Once his shift ended at six, Barney got into his blue Dodge Ram and raced for home. He had no time for a shower. After throwing on civilian clothes, he grabbed a quick shave, slapped on aftershave, and then added a splash of cologne. His horses would get fed a little late tonight, but it wouldn’t harm them. Depending on the road conditions, the drive to Crystal Falls took anywhere from a half hour to forty-five minutes. He didn’t want to be late.
The dumpy little Italian place was even worse than Barney remembered. The gravel parking lot had iced-over mud holes deep enough to bury a Volkswagen Bug. The pale blue clapboard siding of the building needed paint, the windows looked cloudy with grime, and when he ascended the steps to the entrance, he felt the wooden planks give a little under his weight.
The interior wasn’t much better. The stench of rancid oil blasted him. Pots of fake green ivy sat on dividing walls that formed eating areas, and the leaves looked coated with dust. The red-checkered tablecloths were plastic. The flatware sat on paper napkins. He saw only two couples in the dining room and a handful of people at the bar in the back. Taffeta sure knew how to pick them.
Glancing around, Barney didn’t see her. He concluded that she hadn’t arrived yet. When an older woman came to seat him, Barney held up two fingers and said, “Do you have a secluded table where I can watch the entrance? My date isn’t here yet.”
The waitress pulled two plastic-covered menus from a rack and led him to a bistro table tucked into a corner near the bar. Barney took one of the two stools and watched the front door through a tangle of gray-green ivy leaves.
His breath hitched in his throat when Taffeta finally walked in. She wore a pink, figure-hugging knit top, a tight black skirt that reached to just above her knees, and sassy strapped heels the same color as the skirt. Boy, oh, boy, did the girl ever have legs! To hell with dinner. He wanted to go straight for dessert, which, if he had his druthers, would be her.
He waved so she would see him. She nodded and moved toward him with purposeful strides and a seductive swing of her hips. Holy crap. He’d known Taffeta could be a knockout. Kissable pink gloss shimmered on her lips again. Her eyes, deftly enhanced with shadow, seemed to dominate her face. Not that he could stay focused on her face for very long. She was dressed to kill, and she was stunning enough to knock a man on his ass from fifty feet away. This was a hell of a turnaround from a woman who came to work disguised as the local bag lady and had told him point-blank that she didn’t date.
With an upward twist of one hip, she perched on the tallish stool across from him.
“Thank you so much for meeting me,” she said.
The shakiness he’d heard in her voice earlier hadn’t been due to a bad phone connection, after all. With visibly trembling hands, she toyed with her flatware. Under the blush that she had applied to her cheeks, her skin was drained of color. She was one very upset lady.
“Taffeta, what’s wrong?” he asked.
She finally met his gaze. “Can I trust you with a secret that may destroy my life in Mystic Creek?”
That wasn’t at all what Barney had expected to hear. He searched her eyes and saw both fear and panic in their blue depths. “Taffeta, I’m a county deputy. I can’t give you a blanket promise like that. What if you’ve done something illegal?”
She rushed to assure him, “I haven’t! Not really, anyway. And I’m paying my debt to society.”
His stomach lurched. “You’re what?”
“I’m on probation,” she blurted. Then she stared at him, looking on the verge of tears, with her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “Please don’t tell anyone, Barney. I’ve invested a lot of time and money to build a life for myself in Mystic Creek. I don’t want to start over again somewhere else.”
“Did you say probation?” He could scarcely believe his ears. Taffeta didn’t strike him as the criminal type, and he prided himself on being an excellent judge of character. “What did you do wrong?”
“Nothing!”
He shook his head. “A person isn’t put on probation for doing nothing.”
She inhaled a shaky breath and lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “I was wrongly convicted of child abuse. I didn’t do anything of the sort, I swear. My husband lied about me in court to discredit me so he could get a divorce without making his father mad.”
As a lawman, Barney had heard way too many I-didn’t-do-it stories, and so far, hers wasn’t very convincing. “He accused you of child abuse in order to get a divorce? That doesn’t ring true, Taffeta. Why would a grown man go to such lengths, if he simply wasn’t happy and wanted out of the marriage?”
She rested an elbow on the table and cupped a hand over her eyes. “Barney, I swear to you that it’s the truth.” Then she locked gazes with him before she continued speaking. “Phillip is an immature, selfish man who lives way beyond his means. He loves fancy clothes, racy new cars, and young women. Prior to our marriage, he wheedled money out of his wealthy parents to maintain his lifestyle. When he was almost thirty, his father finally got tired of it and gave him one year to grow up, get married, and act responsibly. Phillip decided to create the illusion of what his dad wanted to see, and he started hunting for a wife.”
The waitress came to take their orders. Barney signaled that they weren’t ready with a slight shake of his head. When she walked away, he said to Taffeta, “And he found you?”
“Yes,” she answered with a nod. “I worked in a sports bar to put myself through college. I’d paid a pretty price for a fake ID and wasn’t yet twenty when we met. Phillip decided that I would be the perfect stage prop. His father is a high-end attorney at a fancy law firm. Phillip is, or was, a junior partner. I had just enough education not to be an embarrassment to him. I was young and easily impressed. Phillip charmed my socks off.” She gestured helplessly with her hands. “I thought he was wonderful.”
“But he wasn’t,” Barney guessed.
“No, definitely not. The ink was barely dry on our marriage license when he stopped bothering to be charming. He was far too immature and self-serving to have children. I would eventually have ended up leaving him, I’m sure, but I accidentally got pregnant. I was on the Pill, got a bad case of strep throat, and the antibiotics rendered the contraceptive ineffective.”
Barney vaguely remembered reading somewhere that antibiotics had the potential to decrease the effectiveness of birth-control pills, so at least this part of her story rang true to him. He just wasn’t sure why she was telling him all this. He sensed that she wanted something from him, but he couldn’t imagine what.
“Phillip was furious,” she said shakily. “He demanded that I get an abortion. I flatly refused, and our marriage, already on the rocks, completely fell apart. He stopped coming home except for when his parents came to visit. No matter what, he had to keep his dad convinced that he was a loving husband and an eager father-to-be.” Her eyes swam with tears, and she avoided meeting Barney’s gaze. He got the impression she didn’t often cry and felt embarrassed for letting him see her on the verge.
“When our daughter, Sarah, was born, his parents fell completely in love with her. Phillip pretended to love her, too, whenever his parents were around, but in between those visits, he barely came home often enough for Sarah to know him as daddy. He only showed up when his folks would be around, and then he played his role as a devoted family man to the hilt.”
“Where are you going with this, Taffeta?”
She gave him a pleading look. “I know it’s a long story, Barney, but please, please hear me out.”
Nodding reluctantly, Barney said, “Go for it. The evening’s still young. But I think we should order some food.”
Since his date didn’t seem interested in the menu, Barney perused the selections and ordered spaghetti and meatballs for them both. He ignored the wine selection and settled for drinking water. They both had to drive home, and the way this conversation was going so far, he’d need the clearest possible head. When the waitress left, Taffeta resumed telling her tale.
“I never lied to you, Barney. I’m divorced. I have a little girl. Phillip was granted custody. It was my plan to get Sarah back as soon as I could.”
He took a sip of water. As he set down his glass, he said, “So you were convicted of abusing your child.” It was a statement, not a question, and Barney felt sick to his stomach. He had been attracted to this gal, deeply attracted.
“Yes,” she confessed, “but I’m not guilty.”
That was what they all said, and Barney had been around that block too many times to fall for it. He kept his expression neutral.
“During my pregnancy, Phillip stopped bothering to hide his infidelities. He knew I wanted to provide stability for our daughter and wouldn’t leave him. I had no money of my own. I hadn’t finished my education. I couldn’t properly raise a child while waiting tables at a sports bar. And I honestly no longer cared who my husband slept with. I contented myself with being a homemaker and a mother. I figured I could stay in the marriage for Sarah’s sake.
“What I didn’t count on was Phillip developing an attachment to another woman. She was a blonde named Melanie who looked— Well, I know it sounds judgmental, but she looked like a hooker. I guess Phillip found her a lot more exciting than me, because he wanted out so he could marry her. Only that was sticky because he knew his father would stop cutting him big checks if he divorced me. Both his dad and mom liked me. In order to get out without pissing off his father, Phillip needed an inarguable reason.”
“I see,” Barney said, but in truth, he didn’t see anything clearly and felt as confused as hell.
“One night when Sarah was three, she got up after I’d put her down for the night, unfastened the safety gate on the upstairs landing, and fell down the condo stairs. She was bruised up and had a gash on her head that bled like anything. I was terrified. Ambulance response took fifteen to twenty minutes. I didn’t know scalp wounds often look worse than they actually are, and I knew she needed medical attention. I bundled her in a blanket and drove her to the hospital myself.
“I was frantic to get in touch with Phillip. I didn’t phone him often, but even so, he seldom answered my calls. He was always too busy bonking other women. Finally an ER receptionist called his cell number, and he answered when he saw the name of the hospital on the caller ID.”
She glanced away and saw the waitress coming with their food. She wiped under her eyes with her napkin and sat straighter on her stool. After their laden plates were placed on the table, Barney stared at his dinner, feeling as if he had swallowed a toddler’s building block that had stuck at the base of his throat. He wouldn’t be able to eat a bite.
When the waitress was once again out of earshot, Taffeta said, “I remember being so relieved that Phillip was coming. But when he entered the emergency treatment room, he took one look at Sarah and started yelling that I’d gone too far this time. I didn’t get what he meant. I thought he was mad because he’d gotten pulled away from whatever he was doing at the time. I don’t think I totally realized what he was capable of until the cops came and physically removed me from my daughter’s bedside. They charged me with child abuse, I was put in jail, and because I had no money to hire a good attorney, the court appointed a public defender for me.”
“There must have been evidence against you, Taffeta. You were convicted of the crime.”
“Phillip lied,” she said, her voice trembling. “He was still being discreet at that time about his unsavory nightlife. On the surface, he was a successful young lawyer and family man. His father was a greatly respected person in Erickson. Who was the jury going to believe, Phillip, from a well-known local family, who was so suave and convincing, or me? After we got married, I lost touch with my friends at college. The only social contacts I had were with friends of Phillip’s or his parents’ friends. I had no one I could ask to be a character witness for me.”
“Couldn’t you have asked members of your family?” Barney inserted.
“I have no family.”
Barney gave her an incredulous look. “No family? How did that happen?”
“My birth mother gave me up as an infant for adoption, I wasn’t adopted, and I grew up in foster homes.” She sighed and passed a hand over her brow. “Back to my trial. I was out on bail by then, but all my things were still at the condo and Phillip wouldn’t let me in to get my clothes. I had little money, no decent clothing, no hair tools. I was a mess compared to Phillip in his expensive suit. He got on the stand and testified that I had abused Sarah countless times. He said he’d hoped that it would stop happening, but instead it only got worse. Then he said I went too far. He even sobbed and wept, as if what had happened to Sarah completely broke his heart. He claimed that he could no longer pretend or keep my behavior a secret. Next time I might kill our daughter.”
“And the judge believed him? You were convicted of abusing your daughter on his testimony alone?”
“Yes. Mostly, anyway. Sarah did have cuts and bruises from the fall. And she had been taken to the ER twice before for treatment after she’d had accidents, once at a playground and once by the condo kiddy pool. Phillip swore that even those injuries had been inflicted on his daughter by me. The hospital records were inconclusive and looked bad for me, especially when Phillip’s attorney put his own spin on them.” She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “When those two earlier incidents occurred, I didn’t think I’d ever need witnesses to testify that I didn’t cause my child’s injuries, and by the time of my trial, I couldn’t recall the names of the people who’d seen what happened.”
Barney knew that eyewitness testimony was sometimes enough to get someone convicted of a crime, but normally the court also wanted at least some physical evidence. “Did your daughter’s cuts and bruises look like injuries she might have gotten from a beating?”
“The ER doctor said that they could have been inflicted by a fall down the stairs or by a beating. He couldn’t be sure which. But he also said that to his knowledge he’d never had a person falsely accuse a spouse of abusing a child. What reason would Phillip have to tell such a horrible lie?”
Barney sat back in his chair to study her. Now that he’d heard the whole story, he supposed that she could be telling the truth. He just wasn’t sure why she was involving him.
“The judge was lenient with me,” she went on. “I guess they often are with first-time offenders. I got five years of probation plus mandatory attendance at anger management counseling bimonthly. Phillip immediately started brainwashing Sarah to be terrified of me. I was granted monthly court-supervised visitations with my daughter, but with each visit she was so increasingly traumatized by seeing me that I finally decided I was doing more harm than good. It was the hardest choice I’ve ever made, but I had to think of what was best for my little girl. People in Erickson thought I was guilty. They hated me. I couldn’t even go to a grocery store without something unpleasant happening. When a man spat at my feet and an older woman on a sidewalk called me a monster, I petitioned the court for permission to relocate. Permission was granted, and I was appointed a probation officer and counselor in Crystal Falls. That’s when I came to Mystic Creek. I used a small divorce settlement from Phillip, which he gave me only to make himself look good, to lease my shop and start my business.”
Barney forked up a bite of spaghetti. It tasted like cardboard with a drizzle of grease on top. Offhand, he couldn’t remember when he’d pegged somebody so wrong. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a rotten time of it,” Barney offered. “But I still don’t see how I can possibly help.”
She leaned closer. “I hired a private investigator to keep me updated on Sarah’s well-being. He called me this morning. I knew Phillip had divorced Melanie, but I had no idea that his father had finally gotten fed up and stopped giving him money. I also didn’t know that Phillip’s mom, Grace, is gravely ill and unable to care for Sarah. They’ve been taking care of Sarah for Phillip since his divorce. His dad is, of course, distraught over his wife’s health. Phillip had no choice but to step in and provide care for his daughter. But he’s doing a horrible job of it, leaving Sarah with one strange woman after another. My investigator says rumor has it that Phillip is maintaining his fancy lifestyle by dealing in drugs now that his dad won’t cough up any more cash. I suspected Phillip dabbled in recreational drugs during our marriage, but this is even lower than I would have thought he would stoop.
“Sarah—she’s only five, Barney. The girlfriends who are taking care of her may be using drugs while she’s with them. Sarah is missing a lot of preschool because Phillip can’t be bothered with taking her to class every morning. Her teacher says she isn’t getting along well with other kids. She’s acting out and dressing inappropriately, whatever that means. In short, my little girl is in a very perilous situation, and no matter what it takes, I have to try to get her out of there.”
Barney turned his glass, staring into the remaining water. “How do you think I can help?” he asked. He’d known from the start of this conversation that she wanted something. Now maybe she’d spit it out. “Shoot.”
“You’re a deputy.”
He sighed and gave his glass another turn. “Being a law officer doesn’t empower me to cure all the problems of the world. I can’t bust Phillip for using and selling drugs unless I catch him in the act, and Erickson is way out of my jurisdiction.”
Her gaze clung to his. “You don’t understand, Barney. I don’t want you to bust Phillip. You’re a respected man in Mystic Creek. If you and I were together, it would make me look more squared away and respectable. I might have a chance of getting custody with you standing beside me. I’m not talking about a real marriage, at least not a permanent commitment. It would be only temporary, and of course I would grant you conjugal rights for the duration. Once I get Sarah, we can get a quiet divorce.”
Somewhere in the middle of this announcement, Barney knew his jaw had dropped open. Of all the things he might have expected her to say, this wasn’t it. Now he was glad they had come in separate cars, because all he wanted was to get the hell away from her and her wild stories and even wilder ideas.
A pretend marriage? Was she out of her mind? He believed in the sanctity of matrimony. For him, it was a forever deal. On top of that, his parents frowned upon divorce unless it was absolutely unavoidable. They would be extremely upset if he married a woman and then divorced her a year or so later. In fact, he reflected rapidly, upset didn’t describe it by half. If his mother thought he was at fault, she would shorten him by a head, deputy or no deputy.
“A marriage with benefits?” Barney heard the outrage that rang in his voice, but for the life of him, staying calm was impossible. “I’m sorry, lady, but what the hell makes you think I’m that hard up?” He pushed off the stool. “My answer is no. Not now, not ever.”
“Please, Barney, don’t go. At least think about it before you turn me down. My little girl is in danger!”
Barney grabbed his jacket and shoved his arms into the sleeves with a lot more force than was necessary. “And I’m really sad to know that. But bottom line is, she’s not my problem. When you said you had a proposition for me, I never for an instant suspected that it would be something this crazy.” He turned for the door, stopping only long enough to drop a couple of twenties on the table. Over his shoulder, he said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
• • •
Taffeta was shaking so violently after Barney stormed out that she knew she shouldn’t drive. She sat alone at the table, staring at the grease bleeding off her untouched meatballs and spaghetti. The smell alone made her want to gag. She felt so stupid, not to mention frightened, rejected, and totally humiliated. Barney Sterling now had it within his power to destroy her future in Mystic Creek, and she had handed over the information to him on a silver platter. What had she been thinking?
Taffeta’s only excuse was that she felt completely and utterly desperate. Stepping back from her daughter’s life was one thing when she thought it was the only option for her daughter’s well-being. But she’d missed her terribly every day they’d been apart and now Sarah needed her. Asking Barney to pretend they were in a serious relationship had seemed like her only hope. Taffeta could think of no other way she might stand a chance of contesting Phillip’s custody. As Barney’s wife, she might have had a shot. She certainly wouldn’t have a prayer if she filed for custody as a single mother who had already been convicted on one count of child abuse.
Taffeta recalled all the lonely nights that she had endured during her marriage to Phillip. Now he was abandoning Sarah in the same way. Even worse, he was leaving her with strangers who were possibly abusing drugs. Had she failed to drive that point home to Barney? She hadn’t offered him sex because she thought he was hard up for it. She had offered it as a way of paying him back if he helped her.
Her heart sank when she thought of what her little girl might be witnessing right now. Oh, Sarah. She was a confused little girl who couldn’t possibly begin to comprehend why her daddy didn’t love her and resented being around her. And what line of bull was Phillip feeding the women he was using to watch his kid? Taffeta could almost hear him. “The firm is litigating an important lawsuit. My mom is gravely ill. My dad’s falling apart. While I burn the midnight oil to do all the casework, I need someone to look after my child.” How would those girlfriends react toward Sarah when they discovered Phillip wasn’t working, but was instead having a fine time with some other woman? Taffeta was particularly worried about Sarah’s caregivers being under the influence. They could be violent. It was a bad situation for Sarah all the way around.
Taffeta finally composed herself enough to feel safe behind the wheel. As she drove back to Mystic Creek, her mind kept circling one question over and over.
What would Barney do with all the information that she’d given him? He had never promised that he would keep what she told him a secret.
If he chose, Barney Sterling could destroy the solid reputation she was trying so hard to rebuild.