Trouble in Sudden Falls: A Sudden Falls Romance (36 page)

Driving with a spatting mother and teenaged daughter in the car wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Fortunately and much to Maddie’s relief, about halfway home, Amy and Donna managed to find a middle ground where Donna agreed to let up a bit and Amy agreed never to run off again.

By the time Maddie made it to Oakwood Avenue, she felt like she’d been completely run through the ringer. She wondered if she could sneak into Eli’s house without Rogan detecting her. She needed, more than anything in the world, to spend the night with Eli’s arms around her.

She pulled the Explorer into Eli’s driveway and immediately noticed an extra car in her driveway. She didn’t recognize the white Taurus parked there and she immediately felt uneasy. What if it belonged to the person who’d vandalized the store and who’d sent the threatening letters?

The front porch light and the lights in the living room were on in the house. She hadn’t been home since that morning, and she remembered having turned out all the lights before she’d left for work.

Before she could decide whether to get Eli, call 9-1-1 or brave it herself, the front door opened and her mother stepped out.

“Oh, perfect,” Maddie ground between clenched teeth under her breath.
Exactly what I need to end this day.

For a second or two, she contemplated crawling under the dash and hiding or sneaking out the passenger door and up to Eli’s house all the while hoping that her mother wouldn’t notice her.

Her mother waved.

Oh, hell
. She was out of options.

Maddie opened the door and waggled her fingers in her mother’s direction. For a second she worried that something else had happened to her father, but realized pretty immediately that A) her mother wouldn’t be smiling her direction and B) her mother wouldn’t have thought to break the news gently and in person.

So the only bad news was that her mother was there.

She picked her purse up off the seat, and climbed out, watching her fantasy of sleeping in Eli’s arms go up in smoke.

“Mom. What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound as friendly as possible.

“I told you that I planned to come back this spring to finish clearing out the house,” she said. “There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t where I expected. What did you do with it?”

There was an edge of accusation to her tone and it was almost enough to set Maddie off. She took a deep breath. “Everything’s boxed and labeled in the garage,” Maddie said as she walked across the lawn dividing Eli’s house from hers. “If you’d like to hit the garage door button, I’ll show you.”

Her mother disappeared into the house and Maddie waited until the garage slid up and her mother stepped out into the garage from the kitchen.

Rows of boxes lined the side of the garage, each with a detailed label listing what was in the box, as well as a photo of the contents—Eli’s recommendation.

Her mother moved from the back of the garage to the front, looking at each box. “This isn’t at all how I would have organized this…” she began.

Probably, if it hadn’t been such an incredibly horrible day, Maddie could have bit her tongue. The day being what it had, she didn’t have that sort of discipline in her.

She.

Lost.

It.

“
Jesus
, Mom. When are you
ever
going to give me the benefit of the doubt?” Maddie demanded at about a hundred decibels louder than she’d intended.

Her mom looked up, clearly horrified by Maddie’s blasphemy as well as her tone.

“I’ve made two major mistakes: Lisbet, which I should have known better and Darren, which I probably should have seen coming. Yes, the former was a doozy, but frankly given that I was practically raising myself, I should be given a pass on that one especially given that it was half my life ago.”

Her mom put a hand to her throat and looked as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Maddie didn’t let that stop her. She had a good twenty years of anger to burn off, and she wouldn’t stop, now that she was on a roll.

“You and Dad stopped being here for me as soon as Andy got sick, and I understand—I even understood at the time—that he needed you. But you were
never
there for me. And then when he died, you were only there for each other. You never once assumed that Andy’s death was as hard if not harder for me. At least you had each other. I didn’t have anyone but Millie and Andy—and sometimes Eli—and Andy was gone and Eli was waist deep in girlfriends.” At that moment, she realized how much anger she still had at Eli for that alone. In high school, he was supposed to be her best friend and surrogate brother and he had dropped the ball.

But that was a conversation she needed to have with him, not with her mother, to whom she still had plenty to say.

She felt the tears begin to flow, but she was on a roll and she wouldn’t let that slow her down. “Then Aunt Millie died and Dad had his stroke and it was nearly an exact repeat of the Andy situation. You were so wrapped up in what he needed that you barely noticed you had a daughter. Since I graduated from high school, you’ve treated me like some sort of red-headed step child. You berate me, always expect the worst and are the least supportive person I can think of.”

Well, Rogan’s mom was probably worse, but she wasn’t going there at this point.

Maddie’s mom sat down on a short stack of boxes and Maddie was somewhat gratified to see tears in her eyes as well. Maddie wiped at her own face. Now that she’d gotten that out of her system, the silence in the garage was almost deafening and her entire body felt completely drained.

“You’re right.” Her mom’s rough voice was barely audible over a sniffle. “I wasn’t there for you when Andy was sick.”

Maddie leaned up against a stack of boxes, not certain she could stay standing without support. She couldn’t believe her mother had admitted that.

“But you weren’t there for me when your dad had his stroke. I’ve been completely alone for the last year and a half.” There was enough defiance in her mother’s tone that it pretty much negated her earlier admission. Maddie felt herself sag.

“This isn’t easy for me to say. But I was dying inside, and it seemed like you could brazen out whatever hit you. And you kept making the most awful mistakes—which of course I didn’t want for you—and at the same time, you managed to handle the consequences so well.” She lowered her head. “Or at least it seemed that way. But you weren’t handling it all that well, were you?”

Maddie shook her head.

“Can we—” Her mom looked up. “Is it too late? Can we work things out? You’re—” She took a deep breath. “You’re all I have left. Can we try to be closer?”

Maddie nodded as the tears came in a rush. “I hope so.” It wouldn’t make up for all the years and all the pain, but it was a start.

Chapter Nineteen

Sometime later, Emma returned to earth. Rob hovered over her, propped up on his elbows, but he couldn’t completely keep the welcome, heavy weight of his body from hers.

She felt drained and renewed at the same time. Rob brushed a strand of hair from her cheek and smiled softly. He too looked considerably spent.

As he leaned forward to kiss her, she clung to his neck, enjoying the afterglow of the moment. He straightened, unhooked the metal clasps of the buske on the front of her corset, before pulling the tabs of the zippers running up the entire interior of each leg and setting her boots on the floor.

He pulled her to her feet long enough to lead her around to the side of the bed, whip back the comforter and sheet, and slide them both between.

“That was…”

“Amazing?” she asked, a grin on her face.

“Unbelievable.”

Emma smiled, her entire being glowing.

Rob rolled to his side so that he was facing her. “You said something that’s been bothering me.”

She looked up into his face and felt her heart catch. There was a world of vulnerability in his dark brown eyes. “What is it?”

“Did you really feel like sex with us was something you had to endure?”

“Oh, honey.” She cupped his face in her palm. “It was never
bad
. It wasn’t like I had to close my eyes, open my legs and think of England.”

His unexpected laugh came out as a snort, causing Emma to grin.

“I think we both wanted it to be a little different—a little more adventurous—but we didn’t know how to say so.” She pushed his hair, which was getting a little long, off his forehead. “Be honest. Isn’t that how you felt?”

He nodded. “I’m sorry.” He rolled to his back and opened his arm in invitation to rest her head on his firm chest. Emma accepted as he continued. “I should have been honest with you. I never should have kept this from you.”

She dropped a kiss on his shoulder. “No. You shouldn’t have. But I think I understand why you did.”

“For what it’s worth, I’ve never cheated on you,” he said, quick to defend himself. “I only played with the group in situations where there was no sexual element at all.”

“I believe you. But Don’t
ever
keep anything from me again.”

“No, ma’am,” he said, a devilish twinkle in his eye. “You might…
punish
me or something.”

“In your dreams,” she said.

“It’s always been in my dreams. But I think I like having it in my reality so much better.”

Rogan looked at his watch. Amy was supposed to be over any minute. This would be their first-ever, parentally-approved date.

Sure, it was just a movie on TV, and Eli had to drive Amy home no later than ten, and Rogan wasn’t allowed to pick her up nor take her anywhere in his car, but it was a real, honest-to-goodness Friday night
date
.

And she was almost late.

Well, she would be in five minutes.

He couldn’t wait. Sighing, Rogan realized he was a little pathetic—in a happy, loopy, goofy way. He was certain the happy/loopy/goofy thing moved to his face when the doorbell finally rang.

He made himself walk—not run—to the door. But he couldn’t keep himself from throwing it open in anticipation. Sadly, it was
not
Amy standing on the porch however.

“Rogan, my baby! You look wonderful!”

Rogan felt his spirits sink to somewhere near the deepest part of the earth’s core. It figured that things had gotten too good to last much longer.

“Becca,” he said slowly.

She spread her arms out wide. “Don’t you have a hug for your mummy?”

Dutifully, he wrapped his arms around her, patting her back twice in what felt like the world’s most awkward hug, then he released her and stepped back. “Come in,” he said, for lack of something better.

“Dad!” he yelled up the stairs. “Company.”

Rogan watched his dad’s face as he came down the stairs from his office. He knew the exact moment when the identity of their guest registered with him. Eli’s entire face fell. Rogan couldn’t help but be grateful that this was going to be hard for Eli too.

“You’re back.” Rogan watched the play of emotions across Eli’s face and he wondered at them.

“I didn’t want Rogan to overstay his welcome. We’ll be leaving tomorrow morning.”

“It might have been nice if you’d called,” Eli said as he hit the landing of the stairs. “Rogan still has three weeks of school left. You can’t pull him out now.”

“He’ll be fine,” Becca insisted. “Unless he did horribly, his high school should give him full credit.”

“But the college won’t,” Rogan muttered, watching all his dreams and plans swirl down the drain.

“College? You’re not old enough for college.”

“Rogan has been attending college this quarter in addition to doing fantastically well at the high school. He’s got straight As.” Eli’s obvious pride in Rogan’s accomplishments warmed him in a way nothing else could have. His dad put a hand on his shoulder and for a second, Rogan had the feeling that everything
might
actually turn out okay.

“Good for you, honey,” Becca said absently. “But I have a job in Chicago that starts on Monday. We need to find an apartment before then. We’re going to have to leave tomorrow to make that happen.”

Rogan felt his shoulders fall as his eyes pricked. He should have known better than to get his hopes up.

“Let him stay here, Becca.”

“What? You
want
him to stay?” She couldn’t have injected more surprise in her voice if she’d tried.

“Of course. He’s my son.”

Eli glared at Becca in such a way that he almost dared her to make something of it.

“He’s
my
son. And he can’t stay. I’m sorry.” She turned to Rogan. “Pack your things.”

“I want to stay.” He hated how hesitant his voice sounded.

“What? You can’t mean that.”

He straightened his spine. “I’m sorry, but I do. I want to stay here with Dad.”

She looked between him and his dad in a calculating manner. Her eyes narrowed. “He’s not your father.”

“
Jesus
, Becca,” Eli growled. Rogan looked up at Eli. He didn’t seem all that surprised by her little bomb. He didn’t even bat an eyelash at her statement.

“What do you mean?” Rogan asked as his heart stopped beating in his chest. “I look exactly like him.” Rogan’s throat tightened up. What if she were telling the truth?