Meet Me at Sunset (Evening Island) - Olivia Miles Page 0,43
“We had a lot of fun times, Ellie.”
She grinned, her heart warming at all those memories that she’d stowed away, in a locked part of her heart. She wanted to open it, reminisce. But she also didn’t want to fall again. “We did.”
“Don’t go having too much fun tonight without me,” he said as he hopped back on his bike and began to pedal away.
She sighed. She never had. And that was just the problem.
But as she walked up the porch to her sister, who was waiting for her with a curious gleam in her eyes, she couldn’t fight the smile from her face.
Or the thrill that she hadn’t needed to seek him out today after all. That somehow, he had found her.
Chapter Twelve
Hope
Hope had broken down and bribed the girls into good behavior with the promise of an ice cream. She had just been so desperate to walk around town, take in the sights and sounds, to be around other adults!
The trouble had started in the first gift shop, where Victoria had reached her hand out and pilfered a stuffed toy dog without Hope even noticing until they were four stores down the block. She’d been so mortified that she could feel her face flare up right there, in the middle of the street, and she’d pried it from Victoria’s clutch, rather than ask to see it, which she really should have done, if she’d been thinking clearly, which she obviously wasn’t these days. As she should have expected, Victoria began to scream, one of those screams where she held her breath and turned purple and didn’t release the blood-curdling sound until an alarming amount of time had passed. And then… Well, by then Hope was shaking. She was desperate. She pushed the double stroller back to the shop, wrestled the bulky thing through the door, and handed the toy over with a profuse apology. The shop girl hadn’t even noticed, but oh, did every one notice the screaming. And from the looks in their eyes, they judged. Oh, yes, they judged.
Disgusted with herself, she reached into her bag and plucked out two of the lollipops that she had purchased at the market last week. That quieted things down. At least until they passed by the toy store, and then it was war.
Pretending she didn’t see it, Hope pushed on by and straight into Harbor Home Designs. She knew it was silly, buying things for the cottage when she didn’t even live there and they were most likely going to sell it, but she couldn’t help herself. She was always drawn to pretty objects, and that house had so much potential! She could just picture it cleared of Gran’s worn furnishings, replaced with white slip-covered sofas and rattan chairs and soft, cashmere throws in beachy colors. The walls could be painted over in shady of muted blues and soft grays. The kitchen would be so much brighter in a soft, buttercup yellow, and everything would be so light and airy. The way it was meant to be.
For now, she would make do with what was there. Already she found it was improved with the addition of Ellie’s watercolors, and the new linens on the beds had certainly freshened things up. She did feel a tiny bit guilty as she handed over the credit card and bought a pale teal throw and three matching pillows that would liven up the front living room, but then she remembered that Evan never felt guilty for all the lunches he took with coworkers or the tennis lessons he took on the weekends. It wasn’t his money; it was their money. At least, that’s what he had always told her. But somehow it didn’t feel that way. Her job was in the house, yes, but she felt differently when she was earning her own income.
She was just about to turn out of the store when she saw the most darling set of candlesticks in a washed wood near the window display. She reached for one and turned it over to check the price, when she saw the other was suddenly missing. She glanced down to see Rose clutching it close to her chest, her eyes defiant, as Victoria looked on with interest, sucking her lollipop.
“Can Mommy see that?” she asked, smiling in what she hoped was her pleasant face, not her tense face.
Rose giggled. “No!”
Hope swallowed hard. She couldn’t handle another scene. “Please? I’ll give you a lollipop.”