Page 85 of Her Christmas Wish

And rightfully so.

She had to be somewhat disappointed.

Hell, even he was feeling a form of letdown after the past week of anxiety.

Sad, that they’d watered their relationship down to the point of not being able to be real with each other. To offer comfort where it was most needed.

Only the two of them knew what they’d possibly had. Only the two of them were feeling the effects of finding out there’d been nothing there.

Yet, they weren’t talking about it between the two of them.

The future was wide-open again.

She wasn’t carrying his child.

Gray tried the reality on for the rest of that day, as he drove from appointment to appointment, trying to be everything everyone needed from him as he and eighteen other professionals started new chapters of their lives together.

With him at the helm.

Holding eighteen careers in his hands.

The thought took root. His chest got tighter. So much so that he pulled off the road from one of the new clinic sites to the next. His next on-site contractor appointment wasn’t for another hour. He’d been planning to get there early.

And instead, he sat in his SUV, staring at the ocean.

Why hadn’t he seen it before?

All the vets who’d lost their jobs because of his one mis-hire at GB Animal Clinics. He’d seen a friend where a criminal existed. And he was just going to go and ask eighteen vets to sign on with him again?

And they were doing so? Some of them who’d already been burned by him once?

He grabbed his phone, intending to call Sage, and stopped. Calmed.

Sage. The seemingly endless bylaws and conditions and employee handbooks...she’d not only been protecting Gray from a second career disaster, she’d also been protecting everyone who worked for him.

He pushed her speed dial.

What kind of friends were they if they couldn’t talk?

She didn’t answer. Probably busy with Leigh.

He called another couple of times that afternoon. And a third as he headed home.

Sage didn’t pick up.

And she didn’t call him back.

Which pretty much told him what kind of friends they’d become.

Largely, because of him.

Sage took Leigh on a playdate on Saturday with another little friend from school, Jeremiah, and his mother, Maya, who was also single and a nurse practitioner in a medical office in their building.

Jeremiah wanted to go to the San Diego Zoo because Leigh had been talking about her day there with her uncle Scott and Miss Iris, and she spent the day telling her young friend all the inside scoops—in four-year-old terms—every time they stopped at a new enclosure. She named all the dolphins in the show, too. Telling Jeremiah how to tell them apart, and when one of the trainers recognized her, she invited both kids down after the show to let Jeremiah pet the dolphin in the private pool.

She’d had her phone off during the shows but had seen that Gray had called. He’d been meeting with contractors all day and would have things to discuss with her.

And while, in light of her newfound revelation—the fact that in the past she hadn’t considered her role as a partner and wife nearly as much as she’d focused on becoming a mother—she might need to speak with him, that piece of news wasn’t relevant when it came to work.