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

Chapter Twenty-Five

S he wasn’t.

Gray walked slowly back to Scott’s place, thinking about sand in his flip-flops. How warm the San Diego sun felt even in November.

She wasn’t.

An early Thanksgiving blessing. A whole two weeks before the holiday.

He hadn’t stayed long. One long glance between the two of them, and Gray had downed his tea in one long drink. Set the glass down and hadn’t been surprised when she’d rushed right with him, though good steps behind him, to the door.

They’d broken a cardinal rule there for a second.

Being alone in either of their homes.

He figured, over time, the attraction between them would fade. Or become so commonplace that they lived with it just like their enjoyment of alcohol. It was there, but you didn’t partake of it in excess.

In their case—with the passion—any at all was excess.

She wasn’t.

They’d escaped disaster.

So why wasn’t he flying? Light as a feather?

He’d most definitely spent the week praying for the outcome she’d just delivered.

Even as he’d tried to prepare himself for a different answer. Tried to envision how he’d handle that other outcome. Just so he’d be prepared in the event that she’d said she was.

He’d worked himself up to believing that it could work. If it had to.

She wasn’t.

And...hadn’t seemed all that broken up by the fact. Shockingly unbroken, actually. He knew her well enough to know she’d been hiding from him.

And rightfully so.

She had to be somewhat disappointed.

Hell, even he was feeling a form of letdown after the past week of anxiety.

Sad, that they’d watered their relationship down to the point of not being able to be real with each other. To offer comfort where it was most needed.

Only the two of them knew what they’d possibly had. Only the two of them were feeling the effects of finding out there’d been nothing there.

Yet, they weren’t talking about it between the two of them.

The future was wide-open again.

She wasn’t carrying his child.

Gray tried the reality on for the rest of that day, as he drove from appointment to appointment, trying to be everything everyone needed from him as he and eighteen other professionals started new chapters of their lives together.

With him at the helm.

Holding eighteen careers in his hands.

The thought took root. His chest got tighter. So much so that he pulled off the road from one of the new clinic sites to the next. His next on-site contractor appointment wasn’t for another hour. He’d been planning to get there early.

And instead, he sat in his SUV, staring at the ocean.

Why hadn’t he seen it before?

All the vets who’d lost their jobs because of his one mis-hire at GB Animal Clinics. He’d seen a friend where a criminal existed. And he was just going to go and ask eighteen vets to sign on with him again?

And they were doing so? Some of them who’d already been burned by him once?

He grabbed his phone, intending to call Sage, and stopped. Calmed.

Sage. The seemingly endless bylaws and conditions and employee handbooks...she’d not only been protecting Gray from a second career disaster, she’d also been protecting everyone who worked for him.

He pushed her speed dial.

What kind of friends were they if they couldn’t talk?

She didn’t answer. Probably busy with Leigh.

He called another couple of times that afternoon. And a third as he headed home.

Sage didn’t pick up.

And she didn’t call him back.

Which pretty much told him what kind of friends they’d become.

Largely, because of him.

Sage took Leigh on a playdate on Saturday with another little friend from school, Jeremiah, and his mother, Maya, who was also single and a nurse practitioner in a medical office in their building.

Jeremiah wanted to go to the San Diego Zoo because Leigh had been talking about her day there with her uncle Scott and Miss Iris, and she spent the day telling her young friend all the inside scoops—in four-year-old terms—every time they stopped at a new enclosure. She named all the dolphins in the show, too. Telling Jeremiah how to tell them apart, and when one of the trainers recognized her, she invited both kids down after the show to let Jeremiah pet the dolphin in the private pool.

She’d had her phone off during the shows but had seen that Gray had called. He’d been meeting with contractors all day and would have things to discuss with her.

And while, in light of her newfound revelation—the fact that in the past she hadn’t considered her role as a partner and wife nearly as much as she’d focused on becoming a mother—she might need to speak with him, that piece of news wasn’t relevant when it came to work.

It was a bombshell she needed to work through before it became anything.

If it ever became anything.

With her time with Scott at the park that morning, and then the zoo during the afternoon and evening, Leigh practically slept through her bath, and was out before Sage had a chance to grab a book and sit down to read a good-night story. As Leigh called them.

Sage’s heart filled to the brim, spilling over into a few tears, as she leaned down, kissed the little girl’s cheek and pulled her covers up to her chin.

After turning on the baby monitor, and the night-light, she closed the door behind her.

Got herself a wine cooler from the top shelf of the refrigerator—the one Leigh couldn’t reach—and thought about pulling the phone out of the pocket of her jeans.

She made a trip to the bathroom instead.

The bleeding that had purported the end to any pregnancy possibilities hadn’t gone past the light flow that signified the beginning of her cycle. By the time Scott had brought Leigh home, it had stopped completely.

She’d left the office to buy the test earlier in the week. Had hidden it at the top of the linen closet in the bathroom.

And as she sat and watched lines on a piece of disposable paraphernalia, her life spun on a dime once again.

She sat there...stunned. Heart pounding.

Phone firmly in her pocket. Never coming out again.

And heard a knock on her sliding glass door.

Scott. She hadn’t called to let him know she was back.

Didn’t dawn on her until she was already in the kitchen, staring at the visitor on the other side of the door, that her brother would have just called her. If he hadn’t seen her car in her spot, or lights on in her cottage...

Her heart rate, already accelerated, went into high speed, and she trembled as she pulled open the door.

Funny how fate had brought the man there right as her weaker self had been hoping to never see him again.

She slid open the door. Thinking she had to tell him what she’d just done. Overridden with anxiety as she contemplated the task.

His “Don’t you ever answer your phone anymore?” gave her a shove back into reality. “Or return calls?”

Gray...at her door? He never...

“What’s wrong?” she asked, feeling ashen, weak as she stared. “Is it Scott?”

He shook his head. Stood on the porch, leaning on the hand he had shoved up against the outside of her cottage. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, more quietly. “I apologize for the drama.”

That was new. Gray with drama. She’d thought he was there with urgent news.

And if he wasn’t...

She needed to sit down. Went for the wine cooler she’d left on the kitchen counter. And turned before she got there.

For a few reasons. Most prominent, in that moment, was the no drinking with Gray rule she’d given herself after the disaster her libating had caused two weeks before.

Grabbing the baby monitor off the counter instead, she headed back to the door, and motioning Gray to back up, stepped outside with him.

Sat in her chair, pulling her feet up to her butt, as though she hadn’t a care in the world.

He’d come with a purpose.

Something must have gone very wrong at one of the sites. Which explained his current upset.

She had time to calm down while she heard him out. Dealt with whatever it was. But she started with, “I’m sorry about the calls. I was at the zoo with Leigh and Jeremiah, and his mother, Maya, and had my phone off.” Babbling again. At the zoo with Leigh would have sufficed.

She’d have called him back a bit ago...if she hadn’t had that life-altering detail to take care of...

Managed to cut herself off before that slipped out.

Sitting down next to her, leaning forward, as he had that morning, his elbows on his knees, Gray nodded. Looked over at her.

And then away.

His expression, even in the dark, had her heart pumping overtime again. She’d only ever seen him look that serious, in that deep, emotional way, once before.

The night he’d broken off their engagement.

“I’ve never been good at talking about my feelings, Sage,” he said, and she froze. Ready to take what was coming.

Because she had no other choice. It was coming.

“And I realized this afternoon, I’ve also never allowed myself to admit that I need someone...”

Her sharp intake of breath brought his gaze to hers, and he held up his hand, as though forestalling whatever she’d been about to say.

Which had been nothing. She was barely holding on to her thoughts in those seconds.

“So here I am, telling you, I realize that I need you in my life. I can’t explain it. I’m sure some woo-woo theory would work, but I’m not all that up on that kind of thing. What I know is that where I fail, you succeed, and I think, in some way, I contribute equally to your life as well. Or did. And, I hope, can again. This...attraction between us... I don’t know for sure how we handle it. My baser self would like for us to find a way to be occasional lovers, as needed, while living our separate lives in two separate homes. Preferably exclusive. At least on my part it will be. But if that’s too much, if you need to be strictly friends, no touching, I’ll find a way. I swear to God I will. I just can’t lose you a second time.”

The words seemed to tumble out of him, on top of each other, some louder than others, some barely discernible, in no way sounding like the Gray she knew.

Her eyes filled with tears. Her lips trembled.

“Please tell me you want us, too,” he said, meeting her gaze then. “Tell me I’m not wrong in feeling like that’s what you want.”

He wasn’t wrong.

But that wasn’t what she had to tell him.

“I’m pregnant, Gray.”

I’m pregnant, Gray. He couldn’t have heard what he’d just thought. Was hallucinating back to the seemingly millions of times he’d heard her voice in his mind that week, saying those words to him. Rehearsing how he’d respond.

He’d never gotten that far—coming up with his own reaction.

And, as of that morning, hadn’t had to.

She wouldn’t have lied to him about that. He knew that as well as he knew his own name.

Which might be one of the few things he felt he knew for certain about himself at the moment. That and the fact that he shouldn’t have had that third beer.

Granted, three wasn’t anywhere near his limit. But was three more than he should have had before attempting his current conversation with Sage.

It had taken the third one to get off his ass and down the beach to actually follow through on the idea. He’d spent the second going over reasons for her unreturned calls.

“Did you hear me?”

Blinking, Gray glanced over at her. “Did you say something?”

She had. He knew she had. Just wasn’t yet able to process the actual content.

“I said I’m pregnant.”

Right. That. Except... He shook his head. “You aren’t,” he reminded softly. “Remember, this morning...”

It wasn’t that he thought she was confused. It was that he was. He got that. Just couldn’t find... He shook his head...

“I had some...bleeding...it stopped. This morning, actually. Before I even talked to you. I just didn’t know it. All day, it hasn’t started again. So I took a test.”

She took a test.

Oh!

Oh, God. She took a test.

“You’re pregnant.” He stood, as though he could intimidate the words away. They were a threat to everything he’d come there to say. To do. To accomplish.

“It looks that way, yes,” she said. “Both lines turned very solidly pink.”

Pink. Both of them.

He hadn’t known there were two lines.

“You’re pregnant.”

Sage stood, too, reaching out a hand toward him, but let it drop. “I know it’s a shock.”

“No! No, it’s fine,” he said, knowing that it wasn’t fine at all. Knowing that she knew that, too.

“You’re pregnant,” he said one more time. Just couldn’t seem to wrap his three-beer-addled mind around the implications behind the sentence.

“Yeah,” she said then, wrapping her arms around herself.

Holding her child. Not reaching out to him.

“Okay, well, good deal,” he said. Then turned, trotted down her steps and strode off up the beach. As quickly as his flip-flops in the sand would take him.