Trouble in Sudden Falls: A Sudden Falls Romance (33 page)

Rogan was trying to cram the poles through Eli’s old dome tent—with little success—when a hideously bright green VW Beetle drove up and stopped in front of his campsite.

He looked up and wiped his sweaty palms across the thighs of his jeans. Whether his hands were sweaty because he’d been wrestling with the world’s most stubborn tent or because he was nervous about meeting Tinkas, someone he’d been speaking to online for more than a year and a half but never in person or even on the phone, he couldn’t say. Probably the second, though he’d never admit it.

He wondered why she hadn’t let him pick her up.

He came to his full height as the door opened and
Amy
got out, dragging a giant duffel bag after her.

“What the heck are you doing here?” Amy didn’t really seem like the stalker type, but this was freaky.

She did a double take. “A better question is what are
you
doing here?”

“I’m meeting a friend.”

“Who?”

He hesitated for a second. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her he was meeting another girl. “His name is Tinkas.”

She goggled at him. “You thought I was a guy?”

“What?” Then it dawned on him. “
You’re
Tinkas?”

They both started laughing as Darlene got out of the driver’s seat. “Well, I guess this means you don’t need me to check this guy out to see if he’s a nutjob.”

“He is,” Rogan said with a wink.

Sometimes this little planet he lived on was a little too odd.

“Okay. I knew Tinkas was a girl,” he admitted as she came up to him and smiled up into his face. The brilliance of her smile, her dimples in full display, was nearly blinding.

“This looks like my cue to leave,” Darlene said. “I’ll be back at noon tomorrow to pick you up.” She got back in the car and rolled down the window. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Rogan could hear her laughing even as she pulled away.

“Small world,” Rogan said.

“Yep.”

“Need help getting set up?”

She shook her head. From her duffel bag she pulled a nylon tent bag, from which she extracted her tent. She turned away from him, gave it a toss and it immediately opened into a tent form.

“Oh, that’s so cheating.”

She grinned again and it practically took his breath away. She was so adorable. “It’s a lot harder to put away, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Not really.”

She looked over at the mess of poles and stakes next to his deflated tent. “Having problems with your tent?” she asked.

“Not mine. It’s my dad’s. And it’s not as easy as it looks.”

“It’s not that hard, either.” She stepped over to it and began assembling the poles. “Put this stake in the opposite corner from this one.” She handed him a stake before stepping down on another until in slid into the ground.

He did what he was told, clearly in the presence of someone with far superior camping knowledge to his. Since this was his first-ever camping trip, he didn’t take it too badly.

They worked their way around the tent at opposite sides until all the stakes were in, then she maneuvered the poles into place. In ten minutes she managed to accomplish what he’d been working an hour to do.

“You made that look a little too easy,” he said.

“Lots of practice. In addition to ten years of Girl Scouts, my uncle used to take me camping every summer.”

“I brought hotdogs and marshmallows. I know enough about camping that I know you’re supposed to eat those.”

She giggled and it was the sweetest purest sound in the world. He didn’t know why he ever thought he’d be able to stay away from her.

“Do your camping skills extend to fire-building?”

“Building fires is in the male genes. I’m a pyromaniac from way back.”

She laughed again. He loved that she seemed to get his jokes and wasn’t freaked out by his admittedly dark sense of humor.

He was able to find enough pine needles, pine cones, sticks and branches to get a near funeral pyre going. Cremating hotdogs and a few marshmallows should be well within its scope.

Amy pulled out a couple of wire clothes hangers that had been twisted into fire forks. She slid two franks on each and handed him one. They sat on a log in easy silence as they cooked the hotdogs.

Amy started fidgeting with the handle of her fork and he wondered if the silence was as easy for her as it was for him.

“Something wrong?”

She started. “What do you mean?”

“You seem nervous.”

She continued to look into the fire, then spoke without ever looking at him. “I, uh… Oh, how should I say this? I know it was, uh, really, uh… well, uncharacteristically
bold
of me to meet you out here, but, uh… I—” She pulled her hotdogs out of the fire to inspect them. “I want to make it clear that I’m not, well… offering or expecting anything here.”

He didn’t know whether her cheeks were so red because of how close she was to the fire or embarrassment, but he could make a pretty accurate guess. He chuckled. “Never crossed my mind,” he said.

“Never?”

Rogan had spent far more hours than he’d ever admit to thinking about her in all sorts of situations, some of them including her offering and expecting a number of different things. “Well, okay, that was a lie. It did cross my mind. But I get what you’re saying and I have no expectations.”

She finally looked up at him shyly. “You’re a lot nicer than most people would give you credit for.”

He wished he could believe that.

“So does the fact that you didn’t make Darlene haul me away mean you’ve changed your mind about…” She hesitated. “This?”

“This? Meaning seeing each other outside of school?” he asked.

She nodded.

He thought about it for a long moment. His arguments hadn’t changed, but his feelings had to some extent. “If we’re going to do this, then we have to do it in the light… with both of our parents’ permission. I don’t want you to get in trouble.” He took her hotdog stick out of her hand and leaned them both up against the bigger log so that they could cool off a bit before they ate them. He took her hand in his and noticed how small her fingers were in comparison to his. “You’re not the kind of girl who sneaks off to meet a guy. I can’t even imagine why you agreed to meet with me… I mean, before you knew who I was. Especially after how long you’d been saying you wouldn’t.”

She squeezed his hand when he laced his fingers through hers. “It sounds stupid now, but I was mad at my mom for not liking you to the point that you picked up on it.”

“I get where she’s coming from.” He shrugged. “I’m not generally what mothers pray their daughters will bring home.”

Amy smiled at him and touched her palm to his jaw. Rogan found himself nuzzling into it and he kissed the inside of her wrist.

“You’re not so bad… and since your little makeover, you look downright respectable.”

“Ouch. Not that.” She giggled and he couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and kissed her.

Her tongue met his hesitantly, and she clearly had no idea where to put her hands, but it was the sweetest thing that he’d ever experienced. He pulled up long before he was ready to, but a few moments after he probably should have.

When he was able to breathe again, he cleared his throat and said, “So we’re agreed. We’ll go back home tomorrow and confess together to both of our parents, beg for forgiveness and for permission to date.”

He really hoped both Eli and Mrs. Goodman would let them off the hook. Now that he’d tasted Amy’s sweet kisses, he didn’t see how he could live without them.

By the time Maddie made it home on Friday, she was nearly in tears. She’d had the worst day she could have imagined. Actually, she couldn’t have possibly imagined a day this bad.

It started heading downhill when she’d arrived at the store to find the words “LEAVE TOWN BITCH!!” spray painted in garish orange across the front of the building.

She’d really hoped that once Rob and his group had cleared out the basement, things would settle down. Not that she thought for an instant that the mayor had had anything to do with the vandalism, but she didn’t know about the rest of his group.

The police chief made another trip out. Well, actually,
three
more trips out. First when she called about the graffiti, and then twice more when her security alarm went off. The security company came out and checked all the connections claiming that all the contacts were secure and that the system was working as it was supposed to.

But something—or
someone
—kept setting the alarm off and it was wreaking havoc on Maddie’s business—sales were totally in the can—and with her sense of safety.

Too bad today was the first day Emma had ever requested off. Maddie could really have used her assistant’s help and more importantly, her company. However, Maddie wasn’t willing to call and interrupt Emma’s day, since she knew Emma had something planned with Rob.

So Maddie made it through the day, jumping at even the smallest noise, like the sound of the bell over the door ringing to inform her she had customers. And of course, the only customers she got were tourists. Thank God for the tourists, as few of the locals had been in since the very beginning.

She would never be able to get the store in the black in the next couple of months. And Maddie knew without a doubt that her mother would put the store back on the market exactly six months from the day Maddie had arrived in town.

At this rate, maybe it would be for the best. The whole town clearly still hated her. Except she didn’t want to leave Eli. He was the best thing in her life. Maybe the best thing that had happened to her
ever.

So why hadn’t she responded to his “I love you” or equally important his “I want to marry you”?

She knew he’d expected her to. Now it was hanging there between them, but she didn’t know what to do with it. If she were honest with herself, she’d have to admit she did love him. And had for years and years.

But every time she got close to saying it, she started to feel panic in an anxiety-attack level. If she went that final step and he broke her heart, she wouldn’t recover. Of that, she had no doubt.

It had been hard enough to recover from Darren’s betrayal and she’d stopped loving him—if indeed she ever really had loved him—long before she found him with the chubby tart.

Since Eli made his big declaration and near-marriage proposal, he hadn’t pushed. Hadn’t even said “I love you” again, which she was mostly grateful for.

As she pulled into her drive, completely weary to the bone, she felt so grateful to see Eli’s lights on next door. She didn’t even bother to go in to her house. Instead, she walked right across their joined lawns and in his front door.

She found him in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher and he turned to her as soon as he heard her. “Hi,” he said, drawing the word out. He looked at her a moment longer. “What’s the matter?”

She didn’t say a word, she simply walked into his arms, which he immediately folded around her, pushing the entire awful day away. It was the first time all day that she’d felt safe and warm and almost… happy.

Why couldn’t she trust him enough to say it?

Trust was one of those things like faith that you either had or you didn’t. If you didn’t, then there was no way to manufacture it.

“You’re home a bit early,” he said into her hair. “I was going to make you dinner.” She felt herself shudder and his arms tightened fractionally around her. “Hey. What’s the matter?”

She tilted her head up until she was looking into his face. “Could you kiss me?”

He didn’t even hesitate. His lips brushed hers softly. She clutched at his neck, trying to draw him closer and Eli, sensing what she needed long before she could have said it, scooped her up until her arms were wrapped around his neck and her legs were wrapped around his waist and he headed for the stairs.

He didn’t slow until he set her down on the floor next to his bed. After whipping her shirt over her head, he slid her skirt down her legs along with her panties. She was out of her bra in seconds. His clothes followed moments later and then she was finally in his arms, mouth to mouth, chest to chest, hip to hip. As he laid her back on the bed, he wasn’t gentle, but she didn’t want or need him to be.

She managed to blot out everything but the rush of the blood through her veins, the harsh sound of their breaths mingling as they inhaled each other and the feel of his fingers raking down her back before grasping her hips to pull her even closer.

Covering himself with extreme efficiency, he spread her legs and slid home, filling her heart and her soul every bit as much as he filled her body. He thrust into her quickly, tearing a sob from her throat even as he reached between them to hurry her along with his thumb against the tight bundle of nerves screaming out for release.

She felt herself falling over the edge and Eli sighed. “Maddie. I love you,” he said on a rough groan.

As she looked up into his fiercely blue eyes, she almost said it back. She had to bite her tongue not to tell him.

Somehow, she suspected he knew she held back. There was a moment of disappointment on his face right before he buried his face in her neck. He held her tight until their breathing returned to normal. Maddie felt tears prick the back of her eyes.