When They Weren't Looking: Wardham Book #3 Read Online Free

I’m terrible company right now. Catch ya later?”
    She took off without looking back.
     
    Neither Eleanor nor her mother noticed anything over dinner, and discussion of the potluck extravaganza for Laney and Kyle that was just a week away dominated the evening. She was able to duck out early, citing the last few days of school as a reasonable excuse. Connor had to leave early the next morning for a field trip, and Max just needed more sleep in general lately, it seemed.
    She’d decided over dinner that she couldn’t tell Laney yet. After the party. Her sister was sticking around for a week of vacation, before finally moving her fiancé and their dog to Chicago, where she was a paediatric plastic surgeon.
    The sisters couldn’t be more different. Instead of going to college, Evie had opted to teach dance part-time and work at a clothing store that had long since closed its doors, then married young. She had Connor, and two years later Max. It had taken another six years to realize that she didn’t want to grow old and grey with Dale, who was a good dad, but a shitty husband. Too many issues had cropped up between them that they never dealt with—including Evie’s desire for more kids, and Dale hating to share her body. With his children, and her past.
    Evie shook her head. It was time for her to get over that.
    As she watched her sons brush their teeth, jockeying for position at the tiny sink in the tiny bathroom, she pressed a hand to her flat stomach. Oh, little bean. I want you. I just don’t know how I’m going to manage to give you everything you need.
    And at this rate, it might be just her doing the providing. The call to the midwife’s office had been productive—as a returning client, she was guaranteed care—but as she feared, the calls to the university, and then the Department of Engineering, proved fruitless. No one would give her any information on a student, which of course made sense, but logic and rationality didn’t cut her frustration at being blandly told she’d hit another dead end.
    Hot tears pricked her eyelids, and she widened her gaze to hold them at bay, willing herself to hold it together until the boys were asleep.
    “Dude, you spit on my ear!”
    “No, I didn’t! You put your head under my mouth! Mommy!” Max spun around, looking for her to intervene. His outrage, fueled by fatigue, wasn’t going to go away on its own.
    Evie shot Connor a beseeching look and her eldest, always the peacemaker, ruffled his brother’s hair. “Sorry for yelling, buddy.”
    “‘Sokay. Sorry for spitting.” Max shuffled out of the room with a yawn, and Evie wrapped her arms around Connor for a second before he wrestled away.
    In their room, Connor settled into the top bunk with a book and his night light. Evie crawled in with Max on the bottom, and listened with half an ear as he slowly made his way through a Star Wars reader. When he set it down and rolled over, eyes shut already, she got up, patted Connor’s leg, and flicked off the light on her way to the kitchen.
    No one else was going to do the dishes, and she hated having them there in the morning, so even though sandpaper and sadness were scratching at the inside of her eyelids, she tidied up before making herself a cup of tea to take to bed.
    Why now? There was no ready answer. She’d just gotten her life back together. Set aside her hopes for a big family. Made peace with the fact that she’d left her husband because he didn’t love her the way she wanted to be loved. Moved forward with an alternate dream, one that was harder and more grueling that she ever thought possible. More humble, too. A tiny two-bedroom bungalow on the modest side of town, although Wardham was small enough that it wasn’t far from the quaint main street strip and the public beach on the other side. A rented studio space where she taught Pilates instead of dance, because that’s what paid the bills.
    And she loved it. All of it. The coupon clipping and the