Page 44 of Her Christmas Wish
Sage stared at the other woman. She thought Gray was lusting after her, too?
Now that was just ludicrously...not hitting her as negatively as it should have been.
Shaking her head, shooing away any chance that there could be a little bit of truth hiding in Iris’s erroneous perspective, Sage asked, “You feel like leftovers for dinner? Scott and I both have fridges filled with salads. From potato to broccoli...”
Broccoli salad made by Gray. She’d made sure what wasn’t eaten had made it back to Scott’s refrigerator. Not her own.
“No way, Sage. You aren’t dissing me on this one. Seriously. You and Gray have a past. You just admitted it by thinking Scott had told me about it.”
Yeah. But that didn’t mean she had to spill her guts if she chose not to. Even to her closest friend.
“It might help, having someone impartial to him who could have an eye out for you.” Iris’s words fell softly then, all teasing gone. “Obviously, it’s something of a big deal to you or you wouldn’t be avoiding talking about it.”
Silently entertaining the thought that if Iris knew she was avoiding the topic, she’d be kindest just to leave it alone, Sage homed in on the rest. Someone having her back. Just in case.
Someone who could save her from herself if she slid back out of closure...
A woman who could talk womanly emotions with her. Things like, say, lust. A topic she and Scott had never and would never address.
And so, trying for as few words as possible, she told her friend, “We were engaged. Ten years ago. I wanted a family. He’d said a few times that he didn’t get the whole family thing. That he was open to getting it, but wasn’t sure he’d be a good father. Things like that. Never with any explanation, you know? Even when I asked why he’d say those things. He’d just shrug. And then two days before the wedding—a two-hundred-guest affair, which we’d been planning for almost a year—he tells me that he doesn’t ever want to be a father, doesn’t want a family and since he knew how important it was to me to be a mother, he thought it best if we called everything off.”
There. She’d talked about it.
Saw the change come over Iris. Compassion and support, rather than teasing or egging her on toward a possible hookup.
And Sage finally had closure.
The next week passed in a flurry of business. Gray made the decision to start up a series of clinics, assuming he had enough vets willing to put their names on the dotted line, rather than just into conversation. He’d reached a goal and didn’t want to be scared into sliding backward into one affordable clinic that offered basic care and surgeries at a cost lower-to middle-class families could afford.
And he was calling them Buzzing Bee Clinics. It was a great name for animal clinics. Made him smile. He’d texted the name to Sage, a bit apprehensive that she’d read too much into his adopting her daughter’s name for him for his new start. He needn’t have worried. She’d simply texted back a smiley face, and got to work on filing for the corporation. Drafting bylaws. An employee manual. Composing contracts for all veterinarians to sign, making them wholly responsible, separate and apart from Buzzing Bee Clinics, for their own choices and actions. They’d be contractors. Not employees. And could be terminated for not following contracted mandates.
Each separate clinic would have a manager, who was hired by Gray and reported directly to him.
The list of protections went on, and while Gray wasn’t sure he’d ever find anyone who’d sign on with him under the proposed guidelines, at least not with his reputation currently in tatters, he’d been bolstered by the conversations he’d had the week before and had to try.
All because of Sage.
Before she’d called him to talk business, he’d been thinking in terms of applying to become a government employee paid to work at the shelters where he was currently volunteering. Abandoned animals didn’t give a snoot about reputation. They just wanted to be helped and loved.
Both of which he knew he could accomplish.
Just until the courts were done with GB Animal Clinics and he could see what was left to start over. At which time he’d go back to working the shelters for free.
The house selling had bought him more time.
And Sage...
Heading up the elevator to her office to go over the final draft of the new corporation business portfolio on Thursday afternoon, Gray thought again of his conversation with Sage Saturday night on the beach. He didn’t let himself dwell.
Much.
Hadn’t been home to see her or her little miracle on Ocean Breeze since that night, but he did occasionally have to stop and readjust his thinking of her to a brand-new version.
A beautiful version.
But one that more clearly didn’t fit as a partner in his life. Being a mother was Sage’s life goal.
Being a wife had been a means to that end.
