Trouble in Sudden Falls: A Sudden Falls Romance (3 page)

If she had any idea how much willpower it had taken to turn away from the pleading look in her eyes and her unbuttoned blouse, she’d likely have nominated him for a medal. Or had him knighted. Or sainted. Or… what was better than being sainted?
Something.

It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. Frankly, the thing in his life he’d least wanted to do. He’d wanted to sleep with Maddie O’Callaghan since about the time he hit puberty. He would never let himself, however.

There wouldn’t be any way to do it and preserve their friendship. He was self-aware enough that he knew had a bad habit of sabotaging relationships with women, and he never wanted to sabotage Maddie—she’d been annihilated on too many other fronts.

And if he’d taken her up on her offer—and he’d been so much more than tempted—she would have hated herself. That week, three years ago, she’d come to the decision to leave the bastard who later became her husband. Evidently, the threat to leave was enough to turn Darren around long enough to get married.

Eli knew it had been a moment of weakness and loneliness that had fueled her seduction attempt. Then and now he understood where she’d been coming from. It was definitely a moment out of character for her and as much as he wanted to, he hadn’t been willing to take advantage of her.

Even if he still had both waking and sleeping fantasies about what would have happened had he not been overwhelmed with noble intentions one late night in December three years before.

Eli opened his mouth to ask how her first day at the store had gone when an early-nineties VW, whose chief colors were primer and rust, slowed, passed the house, stopped, shifted into reverse then pulled into the driveway.

Maddie faced the car for a moment and then turned back to Eli who’d moved to the front part of the porch. “
Oh, wow
. Isn’t that Becca Lafayette?” she asked.

Eli squinted against the brilliance of the sun hitting the snow. “Can’t be. She left town our senior year. Abandoned me three days before the prom, if you’ll remember.”

“You managed to recover in time, as I recall.” There was a bite to her tone and with a bit of embarrassment, he began to remember—or maybe even realize for the first time—his own responsibility for her insecurities back then. And now that night three years ago stood between them like an impenetrable wall. They had to sit down and have a discussion about that night. And about everything else.

He sighed as he stepped off the porch to look over at the woman sitting behind the steering wheel of the VW. She was arguing with a passenger he couldn’t see through the glare on the windshield. It definitely looked like Becca, albeit a Becca who was twice the age she’d been the last time he’d seen her.

And the years hadn’t been especially kind, he noted when she stepped from the car. She had a tired, worn look around her eyes that no amount of makeup would ever cover. Silver strands dulled the frizzy blond hair at her temples. Without greeting Eli, Becca crossed in front of the car, opened the passenger door and dragged a very unwilling juvenile delinquent from the seat.

The boy was dressed entirely in black. Eli found himself unable to speak or think as his eyes traced the youth’s multi-buckled leather boots to his ratty and torn black jeans. A black leather coat covered a black T-shirt which read in upside down lettering, “If you can read this, one of us is in trouble” stretched over a skinny torso that slouched in a manner that could be read both as “Wanna make something of it?” and “Leave me alone”. Around his neck, a metal studded black leather collar matched the belt at his waist, and his hair was the dull shade of black shoe polish with bright neon-blue highlights. His lip and eyebrow were pierced with small silver loops and the kid had more metal in his ears than Eli—or Sudden Falls, Ohio—had ever seen.

Clearly, the Anti-Christ had arrived on his doorstep.
Why?
was the question.

He suspected Maddie caught on a few moments before he did, if her gasp was any indication. He wanted to ask her to tell him the punch line, but he feared he already knew it.

“Hey, Eli.” Becca’s voice sounded casual as she came to stand in front of Eli as if more than seventeen years hadn’t separated this meeting from their last.

“Hello.” He found himself reeling from the possibilities of what might have brought her, none of them appealing to him in any way.

“This is your kid.” She grabbed the kid in question by the collar of his jacket and dragged his resisting form forward a few inches. “I’ve done all I can with him. He needs a man’s influence.”

“Ohmygod.”
Maddie’s whisper echoed the words trying to form in his own head.

He felt the blood drain out of his face as he looked the kid over.

It didn’t occur to him to deny the boy’s paternity. Closer inspection revealed the same strawberry blonde roots as grew on his head and his own freckly complexion on the boy’s pale face. While blue eyes were a dime a dozen, the only time he’d seen that exact shade of cobalt was when he looked at a family member or in the mirror.

Why the hell had Becca kept this from him for so many years? Something in him ached at the anger in the boy’s tight features, and the defeated tilt of his head.

He clenched his jaw, unable to assemble the information he’d been given. “I-I-” he stammered, realizing how much he’d raised his voice as he heard an odd noise coming from the direction of the car. He looked beyond Becca to stare into the rust colored eyes of the biggest dog he’d ever seen. He guessed a fair amount of Newfoundland and Rotweiller had gone in to the beast’s genetic makeup… Not to mention Clydesdale. The sound, it occurred to him, was the beast growling.

All thoughts of arguing with Becca left in the face of the dog, whose monstrous head lowered as the short hairs on the back of its neck stood on end.

“Fluffy.” The boy sighed. “Sit.”

Fluffy?
Oo-kay. At least the dog sat obediently on his haunches and let its huge tongue loll out.

“Rogan, meet your father.”

The whole moment felt surreal in the extreme. They each spent a moment sizing the other up. “Nice to meet you, Rogan.”
What do you say when the son you’ve never met lands on your door step?

The kid shrugged as the breath left him. “Right. Whatever, dude.”

Apparently, not that.

“I don’t know what you think gives you the right to talk to your father that way…” Becca began.

Rogan directed his response to Eli. “If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.”

Eli looked over at Maddie feeling the panic creep in. “John Cusack,
Grosse Point Blank
,” they said in unison.

Maddie’s eyes took up her entire face. “No doubt about it. He’s your kid.”

Maddie didn’t know whether she was more surprised that Eli had managed to get someone pregnant, or that it hadn’t happened a lot more often. Heaven knew, his taste in women could never be described as having anything to do with discretion. Maybe she should take it as a compliment that he’d refused to sleep with her.

For a second, she considered turning on her heel and heading back into her house. However, one look from Eli to Rogan and back again made her realize they both might need her. There were too many similarities between them to discard Becca’s assertion. Rogan surveyed his father with an obdurate set to his jaw and a scornful look in his eyes. The bad ass attitude was evident, but no more so than the intelligent glint in his eye with a hint of wounded puppy thrown into the mix. Maddie suspected he was trying to hold back a flood of hurt and anger over his mother’s abandonment and his father’s heretofore ignorance of his existence.

She watched Eli study his son with equal parts terror and wonder. At least, until Rogan spoke and then it was all terror.

“I’m not staying here,” Rogan declared.

Becca’s eyes implored Eli to do something. “Yes, you are. You don’t have any place else to go.”

“You might have at least called,” Eli said to Becca.

Maddie elbowed him then turned to Rogan. “Let’s carry your stuff in. We can argue the particulars in a bit.”

“Sorry. Right. Good idea.” Eli’s words came between clenched teeth.

That Eli didn’t deny Rogan’s paternity or even argue about letting him stay didn’t surprise Maddie. Except for his taste in women, Eli was a stand-up guy. He specialized in doing the right thing.

She watched Eli walk to Becca’s car, giving the dog a wide berth. Rogan turned his back on Maddie to go rescue his belongings from Eli.

Before Maddie could say anything, Becca started talking. “I know you never liked me and I’m sure you think I’m a horrible mother for leaving Rogan here, but I’ve gotten the opportunity of a lifetime and I can’t pass it up. All of my friends and family have kept him at one point in time or another, and they’re not willing to do it again.”

Maddie took a deep breath to argue, but realized she couldn’t. She’d thought Becca was kinda trampy in high school. Of course she’d been fairly jealous of the time Eli spent with all his girlfriends, so she didn’t have high opinions of any of them. But she definitely didn’t think much of a mother who would deny her kid his father and then drop him off without warning seventeen years later.

“I don’t think badly of you,” Maddie insisted even while realizing it was a lie. However, she needed not to offend Becca right now. “But do you really think dropping Rogan with a complete stranger is the best thing for him?”

“I’m out of options and Eli was always Mr. Responsible. Rogan’ll be fine. He adapts quickly.”

That was a pretty big assumption about a man she hadn’t seen in eighteen years. Fortunately, she was right. Maddie looked across the driveway at Rogan, wondering how many times he had been dumped with various relatives. No matter how hard she concentrated, Maddie couldn’t buy the teenager as well-adapted. Something pulled deep in her chest at this cast-off, recognizing a like soul.

Eli sneezed as he pulled a red plaid pillow, sized for a musk-ox, from the back seat of the car. Maddie wondered if he’d say anything about his allergies as he carted his burdens toward the front door and sniffled.

“How do you know Eli will make a good father?”

“Is there something that I should know?” Becca asked off-handedly while picking at a loose thread on her long, quilted coat.

After thinking about it a moment, Maddie had no question about what kind of father Eli would make. He had the patience, the organization, and the discipline to be a good parent.

“No. But you can’t drop your kid on a father he doesn’t know. What have you told him about Eli?”

Becca looked away refusing to meet Maddie’s eyes and rocked from foot to foot. Finally, she shrugged as pink tinted her cheeks. “I told him he died.”

“What have you told him since then?”

“Nothing. I said I was misinformed.”

Outrage flowed through Maddie. She straightened to her full height, wanting nothing more than to grab Becca by the hair.
“Misinformed?”
she asked, unable to keep the knife-edge of anger from her voice.

“I couldn’t tell him I lied.”

“So now he probably thinks that Eli was ducking his parental responsibilities.”

Becca rocked from one foot to the other. “Look, I’ve done the best I could do.”

Arguing that point could easily push Maddie to violence. “Why didn’t you tell Eli when you found out you were pregnant?”

She paused for a very long moment. “I thought his family would try to take Rogan away from me.”

Maddie fought to control her tongue. Typical, selfish Becca.

“But it turns out, raising a kid is harder than it looks.”

The Redmonds were a happy, close-knit family and Maddie had no problem believing Eli’s mom and dad would have made great grandparents. Poor Rogan had missed out on so much.

Maddie didn’t bother to ask why Becca didn’t bring him back to Sudden Falls once she realized how hard parenting was. What was the point?

As Eli and Rogan took the last load into the house, Becca backed away toward her car.

“Aren’t you going to at least say goodbye?” Maddie asked, her heart breaking for the teenager while at the same time she wanted to wrestle Becca down into the snow and beat the stupid out of her.

Before Rogan even stepped back out onto the porch Becca yelled in the general direction of the house, “Bye, Rogan.” As Rogan came out the front door, Becca got into her car. Maddie couldn’t help but remember that she had not only thought Becca was a tramp in high school, but a self-centered one at that. Clearly the self-centered thing seemed to have bloomed to epic proportions.

Maddie watched Rogan dispassionately gaze after his mother as she drove away. He stood tall, but the arms braced around his torso revealed how he really felt.

Maddie turned back around as Rogan disappeared into the house, slamming the screen door behind him.