The Daddy Makeover

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She finally fell into a fitful sleep sometime in the early hours of the morning, only to be awakened a short time later by a cold nose snuffling the side of her neck.

  “Oh, for the love of Pete,” she grunted. “Why don’t you go harass Anna for once?”

  Now the cold nose was joined by a paw on her shoulder. Conan threw in a whine for good measure.

  She glanced at her alarm clock. Six o’clock. He’d at least given her an extra half-hour of sleep. She supposed she ought to be grateful for that much. She scrubbed at her face with one hand and sat up. Every single muscle in her body ached.

  Her penance, she supposed, for a night of only a few moments’ sleep. Conan whined impatiently at the emerging signs of life from her.

  She frowned at him. “I guess a broken heart doesn’t win me any amnesty when it comes to your daily run, does it?”

  He moved his head from side to side in that uncanny way he had. Obstinate male. He barked and cocked his head toward the door. Come on. Let’s go, lazybones.

  For a nonverbal creature, he was remarkably communicative. She sighed, surrendering to the inevitable. She had to be up soon for work anyway. Perhaps a few moments of fresh sea air would help clear this wool from her head.

  Ten minutes later, still aching and exhausted but now in her workout clothes, her hair yanked back into a ponytail, she followed Conan down the stairs at a much slower pace than his eager gallop.

  Outside, the sun was just beginning its rise above the Coast Range. The sweetness of Abigail’s flowers mingled with the sharp, citrusy scent of the Sitka spruce and pines. It was a beautiful morning. She only wished she had room in her heart past this pain to enjoy it.

  Still, the cool air did help her wake up and by the time she propped open the beach access gate and took off across the sand, she was moving a little less gingerly.

  As usual, the moment they hit the beach, he tugged the leash for her to head downtown—exactly the direction she did not want to go. She couldn’t take the chance that Eben might be outside his beach house again. She just couldn’t face him this morning.

  Or ever.

  “No, bud. This way.”

  Conan barked and kept going to the very limit of his retractable leash. She managed to find the strength to give him the resistance to keep him from dragging her up the beach with him.

  Sage pointed stubbornly in the other direction, as far away from Eben’s beach house as she could get. “This way,” she repeated.

  Conan whined but had no choice but to comply. When she started a halfhearted jog down the beach, he came along with a huffy reluctance that might have made her smile under other circumstances.

  “It’s no fun when somebody makes you go somewhere you don’t want to, is it?” she muttered, wondering if his keen communication skills stretched to understanding irony.

  After a few moments of running, she had to admit she felt slightly better. The slanted light of day breaking across the wild, rugged shoreline didn’t calm her soul, but at least the endorphins helped take the edge off the worst of her despair.

  She had the grim feeling it would take many more of these morning runs before she could find the peace her heart needed.

  Why did Eben and Chloe have to come into her life now—and leave it again—when she was still reeling from losing Abigail? It hardly seemed fair.

  If she had met them both before Abigail died, would she have even let them into her life? She didn’t know. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been as vulnerable to falling for both of them if her emotions hadn’t been so raw and unprotected.

  No, that was a cop-out. She had a feeling she would have fallen hard for them no matter what the circumstances. Chloe was completely irresistible and Eben…well, Eben reached her heart in ways no man ever had.

  Or ever would again, she was very much afraid.

  She sobbed out a little breath. Just from exertion, she told herself. It was good for her. Maybe if she ran hard enough, she could outpace the pain.

  The tide rose and fell on Oregon’s coast approximately every twelve hours. It was almost low tide now, the perfect time for beachcombing. She passed a few early-morning adventurers as she ran, most of them tourists who waved at her and smiled at Conan’s friendly bark.

  After a mile and a half, she stopped, her breath heaving in her lungs. That first rush of endorphins could only take her so far. She wasn’t up for their full five-mile round trip, she decided. Three would have to do for today. She started to turn around, when suddenly Conan barked sharply and tugged his leash so hard he nearly toppled her into the sand.

  “What’s the matter with you?” She pulled after him to follow her but he gave another powerful lunge away from her and the leash slipped out of her perspiration-slicked hands.

  In seconds, he was gone, tearing down the beach in the direction of Hug Point.

  “Conan, get back here!” she yelled, but he completely ignored her, racing toward a couple of beachcombers several hundred yards away.

  He was going to scare the life out of them if he raced up to them at full-speed, a big hairy red beast rocketing out of nowhere. She had to hope it wasn’t a couple of senior citizens with an aversion to dogs and a team of attorneys on retainer.

  She groaned and hurried after him.

  “Conan! Get back here.”

  From here, she saw him jump all over one of them and she groaned.

  And then she saw a small figure hugging Conan, heard a high, girlish giggle drift toward her on the breeze, and her heart seemed to stop. She shifted her gaze to see the other person on the beach who stood watching her approach, his dark hair gleaming in the dawn.

  Eben and Chloe.

  She wanted to turn and run hard in the other direction. She couldn’t handle this. Not now. She needed time to restore the emotional reserves that had been depleted by her crying jag the night before.

  Were her eyes as puffy and red as they felt? Oh, she hoped not.

  It was far too late to turn and run back to the safety of Brambleberry House. Conan was already wriggling around them both with enthusiasm and Chloe was waving for all she was worth.

  “Sage! Hi Sage!”

  Somehow from deep inside her, she dug around until she found the courage to meet Eben’s gaze. His features were impassive and revealed nothing as he watched her approach.

  I’m in love with you.

  For an instant, she could hear nothing but those words, not even the low murmur of the ocean.

  He had offered her a priceless gift and she had rejected it with cruel finality.

  I don’t love you. You’re not the kind of man I want.

  She wanted to sob all over again at the lie. How could she face him in the cold light of day?

  She looked away quickly and turned her attention back to Chloe. “Hey. Good morning. I didn’t expect to see you today.”

  Or you can bet I would have been back at my house with the covers over my head right now.

  “My dad woke me up. He said we had to try to find a few more sand dollars to take home today so we can always remember our trip together. Look at how many we have. He’s the best at finding them.”

  “You’re lucky to get them before the gulls do. That’s terrific.”

  “I’m going to make something cool with them. I don’t know what yet but I’ll figure something out.”

  “Great.”

  Oh, she did not want to be here. She wanted to grab her dog and run as far and as fast as they could until both of them collapsed in the sand.

  “Look! My dad doesn’t have his shoes on, either. Don’t you think that’s funny? He said he wanted to wriggle his toes in the sand one more time before we leave.”

  Against her will, Sage shifted her attention to Eben and saw that, indeed, his bare feet were covered in sand. She couldn’t seem to look away from the sight.

  “This isn’t going to last long.” His voice sounded tight, slightly strangled, and her gaze flew to his. A glimmer of emotion slipped through his steely r
eserve and she could swear he looked as if this was as awkward for him as it was for her. “To be honest, it’s not what I expected. The sand is much colder than I thought it would be and I’m a little nervous about being pinched by a hermit crab.”

  “But you tried it, just like you said you wanted to, didn’t you, Daddy?” Chloe chirped, oblivious to the currents zinging between them.

  He smiled, more than a little self-consciousness in his expression, his eyes shimmering with love for his daughter.

  As she gazed at him, something inside her seemed to shatter apart.

  The stiff, controlled businessman she had mistaken him for early in their relationship was nowhere in sight. She was stunned by the transformation. His jeans were rolled up, his toes were bare and he had his hands full of sand dollars.

  She thought of him that first day when she had taken Chloe home to their beach house. He had been angry and humorless and she never would have imagined in a million years that one day she would find him digging his toes in the sand, laughing with his daughter, hunting for the treasures delivered the sea.

  Or that she would come to love him so dearly.

  “Did you get pinched by a crab?” Chloe asked her. “You look funny.”

  Everything inside her began a slow, achy tremble and she suddenly felt as if her heart was like one of the gulls overhead, wheeling and diving across the sky.

  “I’m…I’m fine.”

  Her voice sounded scratchy, and drew Eben’s gaze. She saw echoes of longing in his eyes and a pain that matched her own.

  She let out a breath, trying so hard to hang on to some shred of sanity. Nothing had changed. Not really. She was still terrified she would be left bruised and bloody.

  No. She gazed at his bare feet and at the sight of them, it seemed as if her fear ebbed out to sea with the tide.

  She loved him. More than that, she trusted him. He might not be comfortable digging his feet into the sand, but he had done it for his daughter’s sake. And for his own. Because he wanted to know what it was like, even if it wasn’t the most comfortable feeling in the world.

  He was a good man. A wonderful man. If she didn’t reach for the priceless gift he had offered her, she suddenly knew she would spend every moment of the rest of her life regretting it.

  She wanted desperately to tell him but knew she could say nothing in front of Chloe. As if reading her mind, Conan, bless him, suddenly barked and took off after a gull down the beach.

  “Hey! Get back here,” Chloe giggled, running after him.

  “I’m sorry,” Eben finally said when the two of them were alone. He sat on a rock and started slipping his shoes back on. “I assumed with the late night and…everything…that you and Conan probably wouldn’t be running this morning. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable by forcing you to have to see us again.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not uncomfortable.”

  “No?” He rose from the rock. “Well, that makes one of us.”

  How difficult must it be for him to meet up with the woman who had coldly rejected him the night before?

  “Don’t be uncomfortable. Please.”

  “Sorry. I haven’t had a lot of experience with this. I’m not exactly sure the correct protocol here. How does a man act smooth and urbane around the woman in front of whom he’s made a complete ass of himself?”

  She closed her eyes, hating the echo of hurt in his voice. She couldn’t do this. She had to tell him the truth, no matter how painful.

  “I lied, okay?” she finally blurted out. “I lied.”

  A dead silence met her pronouncement, with no sound at all but the waves and the gulls overhead.

  “You…lied about what?”

  She went to him and reached for his hand, wishing she wasn’t disheveled and sweaty for this. He seemed to always see her at her worst.

  Yet he loved her anyway.

  “I lied when I told you you weren’t the kind of man I want, that I didn’t love you. I’ve never told such a shocking untruth.”

  He suddenly looked as astonished as if she had just knocked him into the cold waves.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do.” She squeezed his fingers. “I love you, Eben. I have from the beginning.”

  “Sage—”

  She didn’t give him time to say anything, just blurted out the rest. “I’m such a coward. I never realized that about myself until last night. I always thought I had everything figured out, that I was so in control of my world. I thought I had worked through all the stuff of my past and become a capable, well-adjusted adult.”

  “You are.”

  She shook her head, fighting tears. “No. Inside I’m eight years old again, watching my father walk away without a backward look. I was so afraid to admit my feelings, a-afraid to give you that same kind of power to hurt me. Instead, I decided I would be the one doing the walking.”

  He said nothing, just continued to watch her, as if he didn’t quite know what to believe.

  She drew in a breath and reached for his other hand. “I love you, Eben. I’m sorry if I…hurt you by lying and saying I didn’t.”

  He gazed at her for one stunned moment and then he gave a little, disbelieving laugh and tugged her into his arms. As his hard mouth covered hers, Sage wrapped her arms around his waist and held on for dear life. The tight ache inside her eased and she could finally breathe again, for the first time in hours.

  This was right. This was exactly where she belonged, right here in his arms.

  “It was ripping my heart out to leave you,” he murmured against her mouth. “I came down to the beach with Chloe one more time because I wanted one last connection to you. I felt closer to you here by the ocean than anywhere.”

  She kissed him again and the tenderness in his touch brought tears to her eyes.

  “Don’t cry,” Eben murmured, kissing her cheeks where a few tears trickled down.

  She laughed, wondering if her heart could burst from happiness. “These are happy tears. Not like the ones I cried all night. Conan had to drag me out of bed to run. All I wanted to do was pull the covers over my head and hibernate there for a few weeks.”

  “What if I’d missed you this morning?” he asked. “If I hadn’t decided to bring Chloe here one last time? If you and Conan had decided to go in the other direction?”

  She hugged him. “We’re both here. That’s the important thing.”

  “I think you’re the reason I came back for The Sea Urchin, why it seemed so vital to me that I buy it. The hotel was only part of it. Call it fate or destiny or dharma or whatever, but I think everything that’s happened was leading me right here, to this moment and to you.”

  It was the perfect thing to say and she could swear she tumbled even deeper in love with him. This was her prosaic, austere businessman, talking of fate and destiny? Dharma? Had she ever been so wrong about a person in her life?

  “I think it was Abigail.”

  He blinked. “Abigail?”

  “I think she met you and fell for those gorgeous green eyes of yours.”

  She could swear a touch of color dusted his cheekbones. “She did not.”

  “You didn’t know her as well as I did. She always was a sucker for a gorgeous man. Since she couldn’t have you for herself, I think she handpicked you for me and she’s been doing everything she can since she met you to throw the two of us together.”

  Eben didn’t look convinced, but since he reached for her and kissed her again, she decided the point wasn’t worth arguing.

  She received confirmation of it a moment later, though, when a sudden bark managed to pierce the lovely fog of desire swirling around her. She wrenched her mouth from Eben’s to gaze at her dog.

  Conan watched them from a few feet away with that uncanny intelligence in his eyes. He barked again, a delighted sound. It seemed ridiculous, but she could swear he looked pleased.

  Chloe was close on the dog’s heels and she studied them with startle
d concern in her green eyes. “Daddy, why are you holding on to Sage? Did she fall?”

  His expression filled with sudden panic, as if he hadn’t quite thought far enough ahead about explaining this to his daughter. Sage took pity on him and stepped in.

  “You’re exactly right. I fell, really hard. Harder than I ever thought I could. But you know what? Your dad was right there to pick me back up and help me find my feet. Isn’t that lucky?”

  Chloe’s brow furrowed as she tried to sift through the layers of the explanation. Sage could tell she wasn’t quite buying it. “So why is he still holding on to you?”

  She laughed and slanted Eben a look out of the corner of her eyes. “I’ll let you answer that one,” she murmured.

  He gave her a mock glare then turned to his daughter, “Well, after I helped her up, I discovered I didn’t want to let her go.”

  Chloe seemed to accept that with surprising equanimity. She studied them for a moment longer, then shrugged. “You guys are weird,” she finally said, then chased Conan across the sand again.

  “I meant it. I don’t want to let you go,” Eben repeated fiercely after they were gone.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  As he kissed her again, she could swear she heard Abigail’s wicked laughter on the wind.

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