The Sea Glass Cottage

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Hey, guys. Grab your shoes. We’re going out,” Cooper called to his nephews.

  He was still tired after working a double shift, but he would try to find enough energy for dinner, especially if it could make Melody smile.

  8

  OLIVIA

  Walking into the main building at Harper Hill Home & Garden the next afternoon triggered hundreds of scent memories in Olivia, one after another. Loamy. Sharp. Sweet. Sawdust and flowers and dirt.

  She had a million things to do. The list Juliet had texted her waited urgently on her phone. Olivia pushed everything away to focus on inhaling the scents of her childhood.

  In many ways, she had grown up here at the garden center, even more than she had at Sea Glass Cottage. She had played dolls in the shade of the trees for sale, had engaged in hide-and-seek games with Natalie between the aisles, had gone for endless rides in the wheelbarrow, pushed by her father.

  The family business was as much a part of her childhood as school, her friends and the recreational opportunities available along the coast.

  The store had been started by ancestors on her father’s side three generations back, first as an agricultural supply store frequented by all the farmers who had originally settled this area of California.

  Around her grandfather’s time, the focus of Harper Hill Home & Garden began to transition from working farmers to hobbyists, those who planted vegetable gardens in every available sun-facing patch and flowers in containers and baskets and patio strips.

  Her father had enjoyed running a greenhouse and garden supply business, and was good at it, but he had loved helping others more. If Steve Harper could have made a living in Cape Sanctuary as a full-time firefighter and EMT, he would have jumped at the chance. During her childhood, though, the entire fire department had been volunteer except the chief.

  Her dad had supported his family through the garden center instead, building it from a mom-and-pop store to one that drew gardeners from the entire region.

  Some people loved nothing more than having their hands in the dirt and a flat full of flowers waiting to be transplanted. Though Olivia had spent so much of her childhood here, she had not picked up the gardening bug. She kept a few houseplants in her Seattle apartment, only one that had survived longer than a year or two.

  Still, she loved the scent of the leather gloves hanging on a rack, the lemon smell of certain herbs, the rich, verdant scent of growing things.

  She could think of worse ways to spend a workday. Like maybe staring at a screen for eighteen hours a day.

  The traitorous thought popped into her head out of nowhere and Olivia frowned.

  She didn’t mind her job. She did important work, keeping her medical group’s computers safe and up-to-date. She enjoyed the people she worked with and she especially loved her side hustle, helping her clients better convey their message to customers. She was good at it and had had more business than she could handle.

  If she sometimes felt overwhelmed, as if the world was spinning so fast she was going to fall off the edge, that was all part of the price for success, right?

  One of the garden center employees, a young college-age student with a goatee and a man bun, was watering the annuals from a coiled hose.

  “Hi,” he said rather laconically as their gazes met. “Welcome to Harper Hill Home and Garden. We have all your gardening needs. May I help you find something?”

  How about a little enthusiasm? she thought, in response to the lackluster greeting.

  “Hi. I’m Olivia Harper. Juliet’s daughter.”

  This didn’t earn her more than a blink of acknowledgment. “Oh. Then you probably don’t need help. You probably already know where everything is.”

  “Not really. But I imagine I will figure things out over the next few weeks. I’m not here to buy anything. I’m going to be helping out, temporarily taking over for my mom while she recovers. Doug, is it?” she asked, reading his name tag.

  “Yeah. Doug Carlson. How is your mom doing? It sucked, what happened to her. I had problems with that same ladder wobbling earlier in the day when I was pulling down a flower arrangement for a customer. Guess I should have said something.”

  You think? Olivia bit her lip to keep the sarcasm inside. She couldn’t blame him. Her stubborn mother probably wouldn’t have listened to him anyway. She never should have been up on a ladder in the first place, wobbly or not.

  “She’s all right. In a lot of pain, still.”

  “Oh man. I’m sorry to hear that. She’s a nice lady. If you want, I’ve got some edibles that might take the edge off her pain.”

  She could just picture her mother zoned out on enhanced brownies.

  “Right now, she’s being followed pretty closely at the hospital. But who knows? She might take you up on that when she gets home.”

  At this point, Olivia wouldn’t mind anything that might mellow her mother a little. Juliet still wasn’t convinced that Olivia was the right person to take over her job here at Harper Hill for the next few weeks.

  “You don’t even like working at the garden center. You never have,” Juliet had repeated, her hands curling around the lovely turquoise knit blanket one of her friends had brought her in the hospital.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Olivia had said, doing her best not to be hurt at her mother’s lack of confidence. “I’m only going to be there temporarily. I can handle it for a month.”

  Juliet had groaned, only partially in pain. “A month. I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “First of all, you didn’t ask. I’m insisting. Second of all, what’s the alternative? Do you want to close the place during the busiest season of the year? What will you do with all your inventory? Think of the carnage. All those homeless plants, left to wither and die!”

  Her mother had made a face and continued arguing, until Olivia was tempted to walk out of the hospital room right then, hop into her car, grab her dog and drive straight back to Seattle.

  She wouldn’t, though. She owed it to her father, if nothing else, to help keep alive the business he had loved during this temporary crisis.

  “I’m going to be running things in name only. You’ll be telling me what to do behind the scenes. Just think of me as your arms and legs. Your eyes and ears. As long as you give me a detailed to-do list every day, everything will work out.”

  Juliet hadn’t looked convinced, but a nurse came in just then to change one of the medications going into her IV line and she had finally let the subject drop.

  “When is your mom supposed to go home from the hospital?” Doug asked her now.

  “A few more days. That’s all I know right now. Her doctor wants to send her to a rehab facility for a week, but of course she’s not happy about that. We’ll see who wins.”

  “I’m betting on Juliet.”

  Maybe he’d been working here longer than Olivia thought. He certainly knew her mother well.

  “I tend to agree, but we’ll see. How have things been going without her these past few days?”

  Before he could answer, a customer approached them, pulling one of the store wagons with tires big enough to handle the gravel and sawdust terrain.

  “Hi. I’ve looked through three greenhouses and can’t find what I need. Can you point me in the right direction? I’m looking for some ornamental grasses for my planters.”

  “Ornamental grasses are in Greenhouse Four,” Doug offered.

  “Can you show me?”

  Olivia stepped toward Doug. “I can finish watering here, if you want to show our customer where to find the grass.”

  She really hoped he would stick to the ornamental kind.

  “This way, ma’am,” he said, leading the way through the door of the main greenhouse to the pathway leading to the others.

  She didn’t know how much water the plants needed but decided she wou
ld give them all a small soak and let one of the more knowledgeable employees fill in if some of the plants needed more.

  Olivia had worked her way down one long row of annuals and was pulling the hose across the way to the other side, focused on the job at hand, when a voice spoke behind her.

  “We keep running into each other.”

  She gasped in surprise and whirled around, completely forgetting momentarily that she still held a hose in her hand. Water splattered all over Cooper Vance. She froze for an instant, horrified, but finally managed to jerk the hose away from him and turn it back to the annuals.

  “Oh. I’m so sorry!”

  He looked down at the water splotched all over his navy fire department polo shirt and cargo pants. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Look at you. You’re soaked! Let me find some towels.”

  He shook his head. “Not necessary. It’s a warm day and this will be dried before we know it. Trust me when I say this is nothing compared to being blasted with a fire hose by a rookie on his first day.”

  Not trusting herself to behave rationally when he was around, Olivia went to the wall, turned off the faucet and looped the hose against the wall holder to ensure no customers would trip over the line. He waited, wearing an expression of interest that left her feeling as if she had been the one doused in cold water.

  “Can I help you with something?” she finally asked.

  “I need to pick up a pruner. My sister has some shrubs and trees that need trimming, but her jackass soon-to-be ex-husband took all the lawn and garden tools with him, despite the fact that he currently lives in an apartment in Redding with no lawn whatsoever to speak of.”

  “I wish I could take a pruner to him,” she muttered.

  He raised an eyebrow and she thought she saw amusement flash in his eyes. “Agreed. I’m afraid that won’t help clip back her honeysuckle, though.”

  She looked around the garden center. “I’m afraid I can’t help you much. I don’t know where anything is. I think I know where they used to be but I have no idea if my mom has moved things. If you want to wait a minute, I can find someone to help you.”

  “No problem. I can take a look around. I’ll find what I need eventually.”

  The smartest thing would be to leave him to it. Hadn’t she told herself the day before to stay far away from Cooper Vance? But she needed to familiarize herself with the layout of the greenhouses anyway and it made sense for her to help out a client at the same time.

  “When I was a kid, Dad kept the loppers and clippers and other gardening tools in here,” she said, leading the way to a cavernous space next to the main greenhouse.

  “Bingo,” he said as soon as they walked through the doors. The room held shovels and spades, wheelbarrows, coiled hoses and a wall display of dangerous-looking pruning shears.

  “I can help you find them but don’t ask me which one is best for your job,” she warned him.

  “I can probably figure out that part,” he answered.

  “That makes one of us, then.”

  He grinned and went to the wall to better study the implements of destruction. After studying his options, he pulled down a long pair of shears with orange handles.

  “I think these should do,” he answered.

  “For the honeysuckle or for Rich?”

  “Both, if I’m lucky.” Cooper grinned at her and Olivia felt hot and breathless suddenly.

  Oh, cut it out, she snapped at herself.

  “Excuse me,” a voice cut in. “Do you work here? I have a question and can’t find anyone else.”

  She cleared her throat and faced a man who looked to be in his sixties, wearing a Western-cut shirt, suspenders and Levi’s rolled up at least twice. “Sort of, sir. I just started. How can I help you?”

  “I need to buy a chain saw but you have so many. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  She could totally relate. “Can you tell me how you expect to use it most?”

  “Oh, you know. The usual thing. General use. Clearing away tree branches. Maybe cutting up firewood here and there.”

  Okay. That didn’t help her at all. She had no idea how to guide the man to the right purchase. Fortunately, Cooper stepped in to her rescue.

  “I don’t work here, but I do know quite a bit about chain saws.”

  “You’re the new fire chief, aren’t you?”

  He nodded and held out the hand not holding the pruning shears. “Cooper Vance.”

  “Walter. Walter Trevino. I knew your aunt and uncle some,” the man said. “Good people.”

  Something sad flickered in Cooper’s gaze. “They were great.”

  They were the ones who had taken in his sister after his and Melody’s mother had died. Olivia remembered the uncle had died about ten years ago and his aunt Helen had remarried and moved to the San Diego area, leaving the house to Melody.

  “I still miss seeing old Frank working in his yard. He loved that place. It’s nice to have your sister and her little ones in the neighborhood. Shame about the divorce, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Cooper said, his voice clipped. “Let’s see if we can find a good chain-saw fit for you.”

  For the next ten minutes, Cooper and Mr. Trevino—whom she recognized now as a man who once owned an insurance agency in town—looked through the available inventory until they settled on one that would meet his needs.

  “Thanks for all your help, Chief,” he said after loading down with chain oil and a gas can to fill it with.

  “Glad to help.” Cooper smiled and she felt slightly breathless again, trying hard not to notice how the sunlight filtering through the greenhouse room seemed to gleam in his hair.

  “I can’t ring you up since I don’t have cashier credentials yet, but I’ll see if I can find someone to help,” Olivia said to both men.

  She led the way back into the main greenhouse, where Doug was working the cash register now, helping a young woman who looked to be buying only gardening gloves.

  “You first.” Cooper gestured to the other man, who got into line behind the young woman.

  When the fire chief turned to face her, Olivia fought that stupid reaction again. “Thanks for your help,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as breathless as she felt. “As you can tell, I’m a bit out of my comfort zone here.”

  “You’re trying. That’s the important thing.”

  She made a face. “I don’t exactly have much choice. Juliet will be laid up for a while.”

  “Poor thing. She’s not going to be happy on the sidelines.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that. My mom thinks she has to do everything by herself and has a really hard time letting other people help her.”

  “Don’t make the same mistake,” Cooper suggested.

  His words hit a little too close to home. She possibly might have inherited her mother’s independent streak, at least in most areas of her life. “That shouldn’t be a problem for me, at least while I’m working here.”

  She ought to have a better idea of how things worked at the garden center. At least where things were. She had worked here during high school, after all. Of course, that had been more than a decade ago, and even back then, she had been going through the motions, only doing what her mother told her to.

  Juliet had never wanted to give her responsibility over anything, even the garden center’s website.

  “I don’t want you working so hard. You have enough to do with schoolwork and your friends and extracurricular things. You should just enjoy your teen years, honey,” Juliet had urged.

  Right. Enjoy and teen years were not words she could easily put together. Her mother hadn’t even been aware of how Olivia had struggled over losing her father and coping with the drama that always surrounded Natalie. The late-night calls from jail, the hospitalizations, the rehab
that never stuck.

  She knew everything her mother had been dealing with, especially after Caitlin came along. Her mother had been exhausted, overwhelmed. In response, Olivia had tried to be the perfect daughter, unwilling to add one more burden to her mother’s shoulders.

  She had felt a huge pressure not to rock their already wildly flailing boat. Her grades had been stellar; she had stayed out of trouble; she learned to cook and took over some of the housekeeping duties at Sea Glass Cottage to ease her mother’s load.

  Look at where it got her. She was now responsible for everything. The pot-smoking employees, the customers who didn’t know what they wanted but expected you to find it for them, the payroll and the taxes and keeping the inventory alive.

  This was going to be a disaster.

  Olivia wanted to sink down next to the cash register and cry.

  “You okay?”

  She could feel the beginnings of a panic attack starting at the edge of her subconscious, the second one she had suffered in a week. She hadn’t had one in ages, probably since college, when the pressure of trying to be the perfect daughter all the time had finally caught up with her.

  She took a deep breath, willing herself to stay calm as she forced a smile for Cooper. “Fine,” she lied. “Is that all you need?”

  COOPER

  He did not like the sudden pinched lines around her mouth or the way her high cheekbones had lost their color. She looked like she was going to pass out.

  “I think I’m good for now,” he said. “I was thinking about planting an herb garden at the fire station and might be back for some planning help with that. But for now, I only need the shears.”

  “Right. Okay. Good. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that by the time you come back for that, things won’t be so crazy around here. We’re shorthanded. Apparently the assistant manager also quit this week.”

  He gave her a sympathetic look. “Rough timing.”

  “Tell me about it. The garden center does the bulk of its business in the spring and right now we’re barely operational.”