as well as a couple of water bottles. She wasn’t at all surprised when each of the boys went for the soda.
They ate on the blanket, laughing while the boys told knock-knock jokes and tried to do tongue twisters.
She was glad she had a jacket as the evening air began to cool. It didn’t seem to bother the boys, who ate quickly and then hurried back to the playground.
After they were gone, Cooper stretched out beside her on the blanket. “This was a good idea,” he said.
“Thanks. I do have them once in a while.”
“I think you have them more than once in a while,” he said, his eyes closed behind his sunglasses.
Unable to resist, she snapped a couple of pictures of the boys playing together with her phone, lit by the fading light, to send to their mother. By the time she turned back to Cooper, his breathing was steady and she realized he had fallen asleep.
He seemed relaxed and comfortable, with his ankles crossed and one hand above his head.
Under other circumstances, she would have been tempted to take a picture of him for the fire department’s social media site, labeling it The Chief At Rest. It would definitely go viral, but she knew he would hate that. Anyway, it would be a gross invasion of his privacy.
Instead, she watched him sleeping, noticing how the tension seemed to seep out of him as he truly relaxed his guard.
She was failing miserably at protecting her heart around him. Every time she thought she was safe, that she couldn’t possibly fall for him, he did something sweet like help Charlie with his Rs in one of the tongue twisters or catch Ryan at the bottom of the slide or check in with his sister to see how she was feeling.
Or trust her enough to fall asleep next to her.
Yeah, she was falling hard.
She watched the boys, trying not to give in to the panic suddenly kicking through her like Will beating against the air on the swings.
She couldn’t. She had her life figured out. She was going back to Seattle as soon as it was safe for her mom to return to the garden center. She had an apartment there, a job, her company, a life.
She couldn’t risk everything she had worked for by doing something completely stupid like opening herself up to having her heart broken—especially not by a man like Cooper. If she wasn’t brave enough to climb out from beneath that table at the coffeehouse, she certainly didn’t have the strength to take on a man like Cooper, who risked his life on a daily basis.
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,