Scott generally slept in a bit on Saturdays...
When Morgan dove into the water, Sage left her cup on the table and raced to the door. By the time she had it unlocked, the corgi was back out of the water, dragging something with her.
A life vest that had been washing up to shore. Sage had seen it bobbing on the water earlier. Had figured it for having fallen off a boat. Like many of the other items that eventually washed up on their beach. Set in between high and miles-long rock faces as they were, those things trying to wash to shore bobbed against mountainous rock until they finally found solace in Ocean Breeze sand.
And Morgan often dove for them.
But never alone...
With her hand frozen on the still-closed door’s pull handle, Sage watched the clearly safe dog run up the beach.
And saw the man she ran toward. With a strong surge of inappropriate warmth, she recognized him. Quite personally. That thick, dark bed of chest hair in between his nipples...the way it trickled to a single line as it ran down to his belly button...
The scar just above his right hip...
A surfing thing, he’d said, blowing her off when she’d tried to pry further. But he’d welcomed her tongue offering its own consolation down the scar’s length.
Many times.
“Mommy?”
Spinning, Sage saw Leigh, in pajama shorts and top, rubbing her eyes as she came through the living room to the kitchen. Leigh’s little nose scrunched as she looked up at Sage. “Why you standing there?” she asked, and came to push in front of Leigh to stare out.
“It’s Morgan!” the little girl cried, and with both hands on the glass, pushed the still-unlocked door open enough for herself to fit through and slid out.
“Morgan!” she cried out, dancing on the top step of the porch.
Sage had to go out, in spite of the cutoff sweat shorts and spaghetti strap top she’d worn to bed being her only attire. “Leigh, come on back in here, we aren’t dressed,” she said, just as the little girl turned around to talk over her.
“Can I go see her, Mommy? Pwease? It’s pwite to say good morning!” The little girl repeated something Sage had told her a time or two when they’d arrived at day care and a little boy that Leigh didn’t like had said hello to her.
“No!” Sage said as the little girl started down the steps.
Dying of humiliation at the thought of what was coming, Sage was relieved—and surprised—when Leigh turned back around and looked up at her.
Perhaps her tone in thatnohad been overly harsh.
“We aren’t dressed yet, sweetie,” she said then, offering her hand out to walk Leigh back inside. “Remember, we have to be dressed to go outside, even on the beach between our house and Uncle Scott’s house.”
Leigh immediately climbed back up to the porch. Reached the top and looked up at Sage, her expression a study in seriousness.
“Morgan’s not dressed,” she pointed out. Then turned her back and went inside.
With a grin, and a last look down the beach—relieved to see that Gray and Morgan had disappeared, hopefully into Scott’s cottage—Sage followed her daughter into the cottage.
Score one for lack of closure.
She’d get it next time.
Gray had barely come from the shower, had been stepping into clean scrubs for his morning stint at a Rockcliff pet shelter, when his phone sounded an incoming text message.
Incoming from Sage. He’d set the single clunk sound as a ringtone specific to her. Unobtrusive, innocuous...he’d know it was her, but the sound wouldn’t draw undue attention or interrupt anything else he might have going on.
But he grabbed it up like the house was on fire.
He’d seen her on her porch. When he’d heard the undeniable child voice call out for Morgan. The little one had been there, too, pretty much obscured behind the stair-rail post.
But Sage...the spaghetti straps, mostly bare thighs...
