tongue. He couldn’t flirt with Olivia Harper, as much as he might want to.
He was swiping his credit card to pay for his purchase when Olivia’s niece walked in, tall and pretty and the spitting image of her mother.
Caitlin was a good reminder of another reason he couldn’t pursue this attraction to Olivia. Natalie. Olivia’s sister, who had once been closer to him than anyone else on earth.
Yet another person he couldn’t save.
Caitlin looked startled to see him. “Oh. Hi, Chief Vance.”
The girl always acted oddly around him and he couldn’t seem to figure out why. She seemed like a nice kid, though. Melody certainly trusted her with her tribe of unruly boys.
“Hi, Caitlin. Hey, Jake.”
“Hi, Chief Vance.”
The teenager reached out to shake his hand and he was once more impressed by him. Jake was part of the youth EMT program in the community, the same program where Cooper had started. The boy demonstrated a calm leadership Cooper had to admire in one so young.
“What are you two up to today?”
“Uh. Not much.” Caitlin didn’t meet his gaze. He could never figure out what he had done to make her so nervous around him.
“We took a bike ride to the hospital to see Mrs. Harper and decided to stop here to grab a soda before we head home,” Jake said.
“Mimi keeps them in a fridge in her office for me,” Caitlin said, rather defiantly.
“She’s really thoughtful about things like that,” Jake added with a smile.
“Do you want one?” Caitlin asked Cooper, her expression oddly hopeful.
“Um, no. But thanks.”
“I wouldn’t mind a drink,” Olivia said.
“I’ll see if there are enough but I doubt there will be.”
She headed through a door that had Head Gardener stenciled on the doorjamb but returned with only two sodas. “Sorry. This is all I could find,” she said to Olivia, popping the top of one and handing the other to Jake.
“You can have mine,” Jake said instantly, holding it out to Olivia, who shook her head.
“Thank you but I think I’m good. I can find some water.”
Caitlin took a swig of her soda then turned to face Cooper, who should have left the moment he paid for his pruning shears but found himself strangely reluctant to leave, for reasons he wasn’t sure he wanted to identify.
“You knew my mom, didn’t you?” Caitlin said to him suddenly, the question coming out of the blue and just about knocking him over.
Olivia gave a sharp intake of breath, Jake looked startled and Cooper had no idea what to say.
“She was my best friend,” he said, his heart aching at the thought of Olivia’s sister.
“That’s what my grandmother said. She said you guys were always together and you used to eat at Sea Glass Cottage a lot.”
“Yes. Your grandparents were very kind to me.”
“So, did my mom drink Coke?” she asked after a minute.
“Yeah. Diet Coke. She loved the stuff. Why do you ask?”
Caitlin shrugged, not meeting his gaze. “I just wondered. I don’t remember her at all. I like talking to people who do, to kind of keep her memory alive. Mimi doesn’t like to talk about her too much. It makes her sad.”
It made him sad to remember, too. All that potential, wasted.
Every time he went out on an overdose call, he thought of Natalie and how she had thrown her life away.
“If you want to know about Natalie, you could always ask me,” Olivia suddenly said briskly. “She was my sister. I lived in the bedroom next door at Sea Glass Cottage.”
To Cooper’s surprise, Caitlin flashed a look of deep loathing at her aunt. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say about my mother,” she snapped, then turned and marched out of the store, leaving all of them staring after her.
Jake gave them both an apologetic look. “Sorry,” he mumbled, as if her outburst was his fault, and hurried after her.
“See? We’re a full-service nursery. Come for the pruning shears, stay for the drama,” Olivia said.
He smiled at her attempt at a joke, though he could see she was still hurt by Caitlin’s sudden attack.
“Anyway, thanks for your help. When you’re ready to plant the garden at the fire station, let me know. We would love to help.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, then waved and headed away, aware as he did that anticipation curled through him, knowing he would have an excuse to see her again.
9
CAITLIN
“Wow. That was unnecessarily harsh.”
Caitlin, in the middle of trying to get her bike out of the rack in