up here?” Eben asked. He sounded genuinely interested, she realized, feeling ashamed of herself for being so surprised by it.
“One day at the grocery store I helped a local woman with her bags and she invited me home for dinner.” Her heart spasmed a little and she suddenly missed Abigail desperately.
She managed a smile, though she suspected it didn’t look very genuine. “I’ve been here ever since.”
Eben was silent for a long moment. By the time he spoke, Sage had regained her composure.
“How many apartments are in this place?”
“Three. One on each floor, but the middle floor is empty right now.”
“Your neighbor on the first floor let me in.”
“Right. Anna.”
Conan barked a little from under the table when she said Anna’s name and Sage covered her annoyance by taking a sip of the wine she had set out for her and Eben.
Eben and Anna Galvez would be perfect for each other. The hotel tycoon and the sharp, focused businesswoman. They were both type A personalities, both probably had lifetime subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal, both probably knew exactly the difference between the Dow Jones and the NASDAQ—and how much of their respective portfolios were tied up in each, down to the penny.
Sage could barely manage to balance her checkbook most months and still carried a balance on her credit card from paying a down-on-his-luck friend’s rent a few months earlier.
Yeah, Eben and Anna would make a good pair. So why did the idea of the two of them together leave her feeling vaguely unsettled?
“You said the second floor is empty?”
“Yes. We’re still trying to figure out what we want to do, whether we want to fix it up and rent it out or leave things as is. Too many decisions to make all at once.”
“I didn’t understand that you owned the place. I thought you were renting.”
She made a face. “I own it as of a month ago. Well, sort of.”
“How do you sort of own something?”
“Anna and I co-inherited the place and everything in it, including Conan.”
He looked intrigued and she didn’t like feeling her life was one interesting puzzle for him to solve. “So the dog came with the house?” he asked.
“Something like that.”
“So are you and Anna related in some way?”
“Nope.” She sipped at her wine. “It’s a long story.”
She didn’t want to talk about Abigail so she deliberately changed the subject.
“I understand from Chloe you’re in town to buy The Sea Urchin from Stanley and Jade Wu.”
Frustration flickered in his green eyes. “That’s the plan, anyway.”
“When do you expect to close the sale?”
“Good question. There have been a few…complications.”
“Oh?”
“Everything was supposed to be done by now but I’m afraid the Wus are having second thoughts. I’m still working hard to convince them.”
“My daddy has a lot of other hotels,” Chloe piped up, “but he really, really wants The Sea Urchin.”
Of course. No doubt it was all about the game to him, the acquisition of more and more. Just like her own father, who had virtually abandoned his child to the care of others, simply to please his narcissistic, self-absorbed socialite of a second wife.
“And I imagine whatever you want, you get, isn’t that right?”
She meant to keep her voice cool and uninterested, but she was fairly sure some of her bitterness dripped into her words.
He studied her for a long moment, long enough that she felt herself flush at her rudeness. He didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of an old, tired hurt that had nothing to do with him.
“Not always,” he murmured.
“Can I have another breadstick?” Chloe asked into the sudden awkward silence.
Her father turned his attention to her. “How many have you had? Four, isn’t it?”
“They’re so good, though!”
Sage had enough experience with both eight-year-olds and dogs to know exactly where the extra breadsticks were going—under the table, where Conan lurked, waiting patiently for anything tossed his way.
She handed Chloe another breadstick with a conspiratorial smile. “This is the last one, so you’d better make it last.”
“I’m going to have to roll you down the stairs, I’m afraid.”
Chloe snickered at her father. “Conan could help you carry me down. He’s way strong.”
“Stronger than me, probably, especially with all those breadsticks in his system.”
Chloe jerked her hand above the table surface with a guilty look, but her father didn’t reprimand her, he only smiled.
Sage gazed at his light expression with frustration. Drat the man. Just when she thought she had him pegged, he had to act in a way that didn’t match her perception.
It was becoming terribly difficult to hang on to her dislike of him. Though her first impression of him had been of a self-absorbed businessman with little time for his child, she was finding it more difficult to reconcile that with a man who could tease his daughter into the giggles.
She had always made a practice of looking for the good in people. Even during the worst of her childhood she had tried to find her stepmother’s redeeming qualities. So why was she so determined to only see negatives when she looked at Eben Spencer?
Maybe she was afraid to notice his good points. If she could still be so attracted to him when she was only focusing on the things she disliked, how much more vulnerable would she be if she allowed herself to see the good in him?
The thought didn’t sit well at all.
* * *
What was her story? Eben wondered as Sage dished out a simple but delicious dessert of vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries. She was warm and approachable one moment, stiff and cool the next. She kissed like a dream then turned distant and polite.
Her house was like her—eclectic, colorful, with a bit of an eccentric bent. One whole display case in the corner was filled with gnarled pieces of driftwood interspersed with various shells and canning jars filled with polished glass. Nothing in the house looked extravagant or costly, but it all seemed to work together to make a charming, cozy nest.
He was intensely curious about how she came to own the house after five years of renting it, but she obviously hadn’t want to talk about it so he had let her turn the conversation in other directions. He wondered if that had something to do with the pain that sometimes flickered in her gaze.
“I love strawberries,” Chloe announced. “They’re my very favorite thing to have on ice cream.”
“You need to try some of the Oregon berries sometime,” Sage said with a smile.
She maintained none of her stiff reserve with Chloe. She was genuinely warm all the time and he found it entrancing.
“And before you leave, remind me to give you some of the wild raspberry jam I made last summer,” she went on.
“You made jam all by yourself?”
“It’s not hard. The toughest thing is not eating the berries the minute you pick them so you’ve got enough left to use for the jam.”
Before Chloe