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

Chapter Twenty-One

W as Gray about to tell her that he’d met up with Trina again after all these years? That the woman might be showing up with him at the beach?

The idea was ludicrous. But she couldn’t get it to blink away. The thought of him bringing any other woman to Ocean Breeze was...just...wrong.

Chest tight, she watched him, and knew the second he’d made a decision. Was shaking inside by the time he started to speak.

“My grandmother had multiple sclerosis, among several other things. I knew from the time my mother died that my grandmother wasn’t expected to live a normal lifespan. She’d wanted me to know, to be prepared. To be ready...”

Sage fell back to her chair. Staring at him.

“And by ready, I mean she instilled in me a need to make my own way, to strive and achieve and not settle. To make more of my mother’s having lived by succeeding and making a difference in the world.”

He stopped talking, took a couple of quick swipes at his chin, and Sage swallowed back tears. Gray would neither want nor understand them. He’d see pity. Where she felt...love.

She hurt inside for his having hurt.

Growing up with that helplessness...with a loving guardian who taught him to be capable, but not being able to foresee, to prevent, her death.

“Every good ounce in me is due to her,” he said then, meeting her gaze head-on.

It was a tragic tale, and a beautiful story, too. “I’m guessing she’s looking down on you. And is so proud of you, Gray.”

The shake of his head, his unrelenting gaze, stopped her words.

“After a while, living like that, with no real sense of control over my future, or even daily activities...I resented it sometimes.”

“Of course you did. Who wouldn’t?”

“She knew. In that last year, every time I had to stay home, she’d apologize to me. There she was, having given the last years of her life wholly to me, losing her daughter because of me...in pain...still getting up, cooking and cleaning, anytime she could. She gave me her last breath...apologizing because I couldn’t go to the damned prom? Because she knew I resented her for that.”

Sage quieted inside. An almost deathly quiet.

More was on the way. She could feel it emanating from him.

“I’m great at the small stuff, Sage. The momentary things. I can care about all my patients and relate to their young human companions. Because it’s only for the moment. Or the hour...”

She could see the train about to wreck. “That’s not true,” she butted in. Trying desperately to stop the oncoming crash. “You do it all day, every day. It’s your life, Gray.” She waved to the top of her desk. “As embodied by all of the energy going into getting it back for you.”

He wasn’t listening. His shaking head told her so. But she just kept talking. “Not just from me, and others who knew you, but, because of what you’d already built, you’re getting new energy from total strangers, too.”

“The job is my responsibility,” he told her. “Not the individual. I can always call off for a day, have another veterinarian fill in for me.”

“Have you ever done that?”

“I’m also off every evening, weekends, anytime I take vacations...”

She had a flash to her sense of freedom the other night. How much she’d missed a little time for herself. “Everyone needs time off, Gray. Even I...”

He stood, cutting off her words. “No, Sage. Hear me. I can’t bear the thought of being responsible, full-time, for another life. It makes me feel like I’m suffocating inside. The idea of living my life waiting for the resentment to hit...it’s like someone who’s terminal, waiting for death.”

As his grandmother had been. As he’d watched her be. Sage saw him standing there and didn’t recognize him for a second. He was Gray. And was changing right before her eyes.

“That’s why you broke our engagement...” She wanted to stand, too. But didn’t trust her legs to hold her. “You were resenting me.”

“No!” His obvious frustration had her attention. And sent relief shooting through her, even while she remained on full emotional alert. “Children are wholly dependent. Vulnerable. Unable to take a different path than the one you put them on until they’re grown.”

He stopped, ran a hand through the always messy, thick strands of hair that she’d once envisioned being free to touch for the rest of her life.

And then continued, “You’re missing my point, Sage. When you’re an adult, you’re responsible for yourself. But children...you have them, and then the things that happen to you that are out of your control, it’ll affect them adversely, shape the entire rest of their lives, and you won’t be able to do anything about it. I just...”

Dropping his hand to the top of her desk, he just quit talking. Standing there. As though giving up.

Reminding her of something he’d said about his mother. About her death being a blessing because she’d always been so tired.

“Wait a minute. Are you talking about your mother resenting you? Or you resenting having to care for your grandmother?”

The look he gave her was odd. Something new. As though he didn’t understand her. Didn’t know her well enough to figure her out. He sank back down to his chair, continuing to watch her.

As though, if he looked long enough, the answers would suddenly appear, written across her forehead? Or she’d speak them.

She waited. Couldn’t let him off the hook.

“The thought of being like my mother, responsible for shaping a young life, knowing that if I screw up I screw the kid up forever, I just can’t see that. Even if I only make his future more difficult, or don’t have the capacity to love him enough, it’s not fair to that little one who had no choice in the matter.” He shook his head. “And after caring for my grandmother—knowing that I have the propensity to resent someone I love—I can’t allow myself to create a life.” Another head shake.

And then he looked her right in the eye, chin up. “I guess the answer to your question is...both. I won’t risk children’s lives on a chance that I’ll ever feel about caring for them as I felt about caring for the old woman who’d been the only good in my life. I won’t know, until someone is fully dependent on me. And I can’t take the chance that it would happen again. Nor can I risk not knowing if I’m capable of loving a child enough. My father didn’t care enough to stick around. Or at least check for consequences for what he’d done with my mother. And she clearly didn’t seem to find having me worth the sacrifice...”

Sage stilled. Too full of conflicting emotions raging through her to do anything but feel them all.

After all those years...she finally understood.

Was seeing him differently.

And it didn’t help.

Didn’t make anything better. At all.

She’d thought they’d been so close that, other than their familial needs, they’d been open and honest with each other. That she’d known him better than she’d known anyone. Even her twin brother.

She’d given him all of herself.

While he’d been hiding himself from her all along. If he’d only let her in. Talked to her, at least. Let her love the whole younger man while he grew into the successful man he’d become. Maybe he’d have seen life differently, through the eyes of faithful, every-day love. Maybe not. But at least, if he’d have given her a chance, given her the truth and let her make her own choice...

“I’m sorry.” She heard sorrow in his tone. Didn’t meet his gaze. Whether he’d followed her thoughts, or was just sending out a general politeness, Sage couldn’t even try to tune in to find out.

“I’m sorry, too,” she told him. Needing the conversation to end.

In her current, somewhat broken and shocked state, all she knew was that her life with Gray, any kind of future relationship they might have, had just changed forever.

Most particularly in light of a possible consequence from their few seconds of stolen pleasure on the beach.

Gray went straight back to Ocean Breeze that night. No more stopping for a long dinner and a beer, or a sports bar, watching a game he didn’t care about, and having a beer. No more looking at homes he didn’t want, or sitting with the architect to draw up plans for renovating the interiors of the various Buzzing Bee Clinics locations he was in the process of leasing and buying. He’d managed to eat up Sunday through Thursday nights, to avoid any chance of time with Sage on the beach, but Friday night, he just didn’t have it in him to run anymore.

He’d been at it since he was old enough to know that his life wasn’t like his friends’ lives. He’d very likely lost Sage’s respect because of it.

So he was running to avoid becoming what he was. A product of a nontraditional, sad and painful, but still loving home. There’d been enough to eat. He’d always been warm and fed. Clean. And treated with kindness.

He’d never had a hand lifted to him.

Or, as far as he could remember, a harsh word spoken to him inside the walls of his home, either.

Opening up to Sage...had opened up his past to himself. Allowing him to see alternate views of his reality. The woman had always had a way of making him feel...all the things he’d never felt at home. Safe. In a nonphysical sense.

But in the space of one sentence, that had changed.

Nothing Sage had said. It had been his own words.

And between the capital letter at the beginning, and the period at the end, he’d finalized his own life sentence.

My father didn’t care enough to stick around. Or at least check for consequences for what he’d done with my mother.

Six days before, he’d had unprotected sex. A first for him. A major, unforgivable first. He was assuming Sage was on birth control. But he hadn’t asked. Had been too busy running from what they’d done, trying to avoid the consequence he felt he may have created. He did not want to lose their friendship over a glorious minute in the sand.

He’d felt a change come over her that afternoon. Felt her withdrawing from him.

And knew he had to ask about the birth control.

He would not be his father. Period.

He’d suffocate, have his lungs blown out, go on oxygen twenty-four seven, chain himself to within a few miles of the kid at all times, if that was what it took to assure himself he’d stick around. He’d never have a child of his growing up without a father. Wondering where he was.

He’d never abandon a woman pregnant with his child.

Most particularly not Sage Martin.

He’d promised her he’d never walk away again.

Scott’s car was in his spot as Gray pulled in the empty space next to it. The cottage was empty. Friday, early court day. Scott was already out on the beach bringing in November with Morgan’s long walk. Or, he’d finished it and was hanging out four houses down, nursing a beer and enjoying the company.

A private, low-key gathering of friends any night of the week. All dog lovers, too.

Ocean Breeze was most definitely a one-of-a-kind neighborhood.

He couldn’t find anywhere else to live that even came close to it. And hadn’t mentioned buying the cottage at the end of the road, either. Not even to Scott.

He’d inquired about it, though. Knew it was still available. At a way higher price than the building was worth, in its current state. But he’d pay twice as much to be able to come home to it every night.

Gray changed out of his suit and into casual, dark cotton pants and a short-sleeved lighter pullover. He was just reaching for a beer when he heard a knock on the door.

His stomach sank a notch. Harper.

He liked the woman. But he didn’t need adult female companionship at the moment. Even just the friendly version.

He went to the door, though. Doing so was just who he was. You didn’t turn your back on...

It wasn’t Harper looking at him through the glass. Gray had to look a lot lower down to meet the wide-open and very serious and determined big, blue-eyed gaze of his visitor.

Figuring Scott for being within hearing distance, maybe watching Morgan on the side of the cottage, he slid open the door.

“Can I come in?” the child asked.

Sage would not have put her daughter up to the visit.

Would she? She’d clearly been set to show him a thing or two about life, just before her colleague had interrupted them that afternoon.

At least that had been his take on her expression. Her firm stance.

Didn’t matter one way or the other. No way he’d reject a four-year-old.

“Of course,” he said, standing back. Glancing out again to see who was out there listening in. Who’d be coming around the corner to the porch steps any second.

Leigh, in leggings, a long-sleeved purple T-shirt to match and tennis shoes, took one step inside. Peered up at him and asked, “Mr. Buzzing Bee, are you mad at me?” And before Gray could do more than kneel down to her level, she continued. “Sarah got mad at me at school today and she stayed on the other side of the room and wouldn’t come over and play with me and you don’t come play anymore, neither. And I thinked about it on the way home ’cause Mommy was busy in her head.”

“Busy in her head?” He tended to the least minefield-feeling part first.

“Yeah.” The child nodded, looking a little less severely focused. “When she’s got work in there and doesn’t always hear me and I have to say it over and over.”

Gray managed to choke back the chuckle that burst up through him. But couldn’t prevent the smile that split his lips, and he said, “No, Miss-Leigh-who-pays-attention-to-everything. I am not mad at you. And don’t think I ever could be.” He told her something that just seemed clear in that moment. “You are kind, and caring, and you’re very good with dogs,” he told her, words coming up out of him.

“Then why didn’t you come out to play all these days? I saw dolphins and petted a monkey and met a elephant doctor and been waiting to tell you ’bout that last part.”

She’d met an elephant doctor...

“Leigh!”

“Leigh?”

“Leigh!”

Screams, at least two female and a male, all hit him at once, from farther up the beach. Instilling instant remorse. Scott wasn’t around the corner. Sage hadn’t put her up to...

He should have checked.

“Uh-oh.” The little girl’s voice hit him hard, too.

“Don’t worry,” he told her, picking the child up, settling her on his hip as he’d seen Sage do. “We’re both in trouble on this one, and we’ll take our punishment together, okay?”

Those blue eyes, so close to his own now, implored him. “Do I gotta?”

“Yes. Without any argument. You disobeyed your rules.” He was already out on the porch. “Deal?”

“Okay...”

He heard the grumble in her voice.

Might have smiled at it if he hadn’t already been shouting out, “She’s here! She’s here!” at the top of his lungs.

As he galloped down the beach with Sage’s child in his arms.