LITMIR.BIZ

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to work and volunteering with Meals on Wheels seemed exercises in futility when she couldn’t do a darn thing to ease the burden of those she cared about.

      Will was another of Abigail’s lost sheep—Sage’s affectionate term for the little band of creatures her friend had watched over with her endless supply of love. Abigail seemed to collect people in need and gathered them toward her. The lonely, the forgotten, the grieving. Will had been right there with the rest of them.

      No, that wasn’t exactly true. Will had belonged to Abigail long before he had ever needed watching over. He had grown up in the same house where he now lived and he and his wife Robin had both known and loved Abigail all their lives.

      Sage had lived at Brambleberry House long enough to remember him when he was a handsome charmer, with a teasing grin for everyone. He used to charge into Abigail’s parlor and sweep her off her feet, twirling her around and around.

      He always had a funny story to tell and he had invariably been the first one on the scene whenever anyone needed help—whether it was moving a piano or spreading a dump-truckload of gravel on a driveway or pumping out a flooded basement.

      When Sage moved in upstairs at Brambleberry, Will had become like a big brother to her, offering her the same warm affection he poured out on everyone else in town. Robin had been just as bighearted—lovely and generous and open.

      When Robin discovered Sage didn’t having a dining room table yet, she had put her husband to work on one and Will had crafted a beautiful round piece of art as a housewarming present.

      Sage had soaked it all in, had reveled in the miracle that she had finally found a place to belong among these wonderful people who had opened their lives to her.

      If Abigail had been the heart of her circle of friends, Will had been the sturdy, reliable backbone and Robin the nerve center. Their little pigtailed toddler Cara had just been everyone’s joy.

      Then in the blink of an eye, everything changed.

      So much pain.

      She let out a breath as she gave a hand signal and turned onto the street toward work. Robin and Will had been crazy about each other. She had walked in on them once in a corner of Abigail’s yard at a Fourth of July barbecue. They hadn’t been kissing, had just been holding each other, but even from several yards away Sage could feel the love vibrating between them, a strong, tangible connection.

      She couldn’t imagine the depth of Will’s pain at knowing that kind of love and losing it.

      Oddly, the mental meanderings made her think of Eben Spencer, sweet little Chloe’s abrupt, unfriendly father. The girl had said her mother was dead. Did Eben mourn her loss as deeply as Will did Robin and little Cara, killed two years ago by a drunk driver as they were walking across the street not far from here?

      She pulled up to the center and looped her bike lock through the rack out front, determined to put Eben and Chloe Spencer out of her head.

      She didn’t want to think about either of them. She had learned early in her time at Cannon Beach not to pay much mind to the tourists. Like the fragile summer, they disappeared too soon.

      Her resolve was tested even before lunchtime. Since the weather held through the morning, she and her dozen new campers gathered at a picnic table under the spreading boughs of a pine tree outside the center.

      She was showing them intertidal zone specimens in aquarium display cases collected earlier that morning by center staffers when she heard a familiar voice call her name.

      She turned to find her new friend from the morning barreling toward her, eyes wide, her gamine face animated.

      Moving at a slower pace came Eben Spencer, his silk, undoubtedly expensive tie off-center and his hair slightly messed. He did not look as if he were having a great day.

      Of course, when Sage was having a lousy day, she ended up with circles under her eyes, stress lines cutting through her face and a pounding headache she could swear was visible for miles around.

      Eben Spencer just looked slightly rumpled in an entirely too-sexy way.

      Heedless of the other children in the class, Chloe rushed to her and threw her arms around Sage’s waist.

      “It’s not my fault this time, I promise.”

      Under other circumstances, she might have been annoyed at the interruption to her class but she couldn’t ignore Chloe’s distress—or the frustration stamped on Eben’s features.

      “Lindsey, can you take over for a minute?” she asked her assistant camp director.

      “Of course.” The college student who had worked for the nature center every summer since high school stepped forward and Sage led Eben and Chloe away from the interested campers.

      “What’s not your fault? What’s going on?”

      “I didn’t do anything, I swear. It’s not my fault at all that she was so mean.”

      Sage looked to Eben for elucidation.

      “The caregiver the agency in Portland sent over was…unacceptable.” Eben raked a hand through his wavy hair, messing it even more.

      “She was mean to me,” Chloe said. “She wouldn’t let me walk out to the beach, even when I told her my dad said it was okay. She didn’t believe me so I called my dad and she got mad at me and pulled my hair and said I was a bad word.”

      From that explanation, she gathered the caregiver hadn’t appreciated an eight-year-old going over her head.

      “Oh, dear. A bad word, huh?”

      Chloe nodded. “She called me a spoiled little poop, only she didn’t say poop.”

      “I’m sorry,” Sage said, trying to figure out exactly what part she played in this unfolding drama.

      “I didn’t care about the name but I didn’t like that she pulled my hair. She didn’t have to be so mean. I think she was a big poop.”

      “Chloe,” Her father said sternly.

      “Well, I do. So I called my dad again and told him what she did and he came right over from The Sea Urchin and told her to leave right now. He said a bad word, too, but I think she deserved it.”

      She gave a quick glance at her father, then mouthed H-E-L-L.

      Sage had to fight a smile. “I see,” she said. She found it admirably unexpected that Eben would rush to his daughter’s defense.

      “And now the place that sent her doesn’t have anybody else to take care of me.”

      Sage raised her eyebrows and glanced at Eben. “I suppose the temp pool is probably pretty shallow right now since the tourist season is heading into full gear.”

      “I’m figuring that out,” he answered. “The agency says it will be at least tomorrow or the next day before they can find someone else. In the meantime, I’ve got conference calls scheduled all day.”

      Sage waited to hear what all of this had to do with her, though she was beginning to guess. Her speculation was confirmed by his next words.

      “I can’t expect Chloe to entertain herself in a strange place while I’m occupied. I remembered you mentioning a summer camp and hoped that you might have room for one more.”

      “Oh, I’m sorry. We’re completely full.”

      The center had always maintained a strict limit of twelve campers per session to ensure an adequate adult-to-student ratio. Beyond that, she had her hands full this year. Three of the children had learning disabilities and she had already figured out after the first few hours that two more might be on their way to becoming behavior problems if she couldn’t figure out how to channel their energy.

      Even as she thought of the trouble to her staff if she added another camper, her mind raced trying to figure out how to accommodate Eben

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