He reached behind the seat for the umbrella and came around to her door to open it for her. As he reached to help her from the vehicle, her nerves tingled at the touch of his hand.
“You and Chloe take the umbrella,” he said. “You’re the ones with the fancy dresses.”
Sage found it particular bittersweet to hold Chloe’s little hand tightly in hers as the two of them raced through the drizzle to the porch.
Oh, she would miss this darling child. Again she had to swallow down the ache in her throat.
Water droplets glistened in Eben’s hair as he joined them on the porch while she unlocked the door.
“Is Conan upstairs or with Ms. Galvez?” Chloe asked when they were inside the entryway.
“He would have been lonely upstairs in my apartment by himself. I think he and Anna were watching a movie when I left.”
“Can I take him upstairs with us for cheesecake?”
“Well, we can get him but I should warn you that Conan doesn’t like cheesecake. His favorite dessert is definitely apple pie.”
Chloe giggled, as Sage had intended. She kept her hand firmly in Sage’s as they knocked on Anna’s door. For just an instant, Sage caught Eben watching her and she shivered at the glittery expression there.
Conan rushed through the door the moment Anna opened it. “Hey,” Anna exclaimed. “How was dinner?”
“You know The Sea Urchin. It couldn’t be anything other than exquisite,” Sage answered. “Sorry to bother you but we’re having an impromptu little party. I’m going to take out the frozen cheesecake Abigail made.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“We’re celebrating,” she said, forcing a smile. “Stanley and Jade agreed to sell to Spencer Hotels.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Congratulations.”
Eben smiled, though in the better lighting of the entryway, Sage was certain he didn’t look quite as thrilled as he had earlier.
“You and Conan have to join us while we celebrate,” she said.
“May I look at the dolls first?” Chloe asked.
Anna sent a quick look at Sage and Eben. Her dark eyes danced with mischief for a moment in an expression that suddenly looked remarkably like one of Abigail’s.
“Sure,” she finally answered. “You two go ahead. Conan, Chloe and I will be up in a moment. Well, probably closer to ten or fifteen.”
She ushered the girl into her apartment and closed the door firmly before Conan could bound up the stairs, leaving Eben and Sage alone in the entryway.
Feeling awkward—and more than a little mortified by Anna’s not-so-subtle maneuvering to give her and Eben some private time—Sage led the way up the stairs and into her apartment.
Eben closed the door behind him. She wasn’t quite sure how he moved so quickly, but an instant later she was in his arms.
His kiss was firm, demanding, stealing the breath from her lungs. She wrapped her arms around him, exulting in his strength beneath her fingers, in the taste and scent of him.
For long, drugging moments, nothing else mattered but his mouth and his hands and the wild feelings inside her, fluttering to take flight.
“I’ve been dying to do that all night.” His low voice sent shivers rippling down her spine.
She shivered and pulled his mouth back to hers, wondering if he could taste the edge of desperation in the kiss. She forgot about Chloe and Anna and Conan downstairs, she forgot about The Sea Urchin, she forgot everything but the wonder of being in his arms one more time.
One last time.
“I don’t want to leave tomorrow.”
At the ragged intensity of his voice, she blinked her eyes open. The reminder of her inevitable heartbreak seemed to jar her back into her senses.
What was the point in putting herself through this? The more she touched him, experienced the wild joy of being in his arms, the harder she knew it would be to wrench her heart away from him and return to her quiet, safe life before he and Chloe had stumbled into it.
She swallowed. “But you have to.”
“I have to,” he agreed, reluctance sliding through his voice. “I can’t miss these Tokyo meetings.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “But I could try to rearrange my schedule to come back in a few weeks. A month on the outside.”
She allowed herself a brief moment to imagine how it might be. Despite the heat they generated and these fragile emotions taking root in her heart, she knew she would merely be a convenience for him, never anything more than that.
She drew in a shuddering breath and slid out of his arms, desperate for space to regain her equilibrium. “I should, uh, get the cheesecake out of the freezer.”
He raised an eyebrow at her deliberate evasion but said nothing, only followed her into the kitchen. She opened the small freezer and quickly found Abigail’s foil-wrapped package.
Her hands shook a little as she pulled it out—from the embrace with Eben, but also from emotion. This was one more tie to Abigail that would be severed after tonight.
She looked at Abigail’s handwriting on the foil with the date a few weeks before her death and one simple word: Celebrate.
Eben looked at the cheesecake from over her shoulder. He seemed to instinctively know how difficult it was for her to lose one more connection to Abigail. “Are you certain you don’t want to save this a little longer, for some other occasion?”
She shook her head with determination. “I have the oddest feeling Abigail would approve. She was the one who introduced you to the Wus, after all. She never would have done that if she didn’t want you to buy The Sea Urchin. I think she would be happy her cheesecake is being put to good use. In fact, if I know Abigail, she’s probably somewhere lifting a glass of champagne to you right now.”
He tilted his head and studied her for a long moment, then smiled softly. “I have you to thank as much as Abigail.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Not true. You know it’s not. I honestly think Stanley and Jade were ready to pull out until dinner tonight, until you and Chloe both charmed them.”
He grabbed her fingers. “You reach Chloe in ways I don’t think anyone has since her mother died.”
She shifted and slid her hand away, uncomfortable with his praise. How could she tell him she understood Chloe’s pain so intimately and connected with her only because her life had so closely mirrored the little girl’s?
“What can I do to reach her that way?” Eben asked. By all appearances, he looked completely sincere. “You need to give me lessons.”
“Just trust your instincts. That’s the only lesson I can give.”
“Following my instincts hasn’t turned out well so far. Maybe if I had better success at this father business, I wouldn’t have to send her to boarding school in the fall.”
At first, she thought—hoped—she misheard him. He couldn’t possibly be serious.
“Boarding school? You’re sending her to boarding school?”
He shrugged, looking as if he wished he hadn’t said anything. “Thinking about it. I haven’t made a final decision.”
“You have. Admit it.”
She was suddenly trembling with fury. She was again eight years old, lost and alone, with no friends and a father who wanted little to do with her. “You’ve probably already signed her up and paid the first year’s tuition, haven’t you?”
Guilt flitted across his features. “A deposit, only to hold her spot. It’s a very good school outside Newport, Rhode Island. My sister went there.”
“Half a world away from you!”
“What do you want me to do, Sage? I’ve been at my wit’s end. You’ve seen a different child this week than the one I’ve lived with for two years. Here, Chloe has been sweet and easygoing. Things are different at home. She’s moody and angry and deceitful and nothing I do gets through to her. I told you she’s been through half a dozen nannies and four different schools since her mother died. Every one of them says she has severe behavior problems and
needs more structure and order. How am I supposed to give her that with my travel schedule?”
“You’re the brilliant businessman. You don’t need me to help you figure it out. Stop traveling so much or, if you have to go, take her with you. That’s your answer, not dumping her off at some boarding school and then forgetting about her. She’s a child, Eben. She needs her father.”
“Don’t you get it? I’m not the solution, I’m the damn problem.”
As quickly as it swelled inside her, her anger trickled away at the despair in his voice. She longed, more than anything, to touch him again.
“Oh, Eben. You’re not. She’s a little girl who’s lost her mother and she’s desperate for her father’s attention. Of course she’s going to misbehave if that’s the only time she can get a reaction from you. But she doesn’t need a boarding school, she needs you.”
“How do you know it won’t help her?”
“Because I lived it! You want to know how I’m able to reach Chloe so well? Because I’m her with a few more years under my belt. I was exactly like Chloe, shunted away by my father to boarding school when I was eight simply because I no longer fit his lifestyle.”
Chapter Thirteen
Eben stared at her. Of all the arguments he might have expected her to make, that particular one wouldn’t have even made his list.
“Sage—”
She let out a long breath. Still in her party clothes, she looked fragile and heartbreakingly beautiful.
“My mother died when I was five,” she went on. “I was seven when my father married his second wife, a lovely, extremely wealthy socialite who didn’t appreciate being reminded of his previous wife and the life they had together. I was an inconvenience to both of them.”
An inconvenience? How could anyone consider a child an inconvenience? For all his frustration with Chloe, none of it hinged on a word as cold as that one.
“I was dumped into boarding school when I was eight. The same age as Chloe. For the next decade, I saw my father about three weeks out of every year—one week during the Christmas holidays and two weeks in the summer.”
He remembered her disdain for him early in their acquaintance, the contempt he saw in her eyes that first morning on the beach, the old pain he had seen in her eyes when they argued about whether he should take Chloe with him on his trip to Tokyo.
No wonder.
She thought of him as someone like her father, someone too busy for his own child. He ached to touch her but couldn’t ignore the hands-off signals she was broadcasting around herself like a radio frequency.
“I’m so sorry, Sage.”
Her chin lifted. “I survived. Listen to me complain like it was the worst thing that could ever happen to a child. It wasn’t. I was always fed, clean, warm. I know many children endure much worse than an exclusive private boarding school in Europe. But I have to tell you, part of me has never recovered from that early sense of abandonment.”
He pictured a younger version of Sage, lost and lonely, desperate for attention. He ached to imagine it.
But she was right, wasn’t she? If he sent Chloe to boarding school, she would probably suffer some of those same emotions—perhaps for the rest of her life.
What the hell was he supposed to do?
“Boarding school doesn’t have to be as you experienced it,” he said. “My sister and I both went away for school when we were about Chloe’s age. We did very well.”
For him and, he suspected, for his sister, school had offered security and peace from the tumult and chaos of their home life. He had relished the structure and order he found there, the safety net of rules. He had thrived there in a way he never could have at home with his parents. In his heart, he supposed he was hoping Chloe would do the same.
“You don’t have any scars at all?”
“A few.” The inevitable hazings and peer cruelty had certainly left their mark until he’d found his feet. “But I don’t know anyone who survives childhood without a scar or two.”
“She’s already lost her mother, Eben. No matter how lofty you tell yourselves your motives might be, I can promise that if you send Chloe away, she’ll feel as if she’s losing you, too.”
“She won’t be losing me. I’m not your father, Sage. I don’t plan to send her away and ignore her for months at a time.”
All his excitement at closing The Sea Urchin deal was gone now, washed away under this overwhelming tide of guilt and uncertainty.
“Besides, I told you I haven’t made a final decision yet. This week has been different. Chloe has been different and I probably have been, too. If I can recapture that when we’re back in our regular lives, there’s no reason I have to follow through and send her to boarding school.”
A small gasp sounded from the doorway. In the heat of the discussion with Sage—wrapped up in his dismay over inadvertently putting those shadows in her eyes—he had missed the sound of the door opening. Now, with a sinking heart, he turned to find Chloe standing there, her little features pale and her eyes huge and wounded.
“Chloe—”
“You’re sending me to boarding school?” she practically shrieked. “You can’t, Daddy. You can’t!”
She was hitching her breath in and out rapidly, on the brink of what he feared would be a full-blown tantrum.
Helpless and frustrated, he went to her and tried to hug her, tangentially aware as he did so of Anna Galvez and Conan standing behind her in the hallway outside Sage’s apartment.
“I didn’t say I was sending you to boarding school.”
She was prickly and resistant and immediately slid away from him. “You said you might not have to but that means you’re thinking about it, doesn’t it?”
He couldn’t lie to her. Not about something as important as her future. “We don’t have to talk about this right now. We’re all tired and overexcited. Come on, let’s have some of Sage’s cheesecake.”
“I don’t want cheesecake! I don’t want anything.”
“Chloe—”
“I won’t go! Do you hear me? I’ll run away. I’ll come here and live with Sage.”
She burst into hard, heaving sobs and buried her face in Conan’s fur. The dog licked her cheek then turned and glared at Eben.
Join the club, he thought. Everybody else in the room was furious with him.
He didn’t know what to do, certain that if he tried to comfort his daughter he would only make this worse. To his vast relief, Sage stepped in and sat on the floor right there in the doorway in her elegant dress and pulled Chloe onto her lap.
She murmured soft, soothing words and after a few tense moments, Chloe’s tears began to ease.
“I don’t want to go to boarding school,” she mumbled again.
“I know, baby.”
Sage ran a hand over her hair but he noted she didn’t give Chloe any false reassurances. “Do you think you’re going to be up for cheesecake tonight? If you’re not, you could always take some home with you.”
“I’m not hungry now,” Chloe whispered. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll take it home. Thank you.”
By the time Sage cut into her friend’s ironically labeled cheesecake—he had never felt less like celebrating—and packaged up two slices for them, Chloe had reverted to an icy, controlled calm that seemed oddly familiar. It took him a moment to realize she was emulating the way he tried to stuff down his emotions and keep control in tense situations.
Somebody ought to just stick a knife through his heart, Eben thought. It would be far less painful in the long run than this whole parenting thing.
Anna had disappeared back to her apartment earlier during the worst of Chloe’s outburst and Sage and Conan walked them down the stairs and to his car.
The rain had stopped, he saw. The night was cool and sweet with the scent of Abigail’s flowers.
Chloe gave Sage an extra-long hug. If he wasn’t mistaken, he saw Sage wipe her eyes after Chloe slid into the back seat, but when she lifted her gaze to h
is, it was filled with a Zen-like calm.
“This isn’t the way I wanted the evening to end,” he murmured. Or the week, really.
Their time with her had been magical and he hated to see it end.
He gazed at her features in the moonlight, lovely and exotic, and his chest ached again at the idea of leaving her.
“Will you come running with Chloe and me in the morning? Just one more time?”
She drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. It’s late and Chloe probably will need sleep after tonight. Perhaps we should just say our goodbyes here.”
“Please, Sage.”
She closed her eyes. When she opened them, they brimmed with tears again and his heart shattered into a million pieces.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “Goodbye, Eben. Be well.”
She turned and hurried up the sidewalk and slipped inside the house before he could even react.
After a long moment of staring after her, he climbed into the car, fighting the urge to press a hand to his chest to squeeze away the tight ache there.
Despite his halfhearted efforts to engage her in conversation, Chloe maintained an icy silence to him through the short distance to their rented beach house.
He couldn’t blame her, he supposed. It had been a fairly brutal way to find out that he was considering sending her to boarding school. He had planned to broach the idea when he returned from Tokyo and slowly build to it over the summer, give her time to become adjusted to it.
“You know you’re going to have to talk to me again sometime,” he finally said when they walked to the door of their rented beach house. In answer, she pointedly turned her back, crossed her arms across her chest and clamped her lips shut.
He sighed as he unlocked the door and disengaged the security system. The moment they were inside, Chloe raced to her bedroom and slammed the door.
Eben stood for a moment in the foyer, his emotions a thick, heavy burden. He didn’t know what the hell to do with them.
He needed a drink, he decided, and crossed to the small, well-stocked bar. A few moments later, snifter in hand, he sat in the small office calling his assistant to set up the meeting with his attorneys at The Sea Urchin in the morning and to arrange for the company Learjet to meet them at the airport in Seaside.
The Daddy Makeover Page 15