She giggled. “No, silly. I’m going to have a birthday. I’m going to be four.” She held up her fingers.
“Four! You are growing up.”
“I know. I go to kindergarten in one more year.”
She leaned against his shoulder and Bryce felt as if a warm sunbeam had suddenly broken through clouds he didn’t even know were there.
The warmth of her tiny body, the trust in her gesture and the innocence in her voice all combined to create a surge of protective affection he’d never experienced before. Somehow Olive had effortlessly slipped past all his defenses, nestling not only against his side but deep within his heart.
“Guess what?” she asked for a third time. It was apparently her favorite phrase. “I have a new bedroom, and I have a pink bed, and my grandma says she’s going to find a dollhouse that my mommy had in the attic and have somebody fix it up.”
“Is that right?”
She nodded, her head moving against his arm, then the little rascal sent him a sidelong look. “Can you fix it for me?”
“Olive,” Emma admonished, sounding mortified. “You don’t just ask people to do things for you.”
“Grandma said she wanted to ask him. So I did it myself.”
“Bryce works for Grandma, honey. He doesn’t work for you.”
“Does he work for you, Mommy?”
Emma shifted on the swing and Bryce could see the question made her uncomfortable. “He doesn’t really work for me, but he is helping me fix up the bookshop to make it a little bit nicer and not so crowded.”
“We’re going to put in a place that sells cookies and muffins and cinnamon rolls. Things like that.”
“Yum. Can I have a cookie?”
He laughed. “We can probably arrange that.”
“Okay.”
Rosie’s little dog, Dottie, wandered past and Olive jumped up to follow the dog, leaving the two of them alone again on the swing.
“She is pretty adorable,” Bryce said as they both watched Olive race back to her friends.
“She is. She’s also extremely busy. Some days trying to keep up with her is more exhausting than running a marathon while juggling flaming torches.”
He was quiet, not sure how to ask the question he had wondered about since she told him about going through the pregnancy alone.
“Why didn’t you come home when you were pregnant with Olive? You had to know Rosie would welcome you back with open arms.”
She looked toward the terrace, where Rosie was chatting with a couple he didn’t know.
“I wanted to,” she said, her voice low. “I started to text her so many times, begging to come home. I always deleted it and didn’t send.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think I was ready. I was still dealing with so many emotions around my dad’s death.” She looked out at the ocean, barely visible in the twilight. “Besides, I knew my mom didn’t want me here either.”
He stared at her. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Of course, your mom wanted you.”
Her laugh sounded ragged. “You don’t know how things were that last year before I left town. We fought constantly. It was ugly. If not for Sylvia trying to keep the peace, it might have been even worse.”
“What did you fight about?”
“Whatdidn’twe fight about? My hair, my clothes, my friends, the tattoo I went to Lincoln City to get. She hated everything I did. I was pretty sure before I left that she hatedme. And, yes. I know I sound like a whiny teenager. Mom didn’t really hate me. I was running wild and she hated that she couldn’t control me. And, of course, every time she looked at me, she was reminded that I caused the death of my father.”
