The Sea Glass Cottage

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Olivia’s diary, on the other hand, had overflowed with gushy stuff about Cooper Vance. When her aunt had been Caitlin’s age, she had definitely been thirsty for Cooper. She had written Mrs. Cooper Vance about a hundred times inside her journal.

  She looked at the information, everything inside her reeling.

  She knew her dad.

  Chief Vance was her dad!

  Her first instinct was to hurry downstairs and tell Mimi. Did she know? Somehow Caitlin doubted it. Whenever she had brought up her father with Mimi, her grandmother had seemed genuinely baffled about his identity.

  “Do you think he knows?” Jake asked.

  She thought of the few interactions she’d had with Cooper and the times she had brought up her mom with him. He had seemed genuinely sad about Natalie. She had seen no trace of guilt or weirdness in him.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. He doesn’t really seem like the kind of guy who would just walk away.”

  “So that means your mom never told him.”

  She couldn’t know for sure, but that was what she suspected, too. Why hadn’t she told him? “I guess not.”

  “What now? Will you tell him?”

  She had to, didn’t she? But how exactly did someone go about blurting out the news to a guy she barely knew that he had a fifteen-year-old daughter?

  “What do you think I should do?”

  Jake slid from the window seat to the floor, where he could stretch out his long legs. “It’s a can of worms, Cait. There had to be a reason your mom never told him she was pregnant with his baby.”

  What could that be? She couldn’t for the life of her think of a reason. Why had Natalie been so careful to keep the identity of her baby’s father a secret? Had she not wanted Cooper to know he had a child? Or had she been with more than one guy and genuinely hadn’t known who, exactly, had fathered the baby?

  “I don’t know what to do. I almost wish I hadn’t done the DNA test now.”

  “At least you know now. The big mystery has been solved.”

  Funny, she didn’t feel that way. She almost felt like she had more questions now than she’d ever had.

  The timer on her phone suddenly went off, and she jumped in shock for a minute before she remembered why she had set it. The rice for dinner was done, which meant Olivia would be home soon.

  How was she going to face Mimi and Olivia without revealing everything she had just found out?

  Forget Mimi and Olivia. How was she ever going to face Melody and her boys?

  And, more significantly, how was she going to tell Chief Vance that she was his long-lost daughter and wanted more than anything to have a relationship with him?

  Or at least she thought she did.

  24

  OLIVIA

  After several sixteen-hour days in a row, Olivia wanted a long bubble bath, a glass of wine if she could find it and a good book that would help her escape to another world.

  More likely, she would be lucky to grab a quick shower and maybe have time for dinner before helping Juliet with her nightly routine then collapsing on her bed.

  She walked in and was pleasantly surprised to hear the rice cooker going off and see Caitlin stirring the stuff she had thrown into the slow cooker that morning, while Jake and Juliet set the table.

  “Hi,” she said with a smile that Jake and her mother returned.

  “Dinner’s almost ready. Go ahead and wash up while we finish setting everything out,” Juliet said.

  Apparently, her mom had had a good day. Juliet’s voice sounded strong and almost cheerful.

  Wouldn’t it be a dream if she could come home to a cooked meal every day? As unlikely as that might be, she could at least enjoy it tonight.

  “Thanks for cooking the rice,” she said to Caitlin after she had washed up and changed out of her work clothes and they were sitting down to eat.

  “It was nothing. All I had to do was measure stuff into the cooker and turn it on. A trained monkey could have done it. Even an untrained one.”

  “Too bad we don’t have a trained monkey.”

  “Or an untrained one,” her mother chimed in.

  “Nope. Only me.” Caitlin looked down at her food, pushing it around her plate with her fork. Why wasn’t she eating?

  Olivia glanced at Jake and found him watching her niece with a concerned expression. When he sensed her attention fixed on him, he gave an obviously fake smile and returned to his meal, with twice Caitlin’s enthusiasm.

  What was wrong? She hated all the secrets in her family. Why couldn’t people just say what was going on with them?

  “How did Melody do today?”

  Caitlin looked up sharply at Juliet’s question, then returned to staring at her food.

  “Good. She only worked part of the day. One of the boys had something at school today.”

  “She sure has her hands full with those boys,” Juliet said.

  “She does. Did I tell you about the fun impromptu photo shoot I did with them last night at the garden center?”

  By the time she had returned home the night before, Juliet had been tired and they hadn’t had a chance to talk.

  “I told you the mayor asked me to help spread the word about the fund-raiser they’re doing this weekend for Chief Gallegos by increasing engagement with the fire department’s social media sites, right?”

  “How is that going?” Juliet asked.

  “So far, I have to say the campaign is a huge success. It’s been a slow and steady build, but the fire department account picked up four hundred new likes overnight.”

  “All because of you? That’s amazing,” Juliet said.

  “Not me. Not really.” She knew just where to give the credit. The city’s hunky new fire chief. “I had a good subject. Cooper came in last night with Melody’s kids to buy some plants he could put in around the fire station. Herbs and some vegetables to brighten up the meals served to the firefighters and EMTs.”

  Oddly, for reasons she didn’t quite understand, this seemed to grab Caitlin’s attention. She lifted her gaze from her plate to stare at Olivia, eyes wide.

  Jake, on the other hand, hardly seemed to be paying any attention to Olivia. His attention was now completely focused on Caitlin, with more of that worry in his eyes.

  “Oh, good for Cooper,” Juliet said. “What a good idea. Steve used to complain about the bland food at the station.”

  The reminder of her father, as usual, made her heart hurt for a minute before she pushed it away.

  “I took some pictures of Cooper and his nephews picking out all the plants for the garden. You know how adorable they are.”

  “Cooper has turned into a good-looking man, too. He was always cute, but he’s definitely grown into his looks.”

  Her mother. A genius at understatement.

  “Yes. Yes, he has. As a result of all the cuteness, I added hundreds of people who are now following the fire department.”

  “Good job, honey,” Juliet said.

  “And of course I tagged the garden center to make sure everybody knows they should come to Harper Hill Home and Garden for all the best gardening supplies.”

  “Smart,” Jake said with a smile.

  Caitlin, Olivia noticed, hadn’t said anything. She seemed to be growing more and more tense.

  “Cooper didn’t love being the center of attention but too bad. I’m going to do it all over again tomorrow.”

  “Is he coming back for more plants?” Juliet asked.

  “No. He and the boys are going to be planting what they bought and I plan to be there to capture it all.”

  “How fun,” Juliet said. “I may have to go into my sadly neglected profile so I can see them.”

  “Chief Vance has been a friend of your family for a long time, hasn’t he?” Jake asked in a nonchalant sort of v
oice that Olivia found highly suspicious—especially when she caught Caitlin elbowing him.

  “Oh my, yes.” Juliet smiled, apparently not noticing anything out of the ordinary. “He and Natalie were the best of friends. A lot like you and Caitlin, Jake. He came for dinner all the time, didn’t he, Olivia?”

  Yes. And she had been gawky and tongue-tied around him from the age of about eleven. “Yes. He and Mel would both eat here at least once a week. Maybe more.”

  “And he and Caitlin’s mom were never anything more than friends?”

  Again, Caitlin seemed to elbow him.

  Olivia wanted to elbow him also, especially since she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the kiss she and Cooper had shared.

  Okay, she could admit it. She had always been more than a little jealous of his friendship with Natalie. They had been so close and had shared everything.

  When she was younger, she had resented him because she missed her big sister and knew Natalie shared things with him she never shared with Olivia. As she got older, she had come to resent Natalie more, because she was able to spend so much time with Cooper when Olivia had been the one with the fierce crush on him.

  “They were good friends. That’s all,” Juliet said. “I always hoped their friendship could have turned into something more. Cooper was always a great kid, so much better than some of the other guys she dated.”

  Natalie hadn’t always gone for the wild, party type. After she turned about sixteen, she had started hanging with a different crowd at school and started wearing edgier clothes, wearing way more makeup, dyeing her hair. She had also started staying out late.

  It was around that time she stopped bringing Cooper around as much, which had broken Olivia’s heart.

  “Anyway, that was a long time ago,” Juliet said, giving a smile that only looked slightly forced.

  “Do you need any help with your photo shoot tomorrow?” Jake asked. “Somebody to hold the flash or something? Maybe Caitlin and I can help you. I would be interested to see what you do.”

  She blinked, surprised at the offer. “You’re welcome to come if you want, but it’s not really an official photo shoot in the traditional sense of the word, just a casual, fun thing.”

  “I don’t know. We might be busy,” Caitlin said, with a meaningful look at Jake that Olivia couldn’t interpret.

  “Well, if you’re in the neighborhood of the fire station, come by. We’re meeting up about five.”

  “Maybe we will,” Jake said. “Thanks.”

  He was a good kid, too. If her niece had any sense, she would grab hold of a good guy like Jake Cragun and not let go.

  Olivia finished her meal, trying not to think too hard about the next day and the anticipation zinging through her at knowing she would see Cooper again.

  He might not be that tough-looking teenager and she might not be twelve and gawky with braces and pigtails, but she was still entirely too obsessed with Cooper Vance.

  COOPER

  Today was the kind of day that made him question all of his life choices.

  Reports of a brush fire had dragged him out of bed at 3:00 a.m. By the time they had fought it to containment, the fire had burned one house and threatened several dozen more.

  The worst of it was, he knew this had been a human-caused fire. Some idiot teenagers decided to light a campfire at their backyard keg party using gasoline, right in the middle of an area with plenty of dry scrub.

  Where the hell the parents had been, he didn’t know.

  At least no lives had been lost, unlike some other nasty fires he had battled—including the one that killed Steve Harper.

  He didn’t like thinking about that night, about his own choices and their terrible consequences. He had not exactly blocked it out over the years, but he didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing about what had happened.

  Somehow the memories seemed sharper and more intense over the past few weeks—probably because Olivia was in town and he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her, which inevitably led him to thinking about her father.

  Not that he had a lot of time to dwell on the past. After the brush fire was out, the morning had been one call after another, most of them sad and difficult. He had responded to a heart attack that Cooper was quite sure the man would not recover from, a car accident with injuries where they had to extract the driver with the Jaws of Life, and a drowning by an inexperienced diver who shouldn’t have been anywhere near the cliffs.

  He loved what he did. He loved being able to help people, especially when the outcome was better than it could have been.

  He loved putting out fires with minimal damage, suppressed by a fast-acting, well-trained fire response team. He loved responding to a call he thought would be a bad one, only to find injuries were less severe than feared. He loved helping kids get their heads unstuck from banisters, rescuing kittens out of trees, delivering babies, which he’d done four times now.

  He loved helping people. That was the basic truth. Yeah, he knew the desire had deep roots in his psyche. He hadn’t needed the military shrink he’d gone to early in his service to tell him his need to help others stemmed from a childhood of trying and failing to fix his mother, with all her mental and emotional problems and the substance abuse she couldn’t seem to beat.

  Most days on the job were a mix of good and bad, which he had a much easier time processing. Today had been relentlessly bad. He was tired, sweaty, mentally and emotionally drained.

  He wanted to grab a pizza and a six-pack, go down to the beach and just sit on a blanket while he let the waves soothe his battered spirit.

  That plan would have to wait. First, he had to plant some herbs as part of this stupid public relations promotion cooked up by the mayor and Olivia Harper. On the positive side, at least he could work out some of his tangled emotions by digging in the dirt, which had its own rewards.

  While he waited for Olivia and his nephews to arrive, Cooper picked up one of the fire department shovels he had used on that brush fire earlier to turn the dirt so he could mix in some of the soil prep he had bought.

  He was almost done when he heard a car pull up and turned around to find Olivia climbing out of her hybrid, along with her funny-looking dog.

  Late-afternoon sunlight glinted in her hair and seemed to make her features glow.

  “Hi,” she said, a little breathless. “Sorry I’m late. Everyone and their aunt Gladys came into the garden center today. I’ve been running all day and still haven’t caught up.”

  He wanted to just stand here in the sunlight and stare at her as he felt a funny kind of peace trickle through him. How did she manage to push away all the dark sadness of the day, just by existing?

  “I didn’t even realize the time,” he said. “I was busy trying to prepare the dirt.”

  “I can help you with that.”

  “You’ve been working in dirt all day. You’re probably tired of gardening right about now. I know the garden center was never your favorite thing.”

  “How did you...?” She blinked, obviously taken off guard that he knew that about her. “I never really hated it. I guess I just...resented it. Does that sound stupid?”

  “No. I get it.”

  “It was all-consuming for my family, you know? That first year or so after my dad died, my mom threw herself into the garden center. She was busy with it from first thing in the morning to long after I went to bed at night. She didn’t have a lot of room left for anything else.”

  Yeah, he got that. Only his mom hadn’t been interested in anything but booze and pills and men.

  “And then Natalie got pregnant with Caitlin and Juliet really didn’t have time for a needy adolescent. I guess you were gone by then.”

  Yeah. His mom had finally died of alcohol poisoning only a few months after Steve’s death. After making sure Melody had a good home with their aunt
and uncle, Cooper had enlisted as soon as he could and left for basic training.

  “Anyway, the point is I don’t really hate the garden center. In fact—” she looked around as if preparing to reveal a big secret “—don’t tell my mom, but these last few weeks have taught me a new appreciation for it. I never realized how satisfying it can be to help someone find exactly the right plant they need for a certain spot in their garden.”

  She smiled. “Don’t get me wrong. It will never be my first love. But if my mom ever falls off a ladder again and I have to come back to town to help her, I won’t be completely miserable.”

  “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” he said.

  When she looked disconcerted, he realized what he had said. “That your mom falls off a ladder, I mean. Not you coming back. You can come back whenever you want.”

  “Um. Thanks,” she said, leaving him feeling like a fumbling idiot.

  “We should probably get the garden prepped before the boys get here,” she said after he couldn’t think of anything to say for several long seconds.

  While Otis stretched out in a patch of sunlight, she went to work with a second shovel he’d brought out to the project. As they worked together, he could feel more of his tension trickle away.

  The patch of ground wasn’t particularly large, only about two feet wide by six feet long, so it didn’t take them long to work in the bag of soil prep.

  When they finished, she stepped away, setting the shovel against the wall of the building. “There you go. Ready to plant.”

  “Now if only the boys would get here. I guess everybody’s running late tonight.”

  As soon as they said those words, they heard children’s footsteps and the boys raced around the corner of the building. Otis jumped to his feet, wagging his little tail.

  “Hey, Uncle Cooper. Hi, Olivia,” his oldest nephew, Will, said, gasping to catch his breath. “We ran all the way down the hill to here.”

  “Where’s your mom? I thought she was bringing you down,” Cooper said, frowning.