“Thank you, sweetheart.”
Feeling all kinds of self-conscious, Anna trudged over to the rock Liam had pointed out. Slightly bowl shaped with a high back and two slabs the perfect height to rest her arms, it did look a little like a recliner.
It took a minute to spread out the towel and another five to get comfortable. A task made more difficult because she was forced to remain idle while her daughters headed into the grove of trees to search for kindling.
“Cassie, Chloe...don’t go too far,” Anna called out. “Stay where I can see you!”
A shadow suddenly fell across the rock and momentarily blotted out the sun. Liam stood in front of her, holding what had to be the ugliest hat ever to grace the shelf of CJ’s Variety store. It was stained, misshapen and smelled a little like—Anna’s nose twitched—fish.
“It’s pretty bright up here. I thought you might want to cover your eyes.” Without waiting for a response, Liam plunked the hat on her head.
“I can’t see anything.” Anna peered at him through the cloud of mosquito netting that drifted over her face like a pea-green wedding veil.
“It won’t matter because your eyes will be closed.”
Liam sauntered away to start the fire, and Anna stifled a yawn. Fresh air and sunshine were a dangerous combination for a woman who logged only five or six hours of sleep a night.
She wadded up the towel underneath her head like a pillow and rolled over onto her side so she could keep an eye on the girls.
“I’m going back down and see if I can catch something to eat,” Liam announced a few minutes later. “Who wants to come with me?”
Cassie and Chloe squealed and dumped the kindling on the ground beside the fire pit, and were at his side in an instant, not the least bit afraid to take on the wall of rock they’d climbed up a few minutes ago.
Cassie and Chloe loved to play outdoors, but Anna’s childhood home, located on a quiet side street in town, boasted a yard the size of a postage stamp. Anna wasn’t ready to let the girls walk to the park alone, so most of their free time was spent in the play area Anna had fixed up in the back room of The Happy Cow or in her studio.
The twins rarely complained, but that didn’t stop the guilt from pressing hard against the scar tissue on Anna’s heart.
She’d taught the girls how to cook but never over an open flame. They visited the library on the weekends and were halfway through a book about a snowy owl named Winter, while two real-life furry acrobats named Ben and Jerry performed a few miles down the river.
Anna scooted closer to the ledge overlooking the river and stretched out on the grass so she could watch. She’d gone fishing once or twice with the church youth group as a teenager, but the boys had been more interested in catching the girls’ attention than catching trout.
The canvas vest studded with colorful lures that Liam shrugged on over his shirt told Anna he took the sport a little more seriously. He retrieved his fly rod from the canoe and walked to the edge of the water. The girls followed, squealing when the ice-cold water lapped against their bare toes.
Anna was used to their exuberant displays of enthusiasm, but Liam was probably wishing he’d taken advantage of the time alone.
Can’t you keep them quiet, Anna? How am I supposed to concentrate when they’re screeching like that?
Memories from the four years she’d been married to Ross continued to pop up like weeds, crowding Anna’s thoughts when she least expected it.
Ross had complained about the level of noise in the apartment, but every sound the twins made had been music to Anna’s ears. She’d been terrified Cassie and Chloe would suffer lasting effects from being born a month premature. The girls had been tiny in size and weight, but as the months went by they hit every milestone on the development chart and in some areas, even surpassed other infants their age.
Ross hadn’t cared about any of that. He’d been too focused on his personal stats, which had fallen far short of his college coach’s expectations for Castle Falls’s star quarterback.
Somehow that had been Anna’s fault, too.
Ross had been charming and attentive while they’d dated, buying her flowers and candy and saying all the things a girl wanted to hear. And then everything had changed after they’d eloped, making Anna wonder if she’d really known him at all.
She had been too ashamed to tell anyone that her marriage had been far from perfect...and too ashamed to tell Liam he’d been right.
For the twins’ sake, she had to protect Ross’s memory. And the only way to do that was to keep her secrets.
Liam seemed like the kind of man a woman could trust, but Anna didn’t trust her judgment anymore.
She closed her eyes and felt the breeze filter through the lacy holes of the netting as the sound of Liam’s husky laughter rolled over her.
The next thing she knew, the girls were screaming.
Anna jackknifed into a sitting position, but her view of the shoreline was obscured by a tangle of pea-green netting. She yanked off the hat and clutched it against her chest, but it didn’t quite muffle the rapid thump of her heart.
Had she actually dozed off for a few minutes?
Fortunately, no one on the sandy beach below seemed to have noticed. The speckled trout thrashing on the end of Liam’s line had captured their attention.
“Liam got another one!” Cassie and Chloe clasped hands and danced around the fishing creel as Liam removed the hook from the fish’s mouth. “Now there’s one for each of us!”
Anna pushed to her feet and waved the hat to acknowledge Cassie’s gleeful shout.
Four trout?
Either Liam was an expert fly fisherman, or she’d been asleep longer than a few minutes.
By the time the three fishermen had retraced their steps up the path and scrambled over the ledge with their catch, Anna had added a few more sticks of kindling to the fire.
“Liam has a secret fishing spot, Mom,” Chloe told her. “The trout like to hide there during the day.”
“But we can’t tell anyone where it is.” Cassie drew the tip of her finger across her lips, sealing them shut. For the moment.
“Technically, it’s Aiden’s secret spot.” Liam unleashed a slow smile that rivaled the sun for warmth and sent Anna’s heart scrambling for purchase. “But we’ll make sure he knows how many we caught.”
“Trout fishing is fun, Mom,” Chloe said. “You’re going to have to try next time.”
Next time.
For a split second, Anna let herself imagine another day like this one. Another day with...Liam.
The thought tugged at her heart like the current, but Anna resisted its gentle pull, afraid it would take her to places she wasn’t ready to go.
Places she might never be ready to go.
She swallowed hard and looked up at Liam.
“Is there anything the girls and I can do while you cook the fish?”
“You can unpack the cooler. Mom said she’d packed a few snacks for us, but when I was lugging this thing up the hill, it felt like she’d packed it with iron ore.” Liam flipped open the lid. “And now I know why.”
The girls crowded in next to him. “Why?”