The Amish Suitor. Jo Ann Brown

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       Chapter One

      Harmony Creek Hollow, New York

      The bottle of spaghetti sauce at the top of the pyramid swayed.

      The three bottles below it rocked.

      The whole stack quivered.

      Eli Troyer leaped forward and hooked an arm around his nephew. He yanked the six-year-old away from the grocery store endcap. Kyle let out a shriek. Whether it was shock or a forewarning, everyone within sight in the small grocery store froze.

      But not the bottles. The stack began to crumble.

      Just as the wall had.

      Irrational terror swelled through Eli, clamping talons around his windpipe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. Sounds erupted in his mind. The memory of an earsplitting crack from a wall that couldn’t stand any longer. A man’s horrified shout, a woman’s scream, crashing stone, pain...silence.

      Always the silence.

      Knowing he had to protect the little boy, Eli put out a hand in a futile effort to stabilize the bottles, to keep the display from crumbling. Too late. Just like before. In a slow-motion avalanche, the tower collapsed. He bent over Kyle, keeping himself between the little boy and disaster. Time escalated again when the first jar hit the concrete floor and shattered. The rest followed. Some bounced and rolled, but most exploded in a spray of marinara sauce. The sharp sounds resonated through his hearing aids as if he stood in a giant hailstorm.

      Shouts, loud enough so he could hear them, though he couldn’t pick out words, rang through the store. His fear faded into knowing he must deal with what had happened in Salem’s only grocery store. He fought the yearning to flee as a different panic burst out in a cold sweat. After four years of staying out of the limelight, eyes were focused on him. It was the moment he dreaded, the moment he’d hoped wouldn’t come.

      Someone СКАЧАТЬ