All About Sage (A City of Sails Romance Book 2) Read online

“Mum’s just under stress,” Harriet said as her fingers texted, her gaze never leaving the screen. “And she’s been smoking. Again.”

  Sage turned to her daughter, her eyes wide with shock. “That was ages ago. How on earth do you know that?”

  “I found the butts in the garden, and that jacket you claim is your gardening jacket stunk of smoke, and it can’t be rubbish-burning smoke because it’s illegal to burn rubbish. And,” she added, “You’ve been drinking that foul tea that has that smoky flavour. At first I thought the smoke was the tea. Now I know different. Nothing gets by me, mother.”

  Harriet was glaring at her, accusing her. Sage stared back at her, speechless. Her face had gone from pink to embarrassed red.

  Harriet said casually, glancing at Ethan, “The last time that happened was when she was finishing university and she got all stressed out. I remember it.”

  Ethan felt like his head was about to explode.

  Sage muttered, “Oh shit.”

  Ethan just stared at them. “So the daughter finds the mother smoking?” The urge to howl with laugher was tempting. “Since when did it switch, from the parents calling out the kids?”

  Sage glared back at him.

  For a moment he felt like he was in the twilight zone. There was something decidedly whack going on here.

  “Listen, I need to—” He was going to say ‘get out of here’ but realized he was in his own place.

  He glanced around. His own house.

  Sage straightened. “We’ve taken up enough of your time already. Come on, Harriet. Let’s go and get some lunch.”

  “Maybe Ethan could join us.”

  He felt his stomach rumble, but he’d promised his friend Emily he’d head out to see her and her baby.

  “Sounds great, but I’ve got plans. Got to visit an old friend. Sorry, Harry.”

  She nodded. “That’s okay. I’ve got work to do and Mum promised she’d look over my assignment to proof it.”

  “I forgot I’d promised that,” Sage admitted.

  “What subject?” Ethan asked.

  Harriet shuddered. “Physics.”

  Ethan glanced with admiration at Sage. “That’s kind of you.” He felt a new respect for her. His parents had never given a damn about his work. Just like Jack, they’d come from completely unsatisfactory backgrounds, his ex-wife had once told him. Unsatisfactory was putting it far too mildly.

  “In what way is me being interested in my daughter’s homework kind?” Sage asked.

  “It’s physics. Not a lot of parents would do that.”

  Harriet frowned. “But Mum’s the best person to do it.”

  Ethan arched his eyebrows. “How so?”

  Harriet gave him a ‘duh’ expression. “Because she’s an expert.” She reached for her sweatshirt lying on the couch behind her. “You know she’s got a PhD in the stuff, right?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ethan threw himself down on Emily Randell’s couch and glanced warily at the baby in the seat on the floor.

  He wasn’t scared of her. Bella was cute. He might even, he’d admit, experience the odd paternal feeling when he picked her up. Occasionally – usually after she’d been changed, had thrown up on someone else, and was half asleep – he’d hold her close and wonder what it would be like to have his own child.

  Shit. He groaned in frustration.

  Sage frigging Lockwood.

  Harriet’s surprised, “You know she’s got a PhD in the stuff, right?”

  No. For the second time that day, he now facepalmed. No, he did not know that. How the heck would he have known that? Sage worked in a daycare centre. How was he to know she had a doctorate in friggin’ physics?

  He rubbed his hands hard down his face. Or was she playing him for a fool? Had he made an unfair judgement about her, made assumptions?

  Or was he actually turning into a woman and overthinking? Overanalysing? He groaned again. Maybe he was the sexist creep she’d accused him of being.

  “I thought life was okay at the moment.” Emily handed him a cup of coffee.

  He took the mug with thanks, noted it was an All Black cup with a sponsor’s logo. Brad. Her ex-husband, Brad Randell. Former superstar rugby player. Current superstar adulterous bastard.

  Ethan shifted uncomfortably. “It is. Was. No,” he amended. “It is.”

  “I feel terrible for missing Jack and Robyn’s wedding.” Emily took the seat opposite as she cradled a cup of green tea. Sage probably drank green tea.

  “You did the right thing,” Ethan said. Bella had come down with what the doctor had suspected might be meningitis but, thank God, hadn’t been. “Did you get a chance to watch the video?”

  She grinned. “It was good. It was great. Jack and Robyn looked so perfect together.” She sighed, took a sip of her tea. “It just goes to show some good came out of a rotten situation.” She stared into her cup. “I never thought I’d say that Brad leaving me for Charlotte had something good come out of it.”

  Ethan grimaced, but she was right, and that was the bit he couldn’t come to grips with. It had been sordid, the whole thing. A train wreck. Brad had fallen in love with Jack’s girlfriend, Charlotte. Even worse, Emily had been pregnant at the time, and Ethan had watched her suffer in a way he’d never known a woman to suffer. Her pain had shattered him, because there had been nothing he could do about it. Nothing Jack could do about it, except wonder how the hell they hadn’t seen this happening between Brad and Charlotte.

  It had made Ethan want to take Brad and do agonising things to him. Yet the truth was, it had freed Jack up. He’d met Robyn, a woman he’d vaguely known from his hometown, and now they were happy and their life was good. It was great.

  But Jack was a little too wrapped up in his own life – and who could blame him – to see that Em was still in pain.

  Ethan saw it though. He felt it.

  He looked absently at her and she stared back at him, the strangest grin on her face.

  “What?” he asked suspiciously.

  “This.” She gestured to him. “You and me. We get on so well. Have you ever thought it’s a shame we don’t like each other ‘like that’?”

  He relaxed further, grinned. She was like a sister to him. “Yeah. I know.” He’d thought about that a lot, just how easy it would have been. No angst or confusion, second-guessing or all that emotional rubbish. He loved Emily. She was a doctor, she was gorgeous.

  Something tweaked in his chest and he rubbed it. Kind of like that bloody Sage, he thought. They were both smart. Too smart.

  He focused back on Em. “And I even really like Bella. Even though her father is Brad.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Emily looked over at her baby. “It’s not the life I’d have planned for any child of mine, that’s for sure, raising her alone like this.” She met Ethan’s gaze. “You know, he came around on Tuesday to see her.”

  A prickle of annoyance on Ethan’s spine grew sharply. He said bluntly, “Does he want to come back?”

  Emily shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not sure. But I think maybe he does. Charlotte’s in Europe doing catwalk shows and Brad hates being on his own. He’s used to being with people all the time and when he had to give up rugby, it was hard. But I doubt this supposed loneliness will last.”

  Bella started to whine irritably, and Ethan rocked her baby seat with his foot. She gazed up at him, her blue eyes staring. She made a gurgling sound and laughed. She looked happy to be looking at him.

  Someone loves me, he thought irrationally.

  He shook the thought, focused back on his ex-friend and Emily. She was his best female friend; maybe his only one, before Robyn had come along. He clasped his hands behind his head and felt anything but relaxed. “I can’t get over how this thing between Brad and Charlotte has lasted.”

  “I know.” Em held out a toy to Bella. “But I’m over it, and I’ve got over them. It took a while but I’m the lucky one. I’ve got my girl and, in spite of the bad moments, I can see light at t
he end of the tunnel. I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.”

  Watching her, Ethan was struck with an odd realization. In spite of them talking about Brad, maybe he did feel an odd peace. Being around Em was comfortable. Maybe too comfortable.

  He sat forward, felt that tension bite into him again. Unlike—

  “Who is she?” Emily said suddenly.

  For a second, a split second, he had no idea what she meant.

  Then he closed his eyes on a silent groan.

  “Spill, Ethan. Who is she? I know you. You’ve been moody and listless ever since you got here.” She watched him speculatively. “Is it that friend of Robyn’s?”

  Ethan’s mouth dropped open. “You know about her?”

  “Of course. Ages ago. Jack told me. Said you’ve got the hots for her.”

  “I have not got the hots for her.”

  Emily arched her eyebrows in a way that said, ‘liar’.

  Ethan slumped. “That woman is a pain in my arse.”

  “Then why did you buy the place next door to hers?”

  “You know why. It was a good business decision. It was a good deal. It’s a project. It’s a challenge.”

  Bella started to squirm and Emily set down her cup and reached for her daughter. “Maybe,” she said on a grunt as she lifted Bella up, “she’ll be the project and the challenge and it’ll turn out to be a very good deal in all ways.”

  “Very funny.” He shuddered. “We rub each other up the wrong way. She is everything I don’t want in a woman, and I don’t want anyone full stop, so end of story.”

  Emily didn’t answer. If ever a silence had spoken volumes, this was it.

  “What?” he demanded.

  Emily sat Bella on her knee and jiggled her. She gazed adoringly at her daughter, and he waited a moment for her to say something.

  “There is nothing going on between us,” Ethan said finally, even as he knew each word was a lie. Because there was and he knew darned well that Sage felt it too, and that like him, she was fighting it.

  And he was blowed if he knew what the heck to do. Even more, it crossed his mind that maybe Emily was right and he’d bought the house because of her. Because of Sage.

  Nah. He gulped down the rest of the coffee. Impossible. Even he wasn’t that stupid, that lame.

  “If you say so,” Emily murmured.

  “Oh, I say so”, he muttered to himself.

  Except he doubted he’d convinced her.

  And he sure wasn’t doing a very good job of convincing himself.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sage glanced across to Robyn’s – Ethan’s – house, and saw he was up. It was only five-thirty in the morning.

  She’d staggered out to the kitchen to brew a green tea, and had been staring at her reflection in the window, thinking she did look disgusting in the morning. She was going to age terribly, she just knew it. Her mother had looked older than her age, and so had her father, and she was going to inherit those genes in a double dose.

  Not to mention her ex-husband had exhibited signs of male pattern baldness before he’d hit twenty five, and was grey by thirty three.

  Poor Harry.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the light was on in Ethan’s lounge and his curtains were open.

  She froze. He couldn’t see in. The slope meant he was a little higher than her, but if he came over to the window...

  She ducked, and promptly regretted it. He wasn’t even there. She was behaving like a kid.

  She slowly raised herself, and peeked. Yep, no sign of him. But maybe he liked getting up at ungodly hours.

  She went quickly back out to the darkened hallway and debated what to do. She could turn off the kitchen light and make the tea in the dark; he wouldn’t see her.

  Or she could just be bold and stand up anyway. It was her house.

  And it wasn’t likely he was there. She relaxed. Of course he wasn’t there. He’d been sanding floorboards well into the night, and he’d probably forgotten to turn off the light and was fast asleep.

  She tightened her robe.

  Nope, she told herself. He wasn’t up.

  She pushed her shoulders back, switched on the light, left it on dim enough so she could see what she was doing, and went into the kitchen. The kettle had boiled, so she poured water over the tea bag, and waited. She liked it brewed for two minutes. She wasn’t anal, but two minutes was good.

  Two minutes was just right.

  Suddenly, she saw movement outside, and before she could duck, Ethan had paused, hands on his hips, looking through her window from across the fence. He lifted his hand in a wave.

  Holy cow.

  She waved hesitantly back.

  He disappeared, and she held her breath. Seconds later, there was a knock at her door. You have got to be kidding me.

  She ran her hands through her hair and checked her breath. Foul. She splashed water over her face, took a mouthful of ice cold tap water, and spat. Straightening, she cleared her throat, willed her pounding heart to give it a rest, and went to open the door.

  You are not attracted to him, she told herself, as she slid the chain and opened the door.

  He looked down at her. “You’re up early.”

  Sweat soaked parts of his T-shirt, and she wondered how he could be out running at this hour?

  “I had a bad night,” she said, “and figured I wouldn’t go back to sleep now.”

  He looked over her shoulder through into her house. “Bazza with you?”

  “Who? No,” she said hastily, and at the same time her face heated. She knew people assumed she and Barry spent nights together, and they could assume all they liked, but they never actually had. Unless you counted the protests. The most recent had been last month’s overnight expedition. They’d sat huddled in a drenched tent on the west coast of Northland, with Dick and Pansy Alborough from FONZES, Friends of New Zealand Endangered Species (Inc). She added, calmly, “Besides, I have a child in the house.”

  “Child?” He scratched his chin. “One who’s about to enter the world of online dating to find Mr Right.” He grinned. “Interesting child.”

  Sage felt her tense shoulders relax. “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.”

  “How did the physics assignment go?”

  “She grasped it well. I made a few tweaks without altering her assessment.”

  He beckoned behind him to the house, his gaze not leaving hers.

  “I was going to stick on some coffee. You want to come over?”

  She resisted the urge to look down at her dressing gown, barely covering the faded flannelette pyjamas. She didn’t need a mirror to know her hair was monstrous.

  “I was just brewing a green tea,” she said.

  Although it had probably over-brewed by now, rendering it foul, and coffee was tempting.

  “Up to you,” he offered, “but I’m up and I’m hanging out for one.”

  He appeared genuine. Neighbourly. What could it hurt?

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll just get changed and be right over.”

  He grinned then. Looked straight at her in a way that made her almost forget to breathe.

  Slay me now. That smile. Good-looking bastard.

  “I’ll see you in a bit,” he said. His gaze slid down her dressing gown. “And you don’t need to change. I’ve seen you now.”

  And with a wave he was gone.

  Sage closed the door and leant against it.

  Breathe, damn it, breathe. It’s coffee. He’s being neighbourly.

  She straightened, pushed her shoulders back and marched to the bathroom. She stared at her face and felt like weeping.

  She looked forty. Fifty. Who was she kidding? A bloody hundred.

  She hastily slapped moisturiser on her face, brushed her teeth, brushed her hair, and decided there was no way she was sitting with Ethan in her dressing gown.

  She picked her jeans up off the floor and hesitated. Maybe she should shower. Maybe...
/>   She doubted he was getting changed. He was probably watching the coffee drip through the filter with glazed eyes, still in those little shorts and that T-shirt with the sweat outlining his muscles.

  She sprayed body spray, stuck on the jeans and an actual clean T-shirt, and grabbed her jacket and keys.

  As she passed Harry’s room, she checked in on her.

  She was sleeping soundly, her head buried in a pillow. She’d been up until close to two a.m., but she was on holidays until next week. She’d be asleep a few hours yet. Sage locked the door behind her, and as she glanced across at Ethan’s house, reminded herself it was just coffee.

  Of course it was.

  She’d done some daft things in her time, but deliberately heading over for any reason other than being neighbourly, no.

  She tilted her chin. “You’re a scientist. You’re a brilliant scientist.”

  A brilliant scientist, she added a third time, under her breath.

  And she went to Ethan’s.

  The door was open, and she stepped inside and into the small kitchen to find Ethan at the bench, the smell – the delicious smell – of coffee floating up from the machine, and music sounding from his laptop.

  He’d changed into jeans and a navy T-shirt, and he acknowledged her with a gesture towards a barstool. “How do you take it?”

  She took it with soy normally, but she said, “Just black.”

  He opened a cupboard and held up a carton of soy milk. “You’re sure?”

  Something skipped in her chest. She hoped it was a heart palpitation from the extra ginseng last night. “Thanks. That would be great.”

  She glanced at the laptop and he noticed. “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “No, it’s fine.” It was in the background and it was classic rock. That at least was normal. She watched him as he moved around Robyn’s kitchen, taking sugar and finding teaspoons, and wondered why he had soy in his house. The soy thing was far too much to emotionally digest.

  Unless…unless he suffered intolerance to lactose, but from the ice-cream she’d watched him devour at the wedding reception, she didn’t think so. Clearly no intolerance there. Unlike Barry, who only had to sniff dairy and he claimed he was getting cramps. But then, he probably was. The boy was so thin she had this overwhelming desire to fatten him up. It was probably maternal.