Brambleberry Shores: The Daddy Makeover / His Second-Chance Family

“Thanks again for exercising Conan,” she called back.

“No problem. I enjoyed it.”

Stepping outside, he decided he wasn’t going to think about anything else he might have enjoyed about the morning.

“The run was good for me,” he said instead. “Helps keep my brain sharp while I’m swindling retirees and gullible widows out of their life savings.”

Her mouth quirked a little at that but she only shook her wild mane of hair and took off down the stairs of his deck and across the beach, the dog close on her heels.

Chapter 5

She tried to tell herself that heated kiss was just a one-shot deal, some weird anomaly of fate and circumstance that would never, ever, ever be repeated.

She and Eben were two vastly different people with different values, different tax brackets. Their lives should never have intersected in the first place—and their mouths certainly shouldn’t have either.

But as she showered and dressed for work, Sage couldn’t shake the odd, jittery feeling that something momentous had just happened to her, something life-changing and substantial.

It was silly, she knew, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that her life had just turned a corner down a route she was not at all sure she was prepared to follow.

Just a kiss, she repeated in a stern mantra as she gave Conan one last morning scratch, pulled her bike out of the garage and cycled through the strands of morning fog that hadn’t yet burned off. Two people reacting to their unlikely attraction to each other in the usual fashion. One never-to-be-repeated kiss certainly was not about to alter the rest of her life, for heaven’s sake.

She was still working hard to convince herself of that when she arrived at the nature center and let herself into her office. She was answering e-mail from a school group interested in arranging a field trip between her camp sessions when Lindsey poked her head into her office.

“So the weirdest thing happened this morning,” Lindsey said without preamble.

Sage raised an eyebrow. “Good morning to you, too.”

Her assistant director grinned. “Yeah, yeah. Hello, how are you, great to see you and all that. I’ve been up at the bakery since four already helping my dad so it feels more like lunchtime to me by this time. But back to my weird morning.”

She pushed away the lingering memory of Eben and that stunning kiss and tried to focus on Lindsey’s story. “Don’t tell me you had another creepy dream about old Mr. Delarosa walking down Hemlock Street in a Speedo again.”

Lindsey screwed up her face. “No! Ew. Thanks for putting that visual in my head again. I just spent the last three months in intensive therapy trying to purge it.”

Sage fought a smile. “Sorry. What happened this morning?”

“I was making the usual morning deliveries of muffins to The Sea Urchin and suddenly this huge dog comes running at me out of nowhere. Scared the bejabbers out of me.”

“Yeah?”

“It was Conan, of course.”

“Of course. He is the only dog in Cannon Beach, after all.”

“Well, maybe not, but you have to admit he’s pretty distinctive-looking. There’s no mistaking him for anyone else. So when I couldn’t see you or Anna anywhere, I thought maybe Conan broke out of your place and was running loose. I was trying to grab hold of his collar so I could take him back to Brambleberry House when suddenly, who should show up but this extremely sexy guy who looked familiar in an odd sort of way?”

Sage didn’t even want to think about just how extremely sexy she found Eben Spencer.

“He whistled to Conan and the two of them just kept running down the beach.”

“That is strange,” Sage murmured.

“I couldn’t help but wonder what on earth our newest little camper’s father was doing running with your dog at six in the morning. That was Chloe Spencer’s hottie of a dad, wasn’t it?”

Sage could feel warmth soak her cheeks. She could only be grateful the coloring she inherited from the Italian side of her family hid her blushing.

“It was. Conan and I bumped into Eben this morning on our daily jog and he, uh, graciously offered to exercise Conan for me.”

Lindsey raised an eyebrow—the one with the diamond stud in it. “You sure that’s all there is to the story? I’m sensing more. Come on, give me all the juice.”

She would not allow anything resembling a guilty expression to cross her features, she vowed. They shared one kiss, that’s all, and she was absolutely not going to share that information with anyone else—especially not Lindsey, who had a vivid imagination and would be spinning this whole thing way out of control.

“What juice?” she said. “You think I spent the night ripping up the sheets with Eben Spencer while his daughter slept in the next room, then I kicked him out of bed so he could go take my dog for a run?”

Lindsey laughed. “Okay. Stupid hypothesis. I have a feeling if a woman had a man like that in bed, she wouldn’t kick him out if the house was on fire, forget about making him walk her dog.”

“He’s here to buy The Sea Urchin and will only be in town for a few days. Not even long enough for a summer fling, if I were into that kind of thing. Which I most assuredly am not. It happened just as I told you. I was jogging past his house and he was outside and offered to take Conan for his jog. Since you know I’m not excessively fond of that particular activity myself, I decided I would be stupid to refuse.”

“Too bad.” Lindsey grinned. “I like my version better. For a man like that, I might reconsider my strict hands-off policy toward tourists.”

“He’s too old for you.”

“Mr. Delarosa in his Speedo is too old. Eben Spencer? Not even close.”

To her relief, Sage was spared having to continue the conversation by the arrival of the first campers.

She was showing the children how to identify the different tracks of birds in the sand—and doing her level best not to pay more than her usual attention to the front door—when it opened suddenly and a little dark-haired sprite rushed through and headed straight for her.

“Hi Sage! My dad says he went running with Conan this morning while I was still sleeping.”

Her skin suddenly itchy and tight, she drew in a breath and lifted her gaze to find Eben standing a short distance away watching her out those glittering green eyes.

She couldn’t read anything at all in his expression— regret, renewed heat, even mild interest.

Fine. She could pretend nothing happened, too. “True enough,” she answered Chloe.

“Why didn’t anybody wake me up?” she pouted. “I would have gone jogging, too!”

“Conan has pretty long legs, honey. It’s hard for me to keep up with him sometimes.”

“I’m a slow runner,” Chloe said glumly, then her face lit up. “I could ride a bike, though. I do that sometimes back home. I ride my bike and my dad has to run to catch up with me.”

Sage couldn’t help giving Eben a quick look, endeared despite herself at the image of Eben jogging while his daughter rode her bike alongside.

It seemed incongruous with everything else she had discerned about the man—but she supposed one brief kiss didn’t automatically make her an expert.

“If I can find a bike, can I go with you next time?”

“I don’t know if there will be a next time,” she pointed out. “You’re leaving in a few days.”