Trouble in Sudden Falls: A Sudden Falls Romance Read Online Free

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