Brambleberry Shores. RaeAnne Thayne

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      Sage looked around at the few isolated cottages and guesthouses on this stretch of beach. “Are you staying close by? I thought I knew all the eight-year-olds in town.”

      “Every one?” With a lift of her dark eyebrow, the girl somehow managed to look skeptical and intrigued at the same time.

      “I do,” Sage assured her. “The ones who live here year-round, anyway. I’m sure I don’t remember meeting you.”

      Cannon Beach’s population was only a couple thousand year-round. In the summer, those numbers swelled as tourists flocked to the Oregon shore, but they were still a week or so away from the big crowds.

      “We’re only here for a few days. Maybe a week. But if it’s longer, then my dad says he’ll have to send me to stay with Mrs. Strictland so he can get some work done. She’s my dad’s assistant and she hates me. I don’t like going to her house.”

      Though she knew it was unfair to make snap judgments about a man she had not even met, a clear image of the girl’s father formed in Sage’s mind—a man too busy to hunt for sand dollars with his motherless child and eager to foist her on his minions so he could return to conquering the world.

      She fought down her instinctive urge to take Chloe home with her and watch over her like a sandpiper guarding her nest.

      “Do you remember where you’re staying, sweetheart?”

      Chloe pointed vaguely north. “I think it’s that way.” She frowned and squinted in the opposite direction. “Or maybe that way. I’m not sure.”

      “Are you in a hotel or a condo?”

      The girl shook her head. “It’s a house, right on the beach. My dad would have liked to stay at The Sea Urchin but Mr. Wu said they were all booked. He didn’t look very happy when he said it. I think he doesn’t like my dad very much.”

      No wonder she had always considered Stanley Wu an excellent judge of character. She hadn’t even met Chloe’s father and already she disliked him.

      “But what I don’t get,” the girl went on, “is if he doesn’t like my dad, why is he going to sell him his hotel?”

      Sage blinked at that unexpected bit of information. She hadn’t heard Stanley and Jade Wu were considering selling The Sea Urchin. They had been fixtures in Cannon Beach for decades, their elegant boutique hotel of twenty or so guest rooms consistently named among the best accommodations along the coast.

      “Do you know if your rental is close to The Sea Urchin?”

      Chloe screwed up her features. “Pretty close, but I think it’s on the other side. I didn’t walk past it this morning, I don’t think.”

      Though she seemed remarkably unconcerned about standing on wet sand in only her nightgown and flip-flops, she shivered a little and pulled Conan closer.

      Sage sighed, bidding a regretful goodbye to any hopes she might have entertained of enjoying a quiet moment for breakfast before heading to work. She couldn’t leave this girl alone here, not when she apparently didn’t have the first clue how to find her way home.

      She shrugged out of her hooded sweatshirt and tucked it around Chloe’s small shoulders, immediately shivering herself as the cool ocean breeze danced over her perspiration-dampened skin.

      “Come on. I’ll help you find where you’re staying. Your dad will be worried.”

      Conan barked—whether in agreement with the plan or skepticism about the level of concern of Chloe’s father, she wasn’t sure. Whatever the reason, the dog led the way up the beach toward downtown with more enthusiasm than he’d shown for the ocean-side run. Chloe and Sage followed with the girl chatting the entire way.

      In no time, Sage knew all about Chloe’s best friend, Henry, her favorite TV show and her distant, work-obsessed father. She had also helped Chloe find a half-dozen pristine sand dollars the gulls hadn’t picked at yet, as well as a couple of pieces of driftwood and a gorgeous piece of translucent orange agate.

      “How do you know so much about shells and birds and stuff?” Chloe asked after Sage pointed out a surf scoter and a grebe.

      She smiled at Chloe’s obvious awe. “It’s my job to know it. I’m a naturalist. Do you know what that is?”

      “Somebody who studies nature?”

      “Excellent! That’s exactly what I do. I work for an organization that teaches people more about the world around them. When I’m not working on research, I get to show people the plants and animals that live here on the Oregon Coast. I even teach classes to kids. In fact, our first nature camp of the summer starts today. That’s how I know so many of the local children, because most of them have been my campers at some time or another.”

      “Really? That’s so cool!”

      She smiled back, charmed by the funny little creature. “Yeah, I think so, too.”

      “Can I come to your camp?” The girl didn’t wait for an answer. “My dad has another hotel in Carmel. That’s in California, too, like San Francisco where we live. Once I went with him there and my nanny took me to see the tide pools. We saw starfish and anemones and everything. It was supercool.”

      Her nanny, again. Did the girl’s father even acknowledge she existed?

      “Did you at least tell your nanny where you were going this morning?” she asked.

      Chloe stopped to pick up a chipped shell to add to the burgeoning collection in her nightgown pockets. “Don’t have one. Señora Marcos quit two days ago. That’s why my dad had to bring me here, too, to Cannon Beach, because he didn’t know what else to do with me and it was too late for him to cancel his trip. But Señora Marcos wasn’t the nanny that who took me to see the tide pools anyway. That was Jamie. She quit, too. And the one after that was Ms. Ludwig. She had bad breath and eyes like a mean pig. You know what? I was glad when she said she couldn’t stand another minute of me. I didn’t like her, either.”

      She said this with such nonchalance the words nearly broke Sage’s heart. It sounded like a very lonely existence—a self-involved father and a string of humorless nannies unwilling to exert any effort to reach one energetic little girl.

      The story had a bitterly familiar ring to it, one that left her with sick anger balled up in her stomach.

      None of her business, she reminded herself. She was a stranger and didn’t know the dynamics between Chloe and her father. Her own experience was apropos of nothing.

      “Does any of this look familiar?” she asked. “Do you think your beach house is close by?”

      The girl frowned. “I’m not sure. It’s a brown house made out of wood. I remember that.”

      Sage sighed. Brown and made of wood might be helpful information if it didn’t describe most of the houses in Cannon Beach. The town had strict zoning laws dictating the style and aesthetics of all construction, ensuring the beachside charm remained.

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