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bothering to exchange small talk.
    Justine flicked a quick glance at the closed door. “Yes.”
    “We have a situation,” the sheriff said. “Mrs. Harper has made a complaint.”
    “A complaint about me?” Justine blurted out. “That’s ridiculous. Can’t you just dismiss it?”
    The telephone conveyed the rustle of a heavy sigh. “The complaint isn’t about you. It’s about me.”
    “About you?” Justine frowned. “Why would she complain about you?”
    “She’s claiming that I caught you soliciting and let you off after I…enjoyed a free sample of your offerings.”
    “She what ?”
    “I know. It’s a load of bullshit, but there’s enough truth in it to make the situation difficult for both of us.” Sheriff Taylor paused, carried on in a low voice. “I’ll be asked if I had sex with you, and I’ll have to say yes. Then I’ll be asked if I had ever seen you before or since, and I’ll have to say no. It’s going to sound like Mrs. Harper could be right.”
    “Oh my God.” Justine took a deep breath to suppress the surge of nausea that welled up inside her. “Will the information remain confidential?”
    “I don’t expect so,” Sheriff Taylor admitted. “I’ll try to contain it, but there is always gossip when these things happen.”
    “I’ve never even had a one-night stand before.” The receiver shook in Justine’s unsteady hand. “If this thing leaks, people will get a completely wrong idea of who I am.”
    “I’m sorry to sound callous, but right at the moment, I’m more concerned about holding on to my job than I am about what people think of your moral standards.”
    “Holding on to your job?” Justine muttered.
    “If they decide that I…took a bribe from you, I’ll be history.”
    “But if you took a bribe, the implication is that I offered you one,” Justine said slowly. “That I had done something to break the law and needed you to let me off the hook.”
    “That’s it,” Sheriff Taylor said bluntly. “It looks pretty bad for both of us.”
    Justine clenched her fingers tight around the receiver as the seconds ticked by.
    “There might be a way to diffuse this,” Sheriff Taylor said after a tense silence. “But I need your help.”
    “What?” Justine leaned over her desk, her voice rising with the desperate urge to grasp at any chance, however slim. “Tell me how.”
    “We’ll do it again. We can turn the whole thing around by pretending it was love at first sight. We slept together that night, but it was the start of a committed relationship.”
    Justine’s mind raced ahead as she tested the angles of what Sheriff Taylor was proposing. Her PR expertise quickly concluded he was right. If she pretended Sheriff Taylor was her new boyfriend, they would both come out with their reputations undamaged. After a few months, they could simply drift apart. All it required from her was a few weekends wasted in the depths of rural Pennsylvania, and a few nights that most unattached women with a healthy sex drive would give their designer wardrobes for.
    “That sounds good,” she agreed. “When do you want me to come up?” She reached for the digital organizer on her desk and tapped the keys. “My next two weekends are fully booked, but I could make it at the end of September.”
    “I don’t think you realize how serious this is,” Sheriff Taylor said. “Will you be at home tomorrow night if I drive down?”
    Justine tapped another key and inspected the display. “Tomorrow’s no good. I’m taking clients to dinner at Brasserie Perrier.”
    “Cancel it.”
    “I can’t. It’s part of my job. My boss, who is too busy to even take time off for a honeymoon, needs to attend a charity benefit at the Four Seasons. He can only come for the pre-dinner drinks. I’ll have to represent the firm.”
    “If you had a boyfriend, would he be invited?”
    “Yes, if he wanted to come and host the event with me. The clients will have their spouses with