She had seen firsthand how losing someone you loved so deeply could devastate an entire family.
What if she was too late to protect her heart?
The thought haunted her as she sat in the park beside him, watching the boys play and the sun slide lower into the ocean. She had dated Grant for two years and been engaged for two more. Theirs had been a comfortable, quiet, easy relationship. She had cared about him and wouldn’t have agreed to marry him if she hadn’t thought she loved him, but in all that time, she had never known this wild tangle of tenderness and heat and aching need for Cooper.
No. Coming home to Cape Sanctuary had simply messed with her psyche. Dealing with her mother’s care, the constant tension with Caitlin, her stress over the garden center. Her emotions were on edge right now, everything close to the surface. Once she returned to Seattle and the life she had created there, she would regain perspective and be able to see the difference between physical attraction and deep, meaningful love.
She was still trying to convince herself of that when Cooper woke up.
The sun had only just finished sliding below the horizon in a blaze of orange, lavender and peach. Will and Ryan were still on the swings, but Charlie had come to the blanket and was now sitting on her lap, with Otis on his lap.
She watched as the sleep faded from his eyes.
“Hey. You weren’t supposed to let me sleep.”
“I didn’t know those were my orders.”
He sat up, scrubbing his face. “Sorry. It’s been a really long day, starting with a fire in the early hours.”
Thank you for another reminder of why I can’t fall for you, she thought. “We should probably get these guys home. The older two still have school tomorrow.”
“I don’t. I could stay here all night,” Charlie declared.
“You could, but I’m afraid Otis and I need to go to bed.”
Charlie sighed. “Can we come back tomorrow? This was the best night.”
She smiled and hugged him. “It really was,” she said. For all her angst, she didn’t want the magical evening to end, either.
“We still have to walk back to the fire station and then I’ll give you a ride home,” Cooper said. He stood and his nephew did the same. Then Cooper reached a hand down to help her stand. His hand was warm and she thought for a moment he would pull her into his arms. To her relief, he must have remembered his nephews were there because he released her hand.
“Thanks for the pizza,” he said.
“You paid for it. Next time it’s my treat.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said with a smile. He scooped Charlie up onto his shoulders and reached for Ryan’s hand.
“I think it’s your turn to hold Otis’s leash,” she told Will.
“Yay!” he exclaimed, reaching for it, then completely stole her heart by slipping his other hand in hers, and together they walked through the quiet streets, with Olivia wondering how she was going to say goodbye in a few weeks.
26
JULIET
The gorgeous California coast rolled past her window as she and Henry drove south toward the Hidden Creek Resort again.
With each mile, Juliet could feel more of her tension disappear.
She knew she shouldn’t be here with him. For all her determination that she would be strong and protect him, even if it meant sacrificing what she wanted, she had folded completely when he had texted an hour ago, asking if she wanted to take a trip down and see what his crew had been doing all day.
“It’s a gorgeous afternoon, isn’t it?”
“Stunning.”
She wanted to open the windows of his pickup truck and let the wind ripple through her hair. Even with her hip and her ribs aching, she felt alive and vibrant.
“I feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to get out twice in one week. I’m glad you called. Thank you. We live in one of the most beautiful places on the planet and I don’t take the opportunity often enough to simply enjoy my surroundings,” she said.
“We are lucky to live here, aren’t we?”
“Yes. I sometimes forget just how gorgeous it is, until we have a clear afternoon like this one to remind me.”
“Maybe your accident is turning into one of those blessings in disguise.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said with a smile. “I don’t think I can ever say I’m grateful that I fell. But at least being sidelined has reminded me how important it is to stop and look around once in a while. It’s a lesson I won’t soon forget.”
At least she hoped not, anyway. Once she returned to work, would she jump right into the busy whirl of activity, running the garden center, helping Caitlin with homework, volunteering in the community?
“What’s the latest from the doctor?”
“At my last appointment, she said things are healing nicely. She said I could go back to work next week part-time, if I feel like I’m up to it.”
“Great news.”
Strangely, the prospect did not fill her with as much excitement as she might have expected. “I suppose. I’m not sure I’ve been missed all that much, to tell you the truth.”
He gave her a long look. “You’re not happy things have gone smoothly with Olivia at the helm?”
She gazed out the window at the passing shoreline, wishing she hadn’t brought this up, especially since she didn’t know exactly how to articulate what she meant. “Harper Hill Home and Garden is my livelihood. Of course I’m happy things have gone smoothly. I certainly didn’t want Olivia to fail.”
“What’s the issue, then?”
“I guess I hoped she might turn to me for a little more help. My pride hurts to realize I’m not completely indispensable.”
Henry was the only person on earth with whom she felt free enough to express those feelings because she knew he would never judge her harshly. Who would she possibly tell these things to when she didn’t have him anymore?
“Olivia seems to be doing a very competent job. But you know her heart isn’t in it, like yours is. You love running the garden center, which is one of the reasons people from across the region come to you for their gardening needs. Your enthusiasm, your passion and your knowledge are at least as important as your high-quality inventory, if not more so.”
His words comforted the sting she hadn’t fully realized had been there under her skin. “Thank you.”
“I’m sure Olivia has had plenty of problems, too. She probably just doesn’t ask you questions because she didn’t want to burden you right now while you’re busy healing.”
“You could be right.”
He gave her a careful look across the pickup cab. “What other reason could there be?”
Some of her delight in the afternoon’s beauty seemed to seep away like sand washing out to sea. As much as she trusted Henry, she had never spoken to him about her secret sorrow, about how Olivia had become so adept at shutting her out over the years.
“My daughter is fiercely independent. She has been most of her adult life, basically because I gave her no choice.”
“There you go, being too hard on yourself again.”
“Not hard enough,” she admitted. “We don’t have a perfect mother-daughter relationship and I know it’s entirely my fault.”
“Is there such a thing as a perfect mother-daughter relationship?” Henry asked. “I know Lilianne struggled with her own mother, even as she was dying. She couldn’t let go of some of her past hurt, as much as she wanted to. I think toward the end, she was at least able to find peace with it.”
As he spoke of his late wife, she missed her dear friend with a fierce, visceral ache.
“I wasn’t a very good mother to Olivia after Steve died. I was terrible, actually.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I was, Henry. Ask her. I wasn’t a good mother to
either of my girls. I was too wrapped up in my own pain and in over my head trying to run the business. I see you with Jake and I’m filled with shame and guilt.”
“You shouldn’t be!”
“The two of you are so close. You’ve handled single parenthood wonderfully. I didn’t. Far from it. I didn’t enforce any rules with Natalie, and as a result, she ran wild for that first year and ended up pregnant with Caitlin.”
“Don’t blame yourself for that. Your daughter made her own choices.”
“I can’t help asking myself if she might have made different choices if I’d been more present in her life during that time.”
She had spent many sleepless nights wondering how she could have been stronger, if Steve’s influence while he was alive might have tempered some of Nat’s wildness.
“And poor Olivia. I was running in a hundred different directions during her teenage years. It was completely unfair to her. I neglected her, first because of my grief, then because of Natalie’s and Caitlin’s needs being so overwhelming. I can’t blame her for being angry about that. I wasn’t there for Olivia when she needed me. I can never fix that.”
“Don’t say never,” he said gruffly. “It might be too late to change anything for Natalie, but Olivia is still here and she still needs her mother. Have you talked to her about this?”
It was the huge unspoken elephant in the room every time she was with her daughter. “No. Not in so many words.”
“Maybe it’s time to do that. Maybe Olivia never saw things that way. Or maybe she’s just waiting for you to acknowledge what happened. You won’t know until you have a discussion.”
The idea terrified her, even as she knew she had to do it. “You’re right. I know you are.”
“You can’t change what happened after Steve died, Juliet. All you can do now is move forward and forge the kind of relationship she needs now, as a strong and successful adult woman.”
His words resounded deep in her heart. That was where she had been going wrong. She had been trying to mother Olivia the same way she did Caitlin. That probably wasn’t what Olivia needed right now. She didn’t need to be nagged about remembering to wear a sweater; she needed to be supported and encouraged for the choices she was making in her life and perhaps guided toward different ones.
“How do you always find exactly the right thing to say?”
Henry smiled. “All the years of watching you, the smartest woman I know.”
She scoffed but didn’t have a chance to answer because they had reached the sign for Hidden Creek Resort. The site was even more lovely than she remembered, now that the empty places in the landscaping had been filled in with verdant new plants.
“Oh,” she breathed, struck almost speechless with delight. “It’s absolutely gorgeous.”
“Thank you. I’m thrilled with the way it turned out. How would you like to be the first one to have an official tour?”
“I would be honored,” she said.
He climbed out of the pickup truck and went around for her wheelchair, then rolled it to her side of the vehicle.
Again, he had to lift her out and into the chair. Was it her imagination or did he hold her a little longer than strictly necessary before lowering her to the chair?
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes. I can’t wait,” she said, even as she wished he could hold her just a bit longer.
Again, they were the only ones around as he wheeled her to the garden so she could see the finished product—though she certainly knew well enough that no garden was ever truly finished.
The shadows were long as the sun began to set. In the sweet light of dusk, the colors of the flowers were intense and vivid. Breathtaking. Everywhere she turned, they provided a feast for the eyes.
“I love it,” she said, when he wheeled her to the terrace overlooking the ocean, where containers of flowers spilled over with color. “I’m going to save every penny I have so that I can stay here someday.”
He watched her. “What would you do if you stayed here?”
“Absolutely nothing.” She laughed. “That probably sounds silly when I’ve been complaining about how doing nothing has been making me crazy since my accident, but this seems different somehow. I would love to sit right here with a book and a glass of something cold. How heavenly, to sit and watch the sunset, looking out over the beautiful gardens leading to the sea.”
“We don’t have the book or the beverages, but it still feels pretty heavenly to me.”
“Same,” she admitted with a smile.
They sat there, her in the wheelchair and Henry on the bench beside her, and watched in a perfect, almost reverential silence as the sun slipped into the ocean in one last vibrant orange-and-lavender blast across the sky.
Juliet released a deep sigh she had not realized she had been holding in. “Wow. That was stunning. I’m not sure we could have asked for a more beautiful evening.”
“Agreed,” Henry said quietly. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”
She wanted to weep, suddenly, for reasons she could not have explained. With all her heart, she suddenly wished for more peaceful evenings with him like this.
A lifetime of them.
She tried so hard not to be bitter about her diagnosis. Everyone had some trial or heartache to deal with. It was part of the miracle and challenge of being alive.
Yes, having multiple sclerosis had complicated her life, with the pills and the worry and the things she could no longer do. But it wasn’t the end of the world. In the online support group she followed, she had met others who had lived for many years with MS. The progression of her disease had been relatively slow and the symptoms mild so far. She knew she was lucky.
But as she sat beside the man she loved, sorrow and anger spiraled inside her, both equally powerful.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
No. Far from it. My heart is breaking.
Of course she couldn’t tell him that.
“Sunsets sometimes make me a little melancholy. I’m not sure why.”
“Maybe because this day, this moment, won’t come again. It’s fleeting and precious. We want the sun to stay right on the horizon but it never will.”
Yes. One of the few constants in life was that no one could stand still. “Yes. Something like that.”
“Don’t let it ruin what’s been a really wonderful evening.”
“It has been perfect. Exactly what I needed.”
He looked over at her and she almost wept again at the tenderness in his gaze.
“Juli.”
Only her name. That’s all he said. And then he kissed her with a soft tenderness that left her helplessly entangled.
The moment was perfect, there in the dusky purple light after sunset, when colors were muted and the night was quiet around them.
She didn’t want it to end, even as she knew it had to. “I wish we could stay like this forever,” she murmured after several long, delicious moments.
He was silent, his forehead pressed to hers. “I do, too. Sooner or later, I’m afraid it will get dark and cool and we’ll have to head back to real life.”
She didn’t want to. She knew what waited back in real life. Loneliness. Emptiness.
“Just because we can’t stay here forever doesn’t mean we can’t have other kisses and other sunsets, Juli.”
His words doused her like a bucketful of seawater in the face.
She wasn’t being fair to him. This game she was playing, this back-and-forth, this yes-then-no was wrong, bordering on cruel.
“We have to go.” She rolled the cursed wheelchair away from him, just far enough that he couldn’t miss the message.
He looked as if he wanted to say something but finally gave a nod and pushed her silently back to his pickup truck. He didn’t say anything when he lifted her in
again and made sure the seat belt was fastened or after loading her wheelchair into the back of the pickup truck and climbing in himself.
The distance between them seemed vast and unbreachable, as far as it would take her to reach Hawaii by canoe, the drive to Cape Sanctuary far less comfortable than the one they had taken on their way down the coast. Tension filled the cab of his pickup truck. She could feel it rolling off him in waves. He played the stereo, one of those adult contemporary rock stations where she knew the words to every song, but she had no desire to sing anything.
The coward in her wanted to curl up in the corner pretending to sleep, but she forced herself to stay awake mile after painful mile as the tension between them ratcheted up.
When he finally pulled up to Sea Glass Cottage, she saw lights on in the upstairs rooms, both Caitlin’s and Olivia’s. Good. Her girls were home safely.
“Thank you for a lovely day,” she said with the politeness of someone expressing appreciation to a cashier at the grocery store.
He uttered an epithet, an ugly, raw word she’d never heard him say.
“You’re doing it again.”
“What?” she asked, though she knew perfectly well what he was talking about.
“Pushing me away. You let me inside one minute, then close yourself up completely the next. You do it again and again. And I just let you.”
She heard the pain in his voice and closed her eyes, hating herself. She had created this situation, had hurt him, because she was too weak to make the necessary break between them. She cherished their friendship so much. Losing it was going to devastate her, but she didn’t see any other choice.
Anything she could think to say sounded horrible, so she finally just spilled the words that came to her.
“I told you we could never have a relationship. I don’t know why you’re making this so ugly.”
“You did. You absolutely did. You told me we couldn’t have a relationship.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, curling her hands in her lap and hating herself and this entire situation.
The Sea Glass Cottage Page 26