Page 128 of A Soldier's Return

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 thehands-offsignals 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.Chloehas 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 toboarding school?” she practically shrieked. “You can’t, Daddy. Youcan’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?”

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