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

He was heading the other direction toward Manzanita but Will Garrett pulled up alongside her and rolled down his passenger-side window. “Morning, Sage.”

She straddled her bike. “Hey, Will.”

“Sorry I haven’t made it over to look at the work you want done on the house. Been a busy week.”

She stared. “Work? What work?”

“Anna called me last week. Said she wanted me to give her a bid for a possible remodel of the kitchen and bathroom on the second-floor apartment. She also wanted me to check the feasibility of knocking out a couple walls in Abigail’s apartment to open up the floor plan a little.”

“Oh, did she?”

Anger swept over her, hot and bright. Any warmth she might have been trying to force herself into feeling toward Anna seeped out into the dirt.

How dare she?

They had agreed to discuss any matters pertaining to the house and come to a consensus on them, but Anna hadn’t said a single word about any of this.

Abigail had left the house to both of them, which meant they both should make minor little decisions like knocking out walls and remodeling kitchens. Yet Anna hadn’t bothered to bring this up, even when they were talking a few moments ago.

Was her opinion so insignificant?

She knew her anger was overblown—irrational, even—but she couldn’t help it. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready to go knocking down walls and remodeling kitchens, erasing any sign of the crumbling old house Abigail had loved so dearly.

“She didn’t talk to you about it?”

“Not yet,” she said grimly.

Something in her tone of voice—or maybe the smoke curling out of her ears—had tipped him off that she wasn’t pleased. His expression turned wary. “Well, uh, if you talk to her, let her know I’m going to try to come by this evening to check things out, if that’s still okay. Seven or so. One of you can give me a buzz if that’s a problem.”

He looked eager to escape. She sighed—she shouldn’t vent her frustration on Will. It certainly wasn’t his fault Anna Galvez was a bossy, managing, stiff-necked pencil-pusher who seemed to believe she knew what was best for the whole bloody world.

She forced a smile. “I’m sure it will be fine. See you tonight.”

Though he didn’t smile in return—Will rarely smiled anymore—he nodded and put his truck in gear, then headed down the road.

She watched after him for only a moment, then continued pedaling her way toward town.

She still simmered with anger toward Anna’s high-handedness, but it was tempered by her usual ache of sorrow for Will. So much pain in the world. Sometimes she couldn’t bear it.

She tried her best to leave the world a better place than when she found it. But riding a bike to work and volunteering with Meals on Wheels seemed exercises in futility when she couldn’t do a darn thing to ease the burden of those she cared about.

Will was another of Abigail’s lost sheep—Sage’s affectionate term for the little band of creatures her friend had watched over with her endless supply of love. Abigail seemed to collect people in need and gathered them toward her. The lonely, the forgotten, the grieving. Will had been right there with the rest of them.

No, that wasn’t exactly true. Will had belonged to Abigail long before he had ever needed watching over. He had grown up in the same house where he now lived and he and his wife Robin had both known and loved Abigail all their lives.

Sage had lived at Brambleberry House long enough to remember him when he was a handsome charmer, with a teasing grin for everyone. He used to charge into Abigail’s parlor and sweep her off her feet, twirling her around and around.

He always had a funny story to tell and he had invariably been the first one on the scene whenever anyone needed help—whether it was moving a piano or spreading a dump-truckload of gravel on a driveway or pumping out a flooded basement.

When Sage moved in upstairs at Brambleberry, Will had become like a big brother to her, offering her the same warm affection he poured out on everyone else in town. Robin had been just as bighearted—lovely and generous and open.

When Robin discovered Sage didn’t having a dining room table yet, she had put her husband to work on one and Will had crafted a beautiful round piece of art as a housewarming present.

Sage had soaked it all in, had reveled in the miracle that she had finally found a place to belong among these wonderful people who had opened their lives to her.

If Abigail had been the heart of her circle of friends, Will had been the sturdy, reliable backbone and Robin the nerve center. Their little pigtailed toddler Cara had just been everyone’s joy.

Then in the blink of an eye, everything changed.

So much pain.

She let out a breath as she gave a hand signal and turned onto the street toward work. Robin and Will had been crazy about each other. She had walked in on them once in a corner of Abigail’s yard at a Fourth of July barbecue. They hadn’t been kissing, had just been holding each other, but even from several yards away Sage could feel the love vibrating between them, a strong, tangible connection.

She couldn’t imagine the depth of Will’s pain at knowing that kind of love and losing it.

Oddly, the mental meanderings made her think of Eben Spencer, sweet little Chloe’s abrupt, unfriendly father. The girl had said her mother was dead. Did Eben mourn her loss as deeply as Will did Robin and little Cara, killed two years ago by a drunk driver as they were walking across the street not far from here?

She pulled up to the center and looped her bike lock through the rack out front, determined to put Eben and Chloe Spencer out of her head.

She didn’t want to think about either of them. She had learned early in her time at Cannon Beach not to pay much mind to the tourists. Like the fragile summer, they disappeared too soon.

* * *

Her resolve was tested even before lunchtime. Since the weather held through the morning, she and her dozen new campers gathered at a picnic table under the spreading boughs of a pine tree outside the center.

She was showing them intertidal zone specimens in aquarium display cases collected earlier that morning by center staffers when she heard a familiar voice call her name.

She turned to find her new friend from the morning barreling toward her, eyes wide, her gamine face animated.

Moving at a slower pace came Eben Spencer, his silk, undoubtedly expensive tie off-center and his hair slightly messed. He did not look as if he were having a great day.

Of course, when Sage was having a lousy day, she ended up with circles under her eyes, stress lines cutting through her face and a pounding headache she could swear was visible for miles around.

Eben Spencer just looked slightly rumpled in an entirely too-sexy way.

Heedless of the other children in the class, Chloe rushed to her and threw her arms around Sage’s waist.

“It’s not my fault this time, I promise.”

Under other circumstances, she might have been annoyed at the interruption to her class but she couldn’t ignore Chloe’s distress—or the frustration stamped on Eben’s features.

“Lindsey, can you take over for a minute?” she asked her assistant camp director.

“Of course.” The college student who had worked for the nature center every summer since high school stepped forward and Sage led Eben and Chloe away from the interested campers.

“What’s not your fault? What’s going on?”

“I didn’t do anything, I swear. It’s not my fault at all that she was so mean.”