Falling in Love: A Secret Baby Romance (Rockford Falls Romance)

  Falling in Love

  A Secret Baby Romance

  Natasha L. Black

  Copyright © 2021 by Natasha L. Black

  All rights reserved.

  The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature readers.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  The Lumberjack's Nanny (Sample)

  A Note from the Author

  Books by Natasha L. Black

  Connect with Natasha L. Black

  Introduction

  Everyone deserves second chances.

  But could you try again after having a heart so broken?

  I’m a successful mechanic with a good life.

  Now I’m acting like I lost my damn mind.

  It’s scary how a piece of the past can do that to you.

  Running after her when she walks out on me,

  Kissing her breathless in the street.

  Lying awake thinking of her,

  Realizing my first love was the one that got away.

  Correction, the one I pushed away.

  But as fate would have it,

  A bad storm leaves us stranded together.

  Who knew that a rekindled romance from high school.

  Could end up as what I want for the rest of my life?

  But now she’s the one pushing me away.

  She won’t talk to me.

  She doesn’t trust me.

  It’s like losing her all over again.

  This time, I won’t run away.

  This time I’m fighting for what’s always been mine.

  Falling in Love is the fifth standalone book in the Rockford Falls Romance series. Whether you want forbidden lovers, secret babies, or second chances, this series has it all. Just grab a glass of something cold because these sexy alphas and their fabulous leading ladies are sure to leave you hot and bothered in all the right ways! And don't forget, a sweet HEA is always included!

  1

  Michelle

  I shut down the computers and powered down the printers and copy machines. Going through my mental checklist to close the library felt like tucking it into bed for the night. I loved my job, the books and the spacious, peaceful library I presided over. I cleared the papers off the circulation desk and filed them and looked over the interlibrary loans that were supposed to come in tomorrow on the truck. Nicole had teased me once, asking if I kissed the front door on its forehead and said good night. It was silly, but I did feel like this place was my baby in a way. It had been smaller with an outdated collection and very little taxpayer support when I took over from the retiring head librarian over ten years ago. I was proud of what I’d made of the place and of how the library was used by Rockford Falls residents of all ages now.

  Usually I savored this peaceful time of day as I locked up at seven in the evening. Today, I was excited to get away because my friends Trixie and Nicole had managed to get free for a girls’ night, long overdue. Both of my besties had little kids, so it wasn’t easy for either of them to be away from their babies or convince a hardworking husband to watch the kiddo while they went out for margaritas. Still, I always said a girls’ night was good for the soul.

  And so were margaritas, especially the big pitcher of them that I knew would be waiting on me. If I didn’t hurry, Trixie would have eaten most of the salsa before I got there. I had promised to meet them right at seven, and I’d planned to close ten minutes early if there were no patrons in the library, but Lauren’s mom came in to return her books and ask for a recommendation.

  I parked in a hurry and rushed into the bar, ready to hug my friends and demand extra salsa. As I threw open the door and hurried in, I crashed right into someone. It felt like slamming into a sizeable brick wall, but it was only the insanely jacked, muscular chest of the one that got away.

  Correction: the one that ran away.

  It wasn’t enough that the first boy I gave my heart just broke it and announced he didn’t love me anymore. It wasn’t bad enough that he lived in the same town as me, so we were bound to see each other. Actual albeit accidental physical contact with the man short circuited all my sense and my brain started whirling like an emergency siren, all flashes of light and chaos.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, staggering back from the impact.

  He caught my arm.

  “You okay?” he asked, genuine concern in his voice. I was close enough I could see his Adam’s apple bob when he swallowed. I swallowed hard in response, feeling something like tears burning in my throat.

  I nodded, “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “I saw Trixie and Nicole, so I figured you might be coming in. Running late? That doesn’t sound like you,” he said.

  “I got hung up at the library helping Mrs. Vance find a book. So I may have been hurrying to get in here and I didn’t look where I was going,” I said, trying to sound light, trying to ignore the fact that he’d noticed my friends and expected me be there, that he remembered I was always early or on time. He’d always paid attention to details.

  “Where you headed off to?” I asked politely, noting the big carryout bag he held.

  “Just heading home to have something to eat. I didn’t feel like being in a crowd tonight. Long day,” he shrugged.

  “When did you ever feel like being in a crowd?” I teased, falling so painfully easily into familiarity with Drew, referencing things that were true half a lifetime ago. “Or maybe that’s changed. Maybe you love crowds of people now.” I hedged.

  “No. I wouldn’t say much has changed at all,” he said.

  His dark, dark eyes so intense—that look I knew all too well. It bore into me like he could see everything. My job and cats and houseplants and the fact I hadn’t been on a date in five months, and I spent my nights reading the newest romance novel releases before they ever hit the library shelves. I wanted to hide from him for some reason. I was proud of my job and loved my life and my friends and my kitties. I didn’t need a man to complete me, and I sure as hell didn’t need Drew Casey.

  Not much has changed, my ass.

  I felt the flutter of my pulse, disappointed in myself for being vulnerable to the thrum of attraction I still felt when Drew was in a twenty-mile radius of me. It was embarrassing to be so susceptible to his particular charm. The sharp planes of his face, the high cheekbones, the long straight nose—all of it a testament to the native blood on his mother’s side. He looked so different from the blonde and redheaded kids in school with us, but my eyes were always dra
wn to him, a standard of human beauty that was unlike the other plain faces around us. If I remembered the way his darker brown fingers had looked laced together with mine, if I remembered when he wore his hair long and it brushed against my face while he moved above me, maybe I could be forgiven for being sentimental about that.

  “Everything going well at the library?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thanks. How’s the garage?”

  “Doing well. It keeps me busy,” he said. Why were we standing in the doorway of a bar talking to each other? I was fine with an uncomfortable nod of recognition and moving on. This was awkward and borderline painful. I used to know him better than anyone. Now we were strangers and I asked him how work was going. We had nothing to say to each other. So why were we even trying?

  “Good,” I said. “Glad to hear it. I’m going to go catch up with my friends. You have a good night,” I said with effort. I was trying to sound cheerful, but it came out louder than I meant it to, so it sounded more like a threat. I kept a smile pasted on my face.

  When he went out the door, I rubbed my chest. How could I have heartburn already? I hadn’t even eaten yet.

  I joined my friends, who were very casually gaping at me with their mouths hanging open wide. Not at all being obvious or acting like they’d just witnessed a ten car pileup on the freeway. I treated them to an eye roll to let them know what I thought of their crap.

  “Why are you two looking like an alien just popped out of the ceiling?” I demanded as I sat down and poured myself a drink from the pitcher.

  “Um, the OBVIOUS,” Nicole said.

  “I have no idea what she’s talking about. I mean I can’t see anything for all the steam fogging up the entire bar from you talking to Drew!” Trixie laughed.

  “Trix, you’re being ridiculous. This is not Romeo and Juliet. For one thing, we’re in our thirties. For another thing, neither of us is dead. And there’s the fact that he is not my star-crossed soul mate. He’s some guy who dumped me in high school.”

  “After high school,” Trix corrected.

  “Night before graduation if you want to split hairs on my checkered past, okay?” I said.

  “You two are fire. Period. I saw the collision in the doorway and I’m sitting here chewing my lip like I just stumbled into the naughty side of TikTok by accident, sister,” Nicole said.

  “You’re getting pretty worked up over nothing. Does your husband know you’re checking out dudes on an app?”

  “Shut up,” she laughed. “Noah is more than enough man for me. I’m just pointing out the obvious here. You had a three-minute interaction with your loathed and lamented ex in the doorway and the windows of the bar are fogged up.”

  “Nothing is fogged up. You’re delusional. Cut her off. No more tequila for you, Mrs. Jeffries. You can’t hold your booze since you became a mama.”

  “It hasn’t slowed me down at all,” Trix said, guzzling her drink. “In fact, Ashton just started potty training and there’s nothing makes you want a drink like trying to get toddler to go in the potty.”

  “Did you get the little plastic urinal one with the wheel that spins when they pee on it?” Nicole asked. “Rachel said that’s what they’re going to get for Liam because her cousin said it works wonders.”

  “I haven’t seen that one. We got a regular plastic potty, and he wants to pee on the floor beside it. So I have earned my drinks tonight.”

  “You know who’s earned her drink? The chick who just sat here and listened to you two breeders talk about training urinals with spinning features. That’s who.”

  “You know you love our kids,” Nicole said.

  “Yes, I do. But I don’t have to face the horrors of teaching a small human to go in the potty,” I said. “I think that ship has sailed.”

  “Um, I’m sorry, but you’re thirty-six, not fifty. Halle Berry had a kid at forty-seven.”

  “Yeah, she’s also freakin’ Halle Berry!” I said. “It is not like I’m in that kind of shape. Hell, I wasn’t in that shape at twenty-two.”

  “Trixie, don’t invoke Halle Berry. She exists to make us all feel inadequate,” Nicole said. “When I see her Insta and think that she is in her fifties and has two kids and that body… I kinda want to poke my eyes out a little bit.”

  We laughed and then I stole a little bit of salsa that was left.

  “So you’re saying that bumping into Drew didn’t do anything for you?” Trixie asked.

  “Of course, not,” I lied.

  I could still feel the simmering heat between us, the way that his skin still smelled the same and his hand on my arm felt like it belonged there. Like he should be more than a diffident stranger to me. Like something went wrong in the fabric of time and the universe and that’s why we weren’t together. Not the simple reason that he didn’t want me anymore. It felt wrong. It felt wrong at the time, and it felt worse now. The more time and distance that accumulated between us, the more unnatural things felt when I saw him. Like I should be able to go up and give him a hug and say I missed him, get a toe-curling kiss in return. I couldn’t explain it, how I felt a strange, timeless connection to him like I was still eighteen years old and like we hadn’t spent half our lives apart since then. It felt like yesterday, like every day I could wake up and find out it wasn’t real.

  I’d never tell that to anyone. Not even the qualified therapist I clearly needed because I carried a torch for a high school boyfriend. There was no amount of tequila that could make it go away. That was the sad fact.

  “Okay, we’ll pretend we believe that,” Nicole said. “What do you guys think about getting some tacos?”

  “What I always think about it—bring on the tacos,” Trixie piped up.

  “Ditto,” I said. “Bring it on.”

  We toasted to ordering tacos. Then we talked about how Trixie was expanding the party rentals at her flower shop to include a couple of party inflatables.

  “I thought they’d be great for kids’ parties, but I just rented the obstacle course blow-up for a bachelorette party in Overton!”

  “That sounds hella fun,” I said. “I wish I was invited. But they’re probably not fun old broads like us. They’re probably nineteen years old wearing crop tops and shit.”

  “Want me to ask if they need an older woman to chaperone?” Trixie teased.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Or I’ll eat the cheese right off your taco.”

  “That sounded really filthy,” Nicole said. “Just saying.”

  “Um, are you on lesbian TikTok too?” I demanded, cracking up. We laughed really hard at that one and made some tasteless taco jokes for the rest of the night.

  By the time we left, we had laughed so hard our makeup had streamed down our faces and we’d used a ton of paper napkins to clean ourselves up. It had been exactly the kind of fun night I needed. When I got home, I told myself not to think about Drew at all. I should just go right to sleep like it never happened, like I never ran into him or even noticed him at all. I had a library to run and friends to hang out with and—maybe I’d get some more impatiens to plant in the pots by my garage. The white ones were too boring. Maybe bright pink.

  Speaking of too boring. Me, worrying about which color of plants were outside my house. I would practically be a Golden Girl by the time I was forty if I kept this up. But it was either studious boredom or a wild fantasy about the one that got away. And the fact was, that ship had sailed. That sexy ship with its hard pecs and spicy, musky soap smell and the best sex I’d ever had—that had sailed away a long time ago. Running into him was just karma feeling like a laugh at my expense tonight. A hands-on demonstration of what I could have had if we’d worked things out. I could’ve been in bed with a muscular, handsome, caring man instead of contemplating whether or not the impatiens were on sale outside the feed store in town.

  2

  Drew

  When I got home with my takeout, I sat on the couch, kicked off my boots and stretched my legs out, feet on my beat up coffee table.
I opened the bag, trying to work up my usual enthusiasm for the bacon burger. I loved that burger—it was my favorite, dripping with cheddar, lots of crispy bacon and fried onions. Too bad I didn’t care about it at all right now.

  Now bacon burgers made me think of her?

  Add that to the list.

  The list that included things like snow and bookstores and reading glasses and flashlights and flannel shirts and pickup trucks and Mexican food and those yellow Easter flowers that grow on the side of the road in early spring. Hot chocolate and ramen noodles and blue nail polish, seashells, cats, calendars—now bacon burgers too.

  Michelle ruined everything. There was hardly one damn thing in my life that didn’t remind me of her like a knife twisting in my gut with a sharp, breathtaking pain.

  Okay, I ruined fucking everything.

  I flipped on the TV, but I couldn’t find anything that interested me to watch. Not even reality shows about motorcycles. Because it was in California, and she always wanted to go to Santa Monica Pier. We were going to drive out there with the top down all the way. Then we’d eat cotton candy, kiss at the top of the Ferris wheel as the sun went down. Goddamn, why did I have to remember everything about her? It was years ago. So long ago we could’ve been raising teenagers by now. Kids with my dark hair, rolling their eyes at us, those blue eyes just like hers. I swore and shoved the bag, burger and all, away from me.