Tara Quinn - The Sheriff's Daughter

He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. But this wasn’t about her. She’d given up her rights to Ryan’s life the day she’d let them whisk him away, never to be seen by her again.

A newborn baby rejected by the woman who’d given birth to him.

At least she’d given birth to him. Her parents had spent weeks trying to convince her to terminate her pregnancy.

It was evidence of her overwhelmed state that it took her several minutes to realize Ryan wasn’t talking anymore.

“So why are you here?”

“I haven’t wanted to intrude on your life,” he answered slowly. “But neither have I been able to forget you.”

She smiled and he smiled back.

“So I’ve sort of been watching you.”

She sat up. “Spying on me?”

“No!” Ryan stood. Faced her.

He was a lot taller than she’d pictured him these past couple of years. An inch or two over six feet.

“Watching out for you, I should have said.”

Sara couldn’t help smiling again. While she’d been going through the motions of living, her long-lost son had been protecting her, kind of like her own private guardian angel.

Which was overstating things, she was sure.

But the calming sensation moving slowly through her sure was nice.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” His face was grim.

“What?” Sara sat forward, frowning. “Something’s going on at NOISE that I don’t know about? Tell me.”

“It’s not NOISE.”

“What, then?”

Her father was retired. Still living in the house in Maricopa where she’d grown up. Nagging her about NOISE. Writing the books on adolescence and Internet safety that had made the organization such a success.

“Your husband.”

“Brent?”

Ryan nodded. Waited. Almost as if he couldn’t bring himself to tell her what he’d gone through all of this to say.

“He’s gambling again?” She’d warned him. One more time and they were through.

He shook his head. His eyes warming again. And she knew. Ryan was like her own self-appointed private eye. And everyone who watched the old detective shows knew what kind of information they were usually hired to ferret out when it came to marriages.

She said the words so he didn’t have to.

“He’s having an affair.”

MARK DALTON ROSE when his name was called, walked across the front of the large hall on the Ohio State University campus and accepted his Juris Doctor. Circling around, he resumed his seat in the great hall at the law school he’d been attending for the past three years, immune to those around him. Some might not know who or what he was. Many probably no longer cared. He’d long since ceased to allow such things to bother him.

He’d have left, if not for the fact that his mom and sister were sitting with the family members of his classmates behind him. He’d told them they needn’t come. The two-hour drive from Cleveland, where they’d relocated twenty years before, wasn’t hard, but his sister—a waitress at a well-to-do club—had to work that night.

And his mother’s eyesight wasn’t good enough for her to drive alone in the dark.

Besides, Mark was going to work, too, as soon as he got home and changed out of the conservative shirt and tie he had on under his academic robes. He had a’52 Corvette to deliver the following day and some finishing touches to put on his workmanship.

The rich and famous in the car world didn’t mind doing business with a known sex offender, when he was also one of the best vintage car restorers in the country.

No one worried about him assaulting an engine.

Charles Granger, dean of Ohio State’s College of Law, ended his closing remarks and the ceremony concluded with a whoop of congratulations. Mark waited for his chance to leave.

“Good luck, Mark,” Sharon Rose said from beside him, squeezing his hand.

She was forty, divorced and starting a new life. She’d been hired by the county attorney’s office.

“You, too,” he told her.

“Give me a call sometime.”

He nodded, knowing he wouldn’t.

Filing out, Mark was greeted by many of the other students and professors, all gathered there to celebrate new beginnings. He waved at his mom, who was wiping her eyes.

For Mark, this was an end. Unlike most of his classmates, he didn’t have a job lined up with a firm or with the state, or any kind of a law career ahead. He’d done this simply because it had been one of the most important goals in his life back when his life had been his own. There were many doors closed to him now, but getting the degree was not one of them.

As to the rest of that dream—to practice public law, prosecute for the state of Ohio, as Sharon was going to do—it had died a long time ago.

Registered sex offenders were not permitted to take the bar exam. Nor to hold any position in society that required a professional license.

But he could drive a car.

And he was free.

CHAPTER THREE

SARA WENT TO DINNER with Brent and his partners Tuesday night, as planned. She made small talk with the wives, ordered steak and pretended to eat, and sat silently while her husband talked business. Brent was the rainmaker—the one who sought out business for his firm. And his partners were excellent attorneys.

She had one glass of wine.

And she went home to bed with Brent. They talked about the dinner as they moved around each other almost in choreographed motion, Sara washing her face at her sink while he brushed his teeth at his, meeting together over the dirty clothes hamper in their room-sized closet. She reached for her nightgown off one hook as he grabbed his pajama bottoms from the matching designer hook beside hers. They walked into the bedroom, turning off the lights as they went. She raised the blinds so the moon could shine in.

Brent was pleased with the evening. His partners were pleased with the amount of revenue he was bringing in for them, and they expected very little in the way of actual lawyering from him. He had a young attorney who worked for him who did most of his work—and, according to Ryan, did other things for him, as well. Intimate things. And what she didn’t do, his law clerk handled—workwise, anyway.

“I’m glad the evening went so well,” Sara said, pulling back the covers on her side of the bed to slide beneath them. As Brent clicked off the last light and joined her, she checked the alarm, making sure it was set to go off.

Brent turned, gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Me, too. You were great, babe, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said with dignity and class. And then rolled over facing the wall opposite him, just as she did every single night.

But instead of willing herself to sleep, she lay awake, long into the night, alternating between joy and despair, tears rolling silently down her face onto her pillow.

She’d met her son. After twenty-one years of longing and agony, she’d looked him in the eye, held his hand. Hugged him goodbye.

And after fifteen years of marriage, she had to face the fact that no amount of pretending or trying or waiting was going to repair her marriage.

This day had changed her life.

SATURDAY MORNING DAWNED at 6:09 a.m. Sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee, Sara was waiting. Brent always woke as soon as the sun began to stream into the bedroom window. He’d take a quick shower, because he had a golf game scheduled. And then he’d be down for coffee.

A twisted sense of humor lurking in the part of Sara that had been detached from life since the morning after her rape, prompted the thought that she should take bets with herself as to whether or not he’d make his game.

Twisted thought he would. Kind—or dead, she wasn’t sure—guessed he wouldn’t. She gave up the attempt to pretend she could joke about this, in any way, even to herself, when the tears came again.