Page 117 of A Soldier's Return

Sage’s presence had made all the difference. She had some uncanny moderating effect on Chloe’s misbehavior. If she could distract his daughter long enough, convince her to behave for one simple evening, perhaps all hope was not completely lost.

“Do you mind if I bring along a guest?” he asked before he gave himself time to think it through.

Stanley studied him across the conference table. “What guest is this?”

How exactly did he explain? “My daughter and I have befriended a Cannon Beach resident, Sage Benedetto. I would like to bring her along, if it would be acceptable to you and Mrs. Wu.”

This time the cool look in the other man’s eyes was replaced with the first genuine smile Eben had seen there. “Ah. Sage. Yes. A beautiful woman always improves the digestion.”

“More wisdom from your father?”

Stanley laughed. “I don’t need my father to tell me this truth. I have eyes, don’t I?”

“Uh, right.”

“So you will come for dinner and bring your daughter and our friend Abigail’s beautiful wild rose, yes?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Now he just had to convince Sage.

Chapter Eleven

“Now remember, what’s the most important tide-pool rule?”

“Look but don’t touch!” the six campers in her group recited as one and Sage beamed.

“Exactly right. The rocky shore ecosystem is very fragile and you never know what harm you could do even by picking up a piece of kelp. It’s much better just to take pictures and look. All right, everybody grab your disposable cameras and let’s start recording our observations.”

The kids broke off into their pre-assigned teams of two and, chattering with excitement, headed on their field assignments to record as many tide-pool creatures as they could find.

Sage watched their eager faces and had to smile. This was close to her idea of a perfect day. The sun, making a brief appearance between storms, was bright and warm on her face, the water a spectacularly beautiful shade of deep olive. She had a bright group of children soaking in knowledge like little sea sponges.

For the next half hour, she wandered through the three teams, answering questions, making observations, pointing them toward species they may have missed: tiny porcelain crabs and Hopkin’s roses.

She loved it out here. She didn’t need anything else, certainly not any sharp-eyed executives who smelled like heaven and kissed like a dream.

She pushed thoughts of Eben away—again—and focused on the tide-poolers until her stopwatch beeped, then she gathered them around to compare notes.

“Excellent job, all of you. You’re now official junior naturalists for Cannon Beach.”

“Ms. B., when can we have the crab race? You promised you’d let me whip your butt this year.”

She laughed at Ben Harder, one of Tracy’s twins. “Excuse me, but I believe I promised I would let youtryto whip my butt. Big difference there, kiddo.”

“When? Can we do it now?”

She checked her watch. They had split the campers into two groups so they didn’t stress the tide-pool residents with too much attention at once. Lindsey had the other group down the beach flying kites and they weren’t due to switch places for another twenty minutes.

“Okay. Crab races it is. We need start and finish lines.”

Two of the boys found a piece of driftwood and charted a race course of about thirty feet—far too long in Sage’s book, but the children insisted they could go that far.

Her idea was for one-on-one races, but eventually everybody wanted to compete against her and it turned into a free-for-all.

It was a fight to the finish but she came in a respectable third—behind Ben Harder and Leilani Stein. At the finish line, panting and aching, she collapsed into the sand. How did she seem to forget every year until the first camp of the summer how blasted hard it was to walk backward on her hands and feet? It took her abs all summer long to relearn how to crab race.

“Good race,” she said, gasping. “But I think you got a head start.”

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