Page 130 of A Soldier's Return

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.

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 mindsagain.

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 ondog 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.

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