with his own, starting right in on business, that she’d almost convinced herself the seconds hadn’t happened.

Certainly, they shouldn’t have.

Nothing had changed between them in terms of hooking up. They weren’t right for each other.

But if through closure, she could gain a very dear, beloved, very close friend...or even just be regular friends with Grayson Bartholomew again...

Sage reached for her cell. Hit the new, temporary speed dial she’d set up on her screen. Beneath Scott and Iris.

Listened to the ringing. Again and again.

Reminded herself he’d been going to the title company straight from her office.

Opened her text app instead. Needing to connect with him right then, right there, before she talked herself back from a moment she knew was too important to lose.

I should have known. I shouldn’t have just accepted shrugs and non-answers. Please know that it wasn’t a sign of not caring.

She wanted to tell him what had prompted a response that seemed a bit careless to her all those years later.

Couldn’t explain, even to herself.

Hit Send.

Put her phone down. Reaching for her office phone to get back to work and connect with one of her most important clients, while she waited to hear back from Gray.

He could be with the title people for a while.

Her phone beeped a new text before she’d started to dial.

Setting the receiver back in its cradle, heart thumping, she picked up her cell.

Don’t, Sage. Don’t look back. Don’t start to wonder. Don’t open that door. It won’t end well.

She read the words once. Twice. Again.

Thought about pushing him, even while she knew that she’d lost that chance.

Knowing, too, that he was right, no matter what differences they resolved, or mistakes they tried to repair, in the end, nothing had changed.

And trying to prove otherwise wouldn’t end well.

On Friday afternoon, late, Gray pulled his newly purchased handheld heavy-duty tape dispenser one more time. Sealing the last of the boxes of things that were being picked up and transported to the storage bin he’d rented.

He’d been working all week, in between business meetings—driving through camera flashes as he pulled onto the property.

He wasn’t currently making headlines, but past experience told him that when the GB Animal Clinics case went to trial, any one of those photos could show up in major news sources, and on personal social media accounts, too.

Boy from government housing made good, gone bad. He’d read a couple of them when his clinics had first been shut down but had stopped almost immediately. They were energy sucks.

As was the house he’d once thought proof of him having reached the pinnacle of his success. Thirty years old—at the time of purchase—and he was at the top.

Stacking the last of the boxes by the front door, he locked up for the last time, left the key for the Realtor—who was going to be at the house to meet the moving company the next day so Gray didn’t have to deal with any possible paparazzi—got into his SUV and didn’t look back.

An hour later, he was sipping a beer on Scott’s back porch, inhaling long breaths of salty air. Relaxing for the first time all week.

“He’s here! He’s here!” The childish voice floated up to him before he noticed the bodies walking up the beach. Scott and Morgan had been gone when he’d arrived home—the prosecutor generally took the corgi for a jog on the two-mile-long beach after work. He’d figured them for visiting someplace, one direction or the other.

He didn’t stand as Leigh, in leggings and a pink, short-sleeved ruffled smock, bounded toward the cottage. Her mother, also in leggings, with a loose-fitting white T-shirt and that long hair flowing in waves down her back and over her shoulders, didn’t appear to be in nearly as much of a hurry.

Assuming they were looking for Scott, he was caught off guard when Leigh’s voice, raised for her mother to hear, said, “Hurry, Mommy! We gotta hurry! Mr. Buzzing Bee’s here!”

He stood then.

Sage was looking for him?

The woman had stopped a few yards from the porch. Leigh, however, was taking the steps—her hand on the rail helping to pull her up—one foot on each step.

“Like big people do!” she pronounced when she reached the top, her hair depicting a halo of golden ringlets in the setting sun. “Hi!” she said, stopping a couple of feet from Gray, looking up at him.

She wasn’t smiling.

“Hi,” he said back, glancing over the railing at Sage, still down on the beach. The woman shrugged.

Giving him no clue at all what was expected of him.

“Can I help you?”

“No. I did it all by myself,” Leigh said, pointing toward the stairs. “I’m a big girl now.”

“I can see that.” Another glance toward Sage. Another shrug. “If you’re looking for your uncle Scott and Morgan, they aren’t here.”

With one finger on her chin, Leigh appeared to be pondering that situation. “They’re probly still exacizing,” the little girl told him. “Morgan needs it.”

Smiling, Gray stood there, feeling like a giant towering over the tiny human being, and said, “Why does she need it?” Just to hear the response.

“I dunno.” Leigh squinted up at him. “But Mommy says you’re a doctor for animals.”

A third glance at Sage showed him a woman who was definitely keeping her distance. And an eye on her child, too. “That’s right, I am.”

Leigh’s little fingers reached toward him and before he realized what was happening, she’d taken his hand. Gave it a good, four-year-old-size pull. “Good, then can you come pwease ’cause Baby is broked and Uncle Scott said he could fix her, but she’s my best doggy and I fink she should have a real doctor.”

Not sure what the child was talking about—Sage was one of the few Ocean Breeze owners who didn’t have a dog—Gray filled with purpose.

There’s no way he could, or would, refuse. That little brow, scrunched in the seriousness of the matter, had him leaving his beer behind without a thought as he allowed the youngster to lead him back down the steps to the beach.

In no universe would Sage have encouraged, or even suggested, that her daughter seek out Grayson Bartholomew. But neither did she attempt to dissuade the child from seeking the best care she thought she could get for her broken, battery-operated stuffed toy.

Staying on one side of Leigh as the little girl, with her hand still in Gray’s, leading him with great purpose, told the man all about Baby. “She can bark and walk and wag her tail and do fwips,” Leigh was saying with a sweet earnestness that brought tears to Sage’s eyes. “’Cept now she can’t and can you fix her?”

“I can sure try,” Gray said, his head bent toward the child, his attention all on Leigh. He hadn’t even glanced in Sage’s direction as he’d come down the steps.

Hadn’t given her the chance to mouth the I’m sorry she’d had ready for him.

Nor did he follow Leigh into their home when they reached Sage’s place. “I’ll wait right here on the steps,” he told Leigh, sitting down after she’d climbed up. “Bring Baby out here. Maybe it would be good for her to get some fresh air.”

More like he needed it, Sage guessed. And stood out in the sand, in front of him. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I could have dissuaded her, but she was so adamant. And also, just FYI, she thinks you’re lonely down there all by yourself. I’ve tried to tell her you’re not home much because you’re so busy helping dogs be healthy.” She was jabbering again. A pre-closure thing. Just... “I just don’t want you to think I’m pushing her on you, or encouraging this behavior.”

Gray looked up at her. “The thought never entered my mind.”

Nor, apparently, did the fact that he was blocking her entrance to her porch.

“You’re welcome to come in,” she said from further outside her home than he was.

“I’m fine here.” The refusal should in no way have hurt her feelings. And yet, it did.

“At least come up on the porch. I’ve got two chairs.” He’d been sitting on Scott’s porch. It was a thing he chose to do. If he refused...

Whether Gray was following her train of thought or not, didn’t want to give her the impression that he had a problem being there with her or not, she couldn’t tell. But felt better, anyway, when he stood and availed himself of one of the two chairs.

The one she always used.

But freeing up the steps so she had access to her home.

She just wished there was a way he could free up the space he’d captured in her heart.