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

Chapter Twenty-Nine

G ray was like a man on fire the rest of that day. He went from appointment to appointment, made decisions with precise, on-the-spot thought, and moved on. He knew his stuff.

And somewhere midafternoon, he stopped everything to send a text.

The earrings themselves didn’t matter to me any more than the surfboard did. I like them both, by the way. What mattered to me was that they meant something to you. The giving of them, and having the gift valued, meant a great deal.

There was no marriage proposal in the offing.

But a father taught his children by living authentically. It was something he’d heard on television somewhere along the way. That had just popped into his head out of nowhere.

A lot of things were doing that recently.

Like the fact that he hadn’t been jumping for joy with relief when Sage had first told him she wasn’t pregnant.

If anything...there’d been a tinge of disappointment. He hadn’t dwelled on it at the time. But looking back...

More and more, he was growing confident in his ability to fulfill his responsibilities to Sage and the kids.

The kids.

Like he really was some family man.

Try as he might, he still couldn’t see himself that way. And couldn’t really even say why. He didn’t doubt his ability to learn how to be a good father. Or his ability to stick around.

He’d even reached the point where he was certain that he had what it took to be able to hide his resentment of any calls on his time or energy.

And he wasn’t suffocating.

On anything.

Except, maybe, an overcharged, overloaded unrequited need for sexual release.

With Sage.

And yet, thinking about suggesting that they just bite the bullet and get married stopped him every time. He still didn’t feel like that guy.

He felt more and more like one of Leigh’s people, though. If Scott was missing his niece’s company as she spent as much or more of the group beach time with Gray now, instead of with Scott, the man didn’t say.

Nor did he ask any questions.

About Leigh or Sage.

Or anything that might or might not be going on between the two of them.

Gray knew Scott suspected something. The man was sharp. Was used to reading people. Juries filled with them.

Scott would know soon enough. He and Sage had said all along that after the doctor visit, they’d tell her brother. And Iris. And a few others, as selectively decided by the two of them.

She was waiting until after the first trimester to tell her partners.

And whenever she started to show, Leigh would be clued in.

Gray had been hoping he’d be moved into his place before Scott found out that he’d impregnated the man’s twin sister and wasn’t marrying her. Facing his friend, who’d surely see Gray’s lack as a second fatal blow to his sister, he wasn’t nearly as confident as Sage was that Scott would be fine with it as long as she was. He’d tried to hope for that, too.

Even sent up a little note, asking for it for Christmas.

He’d also learned, probably in the womb, not to expect to get what he hoped for.

But was pleasantly let off the hook for another night when Sage texted late afternoon, the day of her doctor’s appointment, to say that telling Scott that night was out. Her brother the prosecutor was going to be out of town for a couple of days, consulting on a case in another county.

He got the same text from Scott, asking him to look after Morgan, right after Sage’s message came through.

Gray texted back a thumbs-up, to each, immediately.

Didn’t say much about him that his mood lifted noticeably at the reprieve.

He also hadn’t worked his mind around how he’d be a father to his own child, treat Leigh equally, but be less than her uncle Scott to her. Because damn straight, Scott wasn’t going to give up his father-figure role in the little girl’s life for Gray.

Who wasn’t marrying Scott’s twin sister.

He did get one detail figured out though. The three bedrooms and one of the two bathrooms in his cottage were complete. As were parts of the kitchen and great room. Flooring still had to be laid. Drywall put up in the great room. Stove installed. Dishwasher and garbage disposal put in and hooked up. Some electric to finish up.

But the bedrooms and the one bathroom were done.

He could move in before Scott returned. Hook up a small refrigerator and a coffee maker in the bathroom. Be no different than living in a hotel room.

He texted Sage when he got home. Letting her know his plan. Had his suitcases thrown together and his stuff out of Scott’s place before her car was parked in her space four cottages down. Driving by her place, he smiled. He was on his way home.

And he’d be passing Sage’s house every single time he came home. They’d be that close.

He didn’t check himself, but felt as though he’d smiled all the way through getting his stuff in the cottage. And toiletries set in the bathroom. It was all just stuff he’d take on an extended vacation. There were many boxes of things to bring in when the time was right.

But for the moment, he was a man who owned a thing he cared about.

And one with visitors, too, he realized as he heard a knock on the front door.

Figuring one of the residents of Ocean Breeze for giving him some kind of housewarming, he’d just gotten to the part where no one but Sage knew he’d just decided to start sleeping there yet, as he pulled open the door.

His gaze locked with Sage’s first. Seeing happiness glowing there, he grinned down at her sidekick. To see the little girl holding a tiny puppy.

“We ’cided that you could keep him,” Leigh said. “Him’s name’s Puppy.”

Eyes wide, but still, surprisingly, smiling, he glanced up at Sage, who said, “I’m babysitting him for a colleague. Just overnight. And after I told Leigh that you were going to be sleeping in your cottage instead of Uncle Scott’s, she thought you needed the company.” She kind of grimaced, looking like there was more to the story.

“He pooped on my shoe,” Leigh announced, pushing past them to walk around the cottage, still carrying the three-to-four-pound poodle in her arms.

“And I figured, with you...” Sage started in again.

And he interrupted with, “Not having flooring in yet...”

“No, with you moving in, we’d keep Morgan. She was...a little territorial of Leigh...and kept the poor thing cornered in the living room, yapping anytime Puppy tried to move.”

Gray frowned. “How long have you been home?” He’d driven by less than an hour before.

“Fifteen minutes,” she told him, with another grimace. And a smile. “Seriously, I can keep him. I’ve already got the laundry room gated off for him.”

Gray shrugged. “I don’t mind keeping him,” he told her. Maybe, at some point, he’d even get a dog of his own. The thought had occurred enough times over the past month that he figured it would happen at some point.

“You don’t got a bed!” Leigh called from one of the bedrooms. Gray figured she’d already been in all three. One thing was for certain, from the first time the four-year-old had been inside his cottage, she’d made herself at home there.

And had paid careful attention to his rules, too. No getting near any wires of any kind, for any reason, or close to walls without paper over top of them.

“And you don’t got a kissmas tree, either.”

Sage looked at him. “You didn’t get a mattress out of storage?”

Still in the dress pants he’d worn all day, he shrugged again. Looked first to Leigh, and said, “I still have time to get one. Christmas isn’t for another almost two weeks.” He’d already opted out of decorating inside the house. But no way he was going to disappoint that little girl.

Deciding he’d pick up some pre-decorated and lighted thing, he turned to Sage.

“I didn’t actually decide to stay here until the last minute. And it’s not like I haven’t slept down here without a bed before.”

Both times in the sand. Not on hard floors.

“I’ve got a blow-up mattress,” Sage said then. “I’ll run and get it.” Looking toward Leigh, she asked, “You okay with her for a couple of minutes?”

The question had come so naturally but stopped them both. Her probably for different reasons than him. “You don’t trust me with her?”

“Of course I do. Completely.”

“Then you think I might not want to be entrusted with her?”

“No. I just...”

Tilting his head, brow risen, he stared her down. She was the one who’d said if he took on the one, he had to take on the other. Something he’d have figured out on his own, anyway. Just made sense in terms of Leigh’s adjustment. And Lord knew he was not going to be responsible for ruining that little girl’s childhood.

“You’re right,” Sage said then. “Though not like you’re thinking. I’ve been doing it alone a long time,” she told him. “It’s just going to take some time to realize that...I don’t have to. All the time.”

Her words struck right at the core of him. Doing it alone a long time. I don’t have to. Almost as though she’d been speaking for him. Trying to get him to see. But she hadn’t been. The stark look on her face was proof to him of that.

Gray was still thinking about that look on Sage’s face when Leigh came into the great room a minute or so after Sage left. “Why you just standing here?”

He came up blank. “I was deciding what to do next,” he shot from the hip. Leigh, with the dog in her arms, seemed satisfied.

“Where’s Mommy?”

“She went to get a blow-up mattress for me.”

At that, Leigh looked up at him. “You can’t jump on it,” she said solemnly. “Not ever.”

Figuring her for having learned that one out the hard way, wanting to hear the story, he kept his expression as straight-faced as hers and said, “I won’t. Thanks for the warning.”

She nodded with an air of importance. And then stepped closer. “Are you Mommy’s boyfriend?”

Oh, God. Sage. He needed Sage. This wasn’t his call. “Why do you ask that?” he prevaricated. As “wait for Mommy” occurred to him too late.

“Jeremiah said that when mommies spend time with grown-ups who aren’t their brothers, it means boyfriend.”

Ahh. Enlightenment settled his panic a tad. Not a lot, but enough to free up a thought or two. “What else did he tell you?”

“Nothing. But are you?” He wasn’t. Not a boyfriend. But they were becoming a family, the three of them. To be four in another seven and a half months give or take. He couldn’t start that out on a lie.

Hunching down, he faced the little girl, glanced at the puppy that had fallen asleep in her arms, and then back up at her. “Would you be mad if I was?”

“Uh-uh.” She looked him straight in the eye, those big blues of hers wide beneath that swath of blond curly hair. “’Cept I’d have to make you a Christmas present, too, like Mommy, and I don’t got forever left to do it, you know.” That little brow furrowed and the child continued, “But I color good so it should be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. You wanna know why?”

A question he could answer with no doubt. “Yes, I do.”

“’Cause then I don’t have to worry ’bout being alone?”

Danger. Danger. Life sure turned on a dime. “Why would you worry about being alone? You’ve got your mommy.”

“Sarah telled me that when you just have one then if something happens to them, you’re all alone and have to go to some services to live. That’s what happened to her other friend. That’s why a home’s called broked, she said. Member? I telled you. And I don’t want to be alone.” For the first time since he’d known her, Leigh’s chin started to tremble, then her lips, and tears pooled in those so-sweet eyes.

“Hey,” he said, setting the puppy on the floor, to pick her up. Fighting such a huge rush of emotion, he couldn’t get any other words past the lump in his throat. He swallowed. Hard. And said, “First, Sarah’s not quite right...”

“I told her that and she still won’t be my friend no more.”

Yeah, they’d get to that. Maybe some other day. When friends were the issue at hand.

“Well, you were right to tell her that. Because she’s not right. Even if I wasn’t Mommy’s boyfriend, you still have your uncle Scott. Which is super special because that’s even a whole other house. And I can promise you one thing...”

His face right up close to hers, he looked at her and said, “I’m yours, okay? From now for forever. No more worrying about being alone, okay?”

She nodded.

“You promise?” He asked her a question that usually was rolling off her lips.

“I promise, Mr. Buzzing Bee.” Throwing her arms around his neck, she kissed his cheek and then hugged him. Tighter than he’d have figured for four-year-old arms. He closed his eyes to savor the second.

And opened them again to see Sage standing there, staring at him.

Sage couldn’t move. Holding the mattress case in one hand, with her other on the front doorknob, she just stood there. Mouth open. Staring.

I’m yours, okay? From now for forever. No more worrying about being alone, okay?

She’d been gone no more than seven or eight minutes. Right?

How could the universe have tilted so drastically in less than ten minutes?

Gray’s eyes were staring at her. Then not, as Leigh pushed to get down and run after the puppy.

What in the hell had just happened?

Feeling as though she was hallucinating, she was afraid to move. To wake up and find that she’d hit her head and was dreaming.

Gray didn’t seem to be suffering the same malady. He walked up to her, holding her gaze the whole time, took the mattress bag out of her hand, dropped it to the floor and held both of her hands. Peering right into her soul.

“It wasn’t the resentment,” he told her. “Or the responsibility.”

She didn’t get it. “It wasn’t?”

He shook his head. “Truth is, turns out, I’m a coward, Sage. I didn’t get it until just now. Leigh told me.”

She really had to be losing it. “Leigh told you you’re a coward?”

“No, she told me she was afraid of being alone.” He spouted some stuff about her daughter taking the few minutes she was gone to ask Gray if he was her boyfriend. Involving Jeremiah.

“She never said a word to me.”

He nodded. “It had to do with something Sarah said. The broked home thing. If something happened to you, she’d be all alone and have to go to services.”

She was getting further behind. “Okay, since you’ve managed to make her feel better, good job by the way, I’ll deal with her in a second...” She heard her words and stopped. “No, maybe I won’t. You already did it just fine,” she corrected herself. And continued right on with, “Now, about you being a coward...”

“It hit me smack in the face...when I saw the raw fear on Leigh’s usually happy features. Why aren’t we getting married? Other than that we’d now own two cottages, that is. But otherwise...why? And yeah, I learned some tough lessons growing up, and clearly wasn’t mature enough to get married ten years ago, but why not now?”

She wished she had that answer. Wished every single night.

“Because I’m afraid of loving, Sage. Weird, huh? The idea of being tied to you, and you getting sick, or something happening, and having kids and not being able to be there for them...it scares me to death.”

Understanding dawned. Her mouth opened to say the right thing. And she had nothing. There was no cure for life’s limitations.

No guarantees of the kind he needed.

“I looked in Leigh’s eyes, and I saw something else,” he told her.

Pray God it wasn’t more unsolvable vagaries of the universe. “What?”

“Trust. You and I both know that there’s a chance we could be run off the road and be gone, while she’s with a sitter. There aren’t ever guarantees. But she trusts that as long as she’s loved, she’ll be okay. Even if it’s just that that love will see her through, give her strength to carry on.”

Staring at him, Sage was holding on to a vestige of control with everything she had. And used it to ask, “She knows all that?”

“Well, maybe not in so many words. Not knowingly. But what she showed me is that losing the chance to have that love, the chance to live fully, because of the fear of loss...”

Sage pushed herself up against Gray. Without hesitation. Didn’t care that her daughter was present. Kids needed to see their parents hugging sometimes. To be aware of the love not only for them but surrounding them. “You aren’t a coward, Gray,” she told him, loudly enough for Leigh to hear. If, indeed she was listening.

Which she usually was.

“You had a chance to start up one clinic, or dare to risk more to get back everything you lost,” she told him. “You didn’t let the fear of a second loss stop you.” And then she asked, “Grayson Bartholomew, will you marry me?”

“Who’s Grayson Barfew?” Leigh asked, coming up to stand beside the two of them.

“It’s Mr. Buzzing Bee’s other name,” Sage told the little girl, with her arms still wrapped around Gray’s waist.

“But, if you want, you can call me Daddy.”

With one arm wrapped around Sage’s waist, Gray bent down to pick up Leigh in the other, bringing them together in a circle. Seemingly unaware of the tears pouring down Sage’s cheeks.

“Yes,” he said, looking between the two of them. “I will marry you. Both of you.”

“And that means you’re my daddy,” Leigh said, nodding.

“Right.”

Reaching over, the little girl wiped her fingers down Sage’s face. “Mommy does this sometimes,” she said matter-of-factly. “Sometimes when I give her a present. She calls it happy tears, but that doesn’t mean right, does it?” Screwing up her little cheeks and forehead, Leigh giggled.

Then, looking down, squirmed to get away, saying, “Uh-oh, he pooped again!”

If there’d been more than dirt on the ground Sage might have cared more. But she doubted it. “I love you, Grayson Barfew,” she said. Seeing the glow of the Christmas lights on the back of his cottage reflected on the side of his face.

“Not nearly as much as I love you, Mrs. Barfew,” he said back to her.

Sealing her fate.

And giving her an eternity of dreams to start living.

The two of them sharing life—and a home. Leigh with a mom and a dad. The new baby. And stockings hung together.

Her Christmas wish had just come true.