Darlene Gardner - The Stranger's Sin

Kelly’s step faltered at Chase’s words, her defenses going up like a brick wall. She’d felt so comfortable with Chase during the drive that she’d let herself forget he was in law enforcement.

She’d let herself become attracted to him.

Who was she trying to fool?

One of the reasons she’d asked him to team up with her had been that she was already attracted to him.

Far too much.

Dear Reader,

Is lying ever justified?

Kelly Carmichael thinks so, especially upon her arrival in Indigo Springs when the truth could land her back in jail. Then she meets and starts to fall for Chase Bradford, who holds the opposite view—and a badge.

That’s the setup of A Stranger’s Sin, the second book in my Return to Indigo Springs trilogy. I thought it would be interesting to pair a woman, who lies when she has to, with a do-the-right-thing kind of guy and see what happened.

Hint: there’s a scene in the book during a Fourth of July fireworks show.

All my best,

Darlene Gardner

P.S. Visit me on the Web at www.darlenegardner.com.

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While working as a newspaper sportswriter, Darlene Gardner realized she’d rather make up quotes than rely on an athlete to say something interesting. So she quit her job and concentrated on a fiction career that landed her at Harlequin/Silhouette Books, where she wrote for Harlequin Temptation, Harlequin Duets and Silhouette Intimate Moments before finding a home at Harlequin Superromance.

To the truth, which has a way of coming out.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T HE SWEET PROMISE OF FREEDOM lay just beyond the courthouse doors, a nearly irresistible proposition for a woman who’d spent the night in jail.

Kelly Carmichael longed to rush outside and turn her face to the late-June sun. The Wenona County courthouse was three or four miles from the cozy, one-bedroom town house in upstate New York where she lived alone. She planned to walk the entire way home, no matter how high the temperature climbed.

Then she’d take a long, cool shower. She yearned to wash away the horror of the eighteen hours since uniformed police officers had pounded on her door, shown her a warrant and taken her away in handcuffs.

But first she needed to hear what the attorney who’d represented her at the arraignment advised her to do about the colossal misunderstanding that had gotten her arrested.

The attorney stumbled out of the hall restroom, wiping the brow of his thin, pale face. She’d seen that same look of misery on one of her first-grade students last week. Spencer Yates, she guessed, had a stomach virus.

She rose from the wooden bench outside the court clerk’s window where her ex-boyfriend had posted her bail before leaving as quickly as he could. Spencer Yates was moving very slowly.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“No, I am not all right,” the lawyer snapped. His wisp of a moustache underscored how young he was, as though he couldn’t yet grow decent facial hair. He put up a hand. “Sorry. It’s just that this stomach thing has hit me pretty hard. So let’s get down to it.”

He indicated that she should precede him into a meeting room not much larger than the jail cell where she’d spent a sleepless Sunday night on a hard cot, counting down the hours until Monday’s arraignment. He moved to pull the heavy door shut and last night’s claustrophobia came rushing back.

“Please, can we leave the door open?” she asked, her voice cracking.

His hand dropped to his side. “Makes no difference to me.”

He sat down heavily on one of the upholstered chairs alongside a meeting table with a laminate wood top and swiped a hand over his damp brow.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said unconvincingly. “Even if I wasn’t, we need to go over a few things.”

He opened her file and removed some sheets of paper he’d had time only to glance at before the hearing. Kelly sat silently, trying to be patient. Yates had explained the district judge was interested in getting through his heavy load of arraignments rather than correcting mistakes. But once the young lawyer looked over the specifics of her case, surely he’d see to it that justice was served.

In short order he put aside the papers, his head lolling slightly as though he had to put forth an effort to keep it up. “My suggestion is to see if the district attorney will go for a plea bargain. I’ll try to get you a deal where you won’t have to serve more than one year.”

“One year! No!” She shook her head vigorously. Like mother, like daughter, she thought before her mind rebelled. “I can’t go to prison. I won’t.”

He looked at her through tired eyes shadowed with heavy, dark circles. “You should have thought of that before the police found that baby at your place.”

“But there’s a perfectly good reason he was there.” Kelly leaned forward, desperate to make him understand. She’d already told the story a dozen times in hours and hours of interrogation. “A woman I met on the playground asked me to babysit.”

“Where is this woman?”

“I don’t know where she is. I don’t know anything about her except her name is Amanda Smith.”

“So you agreed to babysit for a perfect stranger?” Yates put one elbow on the table and tiredly rested his chin in his hand. “The police aren’t buying that story.”

“It’s the truth. Amanda has to be the one who kidnapped Corey.”

“The baby’s name is Eric, and the police think you kidnapped him. Right now you’re facing charges of second-degree kidnapping, which is a felony. If the DA agrees, I might be able to get the charge reduced to endangering the welfare of a child. That’s a misdemeanor.”

Misdemeanor sounded better than felony, but the words still sent dread coursing through her. If she pleaded guilty to either of those charges, she’d have a permanent criminal record and the repercussions that came with it. “If I’m convicted, nobody will ever hire me to teach again!”

He stared at her as though it was of little importance to him whether she lost her job as a first-grade teacher.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “Teaching children is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’re not the sort of person who should be around kids.”

It took a few seconds for his meaning to sink in. A shudder raked her from head to toe. “You think I’m guilty, don’t you?”

“I shouldn’t have said that.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But it doesn’t matter whether I think you’re guilty or not. What matters is whether there’s enough evidence here to win at trial. And there’s not.”