When They Weren't Looking: Wardham Book #3 (22 page)

“Don’t be sorry,” she whispered. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for, Evie. We’re getting there, don’t you think?”

She nodded, and he brushed his mouth against hers as he gave their baby one last pat.

“Come on. I can’t wait to discover what combination of seeds and beans you’ve convinced your mother to serve instead of stuffing and gravy.”

“Hey!” She playfully shoved him out the door. “I’ll have you know, we’re having seeds, beans, stuffing
and
gravy. It’s a veritable feast!”

“Can’t wait.”

While Evie and Max did his pre-meal blood sugar check and insulin shot, Liam helped Claire carry dishes to the table. And it was a feast, with a large turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, wild rice with cashews, apricots and cranberries, green beans, stuffing, squash and gravy. Even though none of them overindulged, they all felt decidedly nappy afterward. Evie cuddled with the boys for a bit on the couch, watching football and making up answers to their questions about the rules, but when Liam joined them, with answers that sounded real, she took her leave.

“I’m going to go help my mom with the last of the dishes, okay?” she asked Liam. He waved her off, and resumed his explanation of a fair catch kick to Connor.

In the kitchen, she put the last slice of pumpkin pie into a small container, stuck it in the fridge, then picked up a dish towel and started drying the plates. At the sink, her mother was humming quietly.

“You really don’t mind not having a dishwasher?” Evie shook her head. “I can’t wait until I have one again.”

Claire smiled. “There were some lean years when you girls were young, years during which we didn’t run the furnace very often, and the hot dishwater was something I looked forward to at the end of the day.”

“Mom?” Evie couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. She’d always thought of her parents’ farm as very successful.

“Mmm?”

“Mom. You just told me you couldn’t afford heating oil when I was little.”

“So?”

“So…. I’m not sure. That feels significant.”

“I haven’t thought about it in a long time.” Claire paused and looked at Evie. “I guess I’m grateful for that period of struggle. I give thanks for it.”

“Are you trying to teach me something through this story?” Evie opened the cupboard to her right and placed the stack of dried plates in their spot.

“I think I’m losing my touch in my old age.”

“Hardly. Are you trying to give me hope that things will get easier, or reprimand me for wearing some sort of hair shirt?”

Claire chuckled. “Probably the latter, but I wouldn’t use the word reprimand. Struggling is one thing, sweetheart. Refusing opportunity is another.”

“I don’t think—”

“Of course not.”

Evie thumped her tea towel on the counter and glowered at her mother. “Don’t interrupt me like I’m a mindless teenager!”

“You weren’t mindless then, and you aren’t now. But you’ve got a good thing in there, Evie. What’s stopping you?”

She didn’t have an answer for that, not right away, and as they tidied up, the thoughts that came to her weren’t ones she could share with her mother.

Liam helped her carry a bag of leftovers to the car, and while the boys buckled up, she turned and pressed her hand against his chest. It was cold, but he wasn’t wearing a coat, and through his dress shirt, she could feel the flex of his muscles.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Sleep tight tonight, sunshine.” He pressed a quick kiss to her temple and opened her door for her.

But once the boys were asleep, and after she’d spent a few hours reading and online, she gave up on rest and reached for her phone. It only took three false starts before she completely dialed his number.

He picked up right away, but his voice was thick with sleep. “Evie, is everything okay?”

“Yes. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Yeah?” She could hear rustling as he sat up in bed. “That all?”

“Is that okay?”

“Absolutely.” The affirmation rolled over her, low, warm and sexy, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry, but all of a sudden she was overwhelmed with feelings.

“Today was nice.” It was an inane conversation starter at one in the morning, but she didn’t actually have anything to say. She just wanted…

“Mmm-hmm.” He waited for her to say something else, but that was all she had. She was an idiot. After a long silence, he cleared his throat. “Hey, do you…do you want me to come over for a bit? I could be gone before the boys wake up.”

Yes!
“No, not tonight.”

“Maybe sometime soon?”

Hell, yes.
“I think so, yeah.”

“Okay, we can work with that. Are you having trouble sleeping?”

For so many reasons. “Uh-huh.”

“Tuck into bed, I’ll tell you a bedtime story.” And from across town, his voice seeped under her skin and wrapped itself around her heart. His words themselves were dry. He told her about an engineering project he worked on with a mildly entertaining group of co-workers, but it was just what she needed, and she slowly unwound. When she yawned, he promised he didn’t take offense, and told her to close her eyes and count sheep.

“I will. Thanks for this.”

“Sunshine, I wish you’d call me more often.” As it so often did, his voice held an edge to it, one sharpened by something that felt suspiciously like love held at bay. “And Evie…”

She didn’t know if she wanted him to finish that sentence.
Yes, you do
. It was time to stop lying to herself.

“The next time you call me in the middle of the night, your voice full of longing and ache…I’m not going to ask if you want me to come over. I’ll just come over. Because I hate this, being away from you. Knowing there’s a side of your bed that could have my name on it, if you’d stop worrying about what anyone would think. The next time you call me in the middle of the night, I’m not going to worry about your rules, because I know that deep down, you think they suck too.”

“I’m getting there. I miss you.” It was ridiculous to realize that now, on a day when they’d spent hours together.

“I miss you, too. How about I bring muffins over for the boys tomorrow and have a brief visit after school?”

He meant it in the nicest of ways, but his constant giving and her not being able to reciprocate in the way he deserved…it wasn’t fair. She needed to get her act together.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

He thought they’d turned a corner at Thanksgiving, but the next two weeks went by with no more late night phone calls and very little flirting. They had another midwife’s appointment, and held hands on the drive there and back, talked a bit about names, but nothing more than a chaste kiss passed between them. Well, not
nothing
. He was pretty sure the currents were live and arcing with overloaded x-rated thoughts on both sides. Evie kept blushing when she thought he couldn’t see her. After dinner with the boys one night, he was helping Connor with his science homework, and he noticed Evie’s reflection in the large mirror on the wall beside the table. She was standing in the archway between the living room and the small hallway to the two bedrooms, watching them, want all over her face. He almost excused himself, ready to push her into her bedroom and kiss her senseless, when Max needed help reaching his toothpaste and the moment was gone.

But Evie wasn’t wasting his time, or her own. She was thinking, trying to get her head clear, and he liked wherever her thoughts were heading. And in the interim, they were doing things together, without limit or restraint. Not the clothing-optional things he
really
wanted to do, but regular almost-coupley things. Good in a different way things. The weekend before Halloween, she asked him to provide his geeky expertise in helping her build a clone trooper costume for Max, and after he spent the morning painting the downstairs unit, now fully separated from his own apartment, he headed to her place, armed with his iPad and two Star Wars reference books. He had five others, but he didn’t need her to know that until they were living together.

She answered the door in a cut-off pair of jean shorts and a plaid shirt over a tank top. He allowed himself an internal groan as his cock came to life. Damn, why did she have to be so hot all the time?

“Hey!” She was out of breath, which he stupidly also found sexy, even though it probably meant she was working too hard. “You’ve arrived just in time to save the storm trooper from my destructive fingers.”

“Storm trooper or clone trooper?” He lifted the reference books and grinned. “It’s an important distinction.”

“Oh, crap! I don’t know. I’ll call Max and find out.”

“He’s not here?”

“No, they’re at Dale’s for the night.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Did I not tell you this was just going to be the two of us?”

Just the two of us
. Blood pulsed south at those magic words. “You failed to mention that. Good thing I like you.” He winked, slid past her, put his stuff on the table, and took off his jacket. Then he took his time rolling up his cuffs, enjoying the way Evie watched with hunger as he revealed his forearms.

Why wouldn’t she just kiss him?

Because she doesn’t think she should.
Something was still holding her back. He nodded for her to lead the way, and followed her to the boys’ bedroom, where she had white cardboard, duct tape, markers and a glue gun set out. He passed her his cell phone and she called Dale’s house. Max confirmed it was in fact a clone trooper that he wanted to be, and Liam set about cutting and curving and shaping cardboard pieces until they had a helmet and a breastplate to wear over white sweats Evie had already sourced.

She clapped and cheered when he finished, which made him feel like Superman, and he didn’t even blink when she offered him one of her protein bowls for dinner.

She dished out the colourful spoonfuls of lentils mixed with couscous, spinach, red pepper, tomato, garlic, onion and a creamy dressing that he suspected was made of lemons and ground up seeds, but he didn’t care because it was freaking delicious.

“I’m surprised you didn’t push for pizza after working so hard this afternoon,” she said.

“Maybe I want to be on your good side tonight.” He shot her a heated glance. He wasn’t going to push her. He didn’t think. But damn, he wanted to. He wanted to slide that plaid shirt slowly off her body, and cover the revealed bare skin with his hands and mouth and body.

She blushed. “Would it shock you if I said I thought we should slow things down?”

His mind screeched to a halt.
Oh, for fuck’s sake
. Slow down from their already glacial pace? “Maybe, yeah. Why?”

“There’s still a lot I want to know about you.”

“Okay.” It really wasn’t, but she had him over a barrel.

“And I think…maybe it’s my pregnancy hormones, or something, but you’ve got the wrong idea about me.”

His jaw twitched. “Evie, don’t do this.”

She swallowed hard. “I know I’m sending mixed messages, and I don’t mean to.”

“You’re not sending them to me, sweetheart. You’re sending them to yourself.”

“What do you think is going to happen between us?”

“Clearly nothing. But a guy’s gotta have an impossible fantasy.”

“I’m no fantasy.”

“You keep telling yourself that, sunshine.” Damn. He didn’t want to be mad. He didn’t want to be chippy and bitter, but enough was enough.

Evie tried not to think about what that fantasy might be. She chewed the last few bites of her dinner carefully, then carried her bowl to the kitchen sink and washed it out. She returned to the table, grabbed her glass, and repeated the action.

Liam smirked as she returned once again, and when she silently gestured at his bowl, he held up his hands in surrender. She grabbed both his bowl and his glass, to avoid being laughed at
again
, and after cleaning and drying all of the dishes, she paced back and forth in the kitchen. Inside her tummy, Liam’s daughter took great delight at her mother’s activity and started doing her own acrobatics.

She was playing with fire, but hell, she’d already been burnt. And it was Liam. If she could trust anyone, it was him, even if she’d pushed and pulled and pushed more than was fair. Her pulse picked up. Could she? She took a deep breath and turned around, only to find him standing in the doorway. Liam in her kitchen was becoming a regular occurrence.

“Okay, tell me.”

He narrowed his gaze, like he wasn’t expecting that to be her tack. “Tell you what?”

“What’s your impossible fantasy?”

“Evie, you don’t want to do this.”

“Don’t tell me what I want.” Even as the words were spilling out of her mouth, she knew they were the wrong choice.

His lips twitched, and he shifted his shoulders back and forth. “Then how can I tell you my fantasy?”

This was a dangerous game. And she didn’t care. She leveled him with an even glare and adopted her best couldn’t-care-less attitude. “We need to get this out into the open and deal with it. Tell me what you want, I’ll tell you how it won’t happen, and we can move on.”