by Hill, Joanne
“What are you doing?” Sage prodded him and he managed a torturous grunt. His head was swimming and if he moved he was going to throw up. “I think I died.” Dizziness and fatigue swirled around him as he felt a finger press against his neck.
“You’re breathing so you’re not dead and you don’t need CPR. I’ve got aspirin back at the house, anyway.”
He lifted his head cautiously, felt no further swimming in his brain, let a few more seconds pass, then cautiously hauled himself up.
Sage stared at him. “You look disgusting.”
He felt disgusting. He sat down. Hot and cold and hurt and sick and—
He stuck his head between his knees as dizziness rolled over him again in a violent wave.
Moments later he felt his water bottle being pushed into his hand. “You dropped it. Have what’s left. Most of it leaked out. Maybe you’re dehydrated.”
He took a few gulps, tasted sand from around the rim of the bottle, and raised his head.
A few people had stopped to look, and he managed a curt, ‘move on’ flick of his wrist. They moved on.
“Are you on something?” Sage demanded. “What are you taking?”
“Nothing.” Was he? “We’ve got to get back up to the house.” He could finally form a sentence, and his heart rate had come back down, even though he was still dazed. “The kids.”
“The children. Oh for Pete’s sake, the children.” Sage began to throw everything back in the bag again. “We have to get back there.”
He got unsteadily to his feet. Better. He felt marginally better.
“We did it again. We left everyone with Mrs Parker,” Sage accused as she slung the bag over her shoulder and grabbed the cotton shawl. With it trailing behind her, they sped along the sand and up to the stretch of grass leading to the gate.
“I’m sure they’re okay.” He was a shocking babysitter, and he’d nearly puked his guts out in front of Sage. This could not get any worse.
She pushed open the gate and they went through, up the path to the top of the garden, around, and to the front door.
Sage quickly pressed the security code and the door swung open, and Ethan followed her inside.
“Mrs Parker?” she called out. “Children? Where are you? Are you okay? Ruby, James, Eric?”
Ethan strode behind her, through into the living area.
Sage stopped, and he nearly walked into her.
Eric, Ruby and James sat around the coffee table, with glasses of milk and a plate of cookies in front of them.
They were staring intently at the cookies.
“Everyone okay?” Ethan asked. The kids looked up at him and seemed, it struck him, to be staring incredulously.
“They look okay. Thank you, God. I’m checking Harry,” Sage said and a second later he heard the thump of her feet on the staircase.
Ruby started to cry. Eric, he noted, stared open-mouthed at him. James had resumed watching the plate of cookies.
“What the—” Mrs Parker stalked into the room. “Ruby, for goodness sake, what’s upset you now? You only have to wait until the cookies cool—” She stopped and stared at Ethan.
“Holy—” Her gaze slid up and down and settled on his face.
She narrowed her gaze at him, then folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, I see.” Her mouth curled in to something that might have been a smile.
She looked straight at him and said, “I see what went on out there.” Her eyes narrowed, her eyebrows drew together and her mouth tightened. “I see only too damn well what’s been going on.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ethan stood in the shower and washed away the sand that liberally coated his face and matted his hair, rinsing it from his body and letting it make its way down into the sewers of Auckland.
He still fumed. Fumed that Sage hadn’t told him he looked like some hideous figment of a human being that the ocean had dragged in. She’d claimed she hadn’t noticed what he looked like, given the state she was in, a panicked state that he’d induced, she’d felt compelled to add, but he wasn’t inclined to believe her. Especially considering Ruby had spent five minutes crying, too scared to even go near him.
“That monster,” she’d sobbed as Ethan stood, unable to figure out just what she was going on about.
He’d glanced behind, but there was nothing there.
“That man’s a monster,” she’d managed to wail between sobs, and Mrs Parker promptly told them they could have their cookies.
Ethan’s stomach had rumbled. His heart rate had come back down and the nausea had subsided, but he needed something to eat. He decided to wait. Far be it from him to go and disturb Ruby any more when she was fixated with this ‘monster’ accusation. He glanced down at himself and at his clothes, and his bare legs. So he was covered in a little sand.
“So you had a good time out?” Mrs Parker said finally.
At that moment Sage walked in. “Harry’s fine,” she said with relief. “She’s fast asleep.” She put her hand to her chest, and let out a deep breath. “I was worried there.”
Mrs Parker’s eyes widened as they zeroed in on Sage.
“You work mighty fast, McGraw,” she said. There was something like amazement in her voice.
Ethan swallowed down hard on what was surely sand stuck in his throat. He was unable to take his eyes off Sage—couldn’t if he tried. Sand clung to her clothes and to her face and to her hair. The bits on her face, he realized, were stuck there. It was as if there was a muddy paste that had been flung indiscriminately at her with no pattern to it. But they’d been on the dry sand, not down by the water…
The coffee. She’d dropped the coffee cup and it had mixed with the sand and combined to make some weird paste.
He realized then that Sage was staring back at him.
“You look—” Her mouth dropped open.
“So do you,” he remarked coolly.
“No, I mean, you really look bad. I don’t know how I didn’t see it. I think that with all that gasping and panting I was just blind—”
“Neither of you,” Mrs Parker interrupted forcefully, “are to come anywhere near these children until you are both clean and respectable. If you must play adult games, then at least, for the love of all that is pure and innocent in these precious minds, keep it well away from them.”
Ethan put his hand to his face, and sand paste came away.
Sand. Coffee sand. And the water from his bottle. All over him. All over his face. He ran his palm over his cheeks and more came away. No wonder poor Ruby had cried. And there’d been his absurdly high body temperature as he’d run harder than he’d ever run in his life back to Sage, with sweat pouring off him.
All because he’d panicked. All because he’d decided to go for a nice, stress-reducing run along the beach.
Now, minutes later, he stood under the shower head, luxuriating in the hot water pouring over him at its fastest and hardest speed. He switched it off reluctantly.
There was only one conclusion to draw from this, he deduced, as he grabbed a towel and dried himself off with more force than needed. He was clearly never going to be able to leave those children for the next twenty-four hours, or he would suffer a psychological breakdown from sheer anxiety.
He walked through to the bedroom and picked his watch up from the bedside table. He slipped it on, stared at the time, and tapped the face.
And swore.
Ruby was watching more Dora, Eric and James were playing games, and Mrs Parker was grilling Ethan and Sage.
Sage had never felt more like a criminal in her life, and she’d been borderline criminal. Trespassing where it was warranted and holding up traffic where it was warranted, but all for a cause greater than herself.
She had never felt like an actual criminal.
Right now, she was on trial, and even worse, she’d eaten three cookies and was eyeing up a fourth. Flour, chocolate and refined sugar. This was a danger zone. She was over thirty, and she had to watch what she ate.
Middle-age spread and all that, it was only a few years away and the way they were speeding by, closer than she thought.
But man, they looked good. They tasted good. She knew because she’d already had those three. Or was it four? Maybe she’d lost count.
Screw it. She took another. They were huge cookies, loaded with butter and two kinds of chocolate.
She took a bite as Ethan watched her with raised eyebrows.
“You still hungry?” he remarked. “You’re eating that thing like you haven’t eaten in a week.”
“I’m full so this has got nothing to do with being hungry.” She took another bite. Sweet heaven. Mrs P could start a cookie shop and make a fortune. “It’s hormones,” she said.
Ethan glanced away and looked as if he wished he hadn’t asked.
“Let me get this straight,” Mrs Parker began. “And I’m recapping here for clarity. You,” she said to Ethan, “had a sudden feeling.” She raised her fingers in quotation marks. “A feeling that something wasn’t right.”
Ethan folded his arms.
“So then,” she went on, “you raced back to Sage, but you ran too fast, and by the time you got back to her, you were feeling crook.”
Crook. He was close to death.
Blow this. He reached for another cookie.
Sage eyed him with accusation.
He took a bite. “Hormones,” he told her.
Her mouth curled into a smile that reached her eyes and he nearly died. He took another bite. Or was she smiling at him because he was on the road to obesity and diabetes and premature death?
She rolled her eyes and looked away.
“And then,” Mrs Parker continued, “you both panicked, you made a mess with coffee and water, you both ended up lying in the sand, you both got wet and pasty, and you rushed back here to rescue the children.”
“Pretty much,” Ethan agreed. “Although I wouldn’t say we were so much lying in the sand as we fell into it.”
“He’s right.” Sage took another bite of her cookie. “About the sand and everything. We just had this momentary feeling of panic. We’d agreed to look after the children, but we’d left them, Harry wasn’t well and we know you weren’t feeling too well this morning, Mrs Parker, and we just had this massive sense of guilt. Which unfortunately, combined with water, coffee and sand, and Ethan sprinting, produced—well, it produced what happened.”
Mrs Parker narrowed her gaze at them. “So there was nothing…” She seemed to search around for a word, gestured with her hands, and came out with, “romantic about this incident?”
Ethan shot a quick look at Sage to see how she’d react. She appeared calm. She set what was left of the cookie down and wiped the crumbs off her hands carefully. She looked as if she were composing herself.
“I do realize,” she began, “that this is exactly how it looked to you. And potentially to anyone walking along the beach who hadn’t witnessed the collision between me and Ethan.”
“In fact,” Ethan recalled, “I think there may have been some sort of accusation.”
Sage grimaced. “There was. A passer-by seemed to think that we were—” She cleared her throat. “But no. Believe me. Sand, filth, and a whisker off having a heart attack is not romantic.” She lifted her chin. “Although maybe when I hit your age, Mrs Parker, I might think it is. Maybe then, all that will seem terribly romantic. But that’s a long way off yet.”
Whoah. Ethan pressed his lips together. Sage was brave going there. Incredibly brave.
As he moved back in his chair a fraction for safety, lest anything be hurled, he glanced warily at Mrs Parker. She was looking straight at Sage through narrow, scrutinizing eyes.
Around them the air had gone still.
Sage lifted her chin.
Mrs Parker suddenly let out a sigh and reached for a cookie.
She looked up as they both watched her.
She took a bite.
“Hormones,” she said.
By the time dinner rolled around, no one was hungry. Between the cookies and coffee, and leftover soup, appetites for anything more substantial had waned. Ruby had fallen asleep on the couch, and Sage was up in Robyn and Jack’s room, since they’d given Harriet the spare room Sage had been planning to use. Eric and James were watching TV and hadn’t spoken a word to each other or anyone else in an hour, even though they were sitting close together on the floor. That was more like it. Ethan approved. As long as they were asleep by midnight when the cricket began, he was okay with them watching TV the entire night. And he had beer, chips, and a couple of mince and cheese pies he could nuke. It was going to be heaven.
Mrs Parker had declined an offer of a lift home and said that after today, she wasn’t leaving until the children were asleep and when they were, and only then, she’d call a cab.
“What about Mr P?” Ethan quizzed.
“I put meatloaf in a crockpot so he’s good to go,” she remarked, before she changed the subject and said she was making meatloaf for them as well because it would last a few days, and it would make nice sandwiches, or if they preferred, could just be heated up. Ethan, approved. A bit of meatloaf would go well with the beer. Add some liberal squirts of tomato sauce, and the night was looking up.
By nine, the kids had all been put to bed and Sage hadn’t made an appearance. Harriet had woken and staggered down the stairs, where Mrs Parker had given her soup and a plate of cookies to take back up with her. Harry looked like death but she swallowed down more painkillers and went back to bed. When Ethan checked on her half an hour later, she was asleep.
He rubbed his hands together with glee. Finally, some peace.
“I think you can go now,” he suggested to Mrs Parker around ten o’clock.
She had mixed pancake batter and placed cling-wrap over the bowl. “What’s that for?” he asked.
“For tomorrow morning. I might be late. I have to get up early to watch the jilted fiancée trial out of Atlanta, Georgia, on my satellite. The details are gruesome. Although some might say, not entirely undeserved if more care and moderation had been observed in the jilting by the deceased groom-to-be. I might be late so I’m taking care of the batter now.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say ‘you don’t have to’, but he was over that. He was taking help where he could get it.
“Won’t it go off?” he said. “Like go brown or something?”
“I have securely cling wrapped it, and there is a special ingredient in the batter. These pancakes will make your mouth water, and they’ll be served with butter and golden syrup. It’s all taken care of.”
She put the bowl in the fridge, washed her hands and speed-dialed the taxi.
“Parker,” she said curtly, and hung up.
“That was quick,” he remarked.
“They know me. They’ll be here in three minutes. Right.” She finished wiping down the benches and looked satisfied. “Like I said, McGraw, I’ll be late. Might not get here until seven.”
“I’ll be asleep,” he said. “The cricket won’t finish until six, unless it’s rained out.”
She blinked. “So how were you planning to look after those children if you’re sleeping off meat pies and a six-pack?”
“Sage,” he said simply.
Mrs Parker nodded. “Sage.” She nodded again. “I see. Well. I better not watch all that trial then. I’ll check it out later on. Good job I mixed up that pancake batter.”
A few sharp beeps of a car horn sounded outside and she said, “It was an interesting day, McGraw. A little mental but fun. Don’t worry about Jack’s lot. I’ll be here at six to take over while you get your beauty sleep. The murderous acts of the jilted fiancée can wait.” She jerked her head upstairs to the bedrooms. “And for the love of all that is good, don’t do anything stupid.”
“I—I won’t?” he muttered, saying it on a question as she walked over to the front door, pulled it open and walked through. She shut the door behind with her a solid thump. A minute later he heard the
taxi leave and drive down Jack’s driveway.
Of course he wasn’t going to do anything stupid. He had his night planned and he’d been looking forward to it all day. Anticipation began to worm up within him, and he took the stairs, two at a time, to check on the children. They were all out to it, Eric in his room, the twins in theirs. He looked in on Harriet, and moved right up to the bed to check on her. She was snoring slightly, her mouth open, her brown hair tangled around her face.
You, he said to himself, are a great kid. I’d have liked to have been a father to a kid like you.
He hastily pushed the thought away, and went up the next flight to Jack and Robyn’s room.
He hesitated a moment before he stepped cautiously inside and stopped a few feet past the doorway. Sage lay on her front, like Harry had done, her hair spread around her and down her back as she hugged the pillow. Two other pillows lay on the floor.
Her breathing was solid, heavy; she snored.
He bit back a grin. She’d probably deny it, but she did. He moved a step closer, then another step, and forced aside the voice that demanded, what do you think you’re doing?
Sage Lockwood was sexy when she slept.
Not the kind of thought you needed to be having about her.
Not about Dr Sage Lockwood.
He should go.
He didn’t move.
There was something about her, something that made him want to…he didn’t know what. Get to know her better? Except there was too much about her that made them incompatible. What would he find if he did get to know her better?
He was attracted to her, yes. She was an intelligent woman and she cared for people. He liked that she cared. That meant more to him than she could – would – ever know.
And she was attracted to him.
She might act otherwise, but it was there, in spite of the fact she was dating. Dating Barry. He could run from that knowledge, but he couldn’t hide from it.
Though what on earth she saw in him, Ethan, he didn’t know. Yes, some women liked tall men in good shape. It was one thing he could control; one thing he’d made sure he controlled. There had been times when there hadn’t been a lot about himself he liked. He needed that control in ways that were tied up deeply with who he was.