The Daddy Makeover

by RaeAnne Thayne

  After he hung up, he sat for a moment wondering how a night that had started out holding such promise could have so quickly turned into an ugly disaster.

  Now Sage was angry and disappointed in him, his daughter wasn’t speaking to him, he was even getting the cold shoulder from a blasted dog, for heaven’s sake.

  The way his evening was going, he would probably be getting a phone call from the Wus telling him they had changed their minds again.

  By the time he finished the tiny splash of brandy, he knew he had to face Chloe, if only to address her fears.

  He knocked on her bedroom door. “Chloe? Let’s talk about this. Come on.”

  Only silence met his knock. Surely she couldn’t have fallen asleep already, could she? He knocked harder and tried the door, only to find it locked.

  He didn’t need this tonight. Frustration whipped through him and he banged even harder. “Chloe, open this door, young lady. Right now.”

  Still no answer. For the first time, unease began to filter through his frustration. He should never have let her come here and stew. It had been only a cowardly attempt to delay the inevitable. He should have just confronted the problem head-on the minute they walked into the house.

  The lock on the bedroom door was flimsy. He quickly grabbed a butter knife from the kitchen, twisted the mechanism, then swung the door open.

  A quick sweep of the darkened room showed the bed was still made, with no sign of his daughter.

  “Chloe? Where are you hiding? This isn’t funny.”

  He flipped on the light. The dress she had adored so much was discarded in a pile of taffeta on the floor and the shelves of the bureau were open, their contents spilling out, as if she had rummaged through looking for something in a hurry.

  He barely saw any of that. His attention was suddenly focused on the curtains fluttering in the breeze and instantly Eben’s unease turned to cold-edged fear.

  The window was open to the sea-soaked night air and there was no sign of his daughter.

  “Yeah, I know. I don’t need a second piece of cheesecake. Or the first one, for that matter. You’re one to talk. You pig out on dog food, for crying out loud.”

  Conan snickered and dipped his head back to his forepaws as he watched her lame attempts to drown her misery in a decadent swirl of sugar and cream cheese.

  “It’s not working, anyway,” she muttered, setting the plate down on the coffee table in front of her.

  She should be in bed, she knew. The day had been long, the evening painfully full and her muscles ached with exhaustion, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  Her emotions were too raw, too heavy. She had a sinking suspicion that when the sun rose, she would probably still be sitting right here on her couch in her bathrobe, red-eyed and wrung-out and three pounds heavier from the cheesecake.

  Damn Eben Spencer anyway.

  He had no business sweeping into her life, shaking up her status quo so dramatically, then riding off into the blasted sunset—especially not when her grief for Abigail still had such a stranglehold around her life.

  Conan made a sad sound suddenly, as if he sensed she was thinking about his human companion.

  He had seemed much less depressed these last few days with Eben and Chloe. How would their leaving affect him, poor dog? She had a feeling her quad muscles were in for some good workouts the next few mornings.

  He had been acting strangely ever since Eben and Chloe had left for the evening. Now he stood again. Instead of going to the door to signal he needed to go out, he went to the windows overlooking the ocean and stared out into the night for a long moment then whined plaintively.

  That was the third time he had repeated the same odd behavior in the last half-hour. It was starting to freak her out.

  “What’s the matter, bud?” she asked him.

  Before the words were even out of her mouth, she heard a sharp knocking at the door downstairs.

  Who on earth would be coming to call at—she checked her clock—eleven o’clock at night?

  She went to the opposite windows but couldn’t see a car in the driveway. The caller knocked again and Sage moved warily down the stairs, one hand on Conan’s collar.

  The best Conan would do was probably sniff an intruder to death but he was big and could look menacing if the light wasn’t great and the intruder had bad eyes.

  She left the chain in the door and peered through, but her self-protective instincts flew out into the night when she saw Eben standing on the porch, a frantic expression in his eyes.

  “Eben! What is it? What’s happened?”

  He studied her for a moment, then raked a hand through his hair. “She’s not here, is she?”

  She blinked, trying to make sense of his appearance on her doorstep so late. “Chloe? No. I haven’t seen her since the two of you left. She’s not at home?”

  “I thought she was just sulking in her bedroom. I gave her maybe twenty minutes to get it out of her system while I made a few calls. But when I went into her room to talk to her, she was gone and her window was open. I was certain she must have come here to find you. That’s what she said, right? That she would run away and find you.”

  Conan whined and ran past them sniffing around the perimeter of the wrought-iron fence.

  “You checked the beach?” Sage asked.

  “That’s the way I came. I ran the whole way, sure I would bump into her any minute, but I couldn’t see any sign of her. I called and called but she didn’t answer.”

  His eyes looked haunted. “I have to find her. Anything could happen to her alone in the middle of the night!”

  His desperation terrified her as nothing else could. “Let me throw on some clothes and get a jacket and shoes. Perhaps we can split up, cover more ground.”

  Anna’s door suddenly opened and she poked her head out, her hair as messy as Sage had ever seen it and her dark eyes bleary with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

  “Sorry we woke you,” Sage spoke quickly. “Chloe’s missing. She was angry with her father about what happened earlier and it looks as if she snuck out her window.”

  She couldn’t help but be impressed at the rapid way Anna pushed aside the cobwebs and became her normal brisk, businesslike self. “What can I do? Do you want me to call the police?”

  Eben drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t know. I just keep thinking she didn’t have enough time to go far. Where could she have gone? There aren’t that many places she’s familiar with around here.”

  “I don’t know. We’ve explored the area around here quite a bit this week in camp.” Her voice trailed off and she gazed at Eben and saw the exact same realization hit him.

  “Hug Point,” Sage said. The beach they had visited when they took the tandem bicycle.

  “Would she have time to get there?”

  “She’s fast. She could make it.”

  “That’s a hell of a long way for an eight-year-old in the dark,” Eben said, and she ached at the fledgling hope in his eyes.

  “She has a flashlight. It’s part of the survival kit we did the first day of camp.”

  “That must have been what she was rummaging through her room to find. That’s something, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe.” She paused, loathe to tell him more bad news but she knew she had no choice. “Eben, the tide is coming in fast. High tide will be in about ninety minutes.”

  She saw stark fear in his eyes and knew it mirrored her own.

  “We should split up,” he said. “One of us search down the beach in case she hasn’t made it that far yet and is still on her way and the other one start at Hug Point and head back this direction.”

  “Good idea. I’ll drive to Hug Point and start backtracking this way. You take Conan with you.”

  She thought of the way the dog had immediately gone to Chloe that first day, as if he’d been looking just for her. “If she’s out there, he’ll help us find her.”

  “Okay.”

  She grabbed his h
and, heartsore for him. “Eben, we’ll find her.”

  He looked slightly buoyed by her faith and squeezed her fingers, then took off through the backyard to the beach access gate.

  “Maybe I ought to call the police chief and give him a heads-up, just in case your hunch is wrong,” Anna said.

  “Do it,” Sage said on her way up the stairs two at a time.

  For all her reassurances to Eben, she knew exactly what dangers awaited a little girl on the beach in the dark at high tide and she couldn’t bear to think of any of them.

  Though it only took a few moments to reach Hug Point by car, it felt like a lifetime. The whole way, Sage gripped the steering wheel of her aging Toyota and tried to battle back her terror and her guilt.

  She was as much to blame for this as Eben. If she hadn’t overreacted so strongly at his mention of boarding school for Chloe, they wouldn’t have been arguing about it and Chloe wouldn’t have overheard.

  It was none of her business what school Eben sent his daughter to. She had been presumptuous to think otherwise. In her usual misguided attempt to save the world, she had ended up hurting the situation far more than she helped.

  She pulled into the parking lot as a light drizzle started again. Heedless of the rain or the wind that whipped the hood of her Gore-Tex jacket, she cupped her hands and called Chloe’s name.

  She strained hard to hear anything over the wind and the murmur of the sea. In the distance, somewhere beyond the headland, she thought she heard a small cry.

  Though she knew well how deceiving sounds could be out here—for all she knew, it could have been a nocturnal shorebird—she decided she had to head in the direction of the sound.

  In the dark, the shore was far different than it was in the daylight, though it had a harsh beauty here as well, like some wild moonscape, twisted and shaped by the elements.

  She rounded the cluster of rocks, straining to see anything in the darkness.

  She heard the same cry again and aimed her flashlight along the beach but it was a pitiful weapon to fight back the vast, unrelenting dark.

  Suddenly on the wind, she could swear she heard Chloe’s voice. “Help. Please!”

  She turned the flashlight toward the water and her heart stopped when she saw several yards away a small figure in a pink jacket on one of the rocks they had played on the other day. She was surrounded by water now and the tide was rising quickly.

  Far down the beach from the direction of Brambleberry House, she saw a tiny spark of light on the beach and knew it was Eben. There wasn’t time to wait for him but she whistled hard, hoping Conan would hear and come running. Perhaps Eben would pick up on the dog’s urgency.

  “I’m coming, baby,” she called as she hurried down the sand. “Stay there. Just hang on.”

  When she was parallel on the shore with Chloe on her watery perch, she headed through the surf. She was prepared for the cold but it still clutched at her with icy fingers and she couldn’t contain a gasp. No matter how cold she knew the ocean could be along the Pacific Northwest coast, even in June, it still took her by surprise.

  She knew hypothermia could hit out here in a matter of minutes.

  Chloe’s rock was probably only twenty yards from shore but that seemed far enough as she waded through the icy water, now up to her knees. She was laboring for breath by the time she reached her. “Hi, sweetie,”

  The sobbing girl threw her arms around Sage. She was wet and shivering and Sage knew she had to get her out of the water immediately.

  “You came for me!” she sobbed. “I was so scared. I want my daddy.”

  Sage held her close and buried her face in the girl’s hair, her heart full. She could barely breathe around the emotions racing through her.

  “I know you want your daddy, honey. I know. He and Conan are coming down the beach from my house looking for you, but they’ll be here in a minute. He’ll be so happy to see you.”

  “Am I in big trouble?”

  “What do you think?” she asked, trying to sound stern through her vast relief.

  “I snuck out again, even though I promised I wouldn’t. I went on the beach at night, even though you told me I shouldn’t. I broke a lot of rules. I bet my dad’s really mad.”

  Sage kept one eye on the rising tide. A wave hit her, soaking her to her waist and she knew they had to move. “Let’s worry about that when we get out of here, okay? How about a piggyback ride?”

  “Okay. My hands are really cold, though. I don’t know if I can hang on.”

  “You can. Just pretend you’re a crab and I’m your dinner and you don’t want to let me go.”

  Chloe giggled and gripped her arms around Sage’s neck. Sage could feel her shiver even through her jacket.

  It was tough going on the way back. She couldn’t see where she was going and she felt as if she were walking through quicksand. For the first time, she was grateful for the last month of morning runs that had built up her muscles. If not for those runs, she wasn’t sure she would have had the endurance to get to shore.

  A journey that had only been twenty yards on the way out now seemed like miles. They were almost to the sand when a sneaker wave came out of nowhere and slammed into the backs of her legs.

  Tired and off balance with Chloe on her back, Sage swayed from the force of it and stumbled to her knees. She managed to keep her hold on Chloe but then another one washed over them and drove her face into the surf.

  Spluttering and coughing, she wrenched her face free of the icy water. She had to get to her feet now, she knew, but she felt as if she were fighting the whole ocean.

  At last, with a great surge of adrenaline, she staggered to her feet. Chloe was crying in earnest now.

  “We’re okay. We’re okay. Only a little farther,” she managed, then she heard the most welcome sounds she had ever heard—a dearly familiar bark and Eben’s strong voice.

  “Chloe! Sage!” he called. “Hang on. I’m coming.”

  She sobbed out a breath of relief and made it only another few feet before he reached them and guided them all back to safety.

  Chapter Fourteen

  By the time he reached them, both Sage and Chloe were soaked and shivering violently. He grabbed Chloe in one arm while he drew Sage against his body with the other. Together, the three of them made their way to the shore. Only when they were above the high tide line did Eben pause to take a breath.

  His heart still pounded with rapid force from that terrible moment when he saw them both go down in the water and struggle so hard against the waves to come up.

  “Are you both okay?” he asked.

  In his arms, Chloe nodded and sniffled. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run away. No wonder you want to send me away to boarding school.”

  He closed his eyes, pained that they had come back to this. “We need to get you both warmed up. Come on. Let’s get you home.”

  “There’s a trail back to the road from here. That’s probably the easiest way to get to the parking lot and my car.”

  After the longest fifteen minutes of his life, they made it to Sage’s car.

  “There’s a b-blanket in the b-back for Chloe,” she mumbled. “It’s probably covered in dog hair but it’s the b-best I can do.”

  He found it quickly and also a fleece jacket of Sage’s, which he handed to her.

  “I’ll drive,” he insisted. “You work on getting warm.”

  After Chloe was settled in the back wrapped in the blanket and cuddled next to Conan’s heat, Eben climbed into the driver’s seat and turned her heater on high.

  His emotions were thick, jumbled, and his heart still pounded with remembered fear as he drove toward Brambleberry House.

  “I should call Anna, tell her to call off the police,” Sage said after a moment. Her trembling had mostly stopped, he saw with vast relief.

  “The police were looking for me?” Chloe asked in a small voice from the back seat. “I’m in big trouble, aren’t I?”


  “Everybody was worried about you,” Eben said.

  Sage called Anna on her cell phone and for the next few moments their one-sided conversation was the only sound in the small vehicle.

  “She’s fine. We’re all fine. Cold and wet but everybody’s okay. Yeah, I’ll be home in a minute. I’ll tell her. Thanks, Anna.”

  She closed her phone and turned to the back seat. “Anna says to tell you she’s so glad you’re okay.”

  “Me, too,” Chloe said sleepily. “I was so scared. The water wasn’t high when I went out to the rock but then it started coming in fast and I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You did the right thing to stay where you were,” Sage said.

  “I remembered what we talked about in camp. I tried to do just what you said.”

  He couldn’t bear to think about what might have happened if Chloe hadn’t had a little survival training through Sage’s camp or if they hadn’t found her in time.

  With the resilience of the young, Chloe was nearly asleep by the time they reached Brambleberry House, her arms wrapped around Conan and her cheek resting against the top of his furry head.

  He feared it would be as tough to wean her from the dog as it would be to leave this place.

  “Just drop me off,” Sage said. “I can pick up my car at your place tomorrow on my way to the center.”

  In the driveway, he put the car in park and finally reached for her hand. “Sage, I don’t know how I can ever thank you.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t. You know you don’t need to thank me. I’m just so grateful everything turned out okay.”

  He was quiet for a moment, hot emotion choking his throat. He wanted to shunt it all away as he usually did, to lock it down deep inside him, but this wild tangle was too huge, to overwhelming.

  He knew he couldn’t leave things between them like this, tainted by this stilted awkwardness, not after everything that had happened.

  “I know it’s late but…I need to talk to you. After I get Chloe settled into bed, I would like to call Stanley and Jade, see if they could send someone over to stay with her for a little while.”