New Leaf

PRAISE FOR
SILVER THAW

“Master storyteller Anderson has skillfully penned the heart-wrenching story of domestic abuse and its aftermath . . . compelling.”

—
Booklist
(starred review)

“The stuff romances are made of.”

—Heroes and Heartbreakers

“I’d recommend
Silver Thaw
to contemporary romance readers who like to go deep into a novel that explores many emotions.”

—Harlequin Junkie

“I am totally hooked. . . . Thank you, Catherine Anderson, for this wonderful story.”

—The Reading Cafe

“Romance veteran Anderson is a pro at making readers weep.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Sweet and inspirational.”

—Smitten by Books

“Mystic Creek was a close-knit, loving community that made you feel warmth and a giving human spirit . . . [a] heartwarming romance.”

—The Reader’s Den

“A good winter read in which love heals the worst wounds.”

—The Romance Dish

“Heartwarming and heart-wrenching.”

—Open Book Society

PRAISE FOR THE ROMANCES OF CATHERINE ANDERSON

“Clever, emotional, and totally entertaining.”

—Fresh Fiction

“Uplifting and emotionally riveting. . . . Get ready for one magically heartwarming experience!”

—
RT Book Reviews
(top pick)

“This is a story not to be missed . . . delivers on all levels and is a fantastic read that will touch readers at the very core of their being.”

—The Romance Readers Connection

“This smart, wholesome tale should appeal to any fan of traditional romance.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“The kind of book that will snare you so completely, you’ll not want to put it down. It engages the intellect and emotions; it’ll make you care. It will also make you smile . . . a lot. And that’s a guarantee.”

—Romance Reviews Today

“Readers may need to wipe away tears . . . since few will be able to resist the power of this beautifully emotional, wonderfully romantic love story.”

—
Booklist

“Emotionally involving, family-centered, and relationship oriented, this story is a rewarding read.”

—
Library Journal

OTHER NOVELS BY CATHERINE ANDERSON

Mystic Creek Novels

Silver Thaw

“Harrigan Family” Novels

Morning Light

Star Bright

Here to Stay

Perfect Timing

Contemporary “Coulter Family” Novels

Phantom Waltz

Sweet Nothings

Blue Skies

Bright Eyes

My Sunshine

Sun Kissed
and
Sun Kissed Bonus Book

Historical “Coulter Family” Novels

Summer Breeze

Early Dawn

Lucky Penny

Historical “Valance Family” Novels

Walking on Air

The Comanche Series

Comanche Moon

Comanche Heart

Indigo Blue

Comanche Magic

Other Signet Books

Always in My Heart

Only by Your Touch

Coming Up Roses

Cheyenne Amber

SIGNET

Published by New American Library,

an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

This book is an original publication of New American Library.

Copyright © Adeline Catherine Anderson, 2016

Excerpt from
Silver Thaw
copyright © Adeline Catherine Anderson, 2015

Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

Signet and the Signet colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

For more information about Penguin Random House, visit
penguin.com
.

eBook ISBN 978-1-101-61123-4

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

In Loving Memory This book is dedicated to my husband, Sid Anderson, the love of my
life.

April 2015

The headlights of the county-owned crew-cab truck cut through drifting snowflakes to bathe quaint storefronts in flashes of gold as Barney Sterling circled the town center of Mystic Creek and then turned right onto East Main. Paul Kutz, better known as Pop, the proprietor of Antiquarian Books in the Mystic Creek Menagerie, had just called in a complaint about loud music keeping him and his new roommate, Ray Burke, awake. It wasn’t yet nine, but Barney guessed that people on the high side of eighty went to bed early.

Reaching across the console, he crumpled the top of a white paper bag that held what remained of his night-shift meal, fresh from the ovens at the Jake ’n’ Bake. He’d ordered three Italian panzarotti, small closed pizzas filled with tomato, mozzarella, and sausage. Now a dusting of confectioner’s sugar clung to his fingers from the warm cream horns he’d been about to devour for dessert. The interior of the cab
smelled of vanilla filling, yeast bread, peppers, and cheese, with a touch of his Polo cologne underscoring the lot.

A woman’s voice came over the radio. “You gotten there yet, Barney?”

Doreen, a plump redhead and newly hired dispatcher, hadn’t memorized any police codes yet. Nearly everyone at the sheriff’s department was willing to bet that she’d still be yacking over the airwaves in plain English come next Christmas. It had become a sore point with most of the officers. Doreen used the names of individuals in town, gave details about complaints over the air, and pretty much broke all the FCC regulations in every other way as well. Barney knew that the sheriff had been in a pinch for a new dispatcher when he hired Doreen, and the man had probably anticipated that she’d apply herself to learning how to do her job, but so far she just wasn’t getting it.

In such a small town, certain informalities over the radio did occur, but Doreen carried informality to a whole new level. Anyone out there with a police scanner could listen and learn particulars about other townspeople that they had no business knowing.

“You’d better get your only bullet out of your pocket and load your weapon, Deputy,” she said with a laugh. “This might get sticky. Kutz just called again, madder than a wet hen. He says that Taffeta Brown’s music is turned up so loud that it’s vibrating
his walls clear across the street and Ray is about to go ballistic.”

Barney didn’t care for Doreen, partly because she didn’t know much of anything about being a dispatcher and also because she kept a wad of bubble gum wedged between her teeth and cheek. But the biggest thing about her that ticked him off was that she wouldn’t stop razzing him with Deputy Barney Fife jokes. He’d heard enough of those by the time he was on the force for only a week.

What was her deal? Barney disliked his first name, but it was the handle his mother, Kate, had given him, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by changing it. Besides, it wasn’t his mom’s fault that he had gone into law enforcement and become a deputy. If he’d had any sense, he would have been Barnabas the dentist, or Barney the builder. Anything but a deputy.

Deciding to let Doreen’s wisecracks pass, Barney asked, “Is the complainant certain it’s the accused’s music?”

“The
what
and the
what
?”

Barney bit down hard on his molars. “The complainant—the individual who called in the complaint. The person being complained about is the accused.” He keyed his mike again to add, “It’s difficult for me to believe that loud music is coming from the indicated location.”

Barney had good reason to wonder if the information was accurate. Paul Kutz was deaf as a post, and Ms. Brown had never struck Barney as being
the loud or rowdy type. In fact, he reflected, the woman hadn’t made much of an impression at all. Ms. Brown had opened a health store on East Main nearly a year ago, and on the few occasions that Barney had gone in there, she’d defined the word
mousy
, both in demeanor and appearance. Not that Barney visited her shop often enough to have a clear memory of what she looked like. A vague image of drab clothing, dark hair, blue eyes, and an unremarkable face entered his mind. Maybe at night her wild side came out.

Doreen snapped her gum. The sound grated on his nerves like a fingernail scraping a blackboard. Enunciating carefully around the sticky mass, Doreen informed him, “Paul says he can see Taffeta Brown dancing in her apartment over the shop. So far as I know, his eyesight’s still fine.”

“You’re not supposed to reveal too much information over the air, such as people’s names or what they’re doing.”

“Well, how will you know who’s doing what, then?”

Barney sighed. As far as he was concerned, Doreen’s lack of knowledge about appropriate dispatching exchanges was the sheriff’s problem to rectify. He wasn’t about to spend his whole shift trying to teach her how to properly convey information over the radio.

On occasions like this, Barney wondered why he’d given up being a state policeman to become a small-town cop. His hometown was mostly crime free, and unless he maintained a keen sense of
humor, keeping the peace could get downright boring. There were occasional incidents of domestic violence to keep him on his toes, and barroom brawls occurred once in a blue moon. Sometimes a group of teenagers would get up to no good, and they’d had a few burglaries last year. But overall, Barney spent more time climbing trees to rescue cats than he did enforcing the law.

Yesterday afternoon while cruising the streets, he had been over on Elderberry Lane trying to settle a quarrel between Christopher Doyle and Edna Slash, both older than Methuselah. The garbage company had just picked up the trash, and the two geriatrics had been nose-to-nose over their empty aluminum cans, arguing about whose was whose. When Barney pointed out that both containers were exactly alike, they’d started berating
him
.

He eased the county truck up to the curb in front of Paul Kutz’s upstairs apartment. The old man had sold his house after his wife passed away and now lived above Creative Jewelry Designs, run by a young woman named Marjorie Brogan. Barney suspected Kutz’s move had been prompted, at least in part, by the apartment’s proximity to several local eateries. Paul wasn’t exactly handy in the kitchen.

“Why didn’t you just tell Pop to turn off his hearing aids?” Barney winced at the slip. Doreen could blab people’s identities to the world if she wanted, but he didn’t like doing it. Then he decided to hell with using codes since the damage was already done. “That’d be an instant fix, and I wouldn’t have to slosh around in the snow for no good reason.”

“Cranky, cranky. You there yet? Old Man Kutz is calling again. He probably hasn’t had this much excitement since the last Veterans Day parade.”

“Tell him to keep his shirt on. I’m here. Ten-four clear.” Barney cut the truck engine and licked the sugar from his fingertips before reaching for his dark brown Stetson, which rode shotgun on the passenger seat beside him. Because of his height, he couldn’t wear it inside the vehicle without crushing the crown. The smell of the cream horns still tickled his nose and titillated his taste buds.
Warm vanilla filling
. He would have loved to sink his teeth into the pastries before they grew cold. Fat chance of that. Communicating with Paul Kutz took forever because he could barely hear a word that was said to him.

A loud popping sound came over the radio as he pushed open the driver’s door. He realized that the dispatcher was still on the channel. He grabbed the mike and clicked it several times to cause burps of static at her end so she would get her finger off the microphone button. “Dammit, Doreen. You can chew gum on the job and get away with it, but blowing bubbles over the airways may get you fired.”

“Oops! Sorry,” she said in a tone from which regret was successfully banished. “I thought you’d signed off. And I’m not blowing bubbles. That takes no skill at all. You have no clue how long I practiced before I learned how to snap my gum.”

And he wanted to remain blissfully ignorant. “Ten-four clear. That means I’m finished talking, in case you don’t know. And one other thing, Doreen.
If you have your mike on, how in Hades do you think I can radio in if there’s an emergency?”

“You said you were finished talking.”

Barney squeezed his eyes shut and took a fortifying breath of icy air. “Never mind that. How is anyone supposed to radio in if you’re attempting to eavesdrop?”

“I just wanted to listen for a minute. Maybe it’ll get exciting!” she said with an eager chirp in her tone.

“You can’t hear anything at my end until I turn my mike on.”

I’m dealing with an imbecile,
he thought, wondering if Sheriff Adams had hired Doreen when he was drunk.
Nah
. Blake seldom imbibed and never while on duty. Well, not normally, anyway.

Barney exited the vehicle and pushed the door closed with his hip. A few lights illuminated second-story living quarters along the street. The faint smell of fried chicken wafted to him on the breeze. The smell failed to entice him, partly because it was probably the main dish of a frozen dinner, which he hated, and also because he’d already eaten. All he wanted now was his dessert.

To his surprise, music did indeed thrum in the air, and when he glanced up, he saw a shadow dance playing out on Taffeta Brown’s window curtains. He froze and then found he couldn’t look away. His eyes widened. The sleek yet curvaceous silhouette of a woman gyrating her pelvis to the lively beat of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was an unexpected highlight of his evening. Watching slender hands
slide provocatively over ample breasts and rotating hips might have given him an instant hard-on if snow hadn’t been pelting him in the face. Come to think about it, the snow stinging his cheeks wasn’t offering much competition to the tingling sensation that he felt in another location.

Shit
. Barney clamped the Stetson on his head and strode across the icy street to reach the opposite parking curb where a glowing light post stood sentinel in a swirl of breeze-tossed snowflakes. No wonder Paul and Ray were in such a dither. What man this side of heaven could sleep when a performance like that was going on?

As Barney gained the sidewalk, he searched his memory again for a clear image of Taffeta, wondering if his male radar had malfunctioned the few times that he’d entered her shop. Normally when he came across a sexy woman, he at least noticed her. About all he really recalled about the Brown woman was that she seemed to blend into the woodwork.

He decided the oversight might be due to his habit of ignoring single local women. When Sheriff Adams retired, Barney intended to run for the office. He wouldn’t get many men to vote for him if he hit on their female relatives.

Barney drew a flashlight from his belt and flicked it on. The beam reflected off the display window of Healthful Possibilities. He had to step close to see inside. His gaze landed first on a bottle of berries sporting a label that read
LOSE WEIGHT FAST
. A sign over a collection of boxed items promised
FIVE
SUPPLEMENTS TO CURE ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION
. Barney blinked and read the advertisement again. He couldn’t imagine any male in Mystic Creek, no matter how desperate, walking into Taffeta Brown’s shop and having the nerve to take one of those boxes up to the cash register.

Darting his light beyond the pills, Barney peered into the bowels of the shop, which was closed for the night. With her music turned up so loud, Ms. Brown with the mind-blowing dance movements wouldn’t hear him knock. She probably wouldn’t hear him if he attacked her door with a chain saw.

Sighing, he left the window to play his light over the clapboard siding near the door. When he saw a buzzer button, he pressed it with his thumb, hoping the sound would peal through the upstairs flat and get the lady’s attention. If not, he could try pounding on the door, and if that failed, he carried a master key to all the businesses along Main in case of an emergency. Somehow he didn’t think a woman dancing in the privacy of her own home qualified—unless her sexy shadow play sent Paul Kutz or his roommate into cardiac arrest. Barney grinned. It might. Men that old probably hadn’t seen anything to equal this in over sixty years.

Actually, he realized, he had seldom seen anything to equal this, either, and he didn’t exactly live like a monk. Being a small-town deputy complicated his love life. Gossip traveled through Mystic Creek faster than beer down a parched throat. Barney drove to nearby Crystal Falls when he got a
hankering for female company. In civilian clothes, he could blend in with the crowd, have fun, and not worry about tarnishing his reputation. Or, God help him, having to endure scathing sidelong glances and a pungent comment or two from his mother if she ever heard of his exploits. Kate Sterling wasn’t very broad-minded when it came to sex outside of marriage.

The frigid night air had already chilled Barney’s hands, and as he tapped his knuckles against the wooden door, pain shot from the impact points to his elbow. The music upstairs continued to reverberate off the winter landscape. It wasn’t over-the-top loud, but in the quiet of Mystic Creek on a weeknight, every note seemed invasive. Paul definitely had a legitimate noise complaint. Barney decided that he was down to his last resort, the master key.

He drew the large ring from his belt and fanned the pieces of metal. An instant later, he was inside the store. He used his flashlight to avoid tripping over obstacles. When he reached the old wooden stairs, he tromped up the risers, hoping Ms. Brown might finally hear him. He didn’t want to scare the woman half to death.

No such luck
. Now, instead of fried chicken, he smelled tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, which once again spurred his memory of his canceled date with warm cream horns. It was a curse to have such a sensitive nose. His whole family teased him about his overdeveloped smeller, saying he could detect food at five hundred feet. Once on the
creaky landing, he saw a glimmer of gold seeping out beneath the door. He hoped the sudden noise wouldn’t frighten Ms. Brown when he knocked. Assuming she heard him at all, that is.