The Daddy Makeover

“There it is! Right there.” Chloe pointed to a house with an unobstructed view of the ocean and the sea stacks. Sage had always loved the place, with its quaint widow’s walk and steep gables.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

Chloe nodded. “I remember the fish windchimes. I heard them when I was going to sleep and it sounded like angels singing. And I remember the house next door had those big balls that look like ginormous Christmas ornaments.”

Sage shifted her gaze to take in the collection of Japanese glass fishing floats that adorned Blair and Kristine Saunders’ landscape.

“Do you have a key?” she asked the girl.

Chloe held tight to Conan’s collar. “No. My dad didn’t give me one. But I climbed out the window of my room. I can just go back that way.”

Sage was tempted to let her. A quick glance at her watch told her it was now twenty minutes to seven and she had exactly forty minutes to change and make it in to work. Her life would certainly be easier if she let Chloe sneak into her rental house, but it wouldn’t be right, she knew. She needed to make sure the girl’s father knew what Chloe had been up to.

“We’d better make sure your dad knows you’re safe.”

“I bet he didn’t even know I was gone,” Chloe muttered. “He’s going to be mad when he finds out.”

“You can’t just sneak out on your own, Chloe. It’s not safe. Anything could have happened to you out on the beach by yourself. I have to tell your dad. I’m sorry.”

She rang the doorbell, then felt like the worst sort of weasel when Chloe glared at her.

Before she could defend her action, the door opened and she forgot everything she intended to say—as well as her own name and how to put two words together.

Chloe neglected to mention the little fact that her father was gorgeous. Sage swallowed hard. The odd trembling in her thighs had nothing to do with her earlier run.

He had rugged, commanding features, with high cheekbones, a square, firm jaw and green eyes a shade darker than his daughter’s. It was obvious he’d just stepped out of the shower. His hair was wet, his chest bare and he wore only a pair of gray trousers and an unbuttoned blue dress shirt.

Sage swallowed again. Why did she have to meet a man like him today when she smelled like wet dog and four miles of sweat? And she already disliked him, she reminded herself.

“Can I help you?” he asked. She didn’t mistake the shadow of irritation on those rugged features.

She blinked and tugged Chloe forward.

“Chloe?” he stared at his daughter, baffled concern replacing annoyance. “What’s going on? I thought you were still sound asleep in your bed. What are you doing out here in your nightgown?”

She didn’t answer for a moment then she shrugged. “Nothing. I just went for a walk to get some more sand dollars. I found a ton. Well, Sage helped me. Look.” She thrust her armload at her father.

He didn’t take them, gazing at his daughter’s hard-won treasure with little visible reaction. Or so Sage thought, until she happened to catch the storm clouds scudding across his green eyes like a winter squall stirring up seafoam.

“What do you mean, you went for a walk? It’s barely six-thirty in the morning!”

Chloe shrugged. “I woke up early but you were still sleeping and I didn’t want to wake you up. I was just going to be gone for a minute, but…then I couldn’t remember how to get back.”

“You are in serious trouble, young lady.”

His voice was suddenly as hard as a sea stack and Sage was automatically seven years old again, trying desperately to understand how her world could change with such sudden cruelty.

“I am?” Chloe’s fingers seemed to tighten on Conan’s collar but the dog didn’t so much as whimper.

“You know you’re not supposed to leave the house alone. You know that. Any house, whether our own or a temporary one.”

“But Daddy—

“You promised me, Chloe. Do you remember that? I knew bringing you along on this trip would be a huge mistake but you promised you would behave yourself, for once. Do you call running off down the beach by yourself behaving?”

He didn’t raise his voice one single decibel but muscles inside Sage’s stomach clenched and she hated it, hated it. The terrible thing was, she couldn’t blame the man. Not really. She could imagine any parent would be upset to discover a child had wandered away in an unknown setting.

She knew it was a normal reaction, but still this particular situation had an entirely too-familiar ring to it.

“But I wasn’t alone for very long,” Chloe insisted. “I made two new friends, Daddy. This is Sage and her dog’s name is Conan. She lives here and she knows all kinds of things about birds and shells and fish. She’s a naturist.”

“Naturalist,” Sage corrected.

“Right. A naturalist. She teaches summer camp and tells kids about shells and birds and stuff like that.”

For the first time since she rang the doorbell, the man shifted his gaze to her.

“I’m Sage Benedetto,” she said, hoping her cool voice masked the nerves still jumping in her stomach. Though she wanted to yell and scream and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing trying to quash this sweet little girl’s spirit, the words tangled in her throat.

“I live down the coast about a half mile in the big Victorian,” she said instead.

He stared at her for a long second, an odd, arrested look in his eyes. She didn’t know how long he might have stared at her if Conan hadn’t barked. The man blinked a little then closed his fingers around hers.

She was quite certain she imagined the odd little sizzle when their fingers touched. She didn’t imagine the slightly disconcerted expression that crossed his features.

“Eben Spencer. Thank you for taking the time to bring my daughter home.”

“You’re welcome,” she said in that same cool voice. “You might want to keep a closer eye on her.”

“Easier said than done, Ms. Benedetto. But thank you for the advice.”

“No problem.”

She forced a tight smile for him, then a more genuine one for his daughter. “Bye, Chloe. You need to rinse those sand dollars in fresh water until the water runs clear, then soak them in bleach and water for five or ten minutes. That way they’ll be hard enough for you to take them home without breaking. Remember, Henry’s counting on you.”

The girl giggled as Sage called to Conan, who barked at her, nuzzled Chloe, then bounded off ahead as they headed back toward Brambleberry House.

He watched her jog down the beach, the strange woman with the wild mane of honey-colored hair and thinly veiled disdain in her haunting amber-flecked brown eyes.

She didn’t like him. That much was obvious. He hadn’t missed the coldness in her expression nor the way she clipped off the ends of her words when she spoke to him.

He wasn’t sure why that bothered him so much. Plenty of people disliked him. Constantly striving to win approval from others simply for the sake of their approval wasn’t in his nature and he had long ago learned some measure of unpopularity was one of the prices one paid for success.

He was damn good at what he did, had taken his family’s faltering hotel business and through careful management, a shrewd business plan and attention to detail turned it into a formidable force in the luxury hotel business.

Over the years, he had bumped up against plenty of affronted egos and prickly psyches. But seeing the disdain in Sage Benedetto’s unsettling eyes annoyed him. And the very fact that he was bothered by it only irked him more.

What did he care what some wind-tousled stranger with a massive, ungainly mutt for a dog thought of him?