When They Weren't Looking: Wardham Book #3 (3 page)

“Sorry, Mommy. I really gotta pee!” Max bounded past her. Connor stood in the hallway, looking somehow taller than the day before. Maybe it the was look of concern on his nine-year-old face.

“Breakfast, kiddo?” She lightened her tone and gently bumped his shoulder as she stepped past him.

“Are you sick?” He turned and followed her down the tiny corridor to the living room, and the galley kitchen on the other side. Their bungalow was wee, but it was theirs. After living with her mother for eleven months, Evie was happy to have a place all her own. A two-bedroom place.

A baby could sleep in her room for the first few months. Or longer, if he was like Connor. But Max had needed his own room after six months. What if this one was the same?

“Mom?”

She swallowed hard. “No, honey. I’m fine.”
For now
.

Hunger won out over curiosity, and Connor turned his attention to the yogurt and granola she set out. Max soon joined them, and then it was a flurry of eating, changing, library book finding, permission slip signing. By the time she’d escorted them across the street and down the block to school, she was ready for a nap.

Too bad she had four classes today, and dinner at her mother’s tonight, which was doubling as a planning session for Laney’s engagement party. Eleanor Nixon, Laney’s future mother-in-law, would also be there. Two smart women who would smell fear a mile away. She had seven hours to pull her shit together and pretend she wasn’t knocked up.

And hope that the erroneously named morning sickness didn’t choose tonight to make another appearance.

It was too early for that, wasn’t it? She’d sold her prenatal books at a garage sale after Max was born. Maybe the internet would have the information she needed, because there was no way she was going to the Wardham Public Library and signing out
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
.

First step, figure out a due date. That would be easy. There was only one possible date of conception. The night she lost her mind and slept with a college student.
God
.

Second step, call the midwife and get on the waiting list. And hope to hell that Molly Weisz, the receptionist in the Essex Birthing Co-op, and born and bred Wardhamite, actually respected patient confidentiality.

Holy hell. Molly wasn’t going to say anything, but in a few short months, her belly certainly would. Everyone in town would soon know that Evie Calhoun, the one with the plastic surgeon sister, an ex-husband running for town council, and two lovely little boys, was knocked up by a mystery man who was most definitely not in the picture.

Evie was half-way into a panic attack when Carrie Nixon, Laney’s future sister-in-law, and owner of A Bun in the Oven, a bakery-coffee shop that was the jewel of downtown Wardham, popped up in front of her. Carrie’s daughter was in Max’s class, and her son went to the preschool Evie had just walked past.

“Hey, chickadee, what’s up?”

“Heading to the studio. You on your way to the store?”

Carrie nodded and fell in step beside her. “Yep. I’m not in a hurry, though. I love having an assistant manager.” Carrie had recently promoted one of her part-time staff, giving her some much needed mornings off to take her kids to school. Her husband, Ian, was a farmer. Early summer was a busy time for both of them. “I could grab us some lattes and keep you company at the studio for a bit.”

“I…I can’t today, sorry. I’ve got a bunch of calls to make before my first class.” Not a lie. She had to call the midwife, and the University of Toronto. See if she could find someone who would help her track down a student by the name of Liam, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a voice that evaporated panties.

That would work, right?

Because she had to tell him.
Maybe he wouldn’t want to know
, a little voice piped up from the back of her head. She shook the thought away. Not an option. But she didn’t need to tell him right away. The pregnancy might not stick.

“Evie, are you okay?” Carrie pressed a hand to her shoulder and they both slowed to a stop just shy of the main intersection. “You don’t just look preoccupied, you look…sad.”

That was Carrie. Blunt and to the point. And a good friend, but Evie wasn’t ready to confide in anyone just yet. “I’ve got a lot on my mind, I’m sorry. 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 lentil-heavy meals when she only had fifty bucks left in the bank. The quiet nights after the boys went to bed, and the days to herself when they were with Dale.

She’d made peace with where life had dumped her. Started to make something special out of the pieces of her former world. And in a few short months, all of that would be threatened. Unless she asked for a handout. Something she’d avoided so far.

She wasn’t too proud to accept help. Her mother had given them a place to stay after she and Dale split the less than impressive proceeds of sale on their old house—which had been on the fancier side of town, but mortgaged to the hilt—and Dale gave her child-support every month, which she was grateful for as well.

But this would be different. This wouldn’t be something reasonable and small. If she didn’t teach classes for six or eight weeks, maybe more if she had a difficult delivery. The math took her breath away, and she couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

A lot can happen in nine months
. The logical part of her brain fought against the list of concerns she’d been developing all day, but the emotional overload won out. And she didn’t have anyone to share her fear with. Another couple of weeks, and she’d be able to tell her sister. Her mother, too, and how humiliating would that conversation be? But Claire would be supportive. Too supportive.

Evie curled onto her side, and buried her wet cheeks in the patchwork quilt stretched over her bed. She wouldn’t be able to handle her mother’s eternal optimism or the immediate leap to finding solutions. Not yet. Not before she’d had a chance to wrap her head around how drastically her life had changed.

No. For now, she was on her own.

And she still had a big problem in the form of a missing sperm donor. Missing, and probably unwilling. And how would she even explain how this happened? They’d bought a brand-new box of condoms, and to the best of her hazy recollection, none of them malfunctioned.

She fisted her hands into the bedding as a sob wracked her frame.
Pull it together, Calhoun. This wasn’t in your master plan, either
. As the wave of emotion ebbed, she hauled herself to a sitting position and reached for the laptop tucked neatly on her bedside table. She did her nightly check-in on her favourite message board, then opened a new tab. The cursor blinked at her, a taunting vertical line. What search words could she use, exactly? Liam+engineering+business+Toronto? As she started typing, the search engine helpfully suggested Liam Hemsworth.
Wouldn’t that be nice
. Maybe her Liam was a movie star, too.

Her Liam.

That was a phrase she needed to strike from her lexicon. Whatever co-parenting relationship she managed to sort out with the student, if he was interested in that, it would have to be one that ignored how their connection started. Ignored their night together, when he willingly and repeatedly made love to all of her body with all of his.

Evie’s hands flared over her laptop keyboard. Graduating. Maybe there would be photos…but that didn’t lead anywhere, either. She tried a few more things, but soon fatigue pushed the computer away. She had some time still.

Nine months, to be exact.

CHAPTER THREE

There were two realty offices in Wardham. Liam’s uncle didn’t recommend one over the other, and he figured the more time he spent on the main drag, the greater likelihood he might run into Evie, so he planned to visit both. After he did some property browsing, he was going to grab a coffee and take a stroll to look for her studio. Maybe catch a glimpse of her in workout wear.

Evie from Wardham. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind, but he hadn’t tried hard, either. Ever since that night, he’d wanted to make the drive, come and find her and ask her out on a second date. If she hadn’t disappeared from his condo in the middle of the night, and checked out of the hotel before he made it down to the waterfront, their second date might have been brunch.

But then he’d gone back to work at Hexwell, trading his crazy school schedule for an even crazier work schedule. He’d found it hardcore when he was a specialist, but leading the project management team was a whole different level of commitment. One he quickly discovered he didn’t like. The company had been good to him, giving him a leave of absence for his schooling, and employing him during his summer internship the previous year. He would have stuck it out for a while, for reasons of both loyalty and professionalism, but when another manager returned from maternity leave without a project to lead, he saw an opportunity and seized it. He wasn’t cut out for a hundred hour work week. He knew that by the midpoint of his MBA. He was enough of a professional to extricate himself diplomatically, and threw himself into making a small but meaningful contribution before he left. They made noises about a specialist role should he want to return, but he knew he was done.

He had a few months until the sale of his condo closed, and in that time, he was going to help his uncle with the farm, and figure out how he could make himself useful in Wardham.

And hopefully get laid.

Evie. She’d been an unexpected treat after his final exam. Sexy as hell and completely unaware of her appeal. Gorgeous in a shimmery top and jeans. Breathtaking out of them, stretched out on his bed, making a hell of a lot of noise as he made her come, again and again. And more than a little dirty, which he loved.