Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evie Read Free

devoted to the fact that he hadn’t said anything about their relationship. For fifteen years she’d suspected they had blood ties, yet he’d said nothing. Had she been fooling herself all that time? Had it all been a lonely child’s wishful thinking? Or had Thomas simply not wanted to acknowledge her publicly? Perhaps she would never know.
    The remainder of the trip was spent considering the illustrious Detective Max Galloway. According to Thomas, his despised stepson was no prize. Galloway had apparently been so against Thomas’s marriage to his mother that he never set foot on Heyworth Island, not even when she lay dying.
    What a creep. Well, maybe His Arrogance would decline to attend and she wouldn’t have to deal with the jerk.
    She putt-putted the runabout past the twin beacons at the entrance to Heyworth Island’s dock, and slipped the runabout into its moorings, tossing a line around a dock cleat. Leaving her dour thoughts behind, she grabbed her things and hurried up to the house to change.
    Mayhem Manor. It was a grand place. Three stories of white clapboard, a deep, wraparound porch, and five red brick chimneys. Emerald and cream variegated ivy climbed up the many pillars of the porch, and pink roses bloomed along the rails. It looked like one of those old East Coast places where the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers summered by the sea, the Sadies in pastel silk shifts and wide-brimmed white hats playing croquet in the afternoon.
    Mayhem Manor had once known such a time. But all the Heyworths were gone n ow…
    Scurrying up the grand staircase to the third floor, Evie chose a bedroom she’d never stayed in before. Her own room, the one she lived in for most of the fifteen years since she’d come to the island, was being spruced up; new wallpaper, new curtains, the hardwood floor being refinished. Of course, if the house were sold, it wouldn’t be her room anymore.
    She put that out of her head for now as she chose the last room at th e end of the wide hallway. Hope fully, with twenty bedrooms in the place, this one was as removed as possible from where Max Galloway would be sleeping.
    Opening the massive mahogany armoire, she hung up her blue business suit and changed into jeans and a long-sleeve white top, then left the house and headed off toward the north end of the island, practically running in her haste to get to the barn.
    Though she owned a small house in town where she lived during th e school year, holidays and sum mers had been spent at Mayhem with her “family,” doing what she loved best.
    A smile on her lips, she topped the rise to gaze down at the old barn and the ancient, hand-hewn corrals that had stood for nearly a century.
    The minute the gate creaked open, Fernando lifted his beautiful head and strolled over to greet her. Lorenzo appeared from behind the barn and sauntered up, followed closely by pregnant Lily. Soon all three llamas had gathered around her, humming and smiling, filling her troubled heart with serenity and joy.
    Fernando stared into her eyes and blinked slowly, his lashes long and silky, his lids perpetually drowsy. She tickled his nose.
    “Hello, handsome.”
    The llama responded by humming a bit louder and nudging her cheek with his forehead. Evie laughed and gently shoved him away.
    “Okay you few, you happy few,” she said on a laugh. “It’s feeding time at the zoo, and this means you and you and you . ” Fernando nudged her again, “Did you miss me?”
    The llama continued to stare placidly at her.
    “Not talking, huh,” she joked, then headed for the barn, stroking Fernando’s soft neck as he plodded along quietly beside her.
    Inside the barn door, she opened the feed bin and lifted out a layer of alfalfa, setting it into the trough by the window. Glancing about, she looked for the oat bucket she usually left hanging on a nail next to the bins, and spotted it on a hook in front of one of the empty stalls on the other side of the barn.
    “What in the