New Leaf

  He leaned slightly closer to search her gaze. “What more would you like to know about me?”

  The air in her apartment felt suddenly thin. “Barney, you’ve knocked the breath right out of me. I haven’t a clue.”

  He laughed. “I hate my first name. Let’s start with that. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve had to endure Deputy Barney Fife jokes?”

  She gave a startled laugh. Then she confessed, “I hate my first name, too. I’ve never met my mother. She gave me up for adoption right after I was born, but if I ever do meet the woman, the first thing I’ll ask her is why she gave me such an awful name.”

  “I think Taffeta is a fine name.”

  She shook her head. “When I was a kid, being bounced from one foster home to another, everyone called me Taffy. At school, the boys called me Daffy or Daffy Duck. When I got emancipated at seventeen and started college, I went by Taffeta and jumped down people’s throats if they dared to call me by that nickname.”

  “I like Taffy,” he argued. “It suits you.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” she warned, which made him laugh again.

  He bent his head. When he looked back up at her, the humor had vanished from his expression. “I’m sorry I was so self-righteous last night. I could have at least shown some concern.”

  “You reacted like almost anyone would,” she assured him. “And, honestly, I can scarcely believe you’re willing to help me now.”

  “There’s no guarantee that my badge will tip the scales in your favor,” he warned, “but I can’t see how it can hurt your case.”

  She hugged her waist, her whole body going suddenly tense.

  “Where do you think we should live?” he asked. “At my place or here?” He glanced around. “I vote for my place. It’s nothing elegant, just a renovated old farmhouse on an acreage, but it’s got four bedrooms and three baths. Your flat is cozy, but it’s small and isn’t really a home. There isn’t even a second bedroom for Sarah, and judges take things like that into account when they consider a child’s future welfare. I also have livestock to care for, and it’s safer for them if someone is in the house at night. If a predator starts pestering the animals, I’ll hear the ruckus. You can drive from my place to the shop each morning. It’s not that far away.”

  She nodded in agreement. He smiled and asked, “Are you still worried that we don’t know each other well enough to do this?”

  “Sort of. It’d be scary even if we’d known each other for a year.”

  He settled back on the sofa. “Where did you attend college?”

  “The University of Oregon. Erickson is only a hop away from Eugene.”

  He snapped his fingers. “I went to the U of O, too. You see, we have something in common besides hating our first names.”

  Taffeta said, “I wanted to become a pharmacist. Then Phillip came along and asked me to marry him. Like an idiot, I said yes.”

  “I took criminal justice courses before entering the police academy,” he said. “I wanted to be a state cop and specialize in criminal investigation. That requires more education.”

  “So how did you end up here, being a deputy?” she asked, sincerely curious.

  He grinned and shook his head. “You won’t laugh?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I didn’t like being a state cop up north. Bigger towns, more people, and crime out the yang. Bottom line, I got homesick for Mystic Creek and my family.” He shrugged. “When you grow up in a town like this where everyone knows practically everyone else, you miss it. My family is also pretty close-knit. It felt as if a huge chunk of who I was had gone missing.”

  “Why would I laugh about that?”

  “Well, some people might think I’m a mama’s boy.”

  She did laugh then. “Do you hang out with your mom a lot?”

  “No, not half as much as I should. Tonight when I dropped by, she was surprised to see me, and I think she knew right away that I had a reason for being there. That bothered me. She is a fabulous mother. My dad is the salt of the earth. They provided me with a wonderful childhood, and I know they’d like to see more of me.”

  Taffeta thought of her own childhood. “You are so very lucky. As an infant, I got sick. Some kind of weird anemia, and at first the doctors thought it might be leukemia. I was taken off the adoption market for the first year of my life, and by the time I was well, I was over a year old. Young couples prefer to adopt newborns. Nobody stepped forward to take me.”

  His usually bright gaze darkened. “I’m so sorry.”

  She scrunched her shoulders. “Lots of kids grow up in foster care. When I was five, a couple almost took me. I got to meet them and grew excited, thinking I might finally have a real mom and dad. That didn’t happen. Later a set of foster parents considered adopting me, but in the end, they decided against it. As I grew older, I learned not to get my heart set on anything. Now I’m alone in the world except for Sarah. I have no idea who my mother and father are.”

  “You could probably track them down.”

  “I have no desire to find them, Barney. If they were interested, they’d be trying to locate me, not the other way around. When you grow up like I did, you learn to be alone and feel okay about it. Sometimes it bugs me, like when I visit a doctor and need to fill out my family history. Does ovarian cancer run in my family? Do relatives of mine have early onset diabetes? I have no idea. My genetics are a complete mystery. It’s a concern now that I have a daughter.”

  “I can’t imagine not having my family,” he said. “When one of us needs help, everyone circles the wagons. It’s a good feeling to know you can count on people to be there.”

  He told her about his brother Jeb’s wife and how Jeb had rescued her and her daughter during a horrific ice storm. “She was on the run from a crazy husband who had abused her and her little girl. While she was staying with Jeb, the bastard tracked her down. It was a life-threatening situation, and at times Jeb needed help protecting her and the child. All of us boys had his back, and so did our dad. I don’t think Jeb or Amanda will ever forget that.”

  “Phillip isn’t physically violent, thank goodness.” Taffeta smiled. “He’s self-centered and careless with people’s feelings, but he’s too involved in his own gratification to be focused on deliberately harming anyone.”

  “He sure as hell harmed you, not with his fists, but with vicious lies.”

  She nodded. “Yes, but there again, Phillip was thinking about himself, not me. To understand him, you have to know him. He never actively wanted to hurt me. I stood in his way, plain and simple.”

  “You’re very forgiving.”

  “Actually I hate his guts,” she confessed with a laugh. “But I also know it was never his sole aim to ruin my life. He doesn’t think about the other side of the coin. Phillip is all about Phillip. His wants, his needs, his happiness. When he lied about me on the stand, I doubt he spared a second thought for what it would do to me. He wanted out of the marriage, and Sarah’s accident gave him a window of opportunity to divorce me without incurring his father’s wrath.”

  “How could any man fail to understand what such lies would do to the mother of his child?”

  “Barney, he just doesn’t care—about me or about Sarah. She’s a nuisance to him, something to be displayed when it makes him look good and ignored the rest of the time, just like I was. I was only ever a stage prop, the crowbar Phillip needed to pry money out of his dad.” Taffeta got up and moved toward the kitchen. “Your stomach is growling. I have a feeling you haven’t eaten.”

  He placed a broad hand over his abdomen. “I’m sorry. I was so intent on what you were saying, I didn’t notice. Truth is, I spent my lunch hour talking with Bryan Vorch, and I went straight to my parents’ place after work to get their take on a temporary marriage. After that, I went home to feed my animals before coming here,
but I didn’t think about feeding myself.”

  “Well, I can whip you up a grilled cheese with a side of tomato soup,” she offered. “That’s what I fall back on when I’m tired and don’t want to walk over to Flagg’s Market. I don’t have much food storage in this dinky place. I can offer you a beer, though. I enjoy one every now and again.”

  “You don’t have to feed me.”

  Taffeta motioned him toward the kitchen. “It’s not like I’m offering you haute cuisine.”

  “Do you have enough bread for two grilled cheese?”

  She grinned, glad that he had agreed to eat there. “Two sandwiches, coming right up.” She flashed him a look over her shoulder as she grabbed the skillet she’d used earlier from the dish drainer. “You went without lunch and dinner for me. It’s the least I can do.”

  • • •

  While she sliced cheese and spread mayo over the pieces of bread, Barney fished two longnecks out of her fridge and popped the caps with an opener he found in a drawer. He liked that her refrigerator looked tidy and the drawer was well organized. He wouldn’t be sharing his house with a slob.

  He set her beer on the counter near where she worked, and then turned one of the two dinette chairs around backward so that he could straddle the seat. She glanced over her shoulder and dimpled a cheek at him. “That is such a guy thing, sitting on a chair that way.”

  Until that moment, he hadn’t realized that she had dimples. That sent him down memory lane, trying to remember if he’d ever seen her smile during their chats over morning coffee. She had laughed. He distinctly remembered that. But he guessed she’d never smiled broadly enough to make the indentation appear. Tonight she seemed more relaxed. Perhaps it was because for the first time in a long while she had a plan to clear her name after her ex-husband’s false accusations.

  “It’s comfortable, sitting this way,” he said. “I can use the chair back as an armrest.”

  She gave her head a shake. “I use the table.”

  “That’s bad manners when you’re eating. This way, I can brace my arms while I eat, and my mother can’t give me an ass chewing.”

  She giggled. “Your mom sounds wonderful. Does she really jump all over you about your manners?”

  “And about my language,” he revealed. “Jeb and Amanda have given her two grandkids, and no foul language is allowed now, period. To this day I’m wary if she threatens to wash my mouth out with soap. She wouldn’t hesitate to do it.”

  Taffeta turned a questioning gaze on him. “How big is she?”

  “Physically no bigger than a minute, but she makes up for her lack of bulk with attitude.” He took a swallow of beer, pleased that she liked Indian pale ale. “We need a courtship plan, you know. We can’t just get married and hotfoot it to Erickson to see a judge. We have to establish that we met, fell in love, have been dating for months, and are as happy as clams. You never know when the court will check us out, maybe send a PI over here to ask around. We want people to say that we’re the perfect couple.”

  Taffeta turned a questioning gaze on him. “How in the world will we accomplish that? How long are you thinking before I can hotfoot it to Erickson? My little girl needs me now.”

  “A month.” Barney saw no point in breaking that to her gently. “We need to set the stage, Taffeta. It’s crucial to your chances.”

  The sizzle of butter popped in the hot skillet. His mouth began to water as she put the sandwiches on to brown. He wasn’t sure which struck him as being more delicious, the food or the woman. Not good. He’d only just told her he didn’t expect sex to be a part of this arrangement. And he’d meant it. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to have sex with her.

  The problem was that he found her so damned attractive. Even dressed in her plain Jane outfit, she looked good enough to devour, and now that he felt certain beyond a reasonable doubt that she hadn’t harmed her daughter, his hormones had gone into overdrive again.

  But he still wasn’t going to collect that way for helping her out, no matter how many cold showers he had to take.

  Chapter Seven

  While Barney ate the grilled cheese sandwiches and soup, he sipped on his beer. He and Taffeta shared stories of campus life at the U of O. He confessed that he’d blown off studying the first few months and had only started cracking the books when his dad laid down the law. She confided that she’d seen excelling at academics as her only way to rise above being a foster kid with no family and no money to back her. She needed to maintain her scholarships and financial aid. No adult praised her when she graduated with honors from high school at only seventeen. No one encouraged her when she worked nights to pay her own way and pulled a 4.0 GPA by studying until the wee hours of the morning.

  They laughed a little, and then Barney steered the conversation to more practical matters. “It’ll look strange to people in Mystic Creek if we suddenly get married, but if we mean to help Sarah any time soon, we can’t waste time pretending to date and fall slowly in love. I suggest that we drive to Reno this coming Saturday and get hitched in one of those chapels that offer quick weddings. Then we’ll tell people that we’ve been dating on the sly in Crystal Falls since shortly after you moved here.”

  Barney could tell by Taffeta’s troubled expression that her thoughts had turned to Sarah’s welfare. “That’s a whole week away. Who’s watching my little girl tonight? Are the adults around her under the influence, not only of alcohol, but maybe drugs? That thought alone breaks my heart and terrifies me. I’m tempted to go to Erickson and kidnap her.”

  “You can’t do that. If you were caught—and you would be caught—you’d end up doing hard time, and where would Sarah be then? It’s better to work within the legal system. It’s going to take some time,” he warned. “We have to spread our story around and appear together in town, pretending to be madly in love. It’ll be crucial that people here are convinced that we’re the perfect couple in case the Erickson judge has us investigated.”

  Even though Barney saw concern etched all over her face, she nodded. “Do you think people will believe we’ve been secretly dating all this time?”

  Barney considered the question. “I hung around mornings in your store nearly every day this last week. Trust me, in Mystic Creek, people notice things like that. I think they’ll buy it, especially if we make a show of being lovey-dovey in public after we’re married.”

  “The question is, will Sarah survive the situation she’s in for a whole month? And maybe even much longer!”

  Barney didn’t know how to reassure her. “You can only hope that God is watching over her. Let’s pray her babysitters are women with good hearts who don’t grow angry and violent when they’re high.”

  “Or when they go through the initial crash, when using more meth has no effect. I’ve seen people act crazy then.”

  Barney’s attention sharpened on her face. “You know a little about meth addiction, I take it?”

  She shrugged. “In college I knew some kids who got messed up. If you’re asking if I ever experimented, no. I did try pot a couple of times, but I hated the way it made me feel. Meth is something that I never touched.” She flashed her pearly whites in a forced smile. “I’d like to keep my teeth.”

  Barney took a swig of his beer. “Me, too. And I also want to keep a clear head. Like you, I tried pot a couple of times. But I didn’t care for it, either, and I knew my folks wouldn’t approve. I’ll have a few beers now and again, or mixed drinks at a special celebration, but I’ve never liked to feel out of control.” He winked at her. “Will you marry me next Saturday in Reno, Ms. Brown?”

  Her expression didn’t brighten. “Of course. I’ll do anything to help me get Sarah back.”

  “Ouch.”

  She giggled, but the laugh sounded forced. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m extremely grateful that you’ve agreed to do this, Barney. All indications are that
you’re a fine man with a caring heart. I’m just worried about Sarah being left in that mess for so long.”

  “I know.” A heavy, tight feeling filled his chest. “It’s only a little over a month, though, with added time for all the red tape we may face afterward in Erickson. Think you can handle snuggling up to me and swapping a little slobber in public? We’ll have to put on a show all over town.”

  That turned her strained giggle into a mirthful chortle. Her cheeks went pink as well. “That depends. Are you a good kisser?”

  It was his turn to laugh. “I’ve never gotten any complaints.” Barney tried never to lie and held up a hand. “Well, actually, I did get one when I was a teenager and experimenting with chewing tobacco. I forgot to rinse my mouth before I laid one on a girl.”

  Taffeta’s delicate nose wrinkled and she said, “Ick! That’s nasty.”

  He chuckled. “Well, the girl sure thought so. Now I brush my teeth and rinse with mouthwash before a date—and I never chew anymore.”

  “Good, because if you dare to lock lips with me when you have anything horrible in your mouth, I’ll punch you.”

  Barney caught himself staring at her soft mouth. How would he get through kissing her, even if it was only for show in public, without having a physical reaction? He decided that he would cross that bridge when he got to it.

  • • •

  Taffeta felt as if she’d climbed on a runaway bus as she escorted Barney to the door to see him out. Everything from here forward would happen quickly. Not fast enough to suit her because of her concerns about Sarah, and yet too fast for her peace of mind. On Saturday morning, she’d be leaving for Reno to marry this man, and when they got back, she would be the equivalent of an actress on a stage, pretending to be wildly in love with him.

  “I’m not a very accomplished liar,” she admitted as he settled his Stetson on his head and adjusted it to just the right angle. “I don’t know if people will believe me when I say I’ve been dating you in secret.”