Page 96 of A Soldier's Return

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.

“Ilovestrawberries,” 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 could ask the million questions Eben could see forming in her eyes, Sage’s dog slithered out from under the table and began to bark insistently.

“Uh-oh. That’s his ignore-me-at-your-peril bark,” Sage said quickly, setting her unfinished dessert down on the table. “I had better let him out.”

“I’ll do it!” Chloe exclaimed. Her features—so much like her mother’s—were animated and excited.

She had been remarkably well-behaved through dinner—no tantrums, no power struggles. It was a refreshing change, he thought. Sage Benedetto had a remarkably positive effect on her. He wasn’t sure what she did differently, but Chloe responded to her in a way his daughter hadn’t to anyone else in a long time.

“Thanks, Chloe,” Sage said. “Just make sure the gate is closed around the yard so he can’t take off. He’s usually pretty good about staying on his own territory, but all bets are off if he catches sight of a cat.”

Chloe paused at the door. “Can I ask Miss Galvez if I can look at the dolls while I’m downstairs?”

Sage shifted her gaze to meet Eben’s. “You’ll have to ask your father that.”

“Someone will have to clue me in. What dolls?”

“The woman who left the house to me and to Anna Galvez had a huge doll collection. It takes up an entire room in Anna’s apartment now. I promised Chloe we could take a look at them before dinner, but time slipped away from us and then you arrived.”

“Can I see it, Daddy?”

“If Miss Galvez doesn’t mind showing you, I can’t see any reason why not.”

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