Reunion on Rocky Shores Page 18

  She squeezed his fingers. “Oh, Will. You’ll never stop loving them. I would never ask that of you. That’s exactly the way it should be. But the heart is a magical thing. Abigail taught me that. When you’re ready, when you need it to, it can miraculously expand to make room.”

  He studied her for a long moment and then suddenly he smiled. Only when she saw his mouth tilt, saw the genuine happiness in his expression, did she realize he truly meant what he said. He loved her. She still couldn’t quite absorb it, but his eyes in the soft moonlight were free of any lingering grief and sorrow.

  He loved her.

  He cupped his hands around her face and kissed her then, soft and gentle in the cool October air. She wrapped her arms around his waist as a sweet, cleansing joy exploded through her.

  “My heart has made room for you, Julia. For you and your beautiful children. How could it help but find a place? You already had your own corner there sixteen years ago. I think some part of me was just waiting for you to return and move back in.”

  His mouth found hers again, and in his kiss she tasted joy and healing and the promise of a sweet, beautiful future.

  Not far away, a huge mongrel dog sat on his haunches watching them both with satisfaction in his eyes while the soft, flowery scent of freesia floated in the autumn air.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne’s

  next book set in beautiful Cape Sanctuary,

  The Sea Glass Cottage

  available April 2020 from HQN Books!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Olivia

  She could do this.

  Olivia Harper approached the nondescript coffee shop across the street from her apartment in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle.

  The place wasn’t necessarily her favorite. The servers could be rude, the food overcooked and the coffee rather bland compared to the place she preferred a few blocks east. The ambience at the Kozy Kitchen wasn’t particularly cozy, or “kozy,” either, for that matter, featuring cracked vinyl booths and walls that had needed a new coat of paint about a decade earlier. The Kitchen, as those in the neighborhood called it, was too tired and dingy to attract many hipsters, with their laptops and their slouchy knit caps and their carefully groomed facial hair.

  Right now, it was perfect for her needs. Olivia stood outside the door, ignoring the drizzle and the pedestrians hurrying past her on their way to somewhere far more interesting and important than this run-down diner.

  Every instinct inside her cried out for her to rush back down the street, race up the three flights to her apartment, climb into her bed and yank the covers over her head.

  Any normal person would feel the same in her situation, especially after enduring a life-changing event like she had experienced five days earlier.

  Her reaction wasn’t out of the ordinary. In the five days since she had witnessed a horrific assault at another diner, the nightmares still haunted her, so vivid she had awakened every morning smelling spilled coffee, blood and fear.

  She closed her eyes, still hearing the screams of the barista, the enraged yells of the junkie senselessly attacking her, Olivia’s own harsh, terrified breathing.

  She could feel the floor tiles under her knees and the cushions of the booth pressing into her back as she huddled on the floor, trying to make herself disappear.

  Until that experience less than a week earlier, Olivia had blithely gone through life with absolutely no idea what a craven coward she was.

  If she had ever thought about it, which, quite honestly, she hadn’t, she might have assumed she would be the kind of person always ready to step up in the face of danger. Someone who could yank a child out of the way of a speeding car or dive into a lake to rescue a floundering swimmer or confront a bully tormenting someone smaller than him.

  Someone like her beloved father, who had given his life to save others.

  Instead, when her moment to stand up and make a difference came along, she had done absolutely nothing to help another human under attack except crouch under a table and call 911, all but paralyzed by her fear.

  Shame left a bitter taste, even five days later. She hated remembering that she had done nothing while that junkie had fired a gun in the air then used it to pistol-whip the barista again and again.

  Olivia had wanted desperately to run out of the coffee shop and find help but she’d been afraid to do even that, not sure if he had more rounds in his weapon.

  The attack had seemed to last hours but had only been a moment or two before the barista herself and another customer, a woman approximately the age of Olivia’s mother, had finally put an end to the horror.

  That customer, just walking into the otherwise empty coffee shop, had sized up the situation in an instant and demonstrated all the strength and courage that had completely deserted Olivia. Instead of hurrying out of the coffee shop to safety, she had instead run to the barista’s aid, yelling at the junkie to stop.

  Startled, he had paused his relentless, horrifying random attack and had eased away slightly. That had been long enough for the barista, battered and bleeding and crying in pain, to pick up a carafe of coffee and throw it and its piping hot contents at him.

  Olivia could still hear his outraged yell and the shouts of a neighborhood police officer who had finally responded to her call, ordering everyone down to the ground.

  In five minutes it was over, but Olivia had relived it for days, especially coming face-to-face with the stark realization that she was a craven coward.

  Steve Harper would have been ashamed of her.

  Amazing, the lengths a person could go to deceive herself. All this time, Olivia thought she was strong and decisive and in control.

  In certain areas of her life, maybe. Hadn’t she moved away from her hometown in Northern California to go to college twelve years earlier and never looked back? That had taken strength. And she had built her own social media marketing company in her own time, working nights and weekends until she now had clients across the globe.

  Of course, she was terrified to take the leap and make her side hustle her full-time job. She still put in long hours handling information technology for a medical conglomerate because the pay was good and the benefits amazing—even though her ex-fiancé worked in the administration for said conglomerate and made her life unnecessarily difficult, simply because she had broken off their engagement six months earlier.

  She was constantly running from any situation she found emotionally threatening.

  “Are you going in?”

  A man was holding the door for her, she realized. He was about her age and not bad looking in a slightly rumpled, professor sort of way.

  She started to take a step inside after him but fear froze her in place. She couldn’t do it. Not yet.

  “I’m waiting for someone,” she lied.

  “Here’s a crazy idea. You could always wait inside where it’s dry.”

  He smiled, his brown eyes friendly and with a glimmer of interest.

  “I’m good,” she mumbled.

  He shrugged and let the door between them close with a disappointed sort of look.

  Yeah, she was a coward when it came to dating, too. She had one serious relationship in college that had ended by mutual agreement, then she’d become engaged to the first guy she dated out of school, until she realized neither one of them loved the other. They were simply together for convenience.

  She had convinced herself that a mildly enjoyable relationship was the safer choice. What if she loved someone passionately, fiercely, and then lost him suddenly, as her mother had her father? Sixteen years later, there were times Juliet still seemed shattered.

  So many things could go wrong. A car accident. A plane crash. A heart attack.

  A burning building where a man might run inside to save people, despite his daughter begging him not to do it.

  Olivia shoved her hands into her pockets against the damp Se
attle afternoon. Nothing would take the chill from her bones, though. She knew that. Even five days of sick leave, huddling in her bed and mindlessly bingeing on cooking shows hadn’t done anything but make her crave cake.

  She couldn’t hide away in her apartment forever. Eventually she was going to have reenter life and go back to work, which was why she stood outside this coffee shop in a typical spring drizzle with her heart pounding and her stomach in knots.

  This was stupid. The odds of anything like that happening to her again were ridiculously small. She couldn’t let one man battling mental illness and drug abuse control the rest of her life.

  She could do this.

  She reached out to pull the door open but before she could make contact with the metal handle, her cell phone chimed from her pocket.

  She knew instantly from the ringtone it was her best friend from high school, who still lived in Cape Sanctuary with her three children.

  Talking to Melody was more important than testing her resolve by going into the Kozy Kitchen right now, she told herself. She answered the call, already heading back across the street to her own apartment.

  “Mel,” she answered, her voice slightly breathless from the adrenaline still pumping through her and from the stairs she was racing up two at a time. “I’m so glad you called.”

  Glad didn’t come close to covering the extent of her relief. She really hadn’t wanted to go into that coffee shop. Not yet. Why should she make herself? She had coffee at home and could have groceries delivered when she needed them.

  “You know why I’m calling, then?” Melody asked, a strange note in her voice.

  “I know it’s amazing to hear from you. You’ve been on my mind.”

  She was not only a coward but a lousy friend. She hadn’t checked in with Melody in a few weeks, despite knowing her friend was going through a life upheaval far worse than witnessing an attack on someone else.

  As she unlocked her apartment, the cutest rescue dog in the world, a tiny, fluffy cross between a chihuahua and a miniature poodle, gyrated with joy at the sight of her.

  Yet another reason she didn’t have to leave. If she needed love and attention, she only had to call her dog and Otis would come running.

  She scooped him up and let him lick her face, already feeling some of her anxiety calm.

  “I was thinking how great it would be if you and the boys could come up and stay with me for a few days when school gets out for the summer,” she said now to Melody. “We could take the boys to the Space Needle, maybe hop the ferry up to the San Juans and go whale watching. They would love it. What do you think?”

  The words seemed to be spilling out of her, too fast. She was babbling, a weird combination of relief that she hadn’t had to face that coffee shop and guilt that she had been wrapped up so tightly with her own life that she hadn’t reached out to a friend in need.

  “My apartment isn’t very big,” she went on without waiting for an answer. “But I have an extra bedroom and can pick up some air beds for the boys. They’ve got some really comfortable ones these days. I’ve got a friend who says she stayed on one at her sister’s house in Tacoma and slept better than she does on her regular mattress. I’ve still got my car, though I hardly drive it in the city, and the boys would love to meet Otis. Maybe we could even drive to Olympic National Park, if you wanted.”

  “Liv. Stop.” Melody cut her off. “Though that all sounds amazing and I’m sure the boys would love it, we can talk about that later. You have no idea why I called, do you?”

  “I…why did you call?”

  Melody was silent for a few seconds. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” she finally said.

  The breath ran out of Olivia like somebody had popped one of those air mattresses with a bread knife.

  “Oh no. Is it one of your boys?” Oh please she prayed. Don’t let it be one of the boys.

  Melody had been through enough over the past three months, since her jerk hole husband ran off with one of his high school students.

  “No, honey. It’s not my family. It’s yours.”

  Her words seemed to come from far away and it took a long time for them to pierce through.

  No. Impossible.

  Fear rushed back in, swamping her like a fast-moving tide. She sank blindly onto the sofa.

  “Is it Caitlin?”

  “It’s not your niece. Stop throwing out guesses and just let me tell you. It’s your mom. Before you freak out, let me just say, first of all, she’s okay, from what I understand. I don’t have all the details but I do know she’s in the hospital, but she’s okay. It could have been much worse.”

  Her mom. Olivia tried to picture Juliet lying in a hospital bed and couldn’t quite do it. Juliet Harper didn’t have time to be in a hospital bed. She was always hurrying somewhere, either next door to Sea Glass Cottage to the garden center the Harper family had run in Cape Sanctuary for generations or down the hill to town to help a friend or to one of Caitlin’s school events.

  “What happened?”

  “She had a bad fall and suffered a concussion and I think some broken bones.”

  Olivia’s stomach twisted. A concussion. Broken bones. Oh man. “Fell where? Off one of the cliffs near the garden center?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know all the details yet. This just happened this morning and it’s still early for the gossip to make all the rounds around town. I assumed you already knew. That Caitlin or someone would have called you. I was only checking in to see how I can help.”

  This morning. She glanced at her watch. Her mother had been in an accident hours earlier and Olivia was just finding out about it now, in late afternoon.

  Someone should have told her, if not Juliet herself then, as Melody said, at least Caitlin.

  Given their recent history, it wasn’t particularly surprising that her niece, raised by Olivia’s mother since she was a baby, hadn’t bothered to call. Olivia wasn’t Caitlin’s favorite person right now. These days, during Olivia’s regular video chats with her mother, Caitlin never popped in to say hi anymore. At fifteen, Caitlin was abrasive and moody and didn’t seem to like Olivia much, for reasons she didn’t quite understand.

  “I’m sure someone tried to reach me but my phone has been having trouble,” she lied. Her phone never had trouble. She made sure it was always in working order, since so much of her freelance business depended on her clients being able to reach her and on her being able to tweet or post something on the fly.

  “I’m glad I checked in, then.”

  “Same here. Thank you.”

  Several bones broken and a long recovery. Oh dear. That would be tough on Juliet, especially this time of year when the garden center always saw peak business.

  “Thank you for telling me. Is she in the hospital there in Cape Sanctuary or was she taken to one of the bigger cities?”

  “I’m not sure. I can call around for you, if you want.”

  “I’ll find out. You have enough to worry about.”

  “Keep me posted. I’m worried about her. She’s a pretty great lady, that mom of yours.”

  Olivia shifted, uncomfortable as she always was when others spoke about her mother to her. Everyone loved her, with good reason. Juliet was warm, gracious, kind to just about everyone in their beachside community of Cape Sanctuary.

  Which made Olivia’s own awkward, tangled relationship with her mother even harder to comprehend.

  “Will you be able to come home for a few days?”

  Home. How could she go home when she couldn’t even walk into the coffee shop across the street?

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to see what’s going on there.”

  How could she possibly travel all the way to Northern California? A complicated mix of emotions seemed to lodge like a tangled ball of yarn in her chest whenever she thought about her hometown, which she loved and hated in equal measures.

  The town held so much guilt and pain and sorrow. Her father was buried there and so
was her sister. Each room in Sea Glass Cottage stirred like the swirl of dust motes with memories of happier times.

  Olivia hadn’t been back in more than a year. She kept meaning to make a trip but something else always seemed to come up. She usually went for the holidays at least but the previous year she’d backed out of even that after work obligations kept her in Seattle until Christmas Eve and a storm had made last-minute travel difficult. She had spent the holiday with friends instead of with her mother and Caitlin and had felt guilty that she had enjoyed it much more than the previous few when she had gone home.

  She couldn’t avoid it now, though. A trip back to Cape Sanctuary was long overdue, especially if her mother needed her.

  “Thanks again for letting me know.”

  “I’m so glad I called. The minute you find out anything about Juliet, let me know.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  After she ended the call with Melody, Olivia immediately called her mother’s cell. When there was no answer there, she dialed Caitlin’s phone and was sent straight to voice mail, almost as if her niece was blocking her.

  She glared at the phone in frustration.

  Left with few other options, she finally dialed the hospital in Cape Sanctuary. To her relief, after she asked whether her mother was a patient there, she was connected almost instantly to a room.

  “Hello?”

  Her mother did not sound like herself. Usually Juliet’s voice was firm, confident. She wasn’t exactly brusque, merely self-assured and determined to waste as little time as possible.

  Today, Juliet’s voice was small, hesitant, almost… Frightened.

  With her own emotions frayed from the week she’d had, Olivia was aware of a subtle thread connecting them for once, as unexpected as it was unusual.

  She was frightened, too.

  “Mom. What’s going on? Is it true you were in an accident?”

  “How did you find out?” Juliet asked.

  Not from you or from Caitlin, she wanted to answer tartly. The two people who should have told her hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone, had they?