Trouble in Sudden Falls: A Sudden Falls Romance (27 page)

“I guess that means you’ve seen Millie’s basement?”

Maddie nodded. “Yes. But what does that have to do with you?”

He bit his lip, obviously nervous about sharing any more.

“I belong to a BDSM group that Millie was also a member of. She hosted our get-togethers. Much of the equipment in your basement belongs to the group. We were trying to…re-claim it.”

“Did it not occur to you to ask?”

“Honestly? No.” He shrugged. “If news of this gets out, it
will
ruin my career. Of that I have no doubt. I’d hoped that by keeping you out of the store for a bit when you first arrived, I’d be able to get in, but circumstances kept working against me.” He shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about that.”

“If I let you have your stuff, will you let the whole matter go? No more letters, no more bricks through the window, no more hang-up phone calls?”

The mayor shook his head. “Maddie, I haven’t done any of that. I promise.” His wide-eyed innocence said to her that he was either an Oscar-winning actor or he was being honest. “I haven’t done
anything
since the condemnation order was lifted.”

They heard the police siren in the distance almost simultaneously. The mayor leapt to his feet and swore.

Maddie ran over to the cellar doors and threw one of them open. “Mayor, head downstairs. I’ll convince the police it’s my alarm. It’s gone off repeatedly for no reason at all. They should have no problem buying it.”

“Maddie, thank you.” He paused on the stairs for a long moment. “But,
why
?”

She could read the surprise on his face and she shrugged. “Emma has become one of my dearest friends. Plus, I like the idea of being in on a secret the rest of Sudden Falls isn’t.”

She could hear his chuckle even as he disappeared down the stairs. Moments later, Ryan Gibson, the police chief arrived. “Miss O’Callaghan?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, chief. I think we’re still experiencing some technical difficulties with the security system.”

He nodded. “I understand. The security company couldn’t get you or your assistant on the phone, so they called us. I thought I’d better come out and check on the store.”

“Thanks, Chief,” she said, hoping he’d clear out.

“Haven’t they come out and checked on this? A loose connection isn’t it?”

“Yes. They’ve been out a couple of times. I’ll have them take a look at it again. Thanks for checking on me.”

He turned and headed back for his car.

Maddie saw Rogan come around the side of the building. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Be right there. I have to lock up. Stupid security alarm keeps going off.”

He turned and headed back to the car. Maddie sighed. She wasn’t meant for such high drama. She waited a long moment to make sure no one else was headed around the corner before ducking down the stairs to join the mayor in the basement.

“The coast is clear, Mayor.”

“You can call me Rob. You’ve saved my bacon tonight. I think that at least qualifies you to use my first name.”

Maddie laughed.

“I can’t thank you enough.”

“No biggie. Let me know when you want to come pick this stuff up. I’ll let you in or Emma can. “

“Uh—” He had an expectant look on his face like he wanted to say something else. Finally, he said, “One other thing…”

“What?”

“Emma. Could I ask you not tell her about this?” Rob asked, resignation heavy in his voice.

Maddie shrugged. “Wow. Well, I guess it’s not my secret to tell. But Rob? Your wife is considerably more understanding than I think you’re giving her credit for. I think trying to keep a secret this big between you is not in either of your best interests.”

He nodded slowly, his shoulders slumped. “I love my wife.”

“If you love her, be honest with her.”

“Are you familiar with the term power exchange?”

She shook her head, not really sure she was ready to have this conversation with a near-stranger. “I can guess at its meaning, but I’m not familiar with the specifics.”

“I realize that I’m just a small town mayor, but the weight of the entire town is on my shoulders every day. And at the end of the day—or at least once a month or so—I need to be able relinquish that power. I need some release from that pressure and this scene filled that void for me. BDSM can be, but doesn’t
have
to be about sex. It’s about giving up your power to someone and trusting that they’ll give it back to you in the end.”

“And you don’t think you could,
um…
exchange power with Emma?”

She could see the longing for exactly such a thing obvious on his face. “You don’t know how much I’d love that. But I can’t really see her understanding. Can you? At this point, I’m not willing to risk losing her.”

“What if she finds your… toys on her own? How are you going to explain that?”

“It hasn’t happened in the eight years we’ve been together. They are in the basement at our house in a place where Emma would never look.” He shrugged. “Thanks again for your… discretion. I appreciate it.”

“Talk to her, Rob.”

Emma sat down on Millie’s Antique’s air conditioning unit behind the basement door. She hadn’t known what she’d be in for when the security company left a message on her cell phone.

She felt like she’d had the wind completely knocked out of her. So many things fell into place all at once. Rob’s disappearances the second Saturday of every month. The way he’d come home afterward completely turned on. Why it always felt like there were secrets between them. Why every once in a while she’d notice strange, faded, bruises on him. He always had an excuse, and she hadn’t really thought anything of it. Nothing like this, at least.

How could he keep a secret like this for so long? They’d been married eight years and he’d been
lying
to her the whole time. How could he come home to her every month after doing that kind of thing? Emma put her hand to her stomach, praying she wouldn’t throw up. She felt an ache behind her eyes as tears started to spill.

More than the betrayal, it was the inadequacy that began eating her from the inside out. How sad that he felt he couldn’t trust her to show his true self? What must he think of her if he believed that she would take something he was obviously struggling with and use it against him? Did he believe she’d find out and simply leave him?

She shook her head. Clearly he didn’t know her very well.

On the other hand, she was completely unqualified to help him with this…
outlet
that he needed. She knew nothing about bondage or power exchanges or anything kinky. She was the princess of plain vanilla sex—though admittedly not by choice. Frankly, as much as the idea terrified her, it appealed to her about the same amount.

She might not know anything about it, but she had three things: a computer, an Amazon.com account and a library card for the very anonymous Cincinnati library system. If she were to take out anything even remotely risqué from the Sudden Falls Public Library,
everyone
in town would know within the space of twenty minutes.

From the store’s cellar, she heard Maddie and Rob moving around. “Do you need a ride since yours left?” Emma heard Maddie ask.

“Nah. My car’s over by the courthouse and I can walk. I need to stop in and pick up my briefcase anyway.”

Emma hopped to her feet. That meant she had at least a thirty-minute head-start. She had to get home and search through her basement.

From the time she arrived home, it took Emma exactly four and a half minutes to find the duffel bag cleverly hidden in the rafters between the water heater and the furnace. She never would have found it if she hadn’t been looking for it, but it was pathetically easy to find once she was.

Contained inside the black canvas bag was a blind-fold with a fuzzy lining, a wicked-looking plastic rod about three-eighths of an inch in diameter, a riding crop, a flat leather slapper of some sort, a long whippy thing made out of the same material as her kids’ koosh balls, and several leather whippy things of a similar design, some made of really soft leather, others with thick, stiff leather. There were also lengths of bamboo or maybe it was rattan, a ping pong paddle and a plastic battery-operated device with two metal points that she made the mistake of turning on while touching, and got zapped with a fairly stingy electric jolt.

Thank God she’d been prepared for this. If she’d found the bag without any warning, she probably would have had a heart attack, exactly as Rob had suspected.

“I’m kidnapping your car for lunch,” Eli announced on Wednesday.

Evidently, Maddie looked like she was about to protest, because he immediately followed that statement up with, “I’ve earned it fair and square.”

She shook her head slowly fighting a grin. “And so it begins.”

“If you’re nice to me, I might take you with me,” Eli said with a wink, leaning against the counter so that he was inches from her.

Maddie felt her heart rate increase. It didn’t seem to matter how many times they made love—and she’d had lost track of how many times it had been in the past six days—Maddie couldn’t get enough of him.

She was starting to believe that this thing between them might actually work out, and that scared her more than the idea that it wouldn’t.

“I can be
very
nice to you.” Maddie added a meaning and a wink of her own.

“Then let’s go,” Eli’s eyebrows waggled lasciviously. “Lunch at my place?”

“That’s not lunch, that’s a nooner.”

“Is that a problem?”

Maddie pretended to think about it for a moment. “Nope.” She yelled to the back of the store. “Emma, I’m going out for lunch.”

When they stepped outside, Eli tugged her to the right, rather than to the left where her car was parked.

“Car’s that way,” Maddie said, pointing out the car.

“I know. I need to make a stop.” Eli pointed to the pharmacy down the street.

“You need to fill a prescription
now
?”

Eli leaned down to whisper in her ear. “We’re almost out of condoms.” His breath tickled the fine hairs on her neck and caused a bevy of chills to race through her, shooting lightning bolts clenching into her abdomen.

Maddie knew as soon as they walked into the drugstore together, everyone in town would know they were sleeping together. It took her about six seconds to decide she really didn’t care. “Oh,” she said finally. “Well, fine. I need a new mascara anyway.”

Maddie split left to the cosmetics aisle as they entered the store, while Eli veered right and toward the back. It took Maddie about thirty seconds to locate and grab her brand of mascara from the display. Rather than waiting for Eli at the register, she stepped to the back to join him.

Instead of finding her lover rummaging through the condom display for the biggest economy box he could locate, she found him leaning against the end-cap, talking to a woman.

And not
any
woman, but Lisbet Roarke. And not the Lisbet of recent meetings, but the
high-school
Listbet. The
polished-buffed-and-fit-for-the-pageant-circuit
Lisbet. The
town-darling-and-unequivocal-most-beautiful-girl-in-the-county
Lisbet.

She’d had her hair professionally cut and colored. Now, rather than being a matte bottle blonde with dark roots and frizzy ends, she sported an adorable chin length cut that was artfully mussed. It was the kind of haircut that took about forty minutes and three separate types of hair product every morning and made you look like you’d got out of bed after a torrid and very satisfying round of extremely carnal lovemaking.

Maddie suspected Lisbet had also been on a recent shopping trip. Her red halter-top sundress fit her to perfection and matching four-inch, come-and-fuck-me-strappy sandals said, “I’m available and I’m
yours
with little effort at all.”

Lisbet giggled and brushed Eli’s sleeve with a well-manicured, bright-red acrylic nail in a length that looked long and sexy, but not ridiculous or tacky. It was a fine line Lisbet had always been good at walking.

Maddie expected Eli to push Lisbet away or at least straighten away from her. Instead, he leaned farther forward to whisper near her ear. Lisbet closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the ceiling, the better to get closer to Eli.