She wasn’t sure if he moved first or if she did or if they moved at the same time so that his mouth slid over hers. This kiss was slow, sweet, filled with a tenderness that made her ache. She wrapped her arms around him, lost in the peace.
31
CAITLIN
“Are you sure you don’t want a ride home with us?” Ms. Clayton smiled. “I’ve got plenty of room for one more.”
Caitlin shook her head, as always, a little freaked out by the idea of Mimi being close friends with one of her teachers. Ms. Clayton taught her fourth-hour sophomore English. Her classes were fun and she somehow managed to make dry, dusty highbrow books interesting, but that didn’t mean Caitlin wanted her to be besties with her grandma.
“I’m good. I rode my bike down, so it’s easy enough for me to ride home.”
She looked around the rapidly emptying fire station. Where had Chief Vance gone? He had been there one minute; the next he had disappeared. Oddly, Olivia had disappeared as well.
“Anyway, I think I’ll stick around and help clean up a bit.”
“That is so sweet of you.” Mimi smiled at her from her wheelchair. “I am sure the firefighters will appreciate your help.”
She didn’t care about the rest of the firefighters. She only wanted to spend more time getting to know her father.
“It shouldn’t take too long. Looks like they’re nearly done.”
“All right. I’ll see you at home.”
Ms. Clayton wheeled Mimi out of the fire station and Caitlin headed to where some of the firefighters were taking down the tables and chairs.
“Can I help with anything?” she asked Roy Little, a neighbor of theirs who was always nice to her and her friends.
“We’re just tearing stuff down now but we won’t say no to help.”
Chief Vance hadn’t appeared again by the time all the tables were down. She should probably just go home.
“Can I do anything else?” she asked.
“You mind taking these extra paper plates and cutlery into the mess hall? It’s just through there,” Roy said, pointing to the front area of the fire station.
“No problem.” She loaded her arms full with as much as she could carry and headed down the hall where he had indicated. The room was empty. Since she wasn’t sure where to put anything, she ended up just stacking it neatly on the counter.
She headed back out toward the large area where the breakfast had been and had made it a few steps down the hall when she heard voices. She recognized one of them. It was her father. Curious, she turned toward a half-open doorway she hadn’t seen before. That was when she found her father. He was inside, leaning against the desk.
And he wasn’t alone.
He was kissing Olivia.
She stared in shock, a sick feeling spreading in her stomach.
This couldn’t be happening. Her aunt and Chief Vance?
She didn’t think she made a sound but she must have gasped or squeaked or something. They both turned around and spotted her looking in through the slim crack in the door like some kind of weird pervert Peeping Tom.
“Caitlin! Oh. I... This isn’t... We were just...”
All her anger at her aunt, the hurt and betrayal she had nursed for months, seemed to come spilling through her, thick and fast.
Her aunt hated her and had hated her mother. She couldn’t seem to wrap her head around the fact that Chief Vance would be kissing her. It hadn’t seemed like a sexy rom-com kind of kiss, she realized, but something softer. More gentle. Somehow that seemed to make everything worse. Did they have feelings for each other?
“It’s fairly obvious what the two of you are doing.”
Horribly, stupidly, she wanted to cry. He was her dad and she hadn’t even had the chance to get to know him and now Olivia was going to ruin everything.
“Are you two having sex?”
Olivia’s jaw dropped at the question that Caitlin couldn’t believe had even come out of her mouth.
“None of your business,” she exclaimed. “What kind of question is that? You’re fifteen, not eight!”
She drew in a sharp breath, feeling exactly like she was eight again, like a child all by herself in a corner, watching all the other girls have Doughnuts with Dad at some stupid school thing and wondering why she didn’t have a dad to share her doughnut.
“You’re right,” she snapped, not thinking through the words at all, driven only by years of pain and loss and lack. “It’s none of my business. You’re an adult. You can sleep with my father if you want to.”
Again, she couldn’t believe the words had come out of her. This didn’t seem real. It was as if somebody else was here, spewing all this ugliness.
Chief Vance had recoiled at her words as if she’d slapped him with them, while Olivia just stared at her.
This wasn’t the way she wanted this to go. She had imagined it a hundred times since finding out those DNA results and never had she imagined Olivia there at all.
“With your what?” Chief Vance exclaimed.
“Nothing. Never mind.” She turned to go, needing only to get away from the shock and disbelief and, yeah, horror in his eyes. Those tears burned again, stupid and immature, and she could feel them spilling over down her cheeks.
“Hold on. What did you say?” Cooper demanded.
She drew in a breath and swiped at her eyes. At least she knew one thing now. Nobody could act that well.
“You didn’t know,” she stated. “I wondered if you didn’t or if you knew and just didn’t care.”
“It’s not true,” he said sharply. “It can’t be true. I’m not your father. Why would you even say such a thing?”
She wiped at her cheeks. Damn it. Why wouldn’t the stupid tears stop? They were angry tears, she told herself. She wasn’t hurt at all by his reaction.
“DNA doesn’t lie. I took a test at one of the genealogy sites. It sent me the names of people who are closely related to me and, guess what, your sister came up as linked to my DNA profile. Since she is closely related to me, that means you have to be my father.”
Chief Vance sank down onto his desk. Olivia just stared at both of them.
“There must be a mistake. She told me I wasn’t the father. She swore up and down. She swore on her dad’s memory.”
“You slept with Natalie.” Olivia looked like somebody had just punched her in the gut, like that time Caitlin had fallen climbing the ropes in PE class and had the wind knocked out of her and had gasped on the ground for like five minutes.
Chief Vance—her father—looked about the same.
“Once. The night before I left for basic training.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Only that one time. I don’t think either one of us meant for it to happen. It was just...one of those things. She was upset about me leaving. I’d had more to drink than I should have. It was... It shouldn’t have happened. We used protection but...”
“But it doesn’t always work,” Olivia said, her voice sounding strange and distant.
He gazed at Caitlin, his eyes still stunned. “When I found out from Melody that Nat was pregnant, I came home as soon as I could get leave to ask her if you were...if you were mine. She said no. She swore it. She had a boyfriend but she wouldn’t give me his name. She...she claimed he was married and that she didn’t want to ruin his life.”
“I know his name. Paul Reyes.”
Olivia looked astonished. “You can’t know that. How could you possibly know that?”
Caitlin shrugged. “She wrote a lot of stuff down. Not everything, apparently, since I didn’t know about you until after the DNA test.”
“That’s why you read her diaries,” Olivia exclaimed. “You were looking for your father.”
She shrugged, which wasn’t really an answer.
“I’ve been curious f
or...for a while about my dad. Mimi wouldn’t tell me anything. She said she didn’t know. One day after Christmas when I was carrying decorations up to the attic for her, I found a bunch of my mom’s stuff. I went through and found her diaries. So, yeah. I read them looking for answers. She didn’t leave me much else.”
If she sounded bitter, too bad. Her mom had chosen drugs over being a parent to her. How could that not leave scars on her heart?
For all her hurt, Caitlin knew she was one of the lucky ones in the opioid epidemic. She might not have a mom and dad but at least she always had her beloved Mimi to take care of her. It was important to focus on the positive in the situation, on what she had and not what she had missed out on all these years.
“Mimi has told me stuff about my mom over the years when I’ve asked, but I think she only tells me the good things. Not necessarily the truth. I wanted to know who she was.”
“You could have asked me.”
“What would you have told me? You would have just told me the whitewashed stuff, too. Anyway, you weren’t around. You couldn’t wait to leave your mom and Nat’s Brat. That’s what you called me in your diary.”
Olivia looked stricken. “You read mine, too.”
Caitlin shrugged again. “Okay, I was wrong to do it. I guess maybe I thought you might know who my dad was.”
“I obviously had no idea who your father was,” she said stiffly, not looking at Cooper. “I had a few suspicions but apparently all of them were wrong. Cooper would never have been on my list because Nat always said he was like her brother.”
Chief Vance looked like he wanted to throw up. “I didn’t know, Caitlin. I swear it. I asked and Natalie told me I wasn’t. I suppose I...should have insisted on a paternity test.”
She faced him, her chin up. “So why didn’t you?”
COOPER
He didn’t know how to answer her. How could he come up with something coherent when he could barely put two thoughts together?
He felt as if a flashover had just destroyed everything he thought he knew about his life, his past.
This couldn’t be true. He didn’t want to believe it. Even as he instinctively fought against it, something inside him knew she was telling the truth. Caitlin would never lie about something as important as this.
He had a daughter.
He didn’t know how to react. He wanted to hug her at the same time he felt physically ill.
A daughter.
Caitlin Harper was his child.
He was numb. How did a guy react to suddenly discovering he had a teenage daughter?
Olivia looked as shell-shocked as he was. Her features were pale again and she was gripping the edge of the desk as if afraid she would fall over if she let go.
How could it be true? Why had Natalie lied to him? She had been so convincing, had looked him straight in the eyes and promised him on Steve’s grave that he wasn’t her baby’s father.
All through basic training, he had felt so guilty about sleeping with her. She had been the one pushing it, had told him she felt dirty and she wanted to be with someone she knew loved her as a person, just once, so she could know what it felt like.
He’d been eighteen, drunk, horny, scared about going into the military in the first place and more than a little terrified the other soldiers would find out he was a virgin.
None of those reasons justified sleeping with his best friend, someone he had never had romantic feelings for in his life.
Still, when he found out she was pregnant, he had finagled leave and had rushed back to talk to her. Even after she swore he wasn’t the father, he had asked her to marry him. He had told her he didn’t care whether the baby was his or not; he would help raise it.
Nat had laughed, told him she would never do that to him. They would make each other miserable. Anyway, she said, she had started dating someone right after he left and she had fallen hard for him. He promised he was going to leave his wife, and as soon as he did, they would get married and he would help her raise their baby.
And if that never happened, Nat had said with a cheerful smile, she was perfectly happy to raise her baby herself.
Had she lied to him on purpose? He couldn’t imagine why she would.
Was it possible Natalie hadn’t known herself who had fathered her baby? That she had wanted to believe it wasn’t him?
“I have no good answer for that,” he finally said to Caitlin. “She was convincing. I didn’t really see a need to push it, assuming we were still close enough that she would tell me if she suspected I was your father. I was wrong. To be honest, maybe I...didn’t want to know the truth. I’m ashamed to admit that. For that I’m so, so sorry.”
She swallowed and he saw another tear trickle down. He should hug her but he had no idea what to do in this situation.
“For the record,” she said, lifting her chin just like Natalie would have done, “I’m not looking for a relationship, if you don’t want one. I just wanted to know who you were. I always felt there was something missing in my life, something other girls had. Mimi is wonderful and I love her with all my heart. But she was my grandma. I would see my friends with their parents at school things and always felt a little...empty.”
How could he be what she wanted? Hell, he was barely managing the uncle thing to Melody’s boys. Before he could answer, Olivia stepped forward.
“Oh, honey. I wish you’d said something.”
She wrapped her arms around Caitlin, as he should have done. The girl—his daughter—bristled for a moment, then seemed to relax into the hug.
“What would you have done? You couldn’t be my mom or my dad. Anyway, I was just Nat’s Brat to you.”
Olivia winced. “I can’t believe I wrote that in my diary. I was the bratty teenager. Completely self-involved and grieving for my dad. I wanted some of my mom’s attention, which was in short supply at the time. I didn’t understand then that she was doing the best she could. I see things much differently now.”
His poor Olivia, the neglected daughter who had tried so hard to be perfect.
“I shouldn’t have written that in my journal,” she went on. “I’m sorry I did and I’m even more sorry that you read it.”
“It hurt. A lot,” Caitlin said, her voice muffled. “I always loved and admired you so much. It hurt to read how much you resented me.”
“Please don’t hate me for something I should never have written. You were the very best thing that could have happened in our family. My mom started laughing again. I did, too. You brought so much love and joy and life to Sea Glass Cottage. We needed it desperately.”
Caitlin sniffled but he wanted to think she was hugging Olivia a little more tightly.
“What happens now?” Caitlin finally asked, drawing away from Olivia.
He had a million things he wanted to say to her but none of them seemed right.
“I have no idea how to be a dad,” he admitted, wondering if she could hear the little tremor in his voice. “The very idea scares the hell out of me. But if you’re willing, I would like to try.”
She gazed at him for a long time, until he was afraid she would reject him and tell him she didn’t want a relationship with a guy who was so stupid he believed a girl when she told him he wasn’t the father of her baby.
After a moment, though, she smiled. “I don’t know how to have a dad, either. I guess it would be okay if we tried to figure it out together.”
This time he went with his gut and he hugged her. It was more than a little awkward but at least she hugged him back.
It was a start.
“First things first,” Olivia said briskly. “I think we need to go tell Mimi. She has to know, before anyone else.”
His daughter’s eyes widened as if she hadn’t given that any thought. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. Jake already knows, though. He knew about the DNA
stuff all along but I know he won’t tell anyone.”
“Is Jake Cragun your boyfriend?” Cooper asked. “A dad should probably know these things.”
“No!” she exclaimed, but she blushed as she said it, making him wonder.
For a moment, she looked so much like Natalie, his heart ached for the friend he had loved, who had so much potential. If she hadn’t taken the road she did, to drugs and addiction, if she had married him when he asked, could they have been happy together?
He wasn’t sure. He suspected she had been right about that, at least, that they would have made each other miserable. He had loved her as a friend but had never felt anything like what he was beginning to feel for Olivia.
He was in love with her.
As if he needed one more shock in this tumultuous day, one more tangled emotion to work through. Still, the truth of that seemed to push through everything else. He was in love with Olivia Harper. He didn’t know how it had happened. He only knew the thought was like a bright beacon to hold on to in the midst of all this chaos.
“I can meet you at Sea Glass Cottage,” he said.
Her mouth worked and he thought she would tell him no, but she finally nodded. “You should probably be there, I guess. All right. We can meet you there.”
She turned and she and Olivia walked out of his office, leaving him feeling as if he had just ridden a tidal wave to shore on a flimsy piece of plywood.
32
OLIVIA
She and Caitlin decided to hook Cait’s bike on the rack of her SUV and ride together to Sea Glass Cottage. As she drove away from the fire station with her niece sitting in the passenger seat next to her, Olivia’s thoughts seemed to run in an endless, jumbled loop.
Cooper and Natalie.
Natalie and Cooper.
They shared a child.
How could she not have known Cooper was Caitlin’s father?
She couldn’t seem to process all her tangled emotions. Shock, of course, was center stage, but she was also aware of a certain sense of...betrayal.
The Sea Glass Cottage Page 30