Finding Their Son by Debra Salonen Read Free Book Online Page A

to do. It had been. And having Eli suddenly show up out of the blue didn’t mean anything. Did it?
    Her normally loquacious conscience remained atypically silent.
    “Fine,” she muttered. “Whatever.”
    She hurried along the sidewalk until she could see her car. Still there, she noted, trying desperately to ignore the fluttering sensation in her belly.
    She was within two steps of the vehicle when she saw that he wasn’t sleeping sitting up as she’d assumed but was intently reading something on his lap. Her heart rate spiked a heartbeat before she confirmed her worst fear.
    “Oh, God, no,” she cried. “My journal.”

CHAPTER FOUR

    E LI HEARD C HAR’S CRY of alarm but he was too numb to react. A drum was thumping inside his brain. The words she’d written in a girlish combination of print and cursive seemed burned into his mind.
Guess who took care of him? Yep, me. And by took care I mean what you think. Why? Because I knew I’d never get another chance. Who wouldn’t make love to a god?
    She’d spent two pages describing a night Eli could barely remember. His bachelor party had started out like any other party. His cousin—and then best friend—Robert had taken him out to Lake Sharpe to meet a bunch of friends and teammates. At some point in the night he and Robert had gotten into a fistfight. Eli couldn’t remember what they’d been fighting about. He vividly recalled everyone freaking out.
    “Holy shit, Robert,” someone had shouted. “Bobbi’s gonna skin you alive if Eli shows up with two black eyes and a broken nose.”
    He vaguely recalled Robert helping him stumble up to the back door of the dyke nurse’s house. Everyone knewher sexual preferences—even if nobody in their right mind would have openly “come out of the closet” in such a conservative and close-minded atmosphere. The truth didn’t keep people in need from seeking her services. Got an itch that probably didn’t come from a toilet seat? Go see the elder Jones sister. Need stitches but can’t afford the E.R.? Pam Jones would help you out for a few bucks, a barter or for free, if it came right down to it.
    People like Eli went to Nurse Jones when you didn’t want your business spread around town. He sorta remembered knocking on her door, but not much after that. He had no memory whatsoever of what Char had written. And he wasn’t sure he even believed any of it. Especially the part that showed up toward the end of the book.
I haven’t written for a long time because I didn’t want to take a chance on Mom or Aunt Pam finding this and reading that I was pregnant. I didn’t think it could happen from just one time, but it did. Too bad Eli’s happily married and living in San Diego.
    Now that Pam’s found out, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Mom threw her usual hissy fit. There’s talk of sending me to live with Aunt Marilyn in Montana. Like that’s going to happen. I’d run away and take my chances on the street before I’d put my baby within a mile of that creepy uncle of mine. All I know is it’s hard to be miserable when you’re carrying Eli Robideaux’s baby.
    The door wrenched open. “Give me that. You had no right.”
    He looked at the irate woman with the weird hair. Shewas leaning in, her hand extended. It shook with barely concealed fury. Or fear. He didn’t know. He couldn’t think and that made him more pissed off than he’d been all day.
    “You’re a liar. This didn’t happen,” he cried, crushing the notebook in his fist. It felt good to yell at someone.
    She yanked the book from him and pressed it to her chest. Her voluminous chest. A tiny hint of something akin to a memory flitted through his brain.
    No. It didn’t happen. She was a messed-up kid with a big-time crush. I wouldn’t. I didn’t.
    “I don’t lie. Get out of my car.”
    He looked from the notebook flattened against her pumpkin-colored sweater to her face. A stranger’s face. “I’d remember if that happened. I’m