“Sage? Was that…Sage McKnight?”
“Yes. She’s my daughter.”
“Is she okay?”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you knew her.”
“Oh, I don’t. Not really. Well, just a little. We met at a party last summer when I was in town for a few weeks working on your dad’s reelection campaign—remember that, Gen? We went to that party at the reservoir? A friend of a friend, I think, but it turned out to be mostly college students.”
“Of course. Rachel Zeller’s birthday party.”
“Right. We were trying to get a donation out of her father so we went, but the crowd was a little young for us. Sage and I went out on the wakeboards while you were working on your tan, remember that?”
“Look at you, with your memory for names and faces. That will come in so handy when you’re back in Washington, won’t it?” Genevieve’s smile was rather tight, Maura thought.
“Tell Sage we said hello.” Sawyer gave that charming smile of his that seemed to make every female heart flutter helplessly like a moth with a singed wing, and that dark suspicion dug its claws in more sharply.
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
“Let me know if everything’s okay,” Claire said, her pretty features furrowed.
“I’m sure she’s fine. Thanks, Claire. Sorry to ditch on you.”
“Not a problem. That only means I’ll get to look forward to having you both in again.”
Claire had an uncanny way of turning any obstacle into a positive. It was pretty darn annoying sometimes.
“Right. See you later.”
She walked out into the cool March afternoon and headed down the street toward Jack’s office. Worry for her daughter was the reason for these butterflies jumping around in her stomach, she told herself. She was absolutely not nervous to see Jack again.
When she arrived at Lange & Associates, she could see through the window she had guessed correctly. Sage was sitting behind her desk staring down at her hands. She didn’t even register awareness when Maura pushed open the door.
“All right, spill. What’s going on?”
Sage finally looked up, her features pale and set. She blinked when she saw Maura. “Mom. You didn’t have to follow me.”
“You ran out of String Fever like you were about to throw up on the sidewalk. Forgive a mother for being worried for her child. Now, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just… I’m being stupid.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”
“No, I am. I’ve been stupid for months. Everything is so messed up.”
She started to cry, sloppy tears that leaked out of her eyes and dripped down her cheeks, and Maura reached for her, her heart aching for her daughter. “It’s Sawyer, isn’t it?”
Sage drew away a little to stare at her. She didn’t answer, just let out a little sob that confirmed everything.
“Oh, honey.” Maura held her closer and Sage wrapped her arms around her mother and held on as if she were five years old, afraid of the monsters under her bed.
“I know. You don’t have to tell me. I’m such an idiot.”
Sawyer Danforth was the father of Sage’s baby. How on earth had this all become so complicated? He had been engaged to Gen for longer than a year. They were supposed to have been married last fall, but the wedding had been postponed after the accident. His family was wealthy, powerful and connected—and would not be at all thrilled at their scion for fathering an out-of-wedlock child with someone they would consider a nobody.
She could see nothing but a vast sea of heartache for her child and didn’t know the first thing she could say or do to help Sage wade through it.
“Can you tell me what happened between you? Were you…dating?”
Sage sniffed. “It’s not like I was in love with him or anything. Well, I thought I was, a little. But even at the time I knew how stupid that was. I mean, how can I possibly compete with Gen Beaumont? She looks like a supermodel and I’m like a Keebler Elf.”
Despite her own broken heart, she had to smile a little at the imagery, so similar to her own troll comparison. “You could kick Genevieve Beaumont’s skinny little butt in any kind of head-to-head competition, especially if it called for brains and personality.”
For a moment, Maura thought Sage might smile at that. Though her mouth twitched a little, her eyes still looked bleak. “We all went to a birthday party this summer. Rachel Zeller, Josie’s big sister. I guess she was a sorority sister of Genevieve’s or something. She and Gen—and Josie, for that matter—spent most of the day lying out, working on their tans. Gen wouldn’t even get in the water. I’d never been wakeboarding, so Sawyer was showing me what to do. We had a lot of fun together, but it was…nothing.”
She clenched her hands together. “So we were on the boat and we were talking about music and stuff, and he couldn’t believe it when I told him Chris was my stepdad. I guess he’s a big fan of Pendragon. I told him they were coming to Boulder in August, right when school started, and I could probably get him and Gen backstage.”
Maura usually attended all the Pendragon concerts when they played anywhere in Colorado, but she had made an excuse for that particular one. Her relationship with Chris had been more than amicable since the divorce, but his current girlfriend struggled with their friendship, and Maura had decided she couldn’t cope with the drama this year.
“Sawyer was really excited about the concert, so we exchanged emails and cell numbers,” Sage went on. “We kept in touch, nothing serious, just fun. Maybe a little more flirty than we should have been, given his engagement, I guess, but we were just messing around.”
She sighed. “So I got him the tickets from Chris for the concert, but it turned out Gen had something else that night. He didn’t want to miss it, though, especially after I had gone to the trouble to get the backstage tickets for him, so he asked if he could hang with me. I just… We went to the concert and backstage. It was a crazy night. We hung out with Chris and the rest of the gang, and we went back to Sawyer’s hotel and, well, one thing led to another, I guess.”
Sage looked so miserable, Maura’s heart broke all over again. “I knew he was engaged to Gen, but we had so much fun together, even before, you know. I guess some part of me thought maybe he really liked me.”
“I’m sure he did.”
She shook her head. “No. He used me, for everything. He left first thing in the morning. Thanks for the fun night. See you around. That’s all he said and then he never returned any of my texts or calls. I was so stupid.”
Sawyer was gorgeous and charming and much older than Sage. He had already passed the bar, for heaven’s sake. What did he want with a nineteen-year-old girl in her second year of undergraduate work? They were not only in different social strata but completely different stages in their lives.
Maura could absolutely believe he had used Sage for whatever he could get out of her, and Sage had probably been a starry-eyed girl, overwhelmed that someone like Sawyer wanted to be with her.
“What am I going to do?” Sage whimpered.
Maura released a heavy breath. “You’re not going to like this, but I think you need to tell him.”
“I can’t! He’s getting married in a month!”
This was the reason Sage had been so evasive all these weeks when they’d pressed for the identity of the baby’s father—she had to have known the storm that would result.
“I think that’s exactly why you should tell him now. He has to know. It’s only fair to him and to Genevieve.”
If possible, even more
color leached out of Sage’s cheeks. “Genevieve? Why? She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Wrong,” Maura said gently. “Be fair. Wouldn’t you want to know if the man you were preparing to take vows with could father a child with someone else during the engagement, when he’s supposed to be head-over-heels, can’t-think-of-another-woman in love with you?”
“It was just a mistake,” Sage wailed. “We…he had too much to drink and he wasn’t thinking. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
She folded Sage’s fingers in hers. They were cold and trembling and Maura wanted to tuck them against her heart and warm them. So much pain because of a few foolish moments between two young people who should have known better.
“Listen to me, Sage. You and I, we have a unique perspective on this, don’t we? I can see as a woman who’s been exactly in your shoes the choices I should have made twenty years ago. I should have told Jack, no matter the consequences. All my rationalizations and excuses are just that. My way of making myself feel better for my cowardice in not telling him. I regret it now, more than I can tell you. I can see now how much you needed him in your life from the beginning. If I had only had the courage, I would have told him. He may still have chosen to stay out of your life, but at least he would have had the choice. I took that from him and it was wrong—for him and for you.”
She hadn’t admitted that out loud before, but the words still resonated with truth—so loudly in her head that she must have completely missed the sound of the office door opening. Behind Sage she caught a flicker of movement and turned.
Jack. Of course. How much had he heard? Judging by his expression, he must have been standing there for some time. He gazed at her for a long, charged moment and she couldn’t think what to say to him.
She wouldn’t call her words back, even if she could. They were truth and she should have admitted it a long time ago. She had committed a grave injustice against him and she didn’t want to see Sage do the same thing.
Sage hadn’t noticed him. She had her face pressed to Maura’s shoulder. “What’s going on?” he mouthed.
“I’ll explain later,” she mouthed back, holding up a finger, before turning back to Sage and pressing her point. “I don’t know what you’re going to do about the baby, whether you plan to keep it or place it with an adoptive family. Judging from your evasiveness with the attorneys who have called, I think you’re not quite sure yourself. Either way, I think you owe it to yourself, to Sawyer and to the child you both created to involve him in the decision.”
“He’s going to hate me. I’ll ruin everything for him.”
“You didn’t create this mess on your own, honey. He’s a grown man. He made his own choices all along the way.”
“But the wedding. It’s next month.”
She might not particularly like Gen Beaumont—or any of her family, for that matter—but that didn’t mean she wanted to ruin the young woman’s wedding, which so many people had worked tirelessly to pull off.
But putting her grief aside, she knew this was the right thing. Better for Genevieve to know now than to find out after they exchanged vows that her fiancé had been unfaithful to her.
For all she knew, maybe Genevieve wouldn’t care. It was no secret around Hope’s Crossing that Sawyer Danforth had political aspirations even greater than his father’s, who had once been the president of the state senate.
Maybe, like a good political wife in training, Genevieve knew all about any extracurricular activities—going on the logical assumption that Sage hadn’t been his only indiscretion—and had chosen to look the other way.
“I don’t want to,” Sage said in a small voice that reminded Maura of the time Sage’s appendix had burst when she was nine and she had to be rushed into emergency surgery, scared to death and fighting the whole way.
“I know, honey.” She hugged her, aware of Jack standing behind Sage. “It’s your choice, of course. I’ve told you what I think you should do, but you’re an adult. You can decide to say nothing if you want.”
Sage grabbed a tissue from the box on her desk and sniffled into it. “When…when I tell him, will you come with me?”
A tremendous rush of pride burst through her. “In a heartbeat.”
“Do you have room for one more?” Jack asked in a low voice. Sage whirled around and turned pink at the sight of her father behind her.
“I guess you heard.”
“Only the last bit. I’m surmising you encountered the, uh, sperm donor and you’re trying to decide whether to hand him a cigar.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, but, yeah,” Sage said.
“He’s supposed to be getting married in a month to the mayor’s daughter, Genevieve,” Maura explained. “It’s only the biggest social event to hit Hope’s Crossing since the original Silver King Ball.”
“Ah. I don’t know how much my opinion is worth in this situation, but I agree with your mother. Telling him is the right thing to do, even though it’s going to be tough and probably ugly.”
Sage sighed. “Why does everything have to be so hard?”
“If doing the right thing were easy, wouldn’t everybody just naturally do it?” Maura said.
Her daughter didn’t seem to appreciate that bit of maternal wisdom, but Jack smiled a little.
“I guess we should get it over with. Find him tonight while I can still manage the nerve.”
“Do you want me to make a few calls?” Maura offered. “I can at least find out if he’s staying at the Beaumonts or at one of the hotels while he’s in town.”
“No. I still have his number, unless he’s changed it. I’ll try to text him. Ask if I can meet him somewhere. I’d rather tell him without Genevieve there at first. Then he can decide whether to tell her or not.”
Maura wasn’t sure she agreed with that, but she had meant her earlier words—Sage was an adult and could make her own decisions about how to handle the situation.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“READY OR NOT, I GUESS.” Sage opened the passenger door of Jack’s SUV and a rush of cold air flowed inside from the wind tunnel created under the porte cochere at the sprawling Silver Strike Lodge.
“Are you sure you don’t want us to go inside with you, honey?” Maura leaned up from the backseat, where she had insisted on sitting so Sage could take the front seat next to him. Her features were twisted with worry as she watched their daughter.
Sage tucked a stray hair tossed by the wind back behind her ear. “I really think it would be best if I go the rest of the way by myself. It means a lot to me that you both came this far. I’m not sure I could have made it here on my own, but I think I should talk to Sawyer first alone.”
Jack wished he could make this easier for her. Was that a universal parental sentiment, this desire to make the world straighten itself out around his child so her path was always smooth and even? Intellectually, he knew that was not only impossible but would create someone unable to cope with life’s inevitable challenges, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to ease her burden.
“I’ll find a parking space and we’ll wait in the lobby for you, okay?”
“You really don’t have to do that. I can call you when I’m done and you can just tell me where you parked.”
“We’ll be waiting for you in the lobby.” He spoke almost sternly, determined to do this, at least. He hadn’t been here through most of her life and all the other tough things she’d had to deal with, especially losing her beloved little sister. He wouldn’t let her down now that he had the chance to offer support in whatever small way he could manage.
“I’m sure I’ll be out soon. I mean, come on. How long does it take to ruin a man’s life?”
She gave them both a quick, nervous smile, then closed the door, squared her shoulders and walked into the lobby.
If Maura hadn’t been there, Jack probably would have pounded his fist on the steering wheel. At the very least. “Damn it. Why won’t she let us go with her? I’d like to have a word or two with the son of a bitch myself.”
“Maybe that’s why she insisted on talking to him by herself at first. She didn’t want you pulling the outraged father act.”
“I am outraged. It’s no act. The man is twenty-six years old. He’s a full-fledged adult. She’s not even twenty yet and as green as a field of clover, a vulnerable kid dealing with loss and uncertainty. He had no business messing with her.”
Maura touched his arm, just a soft brush of her fingers, and some of his wild anger seemed to ease away. “She’s knows what she’s doing. Let her handle this her way, okay?”
“What else can we do? She’s a stubborn thing.”
“I’m afraid she gets that from both of us. Poor girl was doomed from the beginning.”
He smiled a little. While he was tempted to use the valet parking, he had the feeling Sage might want a quick getaway when they were done, and wouldn’t want to wait out in the cold for the valets to find his car, so instead he pulled a short distance away to the parking lot.
Maura was quiet as he opened the back door for her and reached a hand to help her out. “Careful. It’s icy,” he said, and maintained his hold on her arm, telling himself it was only out of concern for her safety.
After a pause, Maura pulled her arm away but slipped her hand into the crook of his arm for more stability. Despite his lingering worry for Sage and his sharp anger at Sawyer Danforth for being the catalyst for everything Sage was going through, a sweet tenderness seeped through him at this small indication of her trust.
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