Page 7 of Her Christmas Wish

As soon as Sage had heard her brother read the text aloud, she’d gathered her daughter and had taken her in. But Leigh, watching the dogs out the back window, had seen them heading up the beach with Scott and Iris and, crying “I wanna walk with Uncle Scott,” had run out.

She knew not to leave the house, ever.

Unless Uncle Scott and Morgan were on the beach. And then she had to get her mother’s permission first.

Sage had gotten them safely back in the house with the five-foot-high lock latched on the beach-side door, something she’d had installed when she’d first moved in. She’d refrained from disciplining Leigh about waiting until Sage replied before running out. She needed time to calm herself down first, to make certain that she didn’t let any of her own angst shower upon her little girl.

At bedtime, they’d had a brief talk about waiting until Sage said okay before Leigh followed through on her announced intentions.

And then they’d read a story. They’d cuddled.

And the four-year-old bundle of energy had fallen asleep with her head on Sage’s shoulder.

Sage had tried to work after that. Couldn’t get into the applications she’d been going over. None of them excited her.

Which was probably her answer.

But before she turned away a possibly stellar applicant, she needed to get outside her own drama and take one more look.

Just to be sure.

At the office. In the morning.

Sitting at the desk in her home office, she opened a contract that she’d be presenting to a client the next afternoon.

She had a lot invested, emotionally and mentally, in the client and the project. She figured it would get her mind out of the past and back into her own space. Except that she’d been over the contract for a final time that afternoon. There was nothing there to grab her.

Already on her computer, she clicked to the internet. Figured she’d look at how the market had closed for the day. Something she did every night before bed.

And had her attention immediately caught by a headline on her home screen news feed.

GB Animal Clinics had permanently closed.

The news was a couple of weeks old. No reason to be showing up that night.

A sign to her?

More like a product of the artificial intelligence that tracked previous searches.

Because, yeah, she’d looked up Grayson Bartholomew’s business when the news of illegal drug trafficking had first hit the headlines.

Months before.

And had kind of been following bits and pieces.

Because of talk around the office.

She’d never let herself read fully.

Couldn’t take a chance that some inner, younger part of her would turn traitor on the mature, happy woman she’d become and latch on to his woes.

Want to help him.

Or worse, feel for him.

But hearing her twin read a text, telling her that Gray was right there on the beach, that very minute, in her brother’s house...

She felt.