her to scramble for a weapon. The two of them held him off until the police came.”
He couldn’t imagine what Olivia had endured in those terrifying few moments while waiting for law enforcement to arrive.
“I’m sorry.” It seemed wholly inadequate.
“It’s been nearly three weeks and I’ve had a hard time with crowds ever since,” she admitted. “I keep feeling like I’m back there in that coffee shop, only the junkie is coming after me. The day my mom was hurt, I tried to force myself to go into another coffee shop in my neighborhood and I couldn’t do it. I honestly felt like I was on the brink of agoraphobia. I was coming up with a plan to work from home all the time, just stay in my apartment and order all my groceries online.”
“Instead, you drove six hundred miles in the middle of the night to her rescue,” he pointed out.
“That’s different. I was helping family and I didn’t have a choice. You said it earlier. Families help families. My mom needed me.”
“Plenty of others wouldn’t have been so quick to drop everything and step up.”
She slipped her hand away, not looking convinced. “I may have come back to help my mom, but that doesn’t change the fact that I did nothing to help another person in jeopardy in that coffee shop.”
“You called 911. That helped. And I’m guessing you stuck around afterward to give police your statement, right?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds like you did exactly the right thing. We all respond to danger differently, Olivia. There was nothing wrong with how you reacted to the situation.”
“Dad would have stepped in and tried to stop the attack,” she said stubbornly. “He would have been ashamed of me.”
“Your dad weighed two hundred pounds and was one of the strongest men I’ve ever known. If any of us tries to compare ourselves to Steve Harper, we would all fall short.”
She sighed. “I miss him. Coming back to Cape Sanctuary has made me realize all over again what a hole he left in our lives. None of us was ever the same.”
“I know I haven’t been,” Cooper said quietly.
To his eternal amazement, she reached for his hand and they sat that way for a long time, listening to the ocean and the night. Cooper couldn’t remember when he had felt more at peace, sitting on a garden bench on Harper Hill, watching a falling meteor shoot across the sky, listening to her quiet breathing, savoring the quiet Cape Sanctuary night.
Sitting here alone in the dark with Olivia Harper was one of the most profoundly perfect moments of his life, something he knew he would remember forever.
“Thanks,” she finally said, turning to him with her face in shadows. “I feel better. I haven’t told anybody what happened. It helped.”
“You’re welcome,” he murmured. He hadn’t meant to do it. The kiss came out of nowhere. But the moonlight was so enticing, the night its own kind of miracle, and she looked lovely in it, soft and warm and delicious.
She made a surprised kind of sound at first, and then she wrapped her arms tightly around him and kissed him back with a heat that stole his breath. He had guessed correctly. Her mouth was sweet, warm, and tasted like strawberry margaritas.
He groaned and kissed her more deeply, hunger flaring instantly.
On some level, he was aware of a voice telling him he shouldn’t be doing this. This was Olivia Harper, whom he had known since she was a cute kid with freckles and pigtails, always walking around with her nose in a book.
He heard that voice but chose to ignore it, entranced by how perfectly she fit in his arms and how tightly she held on to him, as if they were jumping together at forty-five thousand feet with only one parachute between them.
He wanted the kiss to go on and on. He wanted to stay here until morning, lost in the magic of a heated kiss on a soft spring night with a woman who took his breath away.
He wasn’t a guy to lose his head over a woman, but Olivia Harper affected him like no other woman ever had. She was smart, funny, compassionate. And she kissed him like she couldn’t get enough. How was he supposed to resist that?
He needed to be careful, his conscious whispered loudly. He knew secrets that would hurt her. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t be concerned about revealing those. He was good at keeping things to himself, but he had