Two favorite Brambleberry House stories from New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne

The Daddy Makeover

Eben Spencer learned long ago to keep his eye on the ball and his emotions under wraps. This philosophy has taken him to the pinnacle of success in business. But in his personal life, it led to a shattered marriage. So it’s just him and his little girl…until he meets Sage Benedetto. She’s warm, emotional, open—everything Eben is not. Sage’s bewitching nature soon has this tycoon rethinking his future….

His Second-Chance Family

As a teenager Julia Blair found more than fun in the sun at Cannon Beach. She found a home—in the arms of her first love, Will Garrett. A bright future stretched out in front of Julia…. Though life hadn’t worked out as planned, here she is, back in Cannon Beach, with her two kids in tow. Only to find Will there, too. Julia believes Will can still make her dreams come true, but will he let her into his heart to do the same for him?

Praise for New York Times bestselling authorRaeAnne Thayne

“If you’re going to read only one book this season, make it Blackberry Summer.” —Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“A warm, wise story with emotionally complex and intriguing characters.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Daddy Makeover (4 ½ stars)

“Well-developed characters, plus plenty of raw emotion—and humor—add up to one of the author’s finest books.”

—RT Book Reviews on His Second-Chance Family (4 ½ stars, Top Pick)

“Thayne is a gifted storyteller, whose realistic characters and absorbing dialogue weave a mesmerizing tale.”

—WordWeaving.com

Brambleberry Shores

The Daddy Makeover
His Second-Chance Family

RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Contents

THE DADDY MAKEOVER

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

HIS SECOND-CHANCE FAMILY

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

The Daddy Makeover

RaeAnne Thayne

Chapter 1

On a scale of one to ten, Sage Benedetto would probably rate the concept of jogging before sunrise every day somewhere around a negative twenty.

While she highly doubted she would ever evolve enough that she could wholly enjoy these runs, after a month, she had at least grown to tolerate the activity. Her gut didn’t automatically cramp at just the idea of throwing on her running shoes and her muscles no longer started to spasm after the first few steps.

She supposed that was a good thing.

This would probably never be her favorite thing to do, but she had promised, she reminded herself. And while she had many faults—all of which somehow seemed more glaringly obvious in the pale light of early morning—breaking her word was not among them.

Despite the random muscle aches and her inherent dislike of just about any activity that involved sending her heart rate into heavy exertion mode, she had even come to discover an ethereal beauty in these quiet early-morning runs.

The towering sea stacks offshore glowed pink in the first, hesitant rays of the sun; this wide, gorgeous stretch of Oregon beach was empty, at least for a little while longer.

Soon the beach would be crowded with treasure hunters looking for shells or colored glass or any other gift the sea surrendered during the night. But for now it was hers.

Hers and Conan’s, anyway.

A huge red beast emerged from behind a cluster of rocks and shuffled to her, scaring up a seagull.

She sighed. This was the reason she was here before sunrise, her thigh muscles burning and her breath sawing raggedly. This rangy, melancholy creature was her responsibility, her curse, her unexpected legacy.

“There you are. You can’t keep slipping off your leash or we won’t do this anymore.”

Abigail’s big mutt, rescued from the pound right around the time Abigail rescued Sage, cocked his head and gazed at Sage out of doleful eyes the murky dark green of the sea in a November storm.

Some days these jogs along the shore seemed to lift his spirits—the only reason she carried on with them when she would much rather be home in bed for another hour.

This apparently wouldn’t be one of those days.

“I know,” she murmured, rubbing his chin as she slipped the leash back on. “She loved these kind of mornings, didn’t she? With the air clear and cool and sweet and the day just waiting to explode with possibilities. Anything-can-happen days, that’s what she called them.”

Conan whined a little and lowered himself to the sand, his head sagging to his forepaws as if he were entirely too exhausted to move.

“You’ve got to snap out of it, bud. We both do.”

She tried to swallow down the lump of grief that had taken up permanent residence in her throat during the past month. Her eyes burned and she wondered when these raw moments of sorrow would stop taking her by surprise.

She blinked away the tears. “Come on, dude. I’ll race you home.”

He gave her a long, considering look, then heaved to his feet and shuffled off in the direction of Brambleberry House, still a mile down the beach. Even at his most ponderous pace, Conan could outrun her. A pretty sad state of affairs, she decided, and tried to pick up her speed.

Focusing on the sand in front of her, she had only made it a few hundred yards down the beach, when she heard a sharp bark. She turned in the direction of the sound; Conan was at the end of his long retractable leash, sitting with a small figure above the high-tide mark in the sand.

The figure was a young girl, one she wasn’t even sure was old enough to be considered a tween. A young girl who was wearing only a pale green nightgown and what looked to be seashell-pink flip-flops on her feet.

To Sage’s deep surprise, Conan’s tail wagged and he nudged at the girl’s hand in a blatant invitation to pet him. She hadn’t seen Conan greet anyone with this kind of friendly enthusiasm for the better part of a month.

Sage scanned the beach looking in vain for the girl’s companion. She checked her watch and saw it was barely 6:00 a.m. What on earth was a young girl doing out here alone on an empty stretch of beach at such an hour, and in nightclothes at that?

“Morning,” she called out.

The girl waved. “Is this your dog?” she called to Sage with a big smile. “She’s so pretty!”

Conan would just love being called pretty. When he wasn’t grieving and morose, the beast had more prickly pride than a hedgehog with an attitude. “She’s a he. And, yeah, I guess you could say he’s mine.”

Partly hers, anyway. Technically, she shared custody of the dog and ownership of Brambleberry House. But she wasn’t about to let thoughts of Anna Galvez ruin one of Abigail’s anything-can-happen days.

“His name is Conan,” she said instead. “I’m Sage.”

“Hi, Conan and Sage. My name’s Chloe Elizabeth Spencer.”

The girl had short, wavy dark hair, intense green eyes and delicate elfin features. If she’d been in a more whimsical mood, Sage might have thought her a water sprite delivered by the sea.

A cold, wet breeze blew off the Pacific and the girl shivered suddenly, drawing Sage’s attention back to her thin nightgown and her nearly bare feet. “Chloe, what are you doing out here by yourself so early?”

She shrugged her narrow shoulders with a winsome smile. “Looking for sand dollars. I found four yesterday but they were all broken so I thought if I came out early enough, the tide might leave some good ones and I could get them before anybody else. I promised my friend Henry I’d bring one back to him and I can’t break a promise. He lives in the apartment next door. He’s only seven and won’t be eight until December. I’ve been eight for two whole months.”

“Where’s your mom or dad? Do they know you left?”

“My mom’s dead.” She said the words in a matter-of-fact way that Sage was only too familiar with. “She died when I was six.”

“What about your dad, then?”

“I’m not sure. He’s probably still asleep. He got mad at me last night because I wanted to find more sand dollars so I decided to come by myself this morning.”

Sage looked around at the few isolated cottages and guesthouses on this stretch of beach. “Are you staying close by? I thought I knew all the eight-year-olds in town.”

“Every one?” With a lift of her dark eyebrow, the girl somehow managed to look skeptical and intrigued at the same time.

“I do,” Sage assured her. “The ones who live here year-round, anyway. I’m sure I don’t remember meeting you.”

Cannon Beach’s population was only a couple thousand year-round. In the summer, those numbers swelled as tourists flocked to the Oregon shore, but they were still a week or so away from the big crowds.

“We’re only here for a few days. Maybe a week. But if it’s longer, then my dad says he’ll have to send me to stay with Mrs. Strictland so he can get some work done. She’s my dad’s assistant and she hates me. I don’t like going to her house.”

Though she knew it was unfair to make snap judgments about a man she had not even met, a clear image of the girl’s father formed in Sage’s mind—a man too busy to hunt for sand dollars with his motherless child and eager to foist her on his minions so he could return to conquering the world.

She fought down her instinctive urge to take Chloe home with her and watch over her like a sandpiper guarding her nest.

“Do you remember where you’re staying, sweetheart?”

Chloe pointed vaguely north. “I think it’s that way.” She frowned and squinted in the opposite direction. “Or maybe that way. I’m not sure.”

“Are you in a hotel or a condo?”

The girl shook her head. “It’s a house, right on the beach. My dad would have liked to stay at The Sea Urchin but Mr. Wu said they were all booked. He didn’t look very happy when he said it. I think he doesn’t like my dad very much.”

No wonder she had always considered Stanley Wu an excellent judge of character. She hadn’t even met Chloe’s father and already she disliked him.

“But what I don’t get,” the girl went on, “is if he doesn’t like my dad, why is he going to sell him his hotel?”

Sage blinked at that unexpected bit of information. She hadn’t heard Stanley and Jade Wu were considering selling The Sea Urchin. They had been fixtures in Cannon Beach for decades, their elegant boutique hotel of twenty or so guest rooms consistently named among the best accommodations along the coast.

“Do you know if your rental is close to The Sea Urchin?”

Chloe screwed up her features. “Pretty close, but I think it’s on the other side. I didn’t walk past it this morning, I don’t think.”

Though she seemed remarkably unconcerned about standing on wet sand in only her nightgown and flip-flops, she shivered a little and pulled Conan closer.

Sage sighed, bidding a regretful goodbye to any hopes she might have entertained of enjoying a quiet moment for breakfast before heading to work. She couldn’t leave this girl alone here, not when she apparently didn’t have the first clue how to find her way home.

She shrugged out of her hooded sweatshirt and tucked it around Chloe’s small shoulders, immediately shivering herself as the cool ocean breeze danced over her perspiration-dampened skin.

“Come on. I’ll help you find where you’re staying. Your dad will be worried.”

Conan barked—whether in agreement with the plan or skepticism about the level of concern of Chloe’s father, she wasn’t sure. Whatever the reason, the dog led the way up the beach toward downtown with more enthusiasm than he’d shown for the ocean-side run. Chloe and Sage followed with the girl chatting the entire way.

In no time, Sage knew all about Chloe’s best friend, Henry, her favorite TV show and her distant, work-obsessed father. She had also helped Chloe find a half-dozen pristine sand dollars the gulls hadn’t picked at yet, as well as a couple of pieces of driftwood and a gorgeous piece of translucent orange agate.

“How do you know so much about shells and birds and stuff?” Chloe asked after Sage pointed out a surf scoter and a grebe.

She smiled at Chloe’s obvious awe. “It’s my job to know it. I’m a naturalist. Do you know what that is?”

“Somebody who studies nature?”

“Excellent! That’s exactly what I do. I work for an organization that teaches people more about the world around them. When I’m not working on research, I get to show people the plants and animals that live here on the Oregon Coast. I even teach classes to kids. In fact, our first nature camp of the summer starts today. That’s how I know so many of the local children, because most of them have been my campers at some time or another.”

“Really? That’s so cool!”

She smiled back, charmed by the funny little creature. “Yeah, I think so, too.”

“Can I come to your camp?” The girl didn’t wait for an answer. “My dad has another hotel in Carmel. That’s in California, too, like San Francisco where we live. Once I went with him there and my nanny took me to see the tide pools. We saw starfish and anemones and everything. It was supercool.”

Her nanny, again. Did the girl’s father even acknowledge she existed?

“Did you at least tell your nanny where you were going this morning?” she asked.

Chloe stopped to pick up a chipped shell to add to the burgeoning collection in her nightgown pockets. “Don’t have one. Señora Marcos quit two days ago. That’s why my dad had to bring me here, too, to Cannon Beach, because he didn’t know what else to do with me and it was too late for him to cancel his trip. But Señora Marcos wasn’t the nanny that who took me to see the tide pools anyway. That was Jamie. She quit, too. And the one after that was Ms. Ludwig. She had bad breath and eyes like a mean pig. You know what? I was glad when she said she couldn’t stand another minute of me. I didn’t like her, either.”

She said this with such nonchalance the words nearly broke Sage’s heart. It sounded like a very lonely existence—a self-involved father and a string of humorless nannies unwilling to exert any effort to reach one energetic little girl.

The story had a bitterly familiar ring to it, one that left her with sick anger balled up in her stomach.

None of her business, she reminded herself. She was a stranger and didn’t know the dynamics between Chloe and her father. Her own experience was apropos of nothing.

“Does any of this look familiar?” she asked. “Do you think your beach house is close by?”

The girl frowned. “I’m not sure. It’s a brown house made out of wood. I remember that.”

Sage sighed. Brown and made of wood might be helpful information if it didn’t describe most of the houses in Cannon Beach. The town had strict zoning laws dictating the style and aesthetics of all construction, ensuring the beachside charm remained.

They walked a little farther, past weathered cedar houses and shops. Sage was beginning to wonder if perhaps she ought to call in Bill Rich, the local police chief, when Chloe suddenly squealed with excitement, which prompted Conan to answer with a bark.

“There it is! Right there.” Chloe pointed to a house with an unobstructed view of the ocean and the sea stacks. Sage had always loved the place, with its quaint widow’s walk and steep gables.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

Chloe nodded. “I remember the fish windchimes. I heard them when I was going to sleep and it sounded like angels singing. And I remember the house next door had those big balls that look like ginormous Christmas ornaments.”

Sage shifted her gaze to take in the collection of Japanese glass fishing floats that adorned Blair and Kristine Saunders’ landscape.

“Do you have a key?” she asked the girl.

Chloe held tight to Conan’s collar. “No. My dad didn’t give me one. But I climbed out the window of my room. I can just go back that way.”

Sage was tempted to let her. A quick glance at her watch told her it was now twenty minutes to seven and she had exactly forty minutes to change and make it in to work. Her life would certainly be easier if she let Chloe sneak into her rental house, but it wouldn’t be right, she knew. She needed to make sure the girl’s father knew what Chloe had been up to.

“We’d better make sure your dad knows you’re safe.”

“I bet he didn’t even know I was gone,” Chloe muttered. “He’s going to be mad when he finds out.”

“You can’t just sneak out on your own, Chloe. It’s not safe. Anything could have happened to you out on the beach by yourself. I have to tell your dad. I’m sorry.”

She rang the doorbell, then felt like the worst sort of weasel when Chloe glared at her.

Before she could defend her action, the door opened and she forgot everything she intended to say—as well as her own name and how to put two words together.

Chloe neglected to mention the little fact that her father was gorgeous. Sage swallowed hard. The odd trembling in her thighs had nothing to do with her earlier run.

He had rugged, commanding features, with high cheekbones, a square, firm jaw and green eyes a shade darker than his daughter’s. It was obvious he’d just stepped out of the shower. His hair was wet, his chest bare and he wore only a pair of gray trousers and an unbuttoned blue dress shirt.

Sage swallowed again. Why did she have to meet a man like him today when she smelled like wet dog and four miles of sweat? And she already disliked him, she reminded herself.

“Can I help you?” he asked. She didn’t mistake the shadow of irritation on those rugged features.

She blinked and tugged Chloe forward.

“Chloe?” he stared at his daughter, baffled concern replacing annoyance. “What’s going on? I thought you were still sound asleep in your bed. What are you doing out here in your nightgown?”

She didn’t answer for a moment then she shrugged. “Nothing. I just went for a walk to get some more sand dollars. I found a ton. Well, Sage helped me. Look.” She thrust her armload at her father.

He didn’t take them, gazing at his daughter’s hard-won treasure with little visible reaction. Or so Sage thought, until she happened to catch the storm clouds scudding across his green eyes like a winter squall stirring up seafoam.

“What do you mean, you went for a walk? It’s barely six-thirty in the morning!”

Chloe shrugged. “I woke up early but you were still sleeping and I didn’t want to wake you up. I was just going to be gone for a minute, but…then I couldn’t remember how to get back.”

“You are in serious trouble, young lady.”

His voice was suddenly as hard as a sea stack and Sage was automatically seven years old again, trying desperately to understand how her world could change with such sudden cruelty.

“I am?” Chloe’s fingers seemed to tighten on Conan’s collar but the dog didn’t so much as whimper.

“You know you’re not supposed to leave the house alone. You know that. Any house, whether our own or a temporary one.”

“But Daddy—

“You promised me, Chloe. Do you remember that? I knew bringing you along on this trip would be a huge mistake but you promised you would behave yourself, for once. Do you call running off down the beach by yourself behaving?”

He didn’t raise his voice one single decibel but muscles inside Sage’s stomach clenched and she hated it, hated it. The terrible thing was, she couldn’t blame the man. Not really. She could imagine any parent would be upset to discover a child had wandered away in an unknown setting.

She knew it was a normal reaction, but still this particular situation had an entirely too-familiar ring to it.

“But I wasn’t alone for very long,” Chloe insisted. “I made two new friends, Daddy. This is Sage and her dog’s name is Conan. She lives here and she knows all kinds of things about birds and shells and fish. She’s a naturist.”

“Naturalist,” Sage corrected.

“Right. A naturalist. She teaches summer camp and tells kids about shells and birds and stuff like that.”

For the first time since she rang the doorbell, the man shifted his gaze to her.

“I’m Sage Benedetto,” she said, hoping her cool voice masked the nerves still jumping in her stomach. Though she wanted to yell and scream and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing trying to quash this sweet little girl’s spirit, the words tangled in her throat.

“I live down the coast about a half mile in the big Victorian,” she said instead.

He stared at her for a long second, an odd, arrested look in his eyes. She didn’t know how long he might have stared at her if Conan hadn’t barked. The man blinked a little then closed his fingers around hers.

She was quite certain she imagined the odd little sizzle when their fingers touched. She didn’t imagine the slightly disconcerted expression that crossed his features.

“Eben Spencer. Thank you for taking the time to bring my daughter home.”

“You’re welcome,” she said in that same cool voice. “You might want to keep a closer eye on her.”

“Easier said than done, Ms. Benedetto. But thank you for the advice.”

“No problem.”

She forced a tight smile for him, then a more genuine one for his daughter. “Bye, Chloe. You need to rinse those sand dollars in fresh water until the water runs clear, then soak them in bleach and water for five or ten minutes. That way they’ll be hard enough for you to take them home without breaking. Remember, Henry’s counting on you.”

The girl giggled as Sage called to Conan, who barked at her, nuzzled Chloe, then bounded off ahead as they headed back toward Brambleberry House.

* * *

He watched her jog down the beach, the strange woman with the wild mane of honey-colored hair and thinly veiled disdain in her haunting amber-flecked brown eyes.

She didn’t like him. That much was obvious. He hadn’t missed the coldness in her expression nor the way she clipped off the ends of her words when she spoke to him.

He wasn’t sure why that bothered him so much. Plenty of people disliked him. Constantly striving to win approval from others simply for the sake of their approval wasn’t in his nature and he had long ago learned some measure of unpopularity was one of the prices one paid for success.

He was damn good at what he did, had taken his family’s faltering hotel business and through careful management, a shrewd business plan and attention to detail turned it into a formidable force in the luxury hotel business.

Over the years, he had bumped up against plenty of affronted egos and prickly psyches. But seeing the disdain in Sage Benedetto’s unsettling eyes annoyed him. And the very fact that he was bothered by it only irked him more.

What did he care what some wind-tousled stranger with a massive, ungainly mutt for a dog thought of him?

She stopped at a huge, cheerful yellow Victorian with incongruent lavender trim some distance down the beach. He watched her go inside and couldn’t stop thinking about that odd jolt when their hands had touched.

It was completely crazy but he could swear some kind of strange, shimmery connection had arced between them and he had almost felt as if something inside him recognized her.

Foolish. Completely unlike him. He wasn’t the sort to let his imagination run wild—nor was he the kind of man to be attracted to a woman who so clearly did not share his interest.

“She’s nice. I like her. And I love her dog. Conan is so cute,” Chloe chirped from inside the room and Eben realized with considerable dismay that he still stood at the window looking after her in the early-morning light

He jerked his attention away from thoughts of Sage Benedetto and focused on his daughter. Chloe had spread her treasures on the coffee table in their temporary living room, leaving who knew what kind of sand and grime on the polished mahogany.

He sighed, shut the door and advanced on her. “All right, young lady. Let’s hear it.”

He did his best to be firm, his tone the same one he would use with a recalcitrant employee.

These were the kind of moments that reminded him all too painfully that he didn’t have the first idea how to correctly discipline a child. God knows, he had no childhood experience to draw from. He and his sister had virtually raised each other, caught in a hellish no-man’s-land between two people who had had no business reproducing.

Between their mother’s tantrums and violent moods and their father’s shameless self-indulgence, it was a wonder either he or his sister could function as adults.

Cami had found happiness. As for him, he was doing the best he could not to repeat the mistakes of his parents.

“You know the rules about leaving the house by yourself. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Chloe shifted her gaze to the sand dollars in front of her and he hated himself when he saw the animation fade from her eyes. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I promise I won’t do it again.”

Eben sighed. “You say that every time, but then you find some other way to cause trouble.”

“I don’t mean to.” Her voice was small, sad, and he found himself wishing fiercely that he were better at this.

“I try to be good but it’s so hard.”

He had to agree with her. Nothing was as hard as trying to do the right thing all the time. Even right now, some wild part of him wanted to call up Stanley and Jade Wu and tell them to go to hell, that he didn’t want their stupid hotel if they were going to make him work this hard for it.

That same wild corner of his psyche wanted to toss Chloe onto his shoulders and run out into the surf with her in his bare feet, to feel the sand squishing between his toes and the cold water sluicing over his skin and her squeals of laughter ringing in his ears.

He tamped it down, containing it deep inside. “Try a little harder, okay?” he said sternly. “This deal is important to me, Chloe. I’ve told you that. You’ve got to be on your best behavior. I can’t afford any distractions. It’s only for a few more days, then I promise when we get back to San Francisco, we’ll find a new nanny.”

She nodded, her little mouth set in a tight line that told him clearly she was just as annoyed with him as Sage Benedetto had been.

“I’m supposed to have meetings with Mr. and Mrs. Wu most of the day so I’ve made arrangements for a caregiver through an agency here. All I’m asking is for you to behave. Can you try for a few hours?”

She looked up at him through her lashes. “When you’re done with your meeting, can we buy a kite and fly it on the beach? Sage said Cannon Beach is the perfect place to fly kites because it’s always windy and because there’s lots of room so you don’t run into people.”

“If you promise to be on your best behavior, we can talk about it after my meetings.”

She ran to him and threw her arms around his waist. “I’ll be so good, Daddy, I promise, I promise, I promise.”

He returned her embrace, his heart a heavy weight in his chest. He hated thinking of her going to boarding school at the end of the summer. But in the two years since Brooke died, Chloe had run through six nannies with her headstrong behavior. Some sort of record, he was certain. He couldn’t do this by himself and he was running out of options.

“Maybe Sage and Conan can help us fly the kite,” Chloe exclaimed. “Can they, Daddy?”

The very last thing he wanted to do was spend more time with Sage Benedetto of the judgmental eyes and the luscious mouth.

“We’ll have to see,” he said. He could only hope a day of trying to be on her best behavior would exhaust Chloe sufficiently that she would forget all about their temporary neighbor and her gargantuan canine.

Chapter 2

“Sorry, Conan. You’ve got to stay here.”

Sage muscled her bike around Anna’s minivan and wheeled it out of the small garage, trying to ignore the soulful eyes gazing back at her through the flowers on the other side of the low wrought-iron fence circling the house. “You’ll be all right. I’ll come back at lunchtime to throw a ball with you for awhile, okay?”

Conan didn’t look convinced. He added a morose whine, his head cocked to one side and his chin tucked into his chest. She blew out a frustrated breath. They had been through this routine just about every day for the past month and the dog didn’t seem to be adjusting.

She couldn’t really blame the poor thing for not wanting to be alone. He was used to having Abigail’s company all day.

The two of them had been inseparable from the moment Abigail had brought him home from the pound. Conan would ride along with Abigail to the shops, his head hanging out the backseat window of her big Buick, tongue lolling. He would patiently wait for her on the porch of her friends’ houses when she would make her regular round of visits, would sniff through the yard while Abigail tended her flowers, would curl up every evening beside her favorite chair in front of the huge bay windows overlooking the ocean.

Conan was lonely and Sage could certainly empathize with that. “I’m sorry, bud,” she said again. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

The dog suddenly barked, his ears perking up like twin mountain peaks. He barreled to the front porch just as the door opened. From her place on the other side of the fence, Sage watched Anna Galvez—trim and proper in a navy blazer and gray slacks—set down her briefcase to greet the dog with a smile and a scratch under his chin.

Anna murmured something to the dog but Sage was too far away to hear. She wasn’t too far to see Anna’s warm smile for Conan trickle away when she straightened and saw Sage on the other side of the wrought-iron.

She brushed hair off her slacks and picked up her briefcase, then walked to the gate.

“Good morning. I thought I heard you come down the stairs some time ago. I figured you had already left.”

Sage straddled her bike, not at all in the mood for conversation. Her fault for sticking around when she heard the door open. If she’d left then, she could have been halfway to town by now. But that would have been rude and she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling Abigail wanted her to at least pretend politeness with Anna.

“I couldn’t walk out in the middle of his guiltfest.”

“He’s good at that, isn’t he?” Anna frowned at the dog. “I expected him to be past this phase by now. It’s been a month. Don’t you think he should already be accustomed to the changes in his life?”

Sage shrugged. “I guess some of us need a little more time than others to grieve.”

Anna’s mouth tightened and Sage immediately regretted the low comment. So much for politeness. She wanted to apologize but couldn’t seem to form the words.

“I wish I could take him with me to work,” Anna said after an awkward moment.

Sage gave the other woman a disbelieving look. Anna couldn’t possibly want a big, gangly dog wreaking havoc with the tchotchkes and whatnot in her book and gift shop in town. Conan would bankrupt her in less than an hour.

“I’ve been coming home for lunch to keep him company for awhile. Throw a ball, give him a treat. That kind of thing. For now, that’s the best I can do.”

For an instant, guilt flickered in Anna’s brown eyes but she blinked it away. “I’m sorry. I should have realized you were doing so much. I’m a little preoccupied with some things at the store right now but it’s only right that I do my share. Abigail left him to both of us, which means he’s my responsibility as well. I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t come back to the house today,” she said with a frown. “But I’ll try to arrange my schedule so I can take a few hours to be here with him tomorrow.”

“I’m sure he would enjoy that,” Sage said. As always, she regretted the awkwardness between her and Anna. She knew Abigail had wanted them to be friends but Sage doubted it was possible. They were simply too different.

Anna was brisk and efficient, her world centered on By-The-Wind, the shop she had purchased from Abigail two years earlier after having managed it for a year before that. Sage didn’t believe Anna had even the tiniest morsel of a sense of humor—or if she did, it was buried so deeply beneath spreadsheets and deposit slips that Sage had never seen sign of it.

After two weeks of sharing the same house, though in different apartments, Anna was still a stranger to Sage. Tightly wound and tense, Anna never seemed to relax.

Sage figured they were as different as it was possible for two women to be, one quirky and independent-minded, the other staid and responsible. Yet Abigail had loved them both.

When she was being brutally honest with herself, she could admit that was at least part of the reason for her natural reserve with Anna Galvez—small-minded, petty jealousy.

A weird kind of sibling rivalry, even.

Abigail had loved Anna—enough to leave her half of Brambleberry House and all its contents. Sage knew she was being selfish but she couldn’t help resenting it. Not the house—she couldn’t care less about that—but Abigail’s affection.

“I’d better get going,” Sage said.

“Uh, would you like a ride since we’re both going the same way?”

She shook her head. “I’m good. Thanks anyway. If you give me a ride, I won’t be able to come home at lunch.”

“Oh. Right. I’ll see you later then.”

Sage stuffed her bag in the wicker basket of her one-speed bike and headed off to town. A moment later, Anna pulled past in her white minivan, moving at a cautious speed on the curving road.

Sage knew the roomy van was a practical choice since Anna probably had to transport things for the store, but she couldn’t help thinking how the vehicle seemed to perfectly mirror Anna’s personality: bland and businesslike and boring.

Somebody had certainly climbed out of bed on the bitchy side, she chided herself, resolving that she would think only pleasant thoughts about Anna Galvez today, if she thought of her at all.

The same went for little sea sprites she had met on the beach and their entirely too-gorgeous fathers. She had too much to do today with all the chaos and confusion of her first day of camp to spend time thinking about Chloe and Eben Spencer.

The road roughly followed the shore here. Through the heavy pines, she could catch a glimpse of the sea stacks and hear the low murmur of the waves. Three houses down, she waved at a neighbor pulling out of his driveway in a large pickup truck with Garrett Carpentry on the side.

He was heading the other direction toward Manzanita but Will Garrett pulled up alongside her and rolled down his passenger-side window. “Morning, Sage.”

She straddled her bike. “Hey, Will.”

“Sorry I haven’t made it over to look at the work you want done on the house. Been a busy week.”

She stared. “Work? What work?”

“Anna called me last week. Said she wanted me to give her a bid for a possible remodel of the kitchen and bathroom on the second-floor apartment. She also wanted me to check the feasibility of knocking out a couple walls in Abigail’s apartment to open up the floor plan a little.”

“Oh, did she?”

Anger swept over her, hot and bright. Any warmth she might have been trying to force herself into feeling toward Anna seeped out into the dirt.

How dare she?

They had agreed to discuss any matters pertaining to the house and come to a consensus on them, but Anna hadn’t said a single word about any of this.

Abigail had left the house to both of them, which meant they both should make minor little decisions like knocking out walls and remodeling kitchens. Yet Anna hadn’t bothered to bring this up, even when they were talking a few moments ago.

Was her opinion so insignificant?

She knew her anger was overblown—irrational, even—but she couldn’t help it. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready to go knocking down walls and remodeling kitchens, erasing any sign of the crumbling old house Abigail had loved so dearly.

“She didn’t talk to you about it?”

“Not yet,” she said grimly.

Something in her tone of voice—or maybe the smoke curling out of her ears—had tipped him off that she wasn’t pleased. His expression turned wary. “Well, uh, if you talk to her, let her know I’m going to try to come by this evening to check things out, if that’s still okay. Seven or so. One of you can give me a buzz if that’s a problem.”

He looked eager to escape. She sighed—she shouldn’t vent her frustration on Will. It certainly wasn’t his fault Anna Galvez was a bossy, managing, stiff-necked pencil-pusher who seemed to believe she knew what was best for the whole bloody world.

She forced a smile. “I’m sure it will be fine. See you tonight.”

Though he didn’t smile in return—Will rarely smiled anymore—he nodded and put his truck in gear, then headed down the road.

She watched after him for only a moment, then continued pedaling her way toward town.

She still simmered with anger toward Anna’s high-handedness, but it was tempered by her usual ache of sorrow for Will. So much pain in the world. Sometimes she couldn’t bear it.

She tried her best to leave the world a better place than when she found it. But riding a bike to work and volunteering with Meals on Wheels seemed exercises in futility when she couldn’t do a darn thing to ease the burden of those she cared about.

Will was another of Abigail’s lost sheep—Sage’s affectionate term for the little band of creatures her friend had watched over with her endless supply of love. Abigail seemed to collect people in need and gathered them toward her. The lonely, the forgotten, the grieving. Will had been right there with the rest of them.

No, that wasn’t exactly true. Will had belonged to Abigail long before he had ever needed watching over. He had grown up in the same house where he now lived and he and his wife Robin had both known and loved Abigail all their lives.

Sage had lived at Brambleberry House long enough to remember him when he was a handsome charmer, with a teasing grin for everyone. He used to charge into Abigail’s parlor and sweep her off her feet, twirling her around and around.

He always had a funny story to tell and he had invariably been the first one on the scene whenever anyone needed help—whether it was moving a piano or spreading a dump-truckload of gravel on a driveway or pumping out a flooded basement.

When Sage moved in upstairs at Brambleberry, Will had become like a big brother to her, offering her the same warm affection he poured out on everyone else in town. Robin had been just as bighearted—lovely and generous and open.

When Robin discovered Sage didn’t having a dining room table yet, she had put her husband to work on one and Will had crafted a beautiful round piece of art as a housewarming present.

Sage had soaked it all in, had reveled in the miracle that she had finally found a place to belong among these wonderful people who had opened their lives to her.

If Abigail had been the heart of her circle of friends, Will had been the sturdy, reliable backbone and Robin the nerve center. Their little pigtailed toddler Cara had just been everyone’s joy.

Then in the blink of an eye, everything changed.

So much pain.

She let out a breath as she gave a hand signal and turned onto the street toward work. Robin and Will had been crazy about each other. She had walked in on them once in a corner of Abigail’s yard at a Fourth of July barbecue. They hadn’t been kissing, had just been holding each other, but even from several yards away Sage could feel the love vibrating between them, a strong, tangible connection.

She couldn’t imagine the depth of Will’s pain at knowing that kind of love and losing it.

Oddly, the mental meanderings made her think of Eben Spencer, sweet little Chloe’s abrupt, unfriendly father. The girl had said her mother was dead. Did Eben mourn her loss as deeply as Will did Robin and little Cara, killed two years ago by a drunk driver as they were walking across the street not far from here?

She pulled up to the center and looped her bike lock through the rack out front, determined to put Eben and Chloe Spencer out of her head.

She didn’t want to think about either of them. She had learned early in her time at Cannon Beach not to pay much mind to the tourists. Like the fragile summer, they disappeared too soon.

* * *

Her resolve was tested even before lunchtime. Since the weather held through the morning, she and her dozen new campers gathered at a picnic table under the spreading boughs of a pine tree outside the center.

She was showing them intertidal zone specimens in aquarium display cases collected earlier that morning by center staffers when she heard a familiar voice call her name.

She turned to find her new friend from the morning barreling toward her, eyes wide, her gamine face animated.

Moving at a slower pace came Eben Spencer, his silk, undoubtedly expensive tie off-center and his hair slightly messed. He did not look as if he were having a great day.

Of course, when Sage was having a lousy day, she ended up with circles under her eyes, stress lines cutting through her face and a pounding headache she could swear was visible for miles around.

Eben Spencer just looked slightly rumpled in an entirely too-sexy way.

Heedless of the other children in the class, Chloe rushed to her and threw her arms around Sage’s waist.

“It’s not my fault this time, I promise.”

Under other circumstances, she might have been annoyed at the interruption to her class but she couldn’t ignore Chloe’s distress—or the frustration stamped on Eben’s features.

“Lindsey, can you take over for a minute?” she asked her assistant camp director.

“Of course.” The college student who had worked for the nature center every summer since high school stepped forward and Sage led Eben and Chloe away from the interested campers.

“What’s not your fault? What’s going on?”

“I didn’t do anything, I swear. It’s not my fault at all that she was so mean.”

Sage looked to Eben for elucidation.

“The caregiver the agency in Portland sent over was…unacceptable.” Eben raked a hand through his wavy hair, messing it even more.

“She was mean to me,” Chloe said. “She wouldn’t let me walk out to the beach, even when I told her my dad said it was okay. She didn’t believe me so I called my dad and she got mad at me and pulled my hair and said I was a bad word.”

From that explanation, she gathered the caregiver hadn’t appreciated an eight-year-old going over her head.

“Oh, dear. A bad word, huh?”

Chloe nodded. “She called me a spoiled little poop, only she didn’t say poop.”

“I’m sorry,” Sage said, trying to figure out exactly what part she played in this unfolding drama.

“I didn’t care about the name but I didn’t like that she pulled my hair. She didn’t have to be so mean. I think she was a big poop.”

“Chloe,” her father said sternly.

“Well, I do. So I called my dad again and told him what she did and he came right over from The Sea Urchin and told her to leave right now. He said a bad word, too, but I think she deserved it.”

She gave a quick glance at her father, then mouthed H-E-L-L.

Sage had to fight a smile. “I see,” she said. She found it admirably unexpected that Eben would rush to his daughter’s defense.

“And now the place that sent her doesn’t have anybody else to take care of me.”

Sage raised her eyebrows and glanced at Eben. “I suppose the temp pool is probably pretty shallow right now since the tourist season is heading into full gear.”

“I’m figuring that out,” he answered. “The agency says it will be at least tomorrow or the next day before they can find someone else. In the meantime, I’ve got conference calls scheduled all day.”

Sage waited to hear what all of this had to do with her, though she was beginning to guess. Her speculation was confirmed by his next words.

“I can’t expect Chloe to entertain herself in a strange place while I’m occupied. I remembered you mentioning a summer camp and hoped that you might have room for one more.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. We’re completely full.”

The center had always maintained a strict limit of twelve campers per session to ensure an adequate adult-to-student ratio. Beyond that, she had her hands full this year. Three of the children had learning disabilities and she had already figured out after the first few hours that two more might be on their way to becoming behavior problems if she couldn’t figure out how to channel their energy.

Even as she thought of the trouble to her staff if she added another camper, her mind raced trying to figure out how to accommodate Eben and his daughter.

“I was afraid you would say that.” He smiled stiffly. “Thank you for your time anyway. We’ll try to figure something else out.”

He looked resigned but accepting. His daughter, on the other hand, appeared close to tears. Her shoulders slumped and her chin quivered.

“But I really wanted to come to camp with Sage,” she wailed. “It sounded super, super fun! I don’t want to stay in a boring house all day long while you talk on the phone!”

“Chloe, that’s enough. If the camp doesn’t have room for you, that’s the way it is.”

“You think I’m a little poop, too, don’t you?” Chloe’s chin was definitely quivering now. “That’s why you don’t want me in your camp. You don’t like me, either.”

“Oh, honey, that’s not true. We just have rules about how many children we can have in our camp.”

“I would be really good. You wouldn’t even know I’m here. Oh, please, Sage!”

She studied them both—Chloe so dejected and her father resigned. She had to wonder how much pride he had forced himself to swallow for his daughter’s sake to bring her here and ask Sage for a favor.

How could she disappoint them?

“We’re at capacity,” she finally said, “but I think we can probably find room to squeeze in one more.”

“You mean it? Really?” The girl looked afraid to hope.

Sage nodded and Chloe squealed with delight and hugged her again. “Yes! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Sage hugged her in return. “You’re welcome. You’re going to have to work hard and listen to me and the other grown-ups, though.”

“I will. I’ll be super super good.”

Sage glanced up to meet Eben’s gaze and found him watching her with that same odd, slightly thunderstruck expression she had seen him wear earlier that morning. She didn’t fathom it—nor did she quite understand why it made her insides tremble.

“I’m busy with the class out here,” she spoke briskly to hide her reaction, “but if you go inside the center, Amy can provide you with the registration information. Tell her I said we could make an exception this once and add one more camper beyond our usual limit.”

“Thank you, Ms. Benedetto.” One corner of his mouth lifted into a relieved smile and the trembling in her stomach seemed to go into hyperdrive, much like the Harder twins after a little sugar.

Somehow that slight smile made him look even more attractive and her reaction to it alarmed her.

“Amy will give you a list of supplies you will need to provide for Chloe.” Annoyance at herself sharpened her voice. “She’s going to need waterproof boots and a warmer jacket this afternoon when we go out to Haystack, though we can probably scrounge something for her today.”

“Thank you.”

“May I go with the other children?” Chloe asked, her green eyes gleaming with eagerness.

“Sure,” Sage said. She and Eben watched Chloe race to the picnic table and squeeze into a spot between two girls of similar ages, who slid over to make room for her.

She turned back to Eben. “Our class ends at four, whether your conference calls are done or not.”

He sent her a swift look. “I’ll be sure to hang up on my attorneys if they run long. I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting.”

“It’s not me you would be letting down. It’s Chloe.”

His mouth tightened with clear irritation but she watched in fascination as he carefully pushed it away and resumed a polite expression. “Thank you again for accommodating Chloe. I know you’re stretching the rules for her and I do appreciate it.”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned around and walked toward the center. She watched him go, that fast, take-no-prisoners stride eating up the beach.

What a disagreeable man. He ought to have a British accent for all the stuffy reserve in his voice.

She sighed. Too bad he had to be gorgeous. Someone with his uptight personality ought to have the looks to match, tight, thin lips, a honker of a nose, and squinty pale eyes set too close together.

Instead, Eben Spencer had been blessed with stunning green eyes, wavy dark hair and lean, chiseled features.

Didn’t matter, she told herself. In her book, personality mattered far more than looks and by all indications Eben Spencer scored a big fat zero in that department.

“Ms. B, Ms. B.! What’s this one? Lindsey doesn’t know.”

She turned back to the picnic table. She had work to do, she reminded herself sternly. She needed to keep her attention tightly focused on her day camp and the thirteen children in it—not on particularly gorgeous hotel magnates with all the charm of a spiny urchin.

Chapter 3

“Your daughter will just love the day camp.” The bubbly receptionist inside the office delivered a thousand-watt smile out of white teeth in perfect alignment as she handed him the papers.

“It’s one of our most popular summer activities,” she went on. “People come from all over to bring their children to learn about the rocky shore and the kids just eat it up. And our camp director is just wonderful. The children all adore her. Sometimes I think she’s just a big kid herself.”

He raised an eyebrow, his mind on Sage Benedetto, and her honey-blond curls, lush curves and all that blatant sensuality.

“Is that right?” he murmured.

The receptionist either didn’t catch his dry tone or chose to ignore him. He voted for the former.

“You should see her when they’re tide-pooling, in her big old boots and a grin as big as the Haystack. Sage knows everything about the coastal ecosystem. She can identify every creature in a tide pool in an instant and can tell you what they eat, how they reproduce and who their biggest predator might be. She’s just amazing.”

He didn’t want to hear the receptionist gush about Sage Benedetto. He really preferred to know as little about her as possible. He had already spent the morning trying to shake thoughts of her out of his head so he could focus on business.

He smiled politely. “That’s good to hear. I’m relieved Chloe will be in competent hands.”

“Oh, you won’t find better hands anywhere on the coast, I promise,” she assured him.

For a brief second, he had a wickedly inappropriate reaction to that bit of information, but with determined effort, he managed to channel his attention back to the registration papers in front of them.

He quickly read over and signed every document required—just a little more paperwork than he usually faced when purchasing a new hotel.

He didn’t mind the somewhat exorbitant fee or the tacked-on late-registration penalty. If not for Sage and her summer camp, his options would have been severely limited.

He didn’t have high hopes that the agency in Portland would find someone quickly, which would probably mean he would have to cancel the entire trip and abandon the conference calls scheduled for the week or fly in his assistant to keep an eye on Chloe, something neither Chloe nor Betsy would appreciate.

No, Sage Benedetto had quite likely saved a deal that was fiercely important to Spencer Hotels.

He would have liked to surrender Chloe to someone a little more…restrained…but he wasn’t going to quibble.

“All right. She’s all set, registered for the entire week. Now, you know you’re going to need to provide your daughter with a pair of muck boots and rain-gear, right?”

“Ms. Benedetto already informed me of that. I’ll be sure Chloe is equipped with everything she needs tomorrow.”

“Here’s the rest of the list of what you need.”

“Thank you.”

He took it from her with a quick glance at his watch. He was supposed to be talking to his advertising team in New York in twenty minutes and he wasn’t sure he was going to make it.

Outside, steely clouds had begun to gather with the capriciousness of seaside weather. Even with them, the view was stunning, with dramatic sea stacks offshore and a wide sandy beach that seemed to stretch for miles.

He shifted his gaze to the group of children still gathered around the picnic table. Chloe looked as if she had settled right in. As she chattered to one of the other girls, her eyes were bright and happy in a way he hadn’t seen in a long time.

He was vastly relieved, grateful to see her natural energy directed toward something educational and fun instead of toward getting into as much trouble as humanly possible for an eight-year-old girl.

This next few days promised to be difficult with all the new conditions Stanley Wu was imposing on the sale of his hotel. Having a good place for Chloe to go during the day would ease his path considerably.

His attention twisted to the woman standing at the head of the table. In khaki slacks and a navy-blue knit shirt, Sage Benedetto should have looked stern and official. But she was laughing at something one of the children said, her blond curls escaping a loose braid.

With her olive-toned skin and blonde hair, she looked exotic and sensual. Raw desire tightened his gut but he forced himself to ignore it as he walked the short distance to the cluster of children.

Chloe barely looked up when he approached. “I’m leaving,” he told her. “I’ll be back this afternoon to pick you up.”

“Okay. Bye, Daddy,” she chirped, then immediately turned her attention back to the other girls and their activity as if she had already forgotten his presence.

He stood by the table for a moment, feeling awkward and wishing he were better at this whole parenting thing. His love for his daughter was as vast and tumultuous as the ocean and most of the time it scared the hell out of him.

He looked up and found Sage watching him, a warmth in her eyes that hadn’t been there earlier. Sunlight slanted beneath the clouds, turning the hair escaping her braid to a riotous halo of curls around her face.

She looked like something from an old master painting, lush and earthy, and when her features lightened into a smile, lust tightened inside him again.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Spencer. We’ll take good care of Chloe.”

He nodded, angry again at this instinctive reaction to her. The only thing for it was to leave the situation, he decided, to avoid contact with her as much as possible.

“I have no doubts you will. Excuse me. I’ve got to return to work.”

At his abrupt tone, the warmth slid away from her features. “Right. Your empire-building awaits.”

He almost preferred her light mockery to that momentary flicker of warmth. It certainly made it easier for him to keep his inappropriate responses under control.

“I’ll be back for Chloe at four.”

He started to walk away, then paused, feeling churlish and ungrateful. She was doing him a huge favor and he couldn’t return that favor with curt rudeness.

“Uh, thank you again for finding space for her. I appreciate it.”

Her smile was much cooler this time. “I have no doubts you do,” she murmured.

He studied her for a moment, then matched the temperature of his own smile to hers and walked to the nature center’s parking lot where his rented Jaguar waited.

His mind was still on Sage Benedetto as he drove through town, stopping at a crosswalk for a trio of gray-haired shoppers to make their slow way across the road, then two mothers pushing strollers.

He forced himself to curb his impatience as he waited. Even though it was early June, the tourist season on the Oregon Coast seemed to be in full swing, something that boded favorably for someone in the hotel business.

He had learned that the season never really ended here, unlike some other resort areas. There was certainly a high season and a low season but people came to the coast year-round.

In the summer, families came to play in the sand and enjoy the natural beauty; winter brought storm watchers and beachcombers to the wide public beaches.

Though his ultimate destination was his temporary quarters, he automatically slowed as he approached The Sea Urchin. He could see it set back among Sitka spruce and pine: the graceful, elegant architecture, the weathered gray-stone facade, the extravagant flower gardens already blooming with vibrant color.

He wanted it, as he hadn’t coveted anything in a long, long time. In the four months since he had first seen the hotel on a trip down the coast to scout possible property locations, he had become obsessed with owning it.

His original plan had been to build a new hotel somewhere along the coast, possibly farther south in the Newport area.

But the moment he caught sight of The Sea Urchin— and Cannon Beach—the place called to him in a way he couldn’t begin to explain.

He had no idea why it affected him so strongly. He wasn’t one for capricious business moves, heaven knows. In the dozen years since he’d taken over his family company at the ripe age of twenty-four, he had tried to make each decision with a cool head and a sharp eye for the bottom line.

Building a new property made better business sense—everything was custom designed and there were more modern amenities. That would have been a far more lucrative choice for Spencer Hotels and was the option his people had been pushing.

But when he saw The Sea Urchin, with its clean lines and incredible views of the coast, his much-vaunted business acumen seemed to drift away with the tide.

It had been rainy and dismal that February day, a cold, dank wind whistling off the Pacific. He had been calling himself all kinds of fool for coming here in the first place, for packing his schedule so tightly when he was supposed to be leaving for the United Kingdom in only a few days.

But on the recommendation of a local woman, he had driven past The Sea Urchin and seen it silhouetted against the sea, warm, welcoming lights in all the windows, and he had wanted it.

He had never known this sense of rightness before, but somehow he couldn’t shake the odd sense that he could make this small hotel with its twenty guest rooms the glimmering crown jewel of Spencer Hotels.

He sighed and forced himself to drive past the hotel. He might be certain his destiny and The Sea Urchin’s were somehow intertwined, but Stanley and Jade Wu were proving a little harder to convince.

Renewed frustration simmered through him. A week ago, this sale was supposed to be a done deal. All the parties involved had finally agreed on an asking price— a quarter million dollars more than Eben had planned to pay when he and the Wus first discussed the sale in February.

He thought all the legalities had been worked out with his advance team before he flew to Portland. The only thing left was for Stanley and Jade to sign the papers, but they had been putting him off for two days.

He could feel the property slipping through his fingers and for the first time in his business life, he didn’t know how the hell to grab hold of something he wanted.

He understood their ambivalence. They had run The Sea Urchin for thirty-five years, had built it through skill and hard work and shrewd business sense into a stylishly beautiful hotel. Surrendering the family business to a stranger—seeing it folded into the empire Sage Benedetto had mocked with such disdain—could only be difficult for them.

He understood all that, Eben thought again as he pulled into the driveway and climbed out of the car, but his patience was trickling away rapidly.

He fiercely wanted The Sea Urchin and he wasn’t sure how he would cope with his disappointment if the deal fell through. And in the meantime, he still had a company of a hundred hotels to run.

* * *

Oh, she was tired.

Right now the idea of sliding into a hot bath with a good book sounded like a slice of heaven. In the gathering twilight, Sage pedaled home with a steady drizzle soaking her to the skin.

So much for the weather forecasters’ prediction of sunshine for the next three days. Having lived in Oregon for five years now, she ought to know better. The weather was fickle and erratic. She had learned to live with it and even enjoyed it for the most part.

She tried to always be prepared for any eventuality. Of course, this was the day she had forgotten to pack her rain slicker in her bike basket.

She blamed her negligence on her distraction that morning with Eben and Chloe Spencer, though maybe that was only because she was approaching their beach house.

She wiped rain out of her eyes as she passed it. A sleek silver Jaguar was sprawled arrogantly in the driveway.

Of course. What else would she expect?

Against her will, her eyes were drawn to the wide bay window in front. The blinds were open and she thought she saw a dark shadow move around inside before she quickly jerked her attention back to the road.

Wouldn’t it be just like her to have a wipeout right in front of his house, with him watching out the window?

She stubbornly worked to put them both out of her head as she rode the half mile to Brambleberry House. The house came into view as she rounded the last corner and some of her exhaustion faded away in the sweet, welcome comfort of coming home.

She loved this old place with its turrets and gables and graceful old personality, though some of the usual joy she felt returning to it had been missing since Abigail’s death.

As she pedaled into the driveway, Conan barked a halfhearted greeting from the front porch.

Stubborn thing. He should be waiting inside where it was warm and dry. Instead, he insisted on waiting on the front porch—for her or for Anna or for Abigail, she didn’t know. She got the sense Conan kept expecting Abigail to drive her big Buick home any moment now.

Conan loped out into the rain to greet her by the fence and she ached at the sadness in his big eyes. “Let me put my bike away, okay? Then you can tell me about your day while I change into dry clothes.”

She opened the garage door and as she parked her bike, she heard Conan bark again and the sound of a vehicle outside. She glanced out the wide garage door to see Will Garrett’s pickup truck pulling into the driveway.

Rats. She’d forgotten all about their conversation that morning. So much for her dreams of a long soak.

He climbed out into the rain—though he was at least smart enough to wear a Gore-Tex jacket.

“Hi, Will. Anna’s not here yet.”

“I’m sure she’ll be here soon. I’m a little early.”

“I never told her you were coming. I’m sorry, Will. I knew there was something I forgot to do today. I honestly don’t have any idea when she’ll be home.”

The man she had met five years ago when she first moved here would have grinned and teased her about her bubbleheaded moment. But the solemn stranger he had become since the death of his wife and baby girl only nodded. “I can come back later. Not a problem.”

Guilt was a miserable companion on a rainy night. “No. Come in. You’re here, you might as well get started, at least in the empty apartment. Without Anna here, I don’t feel right about taking you into Abigail’s apartment to see what to do there, since it’s her territory now. But I have a key to the second floor. I just need to run up and get it.”

“Better change into something dry while you’re up there. Wouldn’t do for you to catch pneumonia.”

His solemn concern absurdly made her want to cry. She hadn’t had anybody to fuss over her since Abigail’s death.

“I’ll hurry,” she assured him, and dripped her way up the stairs, leaving him behind with Conan.

She returned five minutes later in dry jeans, a sweatshirt and toweled-dry hair. She hurried down the stairs to the second-floor landing, where Will must have climbed with Conan. The two of them sat on the top step and the dog had his chin on Will’s knee.

“Sorry to leave you waiting.” She pulled out a key and fitted it in the keyhole.

Will rose. “Not a problem. Conan’s been telling me about his day.”

“He’s quite the uncanny conversationalist, isn’t he?”

He managed half a smile and followed her into the apartment.

The rooms here, their furnishings blanketed in dust covers, had a vaguely forlorn feeling to them. Unlike the rest of the house, the air was stale and close. Whenever she came in here, Sage thought the apartment seemed to be waiting for something, silly as that seemed.

Abigail had rented the second floor only twice in the five years Sage had lived at Brambleberry House. Each time had been on a temporary basis, the apartment becoming a transitional home for Abigail’s strays for just a few months at a time.

The place should be lived in. It was comfortable and roomy, with three bedrooms, a huge living room and a fairly good-sized kitchen.

The plumbing was in terrible shape and the vinyl tiles in the kitchen and bathroom were peeling and outdated, in definite need of replacement. The appliances and cabinets in the kitchen were ancient, too, and the whole place could use new paint and some repairs to the crumbling lathe and plaster walls.

Despite the battle scars, the apartment had big windows all around that let light throughout the rooms and the living room enjoyed a particularly breathtaking view of the sea. Not as nice as the one from her third-floor apartment, but lovely still.

She wandered to the window now and realized she had a perfect view of Eben and Chloe Spencer’s place, the lights still beating back the darkness.

“Hey Sage, can you come hold the end of the tape measure?”

She jerked out of her reverie and followed his voice to the bathroom. For the next few minutes she assisted while Will studied, measured, measured again and finally jotted figures on his clipboard.

They were in the kitchen when through the open doorway she saw Conan suddenly lift his head from his morose study of the peeling wallpaper. A moment later, she heard the squeak of the front door and reminded herself to add WD-40 to her shopping list.

Conan scrambled up, nosed open the door and galloped for the stairs. A moment later he was back, with Anna not far behind him.

“Hey, Will. I saw your van out front. I didn’t realize you were coming tonight.”

Sage fought down her guilt. She wasn’t the one in the wrong here. Anna had no business arranging all this without talking to her.

“I meant to call you but the day slipped away from me,” she said. “I bumped into Will this morning on the way to work and he told me he was coming out tonight to give us a bid on the work we apparently want him to do.”

Anna didn’t miss her tight tone. Sage thought she saw color creep over her dusky cheekbones. “I figured there was no harm having him come out to take a look. Information is always a good thing. We need to know what our initial capital outlay might be to renovate the apartment so we can accurately determine whether it’s cost-effective to rent it out.”

Sage really hated that prim, businessy tone. Did any personality at all lurk under Anna’s stiff facade? It had to. She knew it must. Abigail had cared about her, had respected her enough to sell her the gift shop and to leave her half of Brambleberry House.

Sage had seen little sign of it, though. She figured Anna probably fell asleep at night dreaming of her portfolio allocation.

She didn’t want to battle this out tonight. She was too darn tired after wrestling thirteen energetic kids all day.

Instead, she reached into her pocket for the dog treat she had grabbed upstairs when she had changed her clothes. She palmed it and held it casually at thigh level.

Conan was a sucker for the bacon treats. Just as she intended, the dog instantly left Anna’s side and sidled over to her. Anna tried to hide her quick flicker of hurt but she wasn’t quite quick enough.

“Dirty trick,” Will murmured from behind her.

Having a witness to her sneakiness made her feel petty and small. She wasn’t fit company for anyone tonight. She let out a breath and resolved to try harder to be kind.

“I think we’re done up here,” Will said. “Should I take a look at the first floor now?”

Anna nodded and led the way down the stairs. Sage thought about escaping to her apartment and indulging in that warm bath that had been calling her name all evening, but she knew it would be cowardly, especially after Will had witnessed her subversive bribery of Conan.

She followed them down the stairs to Abigail’s apartment. With some trepidation, Sage stood in the doorway. She hadn’t been here since Anna moved her things in two weeks ago. She couldn’t help expecting to see Abigail bustle out of the kitchen with her tea tray and a plateful of Pepperidge Farm Raspberry Milanos.

All three of them—four, counting Conan—paused inside the living room. Shared grief for the woman they had all loved twisted around them like thorny vines.

Anna was the first to break the charged moment as she briskly moved into the room. “Sorry about the mess. If I’d had warning, I might have had time to straighten up a little.”

Sage couldn’t see much mess, just a newspaper spread out on the coffee table and a blanket jumbled in a heap on the couch, but she figured those few items slightly out of place probably affected Anna as much as if a hurricane had blown through.

“What I would like to do is knock down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room to make the kitchen bigger. And then I was wondering about the feasibility of taking out the wall between the two smaller bedrooms to make that a big master.”

Abigail’s presence was so strong here. While Will and Anna were busy in the kitchen, Sage stood in the middle of the living room and closed her eyes, her throat tight. She could still smell her here, that soft scent of freesia.

Abigail wouldn’t have wanted her to wallow in this wrenching grief, she knew, but she couldn’t seem to fight it back.

For one odd second, the scent of freesia seemed stronger and she could swear she felt a soft, papery hand on her cheek.

To distract herself from the weird sensation, she glanced around the rooms and through the open doorway to one of the bedrooms and suddenly caught sight of Abigail’s vast doll collection.

Collecting dolls had always seemed too ordinary a hobby for Abigail, given her friend’s other eccentricities, but Abigail had loved each piece in the room.

She moved to the doorway and flipped on the light switch, enjoying as always that first burst of amazement at the floor-to-ceiling display cases crammed full of thousands of dolls. There was her favorite, a mischievous-looking senior citizen wearing a tie-dyed shirt and a peace medallion. Golden Flower Child. She was certain the artist had handcrafted it specifically for Abigail.

“You should take some of them up to your apartment.”

Sage quickly dropped her hand from the doll’s familiar smile to find Anna watching her.

“They’re part of the contents of the house, which she left jointly to both of us,” Anna went on. “Half of them are yours.”

She glanced at the aging hippie doll with longing, then shook her head. “They belong together. I’m not sure we should split up the collection.”

After a long pause, Anna’s expression turned serious. “Why don’t you take them all upstairs with you, then?”

She had a feeling the offer had not been an easy one for Anna to make. It touched her somewhere deep inside. The lump in her throat swelled and she felt even more guilty for the dog-treat trick.

“We don’t have to decide anything like that today. For now, we can leave them where they are, as long as you don’t mind.”

Before Anna could voice the arguments Sage could see brewing in her dark eyes, Will joined them. “You want the good news or the bad?”

“Good news,” Anna said instantly. Sage would have saved the best for last. Good news after bad always made the worst seem a little more palatable.

“None of the walls you want to take out are weight-bearing, so we should be okay that way.”

“What’s the bad?” Anna asked.

“We’re going to have to reroute some plumbing. It’s going to cost you.”

He gave a figure that staggered Sage, though Anna didn’t seem at all surprised.

“Well, there’s no rush on this floor. What about the work upstairs?”

Those figures were no less stunning. “That’s more than reasonable,” Anna said. “Are you positive that will cover your entire overhead? I don’t want you skimping your profit.”

“It’s fair.”

Anna gave him a careful look, then smiled. “It will be fair when we tack back on the twenty percent you cut off the labor costs.”

“I give my friends a deal.”

“Not these friends. We’ll pay your going rate or we’ll find somebody else to do the work.”

Anna’s insistence surprised Sage as much as the numbers. She would have expected the other woman to pinch pennies wherever she could and she had to admit she was impressed that she refused to take advantage of Will’s generosity.

“You’ll take a discount and that’s final,” he said firmly. “You’ll never find another contractor who will treat Brambleberry House with the same loving care.”

“You guys can hash this out better without me,” Sage announced. She wasn’t sure she could spend any more time in Abigail’s apartment without breaking into tears. “I’m tired and I’m hungry. Right now all I want to do is fix some dinner and take a long, hot soak in the tub with a glass of wine. You can give me the details tomorrow.”

“I’ll walk Conan tonight. It’s my turn,” Anna said.

She nodded her agreement and headed up the stairs to her veggie burger and silence.

Chapter 4

This was the reason he wanted The Sea Urchin so desperately.

Eben leaned his elbows on the deck railing off the back of their beach house watching dawn spread out across the Pacific the next morning, fingers of pink and lavender and orange slicing through the wisps of fog left from the rains of the night before.

The air smelled of the sea, salty and sharp; gulls wheeled and dived looking for breakfast.

He was the only human in sight—a rare occurrence for him. He wasn’t used to solitude and quiet, not with chattering Chloe around all the time. He wasn’t completely sure he liked it—but he knew that if he could package this kind of morning for all his properties, Spencer Hotels would never have a vacancy again.

Normal people—people very much unlike uptight Californian businessmen—would eat this whole relaxation thing up. The Sea Urchin would be busy year-round, with people booking their suites months, even years, in advance.

He sipped his coffee and tried to force the tension from his shoulders. Another few days of this and he would be a certifiable beach bum, ready to chuck the stress of life in San Francisco for a quiet stretch of shoreline and a good cup of coffee.

Or maybe not.

He had never been one to sit still for long, not with so much to do. He’d been up since four taking a conference call with Tokyo in preparation for a series of meetings there next week and in two hours he would have to drive the ninety minutes to Portland to meet with his attorneys.

Despite the calm and beauty of the morning, his mind raced with his lengthy to-do list.

In the distance he saw a jogger running up the beach toward town and envy poked him. He would give his coffee and a whole lot more to be the one running along the hard-packed sand close to the surf, working off these restless edges.

Others found calm and peace in the soothing sound of the sea. For Eben, a good, hard run usually did the trick. But with Chloe asleep inside, that was impossible. He couldn’t leave her alone in a strange place, even if he left a note and took his cell phone so she could reach him.

The jogger drew closer and recognition clicked in at exactly the same moment he heard a bark of greeting. A moment later, Sage Benedetto’s big gangly red dog loped into view.

The dog barked again, changed directions and headed straight toward him. After an odd hesitation, the big dog’s owner waved briefly and followed her animal.

Though he knew it was foolish, anticipation curled through him like those tendrils of fog on the water.

She was still some distance away when the dog nuzzled his head under Eben’s hand, looking for attention. He had never had a pet and wasn’t very used to animals, but he scratched the dog’s chin and was rewarded by the dog nudging his hand for more.

When Sage approached, he saw she was wearing bike shorts and a hooded sweatshirt with an emblem that read Portland Saturday Market across the front.

She looked soft and sensual in the early morning light, like some kind of lush fertility goddess. Her exotic features were flushed and her hair was in a wild ponytail.

She looked as if she had just climbed out of bed after making love all night long.

His insides burned with sudden hunger but he hid his reaction behind a casual smile. “Great morning for a run.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You think?”

“I was just now pondering how much I’d love to be out there doing the same thing if only Chloe weren’t asleep inside.”

She gave a sudden delighted smile that made him feel as if the sun had just climbed directly above his beach house. Before he could catch his breath, she grabbed the coffee mug straight out of his hand and sipped it, pressing her mouth exactly where his own lips had been.

“Problem solved. I’ll stay here in case Chloe wakes up and you can take Conan.”

She made a shooing gesture with the hand not holding his coffee. “You two boys go on and run to your little hearts’ content and I’ll go back to sleep for a few moments.”

She slid into one of the wide, plump rockers on the deck and closed her eyes, his mug still cradled in her hands.

She was completely serious, Eben realized, not quite sure whether to be amused or annoyed. But with a sudden anticipation zinging through him, he couldn’t help but smile. “At least come inside where it’s warm while I throw on some jogging shoes.”

She opened her eyes and her gaze flashed down to his bare toes then back at him with an inscrutable expression on her features. “I’m fine out here, but if you would feel better having me inside in case Chloe wakes up, I have no problem with that, either.”

She followed him inside to the living room with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the shore.

“Nice,” she murmured.

He was intensely aware of her, more than he had been of any woman in a long, long time.

He was also cognizant of the fact that they were virtually alone, with only his daughter sleeping on the other side of the house, something he didn’t want to think about.

“Give me five minutes to grab my shoes.”

She was already nestling into the comfortable leather couch that faced the windows, her eyes already closing, her muscles going slack. “No problem. Take your time. This is perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

He threw on his shoes quickly and hurried back to the family room. She gave all appearances of being asleep. He watched her for only a moment, entranced by the wisp of honey-colored hair curling over her cheekbone.

When he realized he was gazing at her like some kind of Peeping Tom, he hurried out the door to the deck and whistled to Conan, who was busy marking every support of the deck.

The dog stopped mid-pee, barked with an eagerness that matched Eben’s and the two of them set off down the beach.

With a sense of freedom he hadn’t known in a long time, he ran on the hard-packed sand, dodging waves and the occasional long, ragged clump of kelp. The dog raced right along with him, easily matching his stride to Eben’s and in no time they had a comfortable rhythm.

By the time they reached the headlands on the north end of the beach, he felt loose and liberated, as if the jog had chased all the cobwebs from his mind.

He paused for a moment to enjoy the full splendor of the sunrise slanting out across the water while the dog chased a couple of seagulls pecking at something in the sand.

After some time, Eben checked his watch with some regret. “We’d better hustle back. Some of us need to go to work,” he told the dog, who tilted his head with a quizzical look then barked as if he understood exactly what Eben had said. The dog turned and charged back down the beach the way they’d come.

The beach had been largely empty on their way north but on the run back, they passed several other joggers and beachcombers, all of whom greeted him with friendly smiles—or at least offered smiles to Conan.

Several called the dog by name and gave them curious looks that Eben deflected with a wave. All the locals were probably wondering who was running with Sage Benedetto’s dog but he didn’t have the breath to enlighten any of them, even if he’d wanted to.

“Wait out here,” he ordered the sandy dog when they reached the beach house, his breath still coming fast and hard. Conan flopped onto the deck and curled his head in his paws, apparently content to rest.

He let himself into the house and found Sage exactly where he’d left her, sound asleep on his couch.

A quick peek into Chloe’s room showed him she was still asleep as well, the blankets jumbled around her feet.

He closed her door with gentle care and returned to the family room. Okay, so he hadn’t worked all the restlessness out of his system, apparently. Some of it still simmered through him, especially as he watched Sage sleep on his couch. She looked rumpled and sexy, her lashes fluttering against the olive skin of her high cheekbones and the slightest of smiles playing over those lush lips.

What was she dreaming about? he wondered, hunger tightening his insides.

Maybe it was a reaction to the blood still pumping through him from the good, hard run—or, he admitted honestly, probably just the delectable woman in front of him—but Eben wanted her more than he could remember ever wanting a woman.

He cleared his throat, again fighting back his heretofore unknown voyeuristic tendencies. “Uh, Ms. Benedetto. Time to go. The run’s over.”

Her mouth twitched a little in sleep but her eyes remained stubbornly closed. She made a little sleepy sound and rolled over, presenting her back to him, looking for all the world as if she were settling in to nap the morning away.

Now what was he supposed to do?

“Sage?” he said again.

When she still didn’t respond, he sighed and reached a hand out to her shoulder. “Sage, wake up. You have to go to work, remember? We both do.”

After a moment, she heaved a long sigh and turned over again. She blinked her eyes open and gazed at him in confusion for a moment before he saw consciousness slowly return like the tide coming in.

She sat up, gave a yawn and stretched her arms above her head. Eben swallowed and did his best to remember how to breathe.

“I have to say, that had to be just about the best jog I’ve had in a month,” she murmured with a sleepy, sexy smile.

She rose, stretching again with graceful limbs, and Eben stared at her a long moment—at the becoming flush on her features, at the wild tangle of her hair, at her slightly parted lips.

He sensed exactly the instant his control slipped out the window—when she smiled at him again, her head canted to one side. With a groan, he surrendered the battle and reached for her.

She was soft and warm and smelled of the leather sofa where she had been sleeping and an exotic spicy-sweet flowery scent that had to be purely Sage.

He told himself he would stop with just a tiny taste. He had taken her dog out running, after all. Didn’t she owe him something for that? Stealing a little morning kiss seemed like small recompense.

He didn’t expect her mouth to taste of coffee and mint and he certainly didn’t expect, after one shocked second, for her to make a low, aroused sound in her throat then wrap her arms around his neck as if she couldn’t bear the idea of letting him go.

From that point on, he lost all sense of time and space and reason. His foolish idea of giving into the heat for only an instant with one little taste went out the window along with the rest of his control.

The only thing he could focus on was the woman in his arms—her intoxicating scent and taste, the texture of her sweatshirt under his hands, the soft curves pressing against him.

He needed to stop, for a million reasons. He barely knew the woman. She barely knew him. Chloe could wake and come out of her room any moment. He had just jogged three miles down the beach and back and probably smelled like a locker room.

All these thoughts flickered through his mind but he couldn’t quite catch hold of any of them. The blood singing through him and the wild hunger burning up his insides were the only things that seemed to matter.

He deepened the kiss and she sighed against his mouth. He was intensely aware of her soft fingers in his hair, of the other hand curving around his neck. Even with the heat scorching him, the wonder of feeling her hands on him absurdly drew a lump to his throat.

How long had it been since he’d known a woman’s touch? Brooke’s shockingly sudden death from an aneurysm had been two years ago and he hadn’t been with anyone since then. Even for months before her death, things had been rocky between them. He knew he had failed her in many, many ways.

The specter of his disastrous marriage finally helped him regain some small measure of control.

He stilled, then opened his eyes as the sensation of being watched prickled down his spine.

Not Chloe, he hoped, and swept the room with a glance. No, he realized. Sage’s big red dog watched them through the wide windows leading to the deck. And if Conan had been human, Eben would have sworn he was grinning at them.

Though he ached at the effort, Eben forced himself to break the kiss and step back, his breathing uneven and his thoughts a tangled mess.

“Well. That was…unexpected,” she murmured.

Her color was high but she didn’t look upset by their heated embrace, only surprised.

He, on the other hand, was stunned to his core.

What the hell was he thinking? This kind of thing was not at all like him. He was known in all circles— social, business and otherwise—for his cool head and detached calm.

He had spent his life working hard to keep himself in check. Oh, he knew himself well enough to understand it was a survival mechanism from his childhood—if he couldn’t control his parents’ tumultuous natures, their wild outbursts, their screaming fights, and substance abuse, at least he could contain his own behavior.

Those habits had carried into adulthood and into his marriage. In the heat of anger, Brooke used to call him a machine, accusing him of having no heart, no feeling. She had to have an affair, she told him, if only to know what it was like to be with a man who had blood instead of antifreeze running through his veins.

This new, urgent heat for an exotic, wild-haired nature girl sent him way, way out of his comfort zone.

“My apologies,” he said, his voice stiff. “I’m not quite sure what happened there.”

“Aren’t you?”

He sent her a swift look and saw the corner of her mouth lift. He didn’t like the feeling she was laughing at him.

“You can be certain it won’t happen again.”

A strange light flickered in the depths of her dark eyes. “Okay. Good to know.”

She studied him for a moment, then smiled. He wanted to think the expression looked a little strained but he thought that was possibly his imagination.

“Thank you for taking Conan jogging for me. I admit, I’m not crazy about the whole morning exercise thing. I’m trying to warm up to it but it’s been slow going so far. I thought after a month I would enjoy it more, but what are you going to do? It seems to cheer him up a little, though, so I guess I’ll stick with it.”

He couldn’t seem to make his brain work but he managed to catch hold of a few of the pieces of what she said.

“You’re telling me your dog is depressed?” he asked, feeling supremely stupid for even posing the question.

“You could say that.” She glanced out the window where Conan still watched them and lowered her voice as if the dog could hear them through the glass. “He misses his human companion. She died a month ago.”

The dog’s human companion had died a month ago and Sage had been jogging with Conan for a month. Even in his current disordered state, he figured the two events had to be connected.

“She left you her dog?”

“That and a whole lot of other problems. It’s a long story.” One she obviously had no intention of sharing with him, he realized as she headed for the door.

“I’d better go. I’ve got thirteen eager young campers who’ll be ready to explore the coastline with me in just an hour. I’m sure you’ve got things to do, people to see, worlds to conquer and all that.”

His mouth tightened at the faint echo of derision in her voice, but before he could defend himself from her obviously harsh view of his life, she opened the door and walked out into the cool morning air, to be greeted with enthusiasm by the dog, who jumped around as if he hadn’t seen her in months.

Just now the animal looked far from the bereft, grieving animal she had described. She patted his sides, which had the dog’s eyes rolling back in his head. Eben couldn’t say he blamed him.

“Thanks again for exercising Conan,” she called back.

“No problem. I enjoyed it.”

Stepping outside, he decided he wasn’t going to think about anything else he might have enjoyed about the morning.

“The run was good for me,” he said instead. “Helps keep my brain sharp while I’m swindling retirees and gullible widows out of their life savings.”

Her mouth quirked a little at that but she only shook her wild mane of hair and took off down the stairs of his deck and across the beach, the dog close on her heels.

Chapter 5

She tried to tell herself that heated kiss was just a one-shot deal, some weird anomaly of fate and circumstance that would never, ever, ever be repeated.

She and Eben were two vastly different people with different values, different tax brackets. Their lives should never have intersected in the first place—and their mouths certainly shouldn’t have either.

But as she showered and dressed for work, Sage couldn’t shake the odd, jittery feeling that something momentous had just happened to her, something life-changing and substantial.

It was silly, she knew, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that her life had just turned a corner down a route she was not at all sure she was prepared to follow.

Just a kiss, she repeated in a stern mantra as she gave Conan one last morning scratch, pulled her bike out of the garage and cycled through the strands of morning fog that hadn’t yet burned off. Two people reacting to their unlikely attraction to each other in the usual fashion. One never-to-be-repeated kiss certainly was not about to alter the rest of her life, for heaven’s sake.

She was still working hard to convince herself of that when she arrived at the nature center and let herself into her office. She was answering e-mail from a school group interested in arranging a field trip between her camp sessions when Lindsey poked her head into her office.

“So the weirdest thing happened this morning,” Lindsey said without preamble.

Sage raised an eyebrow. “Good morning to you, too.”

Her assistant director grinned. “Yeah, yeah. Hello, how are you, great to see you and all that. I’ve been up at the bakery since four already helping my dad so it feels more like lunchtime to me by this time. But back to my weird morning.”

She pushed away the lingering memory of Eben and that stunning kiss and tried to focus on Lindsey’s story. “Don’t tell me you had another creepy dream about old Mr. Delarosa walking down Hemlock Street in a Speedo again.”

Lindsey screwed up her face. “No! Ew. Thanks for putting that visual in my head again. I just spent the last three months in intensive therapy trying to purge it.”

Sage fought a smile. “Sorry. What happened this morning?”

“I was making the usual morning deliveries of muffins to The Sea Urchin and suddenly this huge dog comes running at me out of nowhere. Scared the bejabbers out of me.”

“Yeah?”

“It was Conan, of course.”

“Of course. He is the only dog in Cannon Beach, after all.”

“Well, maybe not, but you have to admit he’s pretty distinctive-looking. There’s no mistaking him for anyone else. So when I couldn’t see you or Anna anywhere, I thought maybe Conan broke out of your place and was running loose. I was trying to grab hold of his collar so I could take him back to Brambleberry House when suddenly, who should show up but this extremely sexy guy who looked familiar in an odd sort of way?”

Sage didn’t even want to think about just how extremely sexy she found Eben Spencer.

“He whistled to Conan and the two of them just kept running down the beach.”

“That is strange,” Sage murmured.

“I couldn’t help but wonder what on earth our newest little camper’s father was doing running with your dog at six in the morning. That was Chloe Spencer’s hottie of a dad, wasn’t it?”

Sage could feel warmth soak her cheeks. She could only be grateful the coloring she inherited from the Italian side of her family hid her blushing.

“It was. Conan and I bumped into Eben this morning on our daily jog and he, uh, graciously offered to exercise Conan for me.”

Lindsey raised an eyebrow—the one with the diamond stud in it. “You sure that’s all there is to the story? I’m sensing more. Come on, give me all the juice.”

She would not allow anything resembling a guilty expression to cross her features, she vowed. They shared one kiss, that’s all, and she was absolutely not going to share that information with anyone else—especially not Lindsey, who had a vivid imagination and would be spinning this whole thing way out of control.

“What juice?” she said. “You think I spent the night ripping up the sheets with Eben Spencer while his daughter slept in the next room, then I kicked him out of bed so he could go take my dog for a run?”

Lindsey laughed. “Okay. Stupid hypothesis. I have a feeling if a woman had a man like that in bed, she wouldn’t kick him out if the house was on fire, forget about making him walk her dog.”

“He’s here to buy The Sea Urchin and will only be in town for a few days. Not even long enough for a summer fling, if I were into that kind of thing. Which I most assuredly am not. It happened just as I told you. I was jogging past his house and he was outside and offered to take Conan for his jog. Since you know I’m not excessively fond of that particular activity myself, I decided I would be stupid to refuse.”

“Too bad.” Lindsey grinned. “I like my version better. For a man like that, I might reconsider my strict hands-off policy toward tourists.”

“He’s too old for you.”

“Mr. Delarosa in his Speedo is too old. Eben Spencer? Not even close.”

To her relief, Sage was spared having to continue the conversation by the arrival of the first campers.

She was showing the children how to identify the different tracks of birds in the sand—and doing her level best not to pay more than her usual attention to the front door—when it opened suddenly and a little dark-haired sprite rushed through and headed straight for her.

“Hi Sage! My dad says he went running with Conan this morning while I was still sleeping.”

Her skin suddenly itchy and tight, she drew in a breath and lifted her gaze to find Eben standing a short distance away watching her out those glittering green eyes.

She couldn’t read anything at all in his expression— regret, renewed heat, even mild interest.

Fine. She could pretend nothing happened, too. “True enough,” she answered Chloe.

“Why didn’t anybody wake me up?” she pouted. “I would have gone jogging, too!”

“Conan has pretty long legs, honey. It’s hard for me to keep up with him sometimes.”

“I’m a slow runner,” Chloe said glumly, then her face lit up. “I could ride a bike, though. I do that sometimes back home. I ride my bike and my dad has to run to catch up with me.”

Sage couldn’t help giving Eben a quick look, endeared despite herself at the image of Eben jogging while his daughter rode her bike alongside.

It seemed incongruous with everything else she had discerned about the man—but she supposed one brief kiss didn’t automatically make her an expert.

“If I can find a bike, can I go with you next time?”

“I don’t know if there will be a next time,” she pointed out. “You’re leaving in a few days.”

That apparently was the wrong thing to say. Chloe’s bottom lip jutted out and her green eyes looked as wounded as if Sage had just kicked her in the shins.

“I don’t want to go. I like it here. I like you and I like your dog and I like finding sand dollars.”

Sage gave her a little hug. “It’s fun going on vacation and meeting new people, isn’t it? When you came in, did you notice that Lindsey has some sea glass in a jar? Whoever guesses how many pieces are inside gets a prize.”

Distracted for the moment, Chloe’s truculence faded. “Really? What kind of prize?”

“A toy stuffed sea otter. It’s really cool.”

“I bet I can win it! I’m really good at guessing stuff.” Chloe rushed away, leaving Eben and Sage alone.

She was intensely aware of him, the smell of expensive cologne that clung to his skin, his tailored blue shirt, the crisp folds in his silk power tie.

His business attire ought to be a major turn-off for her. It should have reminded her just how very far apart they were.

She had always thought she preferred someone like Will, who wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. But she couldn’t seem to control the wild impulse to loosen that tie a little, to spread her hands over the strong muscles beneath the expensive tailoring.

She cleared her throat and forced herself to meet his still-veiled gaze. “Chloe should have a great day today. We have lots of fun things planned for the children.”

“Great. I know she’s excited—more excited than she’s been about anything in a long time.”

“That’s what we like to hear.”

“Okay, then. I guess I’ll see you later.”

He turned away and headed out the door. Sage watched him for only a moment—but even that was too long and too revealing, apparently. When she turned back to her campers she found her assistant director watching her with a knowing look.

“You know, it’s really too bad you’re not the kind of woman who would consider a summer fling,” Lindsey murmured as Eben closed the door behind him.

Wasn’t it? Sage thought, but she quickly turned her attention to the children.

* * *

He was dead meat.

Roast him, fry him, stick him on a spit. Sage Benedetto was going to kill him.

With one eye on the digital clock on the dashboard, Eben accelerated to pass a slow-moving minivan towing a pop-up trailer. He was supposed to have been at the nature center to pick up Chloe twenty minutes ago and he was still an hour away from Cannon Beach.

Sage might have disliked him before—their disturbing, heated morning kiss notwithstanding—but her mild antipathy was going to move into the territory of loathing if he didn’t reach her soon to explain.

He was beyond tardy, approaching catastrophically, negligently late.

He steered the Jag off the highway and dialed the center’s number again, as he had done a half-dozen times since the moment he had emerged late from meeting with his team of Portland attorneys.

He’d gotten a busy signal for the last half-hour, but this time to his relief the phone rang four times before someone picked up. He recognized Sage’s low, sexy voice the moment she said hello.

“Hello. Eben Spencer here,” he said, feeling far more awkward and uncomfortable than he was accustomed to.

Somehow she seemed to bring out the worst in him and he didn’t like it at all.

“I’ve, uh, got a slight problem.”

“Oh?”

“I’m afraid I’m just leaving Portland. I had a meeting that ran long and, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t paying attention to the time. I’m hurrying as fast as I can, but I won’t be there for another hour, even if the traffic cooperates. I’m very sorry.”

He heard a slight pause on the line and could almost hear her thinking what a terrible father he was. Right now, he couldn’t say he disagreed.

“No problem,” she finally said. “I’ll just take her to Brambleberry House with me. Conan will be over the moon to see her again.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask. I offered. And anyway, I certainly can’t leave her here by herself. I could take her to your beach house but I wouldn’t feel right about leaving her alone there either. I don’t mind taking her home with me. Like I said, Conan will love the company.”

“In that case, thank you.” He had to struggle not to grovel with gratitude.

Until this week when he’d been forced by circumstance to bring Chloe along, he wasn’t sure he had fully comprehended how much he relied on nannies to take care of details like making sure Chloe was picked up on time. It was all a hell of a lot harder on his own.

He always considered himself a pretty good employer but he was definitely going to make sure he paid the next nanny more.

“You live in the big yellow Victorian down the beach, right?”

“Right. It’s got a wrought-iron fence and a sign above the porch that says Brambleberry House.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He paused. “Thank you again. I owe you.”

“No problem. You can pay me back by taking Conan for another run in the morning.”

Her words conjured up that kiss again, Sage all sleepy and warm and desirable in his arms, and his stomach muscles tightened.

“That’s not much of a punishment. I enjoyed it more than he did,” he said, his voice suddenly rough. He had to hope his sudden hunger didn’t carry through the phone line. “I’ll be glad for the chance to do it again.”

“Don’t speak too quickly. The weather forecast calls for a big storm the rest of tonight and in the morning. You’ll be soaked before you even make it out the front door. I, on the other hand, will be warm and dry and cozy in my bed.”

He didn’t even want to go there. “I still think I’ll be getting the better end of the stick, but you’ve got a deal.”

“We’ll see you in a while, then. And Eben, you really don’t have to rush. Chloe will be fine.”

He severed the connection and sat for a moment in the car, surrounded by lush green foliage in every direction.

He shouldn’t be filled with anticipation at seeing her again. He couldn’t afford the distraction—and even if he could, he shouldn’t want so much to be distracted by her.

What was the point, really? He wasn’t interested in anything short-term. How could he even think about it, with his eight-year-old daughter around? And he certainly wasn’t looking for any kind of longer commitment or if he were, it would never be with a wild, free-spirited woman like Sage.

With a sigh, he put the Jag into gear again and pulled back onto the highway. Best to just work as hard as he could to finalize the deal with the Wus so he could take Chloe back to San Francisco, back to his comfort zone where everything was safe and orderly and predictable.

The storm Sage had mentioned hit just as he reached the outskirts of town. The lights of Brambleberry House gleamed in the pale, watery twilight, a beacon of warm welcome against the vast, dark ocean just beyond it.

The house was a bit more than she described, a rambling Queen Anne Victorian with a wide front porch, elaborate gingerbread trim and a voluptuous tangle of gardens out front. Painted a cheery yellow with multi-colored pastel accents, it looked bright and homey, the kind of place that for some reason always made him picture bread baking and the sweet, embracing scents of home.

He blinked the random image away and hurried through the rain to ring the doorbell, grateful for the wide porch that kept him mostly dry.

Despite the sign above the porch, he thought for a moment he might have come to the wrong house when a stranger answered the door. She had dark hair, solemn eyes, and an air about her of efficient competence.

Her mouth lifted in an impersonal, slightly wary smile. “Yes?”

“Hello. I was certain I was in the right place but now I’m beginning to doubt myself. This is Brambleberry House, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” She still kept the door only slightly ajar— probably a smart self-defense move so she could slam it quickly shut if he should try anything threatening.

“I’m Eben Spencer. I believe Sage Benedetto is expecting me.”

She seemed to relax a little and the door opened wider, letting out a bigger slice of light and warmth to fight back the rainy evening. “You must be Chloe’s father.”

He held out a hand and she took it. Again, he gathered the vague impression of competence, though he wasn’t sure what about her spoke so solidly of it.

“I’m Anna Galvez. I live on this floor and Sage is upstairs, all the way at the top.”

“Which means you probably get roped into answering the door for her more often than you’d like.”

Her smile warmed. “I don’t mind, usually, unless I’m in the middle of something. Sage has a separate doorbell to her apartment but it hasn’t been working for awhile. We’re working on it. Sage’s apartment is all the way to the top of the staircase.”

The wide, sweeping staircase was the center core of the magnificent house, he saw, rising straight up from the entry through two other floors. A shame the house had been split into apartments, he thought. It would have made a stunning bed and breakfast, though he supposed it could be converted back if someone had the money, time and energy.

“Thank you,” he said to Anna. “Sorry to bother you.”

“Not a problem.”

He followed the curve of stairs, his hand on the mahogany rail that had been worn smooth over generations.

Outside the door at the top, he heard laughter, then a dog’s loud barking. He picked up Chloe’s voice, then Sage’s. The sound of it, rich and full and sexy, strummed down his spine.

He knocked and the dog’s barking increased. He heard Sage order the dog to be stay and be quiet. It seemed to work—when she opened the door, Conan was sitting perfectly still beside the door, though he was practically vibrating with impatience.

Sage had changed yet again—the third outfit he’d seen her in that day. Instead of her jogging clothes or the conservative navy knit shirt and khaki slacks she wore to work, she wore a flowery tunic-style blouse in some kind of sheer material over a pale pink tank top, dangly earrings and a pair of faded jeans.

She looked heart-stoppingly gorgeous, lush and appealing, and he couldn’t seem to focus on anything but their kiss that morning.

He knew he didn’t mistake the memory of it flaring in her dark eyes. Her mouth parted slightly and beneath the memory was a faint sheen of trepidation.

Did she think he was going to grab her right here in front of her dog and his daughter for a repeat performance?

“You made good time from Portland.” In seconds, she shunted away the brief flicker of remembered heat from her gaze and became as coolly polite as her downstairs neighbor.

“I was afraid you’d be ready to string me up if I didn’t hurry.”

“I told you not to worry about it. Chloe’s a joy.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, not used to hearing such praise of his daughter. Before he could respond, Chloe rushed to him.

“Hi Daddy! I had a super day today. We learned about the different habitats in the ocean at camp and then when we came here, we went outside on the beach and played catch with Conan and then we made lasagna with zucchini and carrots! It’s almost ready. Sage says I can stay and have some. Can I, Daddy?”

He glanced at Sage and saw her mouth tighten slightly. He was quite certain the invitation would never have been extended if she had expected him to be here before the meal was ready.

But how could he disappoint Chloe by telling her they needed to go, that they had already imposed on Sage enough for the day?

Sage must have sensed his indecision. She smiled brightly, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You’re certainly both welcome to stay. There’s plenty for everyone and Chloe did work hard to help me fix it. It’s only fair she get to enjoy the fruits of her labor.”

“Did we put fruit in there too?” Chloe asked, a baffled expression on her face. “I thought it was just vegetables.”

“Well, remember, technically tomatoes are a fruit. So I guess that counts. Seriously, you’re both welcome to stay.”

Though he knew it was a mistake to spend more time with Sage, he couldn’t figure out any way out without hurting Chloe.

“All right. Thank you.”

He was quite certain he was the one with trepidation in his eyes now as he stepped into her apartment. Only after he crossed the threshold did Conan hurry to him for attention and Eben could swear the dog looked pleased.

Chapter 6

Sage had always considered her apartment to be a perfect size, roomy without being huge. The rooms were all comfortably laid out and she loved having an extra bedroom in case any friends from college came to stay. It had always seemed just right for her.

How was it that Eben Spencer seemed to fill up every available inch?

His presence was overwhelming. He wore the same pale blue dress shirt he’d had on that morning, though his tie was off and his sleeves were rolled up. Afternoon stubble shadowed his jawline, giving him a slightly disreputable look she guessed he would probably find appalling if he were aware of it.

He looked so damn gorgeous, it was infuriating.

She shouldn’t even be noticing how he looked, not after she had spent all day sternly reminding herself they had nothing in common, no possible reason for this unwanted attraction that simmered between them.

He represented wealth and privilege and all the things she had turned her back on after a lifetime of struggling—and failing—to find her place there. He was no doubt just like her father, obsessed with making and keeping his money.

Good grief, the cost of his tailored shirt alone could probably feed a family of four for a month.

She didn’t like him, she told herself. While her brain might be certain of that, the rest of her was having a tougher time listening to reason when she just wanted to curl against his strength and heat like Conan finding a sunbeam shooting through the window.

She sighed and pulled her lasagna out, attributing her flushed and tight skin to the heat pouring from the oven.

“Can I help with anything?” he asked, standing in the doorway.

Yeah. Go away.

She forced herself to stuff the thought back into the recesses of her mind. She was a strong, independent woman. Surely she was tough enough to endure an hour or so with the man.

“Everything’s just about ready. Chloe and I were finishing things up in here when you arrived. Would the two of you mind setting the table?”

She regretted the question as soon as she asked it. Eben Spencer probably had a legion of servants to do that sort of grunt work at his house. To her surprise, he didn’t hesitate.

“No problem. Come on, Chloe.”

Through the doorway beyond him, Sage saw Chloe get up from the floor where she had been playing with Conan. She and the dog both tromped into the kitchen, making Sage even more claustrophobic.

“You’ll have to point me in the right direction for plates and silverware,” Eben said.

“I’ll grab them for you.”

She pulled out her favorite square chargers—she’d bought them from a ceramics studio in Manzanita, attracted by their wild, abstract designs—and the contrasting plates she always used with them, then held them out for Eben to take.

Their hands connected when he reached for them and a spark jumped between them.

Sage flushed. “Sorry. It’s the, uh, hardwood floors. Makes electricity jump in the air, especially when there are a lot of negative ions flying around from the storm.”

She was babbling, she realized, and forced herself to clamp her lips shut. She didn’t miss the long, considering look Eben gave her.

“Oh, is that what it’s from?” he murmured.

Before she could formulate what would no doubt be a sharp retort, he grabbed the plates and carried them out of the kitchen. Only after he left did she release the breath she suddenly realized she was holding.

“Silverware is in the top drawer to the left of the dishwasher,” she told Chloe. “Glasses are in the overhead cupboard.”

She didn’t have the luxury of a dining room in her apartment, but she had commandeered a corner of the good-sized living room for the table Will Garrett had made her.

The chairs were a mismatched jumble picked up here and there at thrift stores and yard sales, but she coordinated them with cushions in vivid colors to match the placemats and chargers.

She always thought the effect was charming but she imagined to someone of Eben Spencer’s sophisticated tastes, her house probably reeked of a lousy attempt at garage-sale chic.

She didn’t care, she told herself.

It was a waste of time even worrying about what he might think of her and her apartment. In a week, Eben and Chloe Spencer would just be a memory, simply two more in a long line of transitory visitors to her corner of the world.

The thought left her vaguely depressed so she pushed it away and pulled the salad she and Chloe had tossed earlier out of the refrigerator. After a few more moments of them working together, the meal was laid out on the table.

“Everything looks delicious,” Eben said, taking the seat across from her.

“Sage is a vegetarian, Daddy,” Chloe announced with fascinated eagerness.

“Is that right?”

“Not militant, I promise,” she answered. “Steak lovers are usually still welcome at my table.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. “Good thing. I do enjoy a good porterhouse, I’m sorry to say.”

“You can enjoy it all you want somewhere else, but I’m afraid you won’t find any steaks here tonight.”

“I can be surprisingly adaptable.” Again that half smile lifted his features, made him seem much less formidable. Her insides trembled but she stubbornly ignored them, serving the lasagna instead.

They were all quiet for a few moments as they dished breadsticks and salad.

Sage braced herself for a negative reaction to her favorite lasagna dish. She wasn’t the greatest of cooks but after choosing a vegetarian lifestyle in college, she had worked hard to find dishes she found good, nutritious and filling.

But her tastes were likely far different than Eben’s. He probably had at least one Cordon Bleu-trained personal chef to go along with the legion of servants she’d imagined for him.

To her relief and gratification, he closed his eyes in appreciation after the first taste. “Delicious. My compliments to the chefs.”

Chloe giggled. “There weren’t any chefs, Daddy. Just Sage and me.”

“You two have outdone yourselves.”

“It’s super good, Sage,” Chloe agreed. “I wasn’t sure I’d like it but I can’t even taste the carrots and stuff.”

Sage smiled, charmed all over again by this little girl with the inquisitive mind and boundless energy.

“Thank you both. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

“Maybe you could give me the recipe and I could make it sometime at home, if the new nanny helps me,” Chloe suggested. “I like to cook stuff sometimes, when I have a chance.”

“I’ll do that. Remind me before you leave and I’ll make a copy of the recipe for you.”

“Thank you very much,” Chloe said, with a solemn formality that made Sage smile again. She shifted her gaze from the girl to her father and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Eben watched her, an odd expression in those brilliant green eyes. It left her breathless and off balance. He quickly veiled it in that stiff, controlled way of his she was coming to despise.

“This is a beautiful house,” he said into the sudden silence. “Have you lived here long?”

“Five years or so—I moved in a few weeks after I came to Cannon Beach.”

“You’re not from here? I wondered. You have a slight northeast accent every once in a while, barely noticeable.”

Her mouth tightened as if she could clamp down all trace of the past she didn’t like remembering. “Boston,” she finally said.

“That’s what I would have guessed. So what brought you to Oregon?”

“When I graduated from Berkeley, I took an internship at the nature center. I spent the first few weeks in town renting a terrible studio apartment a few blocks from here. It was all I could afford on an intern’s salary, which was nothing.”

“You worked for free?” Chloe asked and Sage had to smile a little at the shock in her voice.

“I was fresh out of college and ready to see the world, try anything. But I did hate living in that terrible apartment.”

“How did you end up here?” Eben asked. He sounded genuinely interested, she realized, feeling ashamed of herself for being so surprised by it.

“One day at the grocery store I helped a local woman with her bags and she invited me home for dinner.” Her heart spasmed a little and she suddenly missed Abigail desperately.

She managed a smile, though she suspected it didn’t look very genuine. “I’ve been here ever since.”

Eben was silent for a long moment. By the time he spoke, Sage had regained her composure.

“How many apartments are in this place?”

“Three. One on each floor, but the middle floor is empty right now.”

“Your neighbor on the first floor let me in.”

“Right. Anna.”

Conan barked a little from under the table when she said Anna’s name and Sage covered her annoyance by taking a sip of the wine she had set out for her and Eben.

Eben and Anna Galvez would be perfect for each other. The hotel tycoon and the sharp, focused businesswoman. They were both type A personalities, both probably had lifetime subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal, both probably knew exactly the difference between the Dow Jones and the NASDAQ—and how much of their respective portfolios were tied up in each, down to the penny.

Sage could barely manage to balance her checkbook most months and still carried a balance on her credit card from paying a down-on-his-luck friend’s rent a few months earlier.

Yeah, Eben and Anna would make a good pair. So why did the idea of the two of them together leave her feeling vaguely unsettled?

“You said the second floor is empty?”

“Yes. We’re still trying to figure out what we want to do, whether we want to fix it up and rent it out or leave things as is. Too many decisions to make all at once.”

“I didn’t understand that you owned the place. I thought you were renting.”

She made a face. “I own it as of a month ago. Well, sort of.”

“How do you sort of own something?”

“Anna and I co-inherited the place and everything in it, including Conan.”

He looked intrigued and she didn’t like feeling her life was one interesting puzzle for him to solve. “So the dog came with the house?” he asked.

“Something like that.”

“So are you and Anna related in some way?”

“Nope.” She sipped at her wine. “It’s a long story.”

She didn’t want to talk about Abigail so she deliberately changed the subject.

“I understand from Chloe you’re in town to buy The Sea Urchin from Stanley and Jade Wu.”

Frustration flickered in his green eyes. “That’s the plan, anyway.”

“When do you expect to close the sale?”

“Good question. There have been a few…complications.”

“Oh?”

“Everything was supposed to be done by now but I’m afraid the Wus are having second thoughts. I’m still working hard to convince them.”

“My daddy has a lot of other hotels,” Chloe piped up, “but he really, really wants The Sea Urchin.”

Of course. No doubt it was all about the game to him, the acquisition of more and more. Just like her own father, who had virtually abandoned his child to the care of others, simply to please his narcissistic, self-absorbed socialite of a second wife.

“And I imagine whatever you want, you get, isn’t that right?”

She meant to keep her voice cool and uninterested, but she was fairly sure some of her bitterness dripped into her words.

He studied her for a long moment, long enough that she felt herself flush at her rudeness. He didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of an old, tired hurt that had nothing to do with him.

“Not always,” he murmured.

“Can I have another breadstick?” Chloe asked into the sudden awkward silence.

Her father turned his attention to her. “How many have you had? Four, isn’t it?”

“They’re so good, though!”

Sage had enough experience with both eight-year-olds and dogs to know exactly where the extra breadsticks were going—under the table, where Conan lurked, waiting patiently for anything tossed his way.

She handed Chloe another breadstick with a conspiratorial smile. “This is the last one, so you’d better make it last.”

“I’m going to have to roll you down the stairs, I’m afraid.”

Chloe snickered at her father. “Conan could help you carry me down. He’s way strong.”

“Stronger than me, probably, especially with all those breadsticks in his system.”

Chloe jerked her hand above the table surface with a guilty look, but her father didn’t reprimand her, he only smiled.

Sage gazed at his light expression with frustration. Drat the man. Just when she thought she had him pegged, he had to act in a way that didn’t match her perception.

It was becoming terribly difficult to hang on to her dislike of him. Though her first impression of him had been of a self-absorbed businessman with little time for his child, she was finding it more difficult to reconcile that with a man who could tease his daughter into the giggles.

She had always made a practice of looking for the good in people. Even during the worst of her childhood she had tried to find her stepmother’s redeeming qualities. So why was she so determined to only see negatives when she looked at Eben Spencer?

Maybe she was afraid to notice his good points. If she could still be so attracted to him when she was only focusing on the things she disliked, how much more vulnerable would she be if she allowed herself to see the good in him?

The thought didn’t sit well at all.

* * *

What was her story? Eben wondered as Sage dished out a simple but delicious dessert of vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries. She was warm and approachable one moment, stiff and cool the next. She kissed like a dream then turned distant and polite.

Her house was like her—eclectic, colorful, with a bit of an eccentric bent. One whole display case in the corner was filled with gnarled pieces of driftwood interspersed with various shells and canning jars filled with polished glass. Nothing in the house looked extravagant or costly, but it all seemed to work together to make a charming, cozy nest.

He was intensely curious about how she came to own the house after five years of renting it, but she obviously hadn’t want to talk about it so he had let her turn the conversation in other directions. He wondered if that had something to do with the pain that sometimes flickered in her gaze.

“I love strawberries,” Chloe announced. “They’re my very favorite thing to have on ice cream.”

“You need to try some of the Oregon berries sometime,” Sage said with a smile.

She maintained none of her stiff reserve with Chloe. She was genuinely warm all the time and he found it entrancing.

“And before you leave, remind me to give you some of the wild raspberry jam I made last summer,” she went on.

“You made jam all by yourself?”

“It’s not hard. The toughest thing is not eating the berries the minute you pick them so you’ve got enough left to use for the jam.”

Before Chloe could ask the million questions Eben could see forming in her eyes, Sage’s dog slithered out from under the table and began to bark insistently.

“Uh-oh. That’s his ignore-me-at-your-peril bark,” Sage said quickly, setting her unfinished dessert down on the table. “I had better let him out.”

“I’ll do it!” Chloe exclaimed. Her features—so much like her mother’s—were animated and excited.

She had been remarkably well-behaved through dinner—no tantrums, no power struggles. It was a refreshing change, he thought. Sage Benedetto had a remarkably positive effect on her. He wasn’t sure what she did differently, but Chloe responded to her in a way his daughter hadn’t to anyone else in a long time.

“Thanks, Chloe,” Sage said. “Just make sure the gate is closed around the yard so he can’t take off. He’s usually pretty good about staying on his own territory, but all bets are off if he catches sight of a cat.”

Chloe paused at the door. “Can I ask Miss Galvez if I can look at the dolls while I’m downstairs?”

Sage shifted her gaze to meet Eben’s. “You’ll have to ask your father that.”

“Someone will have to clue me in. What dolls?”

“The woman who left the house to me and to Anna Galvez had a huge doll collection. It takes up an entire room in Anna’s apartment now. I promised Chloe we could take a look at them before dinner, but time slipped away from us and then you arrived.”

“Can I see it, Daddy?”

“If Miss Galvez doesn’t mind showing you, I can’t see any reason why not.”

“Yay!” Chloe raced out the door, though Conan shot ahead of her and Eben could hear his paws click furiously down the stairs.

The moment they left, Eben realized he was alone with Sage—not a comfortable situation given the tension still simmering between them. She was obviously suddenly cognizant of that fact as well. She jerked to her feet and started clearing away their dinner dishes.

He finished the last of his dessert and rose to help her. “Thank you again for dinner. I can’t remember a meal I’ve enjoyed more.”

It was true, he realized with surprise. Chloe was usually in bed when he returned home from work, but on the rare occasions he dined with her, he typically found himself bracing for her frequent emotional outbursts.

It had been wonderful to enjoy his daughter’s company under Sage’s moderating influence.

Sage didn’t look convinced by his words. “It was only vegetarian lasagna. Probably nothing at all like you’re used to. You don’t have to patronize me.”

Her words surprised a laugh from him. “I don’t think I could patronize you, even if I tried. I doubt anyone can. I mean it. I enjoyed the meal—and the company—immensely.”

She studied him for a moment then nodded. “So did I.”

“You sound surprised. It’s not very flattering, I must admit.”

“I am surprised, I suppose. I don’t entertain a great deal. When I do, it’s usually friends in my own circle.”

“I appreciate you making an exception in our case.”

He was intensely aware of her, of the way her dangly earrings caught the lamplight, the smell of her, feminine and enticing, her mobile expressions. He wanted to kiss her again, with a fierce ache, though he knew it was impossible, not to mention extremely unwise.

He didn’t want to destroy this fragile peace—especially when his intentions could never be anything other than a quick fling, something he guessed wasn’t typical for her, either.

In an effort to cool his growing awareness, he searched his mind for a change of topic as he followed her into the small kitchen with his hands full of dishes.

“Tell me the truth, now that Chloe is gone for a moment. How was she today?”

Surprise widened her eyes at the question. “Fine. She’s a little energetic, but no worse than any of the other eight-year-olds at the camp. Better than some. She’s very sweet.”

She studied him and he was certain some of his relief must have shown on his features.

“You look like you expected a different answer.”

He sighed and put the dishes down on the counter-top next to the sink. “I love my daughter, but I have to admit that sweet is not an adjective many people use to describe her these days.”

“That surprises me. She seems to me a typical kid, just like the others in the class.”

“I think you have an extraordinary rapport with her.”’

“I’m not sure why that would be.”

“I’m not, either. Chloe is…challenging. She’s bright and creative and funny most of the time, but she has these mood swings. Her mother’s death two years ago affected her strongly. She and Brooke were very close. Her mother doted on her—maybe too much.”

“I don’t think you can ever love a child too much.”

There was that stiffness in her voice again. “I don’t, either. Please don’t misunderstand. I only meant that losing her mother was a fierce and painful blow to Chloe. As a parent, I’m afraid I’m a poor substitute for my wife.”

Her gaze flashed to his and he regretted exposing so much truth about himself.

“I tried to give her some leeway for her grief for several months but I’m afraid I let her get away with too many things and now that’s her expectation all the time. In the last year and a half she’s been through four schools and a half-dozen nannies. She’s moody and unpredictable. Defiant one moment, deceptively docile the next.”

Without really thinking about it, he started to load the dishes in the dishwasher. “The other morning was a perfect example,” he continued. “She could have been seriously hurt sneaking out so early. I wouldn’t do as she demanded the night before and stay out late hunting up seashells with her, so she countermanded me by sneaking out on her own.”

She opened her mouth slightly then closed it again.

“What were you going to say?” he pressed.

“Nothing. Never mind.” She turned away to run water in the sink for the soiled dishes.

Eben leaned against the counter next to her, enjoying her graceful movements.

“You probably would have been right out there with her in the middle of the night with a flashlight and a bucket looking for sand dollars, wouldn’t you?”

She gave him a sidelong look, then smiled. “Probably.”

“I let her get away with too much right after Brooke died and I need to set some boundaries now. Children needs rules and structure.”

“Is that the kind of childhood you had? Regimented, toe-the-line. Military school, right?”

He laughed, though he heard the harsh note in it and wondered if she did as well. “Not quite. I would have given my entire baseball card collection for a little structure and discipline. My parents were of the if-it-feels-good-just-do-it school of thought. It destroyed them both and they nearly took me and my sister along with them. I can’t do that to Chloe.”

Her hands paused in the sink and her eyes widened with sympathy. He shifted, uncomfortable. Where the hell had that come from? He didn’t share these pieces of his life with anyone. He wasn’t sure he’d ever even articulated that to Brooke. If he had, maybe she wouldn’t have expected so many things from him he wasn’t at all sure he had been capable of offering.

He certainly had no business sharing them with Sage. She was quiet for a long moment, watching him out of intense brown eyes. The only sound was the rain clicking against the window and the soft sound of their mingled breathing.

“I’m sorry,” she finally murmured.

He shrugged. “It was a long time ago. I just don’t want to make the same mistakes with Chloe.”

“But you can go too far in the other direction, can’t you?”

“I’m doing my best. That’s all I can do.”

He didn’t want to talk about this anymore. With her so close, he was having a tough time hanging on to any coherent thought anyway. All he could think about was kissing her again.

But he couldn’t.

The thought had no sooner entered his head than he could swear he felt a soft hand in the small of his back from out of nowhere pushing him toward her.

She gave him a quick startled look then her gaze seemed to fasten on his mouth.

What other choice did he have but to kiss her?

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.