Finding Their Son by Debra Salonen Page B

car completely off the road? She couldn’t say for certain—she actually leaned in and made a little sighing sound that she couldn’t believe came from her lips. She was embarrassed, but not enough to push him away.
    Even the fury she’d initially felt when he suggested that she might have had an abortion disappeared the moment he pulled her against him. She wasn’t herself. She was… Oh, no, I’ve turned into my mother.
    ‘Cept ya aren’t drunk.
    No. She was stone-cold sober and she was making out with Eli Robideaux in her Honda, a stone’s throw from her store, where her clerk and any customers could be watching. “This is nuts,” she cried, pushing back. “I must be nuts.”
    Her words were more effective than the pressure she exerted against his shoulders. He stopped kissing her immediately. He was breathing hard and now she could smell a stale hint of burnt tobacco on his breath. And sage?
    The musky, not completely pleasant scent helped clear her head. “You need a toothbrush,” she told him. “And a shower.”
    He let out a gruff snort but didn’t argue the point. Or apologize.
    She eased her foot off the brake and drove straight to her garage. The door was up, she noticed. Not something she ever did, since one half of the space was devoted to boxes of stock and seasonal displays. She pulled into the empty slot and killed the engine.
    “I’ll make you a deal,” she said, knowing there was no turning back from the confrontation that was coming. “I’ll wash your clothes while you clean up. We can talk over a bowl of soup. After that, I’ll drive you to Sturgis.”
    He didn’t jump at the offer. “My uncle’s staying with a woman I only met once a long time ago. I’m not sure I can find her place in the dark. She doesn’t have a phone.”
    She picked up her purse and took the key out of theignition. “I can’t do anything about that. It gets dark early in the mountains.” She pointed over her shoulder. “You’re welcome to try your luck hitching again, but I really think we should talk about this like civilized adults. Seventeen years is a long time.”
    He didn’t argue. He got out of the car and followed her, even hitting the button to close the garage door without being asked. She found that odd, but she didn’t say anything.
    There was a lot to say. Too much, in fact. She’d always assumed that eventually her day of reckoning would come. With her son, not with Eli. She never saw this coming, and now it was too late to run away.

CHAPTER FIVE

    E LI STAYED IN THE SHOWER longer than he had in his entire life. For several minutes, he stood directly under the powerful stream of hot water without moving. Maybe if he stood here long enough, the blood in his brain would start flowing again and he could come up with some kind of plan. He hoped.
    When the heat started to diminish, he grabbed a bottle of shampoo and lathered up. The scent was crisp and clean, faintly antiseptic. He didn’t recognize the brand, but he knew it wasn’t one Bobbi ever bought. For as long as he could remember he’d been using fruity-smelling girly products.
    He never complained, but honestly, didn’t anyone question his needs? If he happened to use the basement shower near his son’s room, he found manly scented products. How come E.J. rated, he silently grumbled, and I didn’t?
    He now knew the answer, but he didn’t want to think about it. Instead he redirected his ire toward the woman he’d been married to for almost twenty years. She did the shopping. Were her purchasing habits one more way to emasculate the man of the house?
    He rinsed his hair and turned off the water. Thinking about Bobbi left a bitter taste in his mouth. He hated beingangry all the time. Maybe that as much as anything had been his motivation behind falling for his uncle’s vision quest baloney. He wanted to start moving forward. If that meant he needed to fill in a few gaps in his past…well, who could have known the gaps