Before they learned they were having twins, Chloe thought of her due date as an abstract point, late in the summer. Her midwife appointments were only once a month, even after finding out about the multiples.
It felt like she had lots of time.
But two things happened just before her big ultrasound anatomy scan. One of the babies kicked her for the first time—no longer just random, fluttery feelings, but an Alien-esque movement that repeated again that night, much to Tom’s obvious joy.
And Chloe’s due date changed.
Well, apparently it had already changed, but she’d missed the memo. In her defence, there was a lot to keep track of.
Tom knew, though. It came up when they were discussing time off from work for her appointments, which were about to increase in frequency.
“We’re nearly at the halfway mark,” she said, tapping her pen against her planner.
“Past it,” Tom said casually.
What?
“No,” she said slowly. “I’m not due until the middle of August. And remember what Kerry said? First time moms usually go late.”
“That’s true for one baby,” he said. Then he wiggled two fingers at her. “Twins are different.”
She blinked. “They can be different,” she corrected, even though she wasn’t sure she was correct at all. “But if all goes well…”
“I think—and you can call Kerry and double check—that we’re hoping to get to the end of July.” He held his hands up. “Which is a long time from now.”
It was barely four months away.
She joked about her belly getting big, but it really wasn’t. How could two whole babies grow in such a short period of time?
So time started to speed up.
And as March came to an end, Tom and Jake were still leisurely discussing renovation options.
Chloe was pretty sure they needed to make a firm plan and soon, because she wasn’t living in a construction zone with newborns. She’d move in with Jenna and Sean if need be.
“It won’t come to that,” Tom assured her.
“The weeks are zooming by.”
“And my guys are machines. As soon as the weather warms up, it’s going to be a big group effort to turn this place into just what we need to welcome the babies home.” He gave her a warm, confident grin. “Like your very own episode of Queer Eye.”
“Army Guys for the Pregnant Lady?”
“Something like that.”
She had to trust his confidence. She had enough to worry about at work. Despite the community support and Owen Kincaid’s continued advocacy for the library to move into the emergency response station, the library board was dragging its feet.
And she still didn’t have her maternity leave paperwork sorted out. There was something rotten in the state of Denmark. Maybe ghosts were haunting the library head offices.
So when they headed back to Walkerton for the anatomy scan, she asked Tom if he minded stopping with her at the library board offices, too.
“Not at all,” he said. “Can I wear my uniform?”
She laughed. He had the army uniform, and the park ranger uniform, and the search and rescue team had reflective gear that counted, too. “Which one?”
He shrugged. “Whichever will put the fear of God into whoever it is that’s causing you all these problems?”
“How about you wear a nice button-down shirt and pretend to be a lawyer?”
That made him laugh. She hoped they were both chuckling at the end of the day.
Their first stop was the hospital ultrasound clinic, where Tom waited while she went back to the dark exam room on her own. The technician took what felt like a bajillion different images, from all different angles around her belly. Then after a lot of clicking and whirring from the giant machine, the tech announced she was done, and asked if Chloe wanted Tom to come back and see the babies too.
Did she? And how. “Yes, please.”
It was a redo of the first ultrasound, when the fact they were having twins was confirmed. Tom held her hand as they were shown the babies, bigger now, one of them sucking a thumb, the other kicking their feet. They were big enough now that the tech could point out fingers and toes, the spines, perfect and tiny, and two beautifully beating hearts.
Tears welled behind her eyelids, and Tom silently passed her a tissue.
She slid a glance sideways at him. He had one too, and shrugged happily at her as he dabbed his eyes.
Once they were done, Chloe wanted to put some space between that lovely moment and her crusade against the library management. It was still early in the day, not yet noon, and she was hungry, too.
“Let’s find some lunch before we storm the library offices,” she suggested. Keep the happy feeling a little longer.
They went to a diner on the main drag. Tom ordered a burger and fries, and Chloe chose the soup of the day. “And extra fries for him,” she added. “Which are really for me.”
When the waitress brought their food out, she brought Chloe a full plate of fries with a wink and a knowing glance at her belly.
They took their time, discussing reno options in between bites, and as they ate the place filled up with a lunch crowd.
Chloe didn’t notice the people who sat behind her, but as the noise swelled—and then died down unexpectedly—she caught a part of their conversation.
“It’s a mistake to string librarians on for too long.”
Chloe froze. Tom caught her eye and nodded slowly. He’d heard it, too.
Holding her breath, she turned her head just enough to point her ear directly backwards.
“The email from the ministry was clear. The spending freeze is confidential until they announce their new plan for library services across the province.”
Spending freeze.
New plan.
Her mouth fell open as blood pounded in her ears.
From the other side of the table, Tom reached over and grabbed her hand. He clearly thought she was about to spin around and give whoever was talking a piece of her mind, because how dare they?
But her boyfriend had another plan. He tugged her arm insistently and she turned her gaze back to him as the volume in the restaurant shifted up again.
What? she mouthed.
He gave her a grim smile and lifted his phone. Smile.
She gave him a wide-eyed what-the-crap look instead, and he took her picture.
“Are you done?” He asked casually, gesturing to the last bites of food between them.
Yeah, she was done. Done being played for a fool by an organization that underestimated her. “Let’s get out of here.”
He let her take the lead until they reached his truck. But before she could wrench the passenger side door open and haul her fed-up, pregnant self up onto the seat, he caught her gently by the arms and spun her around. “Hey,” he murmured, holding her tight to his chest. “I’m sorry.”
“What the fuck, Tom? What are they thinking will happen? They’re just going to run out the clock on everyone and surprise us with closure notices?”
He growled under his breath. “Maybe. And they’d be stupid to do that, but sometimes people are stupid.”
“I need to call them on that. I should go back in there and—”
“Show that know you know there’s a problem but not what the problem is, exactly? We heard a slice of a conversation. You need more intel, okay? Then you can kick their asses, expose them, quietly get them to change their plans…whatever you end up wanting to do.”
She blew out a breath. She didn’t need this stress, that was for sure. And after all the goodwill that had been built up around the town halls across the county, she didn’t want to spread half-truths that could slow that positive momentum with the public support. They might need every single resident in the county on their side at the end of this.
And then there was the sharp, brutal realization that she didn’t want to let anyone down, not after she’d worked so hard to give them hope that she could save the Pine Harbour library. She might not be able to save anything after all. Blinking back frustrated tears, she glared up at Tom. “How do I find out just exactly what is going on here?”
“The same way I found you on Christmas Eve. We ask my brother to use his network to get information that would not otherwise be available.”
Zander was a good…whatever he was. Bodyguard, private investigator. But now she wondered just how far his reach went. “Hacking?”
“Don’t ask me a question you don’t want to hear the answer for,” he said gently. “I don’t ask either.”
“I did not peg you as the radical, criminal type.”
“I have my moments.” He kissed her quickly, then helped her into the truck.
After he’d jogged around to his side and gotten them back on the road up north, she felt the need to clarify that she wasn’t opposed to his grey-area strategic thinking. “About the radical, criminal enterprise. I like it. It’s hot.”
He winked at her from across the cab of the truck. “Let me tell you about this time I climbed on top of the visitor centre at the park in the middle of the night.”
“Recently?”
“When I was in grade ten and trying hard to impress a girl.” His eyes crinkled and his nose twitched as he cleared his throat before continuing. “Spoiler, she was not impressed. But the ranger who found me first thing the next morning thought my climbing skills could be fostered and funnelled in a more productive-to-society kind of way.”
It was closer to an origin story than Tom had ever shared before. And it reminded her of her own librarian book-dealer story she’d told him at Christmas. She told him that. “We’re not that different, are we?”
“Maybe not.”
“You’re cooler-headed than I am, though.”
“On the outside, anyway.” He gave her a quick glance before returning his attention to the road. “I was pretty pissed in that restaurant, too. Secrets like that can mess with people’s livelihoods. It’s not okay.”
“You were right to stop me from engaging, though. I don’t know who those people are. Maybe they’re not in a position to effect change.”
“That reminds me. The photo.” He handed her his phone. “Do you recognize them?”
She carefully studied the photo. It was a horrifying picture of her. She chuckled. “I should have smiled. But no, I don’t recognize them. Should I ask around?”
“I bet Zander can ID them for us.”
“You were serious about hiring him to get the dirt, weren’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“I can’t afford whatever he charges.”
Tom’s brow pulled forward. “Chloe.”
“What? That’s a reasonable—”
He held out his hand, palm up. She slid her fingers across it and he lifted her hand, kissing her knuckles. “He’ll do it free. He’ll do it because he’s a dad whose kid goes to the library, whose mom goes to the library, whose wife writes books that are shelved in the library. But he’ll mostly do it because he’s your brother-in-law, in spirit if not in a strict legal sense.”
She gave him a faint smile. “I’m guessing the strict legal sense isn’t really his deal anyway.”
Tom’s face split into a wide, laughing grin. “Exactly.”
Zander came over that night. Instead of hacking, he had an old school, analog plan to figure out what the real deal was with the library plans for the next fiscal year.
“People who will talk about something confidential in the middle of a diner will also fall for talking to a stranger who knows a little about their secret. There’s a bit of ground work to be done first, but I think I could call them up and pretend to be from the ministry that funds them.”
“That’s… Would that really work?”
“It’s a good first step. If I don’t get anything out of them, then we reach out to someone in the media, quietly, and see if they can get the emails through a Freedom of Information request, which will trigger some more uneasy chatter. The email will pop up at that point.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Twenty years in the military. No such thing as a budget everyone likes. And when people don’t like how things are going, OPSEC is low.”
Chloe would normally be amused at the idea that there was operational security concerns around library services. But the analogy seemed appropriate now. “I don’t feel right keeping this a secret from the other librarians in the county.”
“Give me a day. Loose lips can happen on both sides, and it would be better to be sharing solid information rather than best guesses.”
That was true. Heart pounding, Chloe nodded in agreement. “Deal.”
After he left, Chloe expected to fall asleep early, as she usually did, but the nerves and perilous excitement of the day overrode the low-grade fatigue of pregnancy.
Tom couldn’t sleep, either. They read together for a while, but he was restless. “I’m going to get up for a bit,” he said, setting his book aside. He brushed a light kiss to her temple. “I might be keeping you awake.”
“You aren’t,” she said, putting her book away as well. “I’ll get up, too.”
“A crazy day, huh?”
“The craziest. Do you want ice cream?”
He grinned. “I’m not the pregnant one.”
“It can’t hurt.”
“No, it probably wouldn’t hurt.” He shrugged. “You know what I need?”
“What?” She would give him anything he asked for.
“A hug.”
That sounded amazing. She rolled over, pressing her body against his. Between them, her belly was just big enough to feel like a thing between them, but not between them. More like it was now a third part of their dynamic, and they were hugging around it. He sighed and she squeezed tighter.
One of the babies slowly kicked, then the other. Tom made a happy sound and pulled her in tighter.
Yeah, a hug was even better than ice cream.
“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly into the warm little space between their faces.
“I want to protect you from the chaos of the world.”
“I don’t think you can.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that I want to.”
That was sweet. She kissed him softly. “Thanks.”
He smoothed his hand over her hair and down her back. “What can I do instead?”
“Be my accomplice in crime, apparently.”
“It’s hardly a crime. More like a whistleblower investigation.”
“True.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “You know what you could do?”
“Name it.”
“Can you make some final decisions about the renovation and get that started—and then completed—before the babies arrive?”
He pointed to the other side of the cabin. “Do you want to go stand on the verandah and talk about the nursery options?”
She was already out of bed. “You bet I do.”
He grabbed the quilt and wrapped it around her shoulders. “To keep off the chill of the night air,” he whispered.
She gently fisted the front of his shirt and pulled him in for a lingering kiss. “Same,” she said when they broke apart.