farm/store/nursery amalgamation was doing well enough to keep the property from being sold off as neighboring ones had been, he had no idea.
Ben was startled to see that his turn signal was on and he was slowing. What in hell? He’d been avoiding the farm and Faith Russell in particular for weeks now. He had no new information to offer her.
But, damn it, here he was turning in anyway, pulling into the hard-packed dirt parking lot in front of the nearly one-hundred-year-old barn that housed the retail business.
Faith’s Blazer was parked beside her father’s battered pickup truck up by the two-story yellow farmhouse. It was late enough in the afternoon that she was home from the elementary school, where she taught kindergarten. He knew she came straight home every day, changed clothes, then went straight to work at the barn, taking over from the part-time employee who filled in days when Charlotte wasn’t able to. Don Russell, the twins’ father, had been injured in early August when the tractor had rolled on him. Now, in October, he was becoming more mobile, but was still on crutches and couldn’t be of much help to his daughters in keeping the farm going. Ben had seen the strain on his face; Russell felt guilty as hell that his land, his farm, was still in the family only because Faith was willing—no, determined—to work herself to the bone to save it.
Russell wasn’t the only one feeling guilty. If only Ben could find and arrest Faith’s ex-husband, that would take a hell of a lot of pressure off her.
A van and a car were parked in front of the barn, which meant Faith had some business. He parked beside the car and, after a moment, got out.
Spiky purple asters bloomed in the narrow bed in front of the barn, as did a clump of sunflowers at the corner. A scarecrow sat atop a bale of straw right outside the barn doors. Sheaves of dried cornstalks and a couple of pumpkins added to the Halloween appeal. Between the corn maze, the pumpkin fields and the wagon rides, Halloween was big for the Russells.
Damn it, what was he doing here?
He knew the sight of him upset Faith. She probably wasn’t any happier to see him than she would have been to see her ex-husband stroll in.
Her divorce had been final over a year ago. The marriage had lasted three years, and resulted in only one police report, after Hardesty had beaten Faith so viciously she’d have died if a neighbor hadn’t called 911. He’d gone—too briefly—to jail, and she had left him. What little Ben knew of the marriage had come from Charlotte, who’d told him that the final beating had been the worst, but not the first. Hardesty had hurt his wife over and over again. Until that last time, she’d lied when she got medical treatment for broken bones and concussion. Forgiven him again and again. Intellectually, Ben knew how the dynamic of an abusive relationship worked and why the women often came to think they were at fault and deserved the punishment. Textbook info aside, he still didn’t really get it.
Sometime this past summer, Hardesty had apparently gotten over any sense of shame and decided Faith should be ready to forgive him again and come back to him. When it became clear that wasn’t happening, he’d gotten mad.
First, in August, came a middle-of-the-night arson fire that did some damage to the barn. That was when Ben had met the Russell sisters. A week or so later, a cherry bomb was lobbed through the dining room window when both women were sitting at the table. Ben had arrived to find Faith white with shock, her silken skin bristling with shards of glass from the shattered window. She’d been virtually deaf for nearly a day after the explosion and was damn lucky her eardrums hadn’t been permanently damaged.
Hardesty hadn’t gone back to his apartment, hadn’t shown up to work the next day. He’d vanished—until the night he broke into the farmhouse and attacked Charlotte, thinking she was Faith. Concussed and with an eight-inch-long gash from a knife, Charlotte had gone to the hospital.
“Rory wouldn’t have hurt Charlotte on purpose,” Faith had insisted. “Only me.”
As if that made it all right. Ben hadn’t quite managed to hide his rage, he knew, remembering the way her eyes had dilated when she’d seen his expression.
Ben muttered an obscenity under his breath and felt like a fool, standing here outside the barn, afraid to go in.
Only, he told himself, because he didn’t want to upset Faith.
Too bad he knew a lie when he heard one, even when he was the one telling it.
Still asking himself what he was doing here, Ben stepped inside, then paused to let his eyes adjust to the dim light. Small windows let in some sunlight, and double doors thrown open on one side of the barn to allow customer access to the nursery area outside made a bright rectangle.
The space in here was divided by open shelving units built of rough wood that sectioned off garden supplies from art and antiques from produce. In the middle of the barn, a large counter held displays of hand-canned jams and jellies as well as an old-fashioned cash register.
No one was behind the register. His eye was caught by a woman picking through a bin of Yukon Gold potatoes and filling a bag. He recognized her from the library, where she worked.
Ben nodded. “Ms. Taylor.”
A potato in her hand, she looked up, momentarily apprehensive. “Chief Wheeler. Oh, dear. I hope you’re not here because there’s a problem?”
“No, I came to speak to Ms. Russell or her father. Whoever’s handy.” He smiled. “I might buy some of that raspberry jam while I’m here.”
“It’s divine, isn’t it?” She laughed. “I think Faith is outside helping someone.”
“Thanks.”
He was halfway across the barn when Faith and a pair of women came in from the nursery area. Faith was pulling a flatbed cart with half a dozen large, potted shrubs on it. With her head turned away as she said something to the other women, she didn’t see Ben immediately.
Oh, hell, he thought, frozen in place.
He never got over the shock of the first sight of her. She was so damn beautiful. More than that, she made him think about sunshine, golden roses in bloom and picket fences. Home, the kind he’d never had. She was grace and sweetness.
All good reasons for him to stay away from her. He wasn’t the man for a woman like her, not after the life he’d led. Growing up first with a drug-addict mother, then in foster homes, going straight into the ugly world of inner-city law enforcement—these things didn’t make for a man who could be domesticated enough to belong behind a picket fence.
But damn it, sometimes he just wanted to look at her. To drink in the sight of her corn-silk blond hair, worn most often in a braid that hung down her back or flopped over one slender shoulder. The delicate, beautifully sculpted lines of her face and her pretty mouth. Her eyes—God, her eyes, a blue richer than the sky. Her slim body, endless legs, long-fingered hands he could all too easily imagine touching the five-year-olds she taught every day as she gently guided them.
And yeah, he could imagine those hands touching him, too, although most of the time he didn’t let himself.
This, of course, was why he’d stopped by today. To see her. Nothing else.
He’d gotten himself breathing again when her head abruptly turned and her startling eyes gazed right into his. They widened and darkened, and he’d have sworn color rose in her cheeks.
