Page 49 of Her Christmas Wish
Boy from government housing made good, gone bad.He’d read a couple of them when his clinics had first been shut down but had stopped almost immediately. They were energy sucks.
As was the house he’d once thought proof of him having reached the pinnacle of his success. Thirty years old—at the time of purchase—and he was at the top.
Stacking the last of the boxes by the front door, he locked up for the last time, left the key for the Realtor—who was going to be at the house to meet the moving company the next day so Gray didn’t have to deal with any possible paparazzi—got into his SUV and didn’t look back.
An hour later, he was sipping a beer on Scott’s back porch, inhaling long breaths of salty air. Relaxing for the first time all week.
“He’s here! He’s here!” The childish voice floated up to him before he noticed the bodies walking up the beach. Scott and Morgan had been gone when he’d arrived home—the prosecutor generally took the corgi for a jog on the two-mile-long beach after work. He’d figured them for visiting someplace, one direction or the other.
He didn’t stand as Leigh, in leggings and a pink, short-sleeved ruffled smock, bounded toward the cottage. Her mother, also in leggings, with a loose-fitting white T-shirt and that long hair flowing in waves down her back and over her shoulders, didn’t appear to be in nearly as much of a hurry.
Assuming they were looking for Scott, he was caught off guard when Leigh’s voice, raised for her mother to hear, said, “Hurry, Mommy! We gotta hurry! Mr. Buzzing Bee’s here!”
He stood then.
Sage was looking for him?
The woman had stopped a few yards from the porch. Leigh, however, was taking the steps—her hand on the rail helping to pull her up—one foot on each step.
“Like big people do!” she pronounced when she reached the top, her hair depicting a halo of golden ringlets in the setting sun. “Hi!” she said, stopping a couple of feet from Gray, looking up at him.
She wasn’t smiling.
“Hi,” he said back, glancing over the railing at Sage, still down on the beach. The woman shrugged.
Giving him no clue at all what was expected of him.
“Can I help you?”
“No. I did it all by myself,” Leigh said, pointing toward the stairs. “I’m a big girl now.”
“I can see that.” Another glance toward Sage. Another shrug. “If you’re looking for your uncle Scott and Morgan, they aren’t here.”
With one finger on her chin, Leigh appeared to be pondering that situation. “They’re probly still exacizing,” the little girl told him. “Morgan needs it.”
Smiling, Gray stood there, feeling like a giant towering over the tiny human being, and said, “Why does she need it?” Just to hear the response.
“I dunno.” Leigh squinted up at him. “But Mommy says you’re a doctor for animals.”
A third glance at Sage showed him a woman who was definitely keeping her distance. And an eye on her child, too. “That’s right, I am.”
Leigh’s little fingers reached toward him and before he realized what was happening, she’d taken his hand. Gave it a good, four-year-old-size pull. “Good, then can you come pwease ’cause Baby is broked and Uncle Scott said he could fix her, but she’s my best doggy and I fink she should have a real doctor.”
Not sure what the child was talking about—Sage was one of the few Ocean Breeze owners who didn’t have a dog—Gray filled with purpose.
There’s no way he could, or would, refuse. That little brow, scrunched in the seriousness of the matter, had him leaving his beer behind without a thought as he allowed the youngster to lead him back down the steps to the beach.
In no universe would Sage have encouraged, or even suggested, that her daughter seek out Grayson Bartholomew. But neither did she attempt to dissuade the child from seeking the best care she thought she could get for her broken, battery-operated stuffed toy.
Staying on one side of Leigh as the little girl, with her hand still in Gray’s, leading him with great purpose, told the man all about Baby. “She can bark and walk and wag her tail and do fwips,” Leigh was saying with a sweet earnestness that brought tears to Sage’s eyes. “’Cept now she can’t and can you fix her?”
“I can sure try,” Gray said, his head bent toward the child, his attention all on Leigh. He hadn’t even glanced in Sage’s direction as he’d come down the steps.
Hadn’t given her the chance to mouth theI’m sorryshe’d had ready for him.
Nor did he follow Leigh into their home when they reached Sage’s place. “I’ll wait right here on the steps,” he told Leigh, sitting down after she’d climbed up. “Bring Baby out here. Maybe it would be good for her to get some fresh air.”
More like he needed it, Sage guessed. And stood out in the sand, in front of him. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I could have dissuaded her, but she was so adamant. And also, just FYI, she thinks you’re lonely down there all by yourself. I’ve tried to tell her you’re not home much because you’re so busy helping dogs be healthy.” She was jabbering again. A pre-closure thing. Just... “I just don’t want you to think I’m pushing her on you, or encouraging this behavior.”
