It Happened on Maple Street Read online

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  IT HAPPENED ON MAPLE STREET

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  IT HAPPENED ON MAPLE STREET

  www.hcibooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Quinn, Tara Taylor.

  It happened on Maple Street / Tara Taylor Quinn.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7573-1568-8

  ISBN-10: 0-7573-1568-2

  ISBN-13: 978-0-75739184-2 (ebk.)

  ISBN-10: 0-7573-9184-2 (ebk.)

  I. Title.

  PS3617.U586I7 2011

  813'.6–dc22

  2011002605

  ©2011 Tara Taylor Quinn and Timothy Lee Barney

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  HCI, its logos, and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.

  Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.

  3201 S.W. 15th Street

  Deerfield Beach, FL 33442–8190

  TRUE VOWS Series Developer: Olivia Rupprecht

  Cover photo ©iStockphoto

  Cover design by Larissa Hise Henoch

  Interior design by Lawna Patterson Oldfield

  Interior formatting by Dawn Von Strolley Grove

  For our parents,

  Robert Barney, Joyce Barney, and Walter Wright Gumser,

  who didn’t live to see this day, but who, we believe,

  are smiling with us; and Agnes Mary Gumser,

  who we know is smiling with us.

  And for Mike Barney and Chum Gumser,

  the brothers who had such profound impacts

  on our lives and left us far too early.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Dear Reader

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  THE PARTS OF THIS BOOK THAT TELL OUR LOVE STORY are completely true. The tragedy is completely true. We fictionalized other aspects.

  But our true story can’t be told without acknowledging the three people who are a result of our having lived:

  Rachel Marie Reames

  Mindy Jo Barney

  Chelsea Lee Barney

  Our daughters are by far our greatest accomplishments, and we love them more than life.

  We’d also like to thank Lynda Kachurek and Wright State University for their help and support with thirty-year-old photos and documents as we reconstructed our lives.

  Dear Reader

  YOU ARE HOLDING A ONE-OF-A-KIND STORY. I can say that because I wrote it, and I know that I am never ever going to write another one like it. This is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of book about a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love.

  As a naïve and sheltered twenty-year-old, I trusted a man of God. And when he mistreated me, and told me the fault was mine, I believed him. For almost thirty years, I carried the secret of what that man had done to me. . . until my true love came back into my life with the determination to set me free.

  This book, a romance novel unlike any other, is a tribute to a love that is stronger than time. Stronger than tragedy and human frailties. And it is a coming out. My family and friends will be hearing my story for the first time, right along with the rest of the world. I hope and pray that in its telling, other women will find the courage and conviction that I did not have; the trust and faith, to speak up when they are wronged, to tell someone . . . anyone.

  And this book is a tribute to my husband, Tim Barney. He is proof positive that the love I write about, the love that is strong enough to survive anything, really does exist. I am Tara Taylor Quinn, USA Today bestselling author of fifty-five romance and suspense novels. And this is my true love story.

  To find out more about True Vows, to join our mailing list, and receive occasional giveaways, visit, http://vows.hcibooks.com.

  To find out more about Tim and me, including exclusive letters and photos, visit, www.maplestreetbook.com.

  And to visit with me or find any of my other novels, please stop by www.tarataylorquinn.com.

  One

  I’D NEVER HAD A BOYFRIEND. Never even been on a date. I didn’t go to homecoming. Or prom. I’d never been to the movies with a guy. Or anywhere else alone with one, either, unless you counted my brothers and father, which I didn’t. I was eighteen years old, almost a sophomore in college. And I’d never been kissed.

  There you have it. Right up front. I wasn’t one of the popular girls. I read books. All the time. In between classes. During study hall. After school, before dinner, after work and studying, before bed, I read. On weekends, I read. I went babysitting. And I read. Romances. Always romances. Harlequin romances.

  I had one in my purse when I drove to Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, as a very determined, five–foot-two, 100-pound blonde who was certain I was ten feet tall and had strength equal to any challenge.

  I started college with a lot to learn, but I knew very clearly what I wanted out of life. On that I didn’t waver. At all. I had two goals. I was going to write for Harlequin. And, some day, I was going to find and marry my own Harlequin hero.

  I was actually almost in my second year at Wright State because I’d done my first year attending part-time while still in my senior year of high school. I was in college because my father expected me to go to college, and I wanted to get it over as quickly as possible. I didn’t argue with my father. Ever.

  I was also in college because I absolutely adored learning. It was the writer in me. I could never know enough.

  As I parked my new little blue Opel Manta, a month-old eighteenth birthday gift from my parents, in the student parking lot at Wright State University, I knew I was different from everyone else arriving for the first day of classes. I wasn’t there to learn a career. I wasn’t going to be a nurse or a teacher or anything else the education I was there to receive would provide for me. I’d happily get a degree, but, as a career, I was going to write romances for Harlequin Books. There was no Harlequin major in college. There wasn’t a class that studied, or even mentioned, romance novels. There were writing classes, though— more if I majored in English. That semester, I’d signed up for the one writing class I was permitted to take. And I was taking literature, too. Fantasy. I was going to be reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I was going to learn from the greats.

  And because an English major required a science class—something else I’d managed to graduate high school without—I took geology. Blood and guts weren’t for me. They’d keep me up nights.

  Rocks were innocuous. They’d put me to sleep just fine.

  So there I was sitting in a geology lecture hall filled with a hundred strangers who were mostly my age—all of them having been kissed, I was certain—during my first full-time college semester.

  Dressed in my favorite pair of faded, hip hugger bell bottom jeans— the ones that I’d cut from the ankle to just below the kne
e to insert the piece of white and blue flowered cotton fabric—I might look like the other kids. But I wasn’t like them. I gripped my pencil, my college-ruled paper blank before me, waiting to take notes.

  I’d already decided I’d have to take notes to remain conscious.

  I looked around. After having been in class with the same kids for four long years, I still felt a little weird being in a classroom where I didn’t know a single soul. Weird and kind of free, too. No one knew I was Tara Gumser, daughter of the Wayne Township school-board president. Daughter of the Rotary Club president. Daughter of the best singer in the church choir. Daughter of the best bridge player in Huber Heights, Ohio. No one knew I hadn’t been asked to my proms. Either of them. No one knew I’d never been asked on any kind of date. Ever.

  The room buzzed with energy. Freshman energy. After all, life was just beginning. The future was more question than answer—resting largely on the success or failure of the next four years in classrooms just like that one.

  Did I stand out?

  I didn’t have to be there to obtain a future.

  I had my future planned. I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t going to be swayed.

  It was the fall of 1977. I had my whole life before me . . .

  I saw his hair first. I wasn’t a hair person. I was very definitely an eye person. My one close high-school friend and I had talked about it. When I saw a guy, I always looked at his eyes first. And last, too. I didn’t care about a man’s outer image. Heroes weren’t judged by their book covers. What I cared about was a man’s heart. His soul. You could only get there through his eyes.

  And there was this hair. I saw it walk in the door. Move toward the steps. Move up the steps. The rest of the room really did fade away, just like I’d read about in my books. I mean, the people were there. I still had peripheral vision. I was still aware of the buzz of conversation. But the focus on them faded away. I didn’t notice them at all. I watched that head of hair instead.

  It was dark. Really dark. Not as harsh as black, but darker than brown. It was thick. And long enough to curl up at the collar. It was parted in the middle and feathered down past his ears. My hair was feathered, too. His feathering was much better.

  All I could think about—me, who’d never so much as held a guy’s hand in a man/woman way—all I could think about was running my fingers through that hair. I could almost feel the rough silkiness sliding over my hands, tickling the tender joining between my fingers.

  And somehow I was lying with him. His arms were around me. How else could I get to that glorious hair?

  The body attached to the hair walked close. And then passed me by. Just like that. My great-hair guy was heading up the steps to the back of the room. To sit somewhere else. Near someone else.

  But not before I’d caught a glimpse of his eyes.

  They were brown. And there was something about them, a depth, that disturbed me.

  For the first time in my life I’d come in contact with a real-life guy who intrigued me. Really intrigued me. Enough to make thoughts of my Harlequin heroes fade into the shadows.

  More than anything in the world, I wanted to meet that great-hair guy.

  I didn’t meet him. How could I? It’s not like I was going to go speak to him. And say what? Do you mind if I run my fingers through your hair?

  Or, maybe, you’re the first real, flesh and blood breathing guy I’ve ever seen who made me feel “things”?

  Of course not—I was Tara Gumser. Walt Gumser’s girl-child. I lived with my nose in books. And furthermore, why would I think for one second that a guy as gorgeous as that would have any interest in me, when not one of the 400 boys I’d graduated with had ever asked me out?

  Class started. I took notes. And felt “him” behind me the entire time. The back of my neck was warm. My palms were moist.

  Through the entire lecture I had one thought on my mind: what went up had to come down. If I busied myself after class, I’d still be standing there when he came back down the steps and left the room. And if I just happened to be leaving my row at the exact time . . .

  I had it all planned. I wouldn’t say anything to him. I couldn’t be that obvious. Nice girls “didn’t.” My father, who had a temper that scared the bejeezus out of me even though he’d never laid a hand on me, had made it very clear to me that his daughter behaved with modesty and decorum.

  Period.

  Nice girls didn’t talk to boys first. They didn’t call boys. They didn’t ask a boy out. They didn’t let boys know they liked them unless the boy proclaimed his feelings first. And they didn’t let boys even so much as smell the cow before he owned the barn. Legally. And had a license as proof.

  Class ended. I busied myself closing my notebook very slowly. Conversation buzzed around me. Someone stepped on my foot, in a hurry to vacate the premises. Probably to drop the class.

  My entire back burned. My senses were tuned. I had to time my exit just right. And I had to be legitimately occupied until then or I’d appear forward. Like, maybe I was interested or something.

  I’d blow it before it had ever begun.

  My notebook was closed. My pencil was back in my denim purse. I checked my schedule. Yep, I had a break after that class just like I’d known I did. I stacked my other books up on top of my notebook.

  I made sure that my romance novel didn’t show out of a corner of my purse. And I turned.

  Just in time to see him exit out the other side of his row and trot down the steps on the other side of the room.

  I wasn’t surprised.

  I wasn’t like other girls.

  I didn’t meet guys.

  I read books.

  I was a writer. And that was exactly what I wanted to be. What I had to be. I was seventeen when I got my first job as a professional writer. Seventeen when I received my first paycheck for writing.

  It wasn’t much. Twenty-five dollars. But on the line that read Pay to the Order of . . . the words typed right there beside them read Tara Gumser. That was me.

  And in the upper-left corner, the identifier of the payee, it read, Dayton Daily News.

  I was a stringer for the largest newspaper in the area. My beat was the Vandalia City council. Vandalia was a small city on the outskirts of Dayton. Once a month I went to their city council meetings, determined what of interest happened, and wrote a story about it.

  I was a respected professional and on my way to writing for Harlequin.

  I had my whole life in front of me. A whole lot of time to meet my Harlequin hero.

  After I’d become somebody he’d want to meet.

  I had myself firmly in check two days later when the next geology class rolled around. I’d thought of my great-hair guy far too much. All the time. Even when I was reading. One night, late, I’d been lying in bed reading and somehow my hero had great hair. Dark hair. Longish. Not at all as it looked on the cover of the book. He had brown eyes, too. And legs that looked . . . mmm . . . in jeans as they’d climbed steps.

  So I was done. Over the nonsense.

  I got to class early. I took my seat. I told myself to look at my literature book. I’d been busy with my real life’s work—reading a Harlequin—and hadn’t quite finished the reading required for my college literature class.

  I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t help glancing toward the door every two seconds.

  I couldn’t help being disappointed when my great-hair guy arrived and walked past my row without noticing that I was sitting there needing to meet him.

  That was it. I was over him.

  Over the next weeks, geology class got in my way. I was not interested in the subject, which left me entirely too much time to notice Great-Hair Guy. I’d get bored with the lecture and next thing I knew, class was ending and I’d spent the entire time fantasizing about him.

  Was there any chance the guy was ever going to say hello to me?

  Great-Hair Guy didn’t say hello to me. At all. September traveled on
. Leaves changed colors and fell to the ground. Some days my feelings felt like those leaves. Like I’d had a glorious moment of colorful possibility and then . . . nothing.

  My great-hair guy—I secretly continued to think of him as mine as my thoughts didn’t hurt anyone—came to class regularly. That impressed me. He participated, too, like he really knew what was going on.

  Igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic—I remembered the names of the types of rocks but I couldn’t distinguish between them. I liked the words. What they represented were all rocks to me.

  But I remembered all kinds of details about Great-Hair Guy. Like I was some besotted girl. You know, the kind that irritated me. Like she had no worth on her own but, rather, was judged by how cute her boyfriend was.

  Great-Hair Guy had changed me. He’d impacted my life in a way I would not forget. I felt “things” whenever he was anywhere close to me. And I promised myself that I was the only one who’d ever know what he did to me. It was my embarrassing and shameful secret.

  I knew I’d be the only one who ever knew that Great-Hair Guy gave me feelings down below as surely as I knew that I was going to write for Harlequin some day. As surely as I knew that I would find my Harlequin hero. Out there. When I was ready.

  Just like all the boys in high school, Great-Hair Guy didn’t seek me out. Didn’t even notice me. The only difference was, this time I cared.

  And just to make my life more miserable, there was a geology lab that I was required to attend if I wanted to fulfill my science credit and graduate from college. Lab classes started several weeks later than lecture and had fewer students per class.

  Would Great-Hair Guy be in my lab?

  I tried so hard not to worry about whether or not my hair stayed flipped under at the ends, whether or not my feathers winged. I tried not to picture myself in a pair of male eyes when I chose the tight jeans and the shirt that hugged my breasts. The shiny blue shadow I smeared on my eyelids might bring out the blue in my eyes—my best feature— but who was going to notice?