Harley was raised by her brother Frank after their parents abandoned them. Pregnant at 17, she was forced to give birth in the back of a car after a collision with Alan-Michael and Dinah. She befriended both of them and gave the baby up for adoption. To get some money, she and Alan-Michael had a fake marriage so that he could get his trust fund. The marriage was opposed by much of his family and, unable to actually get the money, he worked with Harley in the diner and they fell in love. Her daughter's father, Dylan, returned and ruptured the marriage, despite Alan-Michael's efforts. After destroying the marriage, Dylan abandoned her again and she tried to sue Alan-Michael for money. When this failed, she became Reva's nanny.
After Reva was presumed dead, she began an affair with Josh until he went in search of Reva after hearing rumors that she was still alive. Abandoned again, she became a cop and fell in love with A.C. Mallet. Together they went after jewel thief Jenna Bradshaw and were almost killed in the bomb attack on Towers. Fearing that he was sterile, he tried to break it off, but she persisted and they were engaged. Soon her father, long thought dead, appeared in town attempting to reconcile with his children. She was reluctant and married Mallet before moving to Florida. However, after Mallet had an affair, she returned to Springfield and started a detective agency with Jenna. She and Phillip Spaulding gradually fell in love, despite the reappearance of his mentally unstable ex-wife Beth, and they eloped to New York. Her daughter Susan returned to town and tried to get Harley into a relationship with her adoptive father Jim Lemay while Phillip had an encounter with Beth when they were lost in the mountains. This encounter left her pregnant. This would end that marriage and leave her open to Gus when he came to town. They two worked together to bring down the Santos family while he helped her through her pregnancy, the product of a tryst with Rick. Still, Gus' questionable vendetta and obsessive behavior caused trouble for the relationship and it remained rocky. They bonded together again when he thought he had lost both of his parents, only to discover that he was really a Spaulding. This didn't bode well for the relationship and, as she investigated a string of killings, the Antimonius drug ring and Spaulding's role in them, she and Gus broke apart when he chose family loyalty over her.
She soon teamed up with Bill Lewis to take down the Spauldings when Phillip began his maniacal attacks on the Cooper family. She disguised herself as a woman named Ruth and went to work for Phillip. As she got closer to discovering his illegal dealings, Gus' suspicions grew of the strangely familiar woman. She couldn't work fast enough however and Phillip abducted Harley's children only to turn up dead hours later. She became the prime suspect, though, with Gus' help tried to frame her alter ego and other people for the crime with no success. She was soon arrested and Gus vowed to free her. His investigation concentrated on his own family and cost him everything he could have gained from them. Despite attempts to free her by he and Buzz, Harley refused to run and pretended to have an affair with Bill to spare Gus waiting for her after her sentencing. To her surprise, the warden of the prison she was sentenced to was Mallet. He felt guilty for the way he'd treated her and did his best to make her prison stay comfortable. While they reconciled, the stay was interrupted by a riot during which he allowed her to escape. He, Gus and Harley then plotted to bring Phillip's real killer out and managed to trap Alan into admission. Now free, Gus proposed but the engagement was strained when she believed Alan's stories that Philip was still alive and set out to find him. When this went nowhere, she concentrated on her marriage, but when Gus was set to become the reluctant CEO of Spaulding, she took his place. Her tenure didn't go well and she was haunted by an increasingly paranoid Gus who vanished. She returned to the police force after a series of maneuvers allowed Alan-Michael to reclaim control of Spaulding. Gus returned, addicted to pills and she helped him though it. Their relationship became stronger as they became partners and planned to have children of their own.
ncG1vNJzZmirn5a9tHrSoZykpp%2BswG%2BvzqZmoK2Zmbavs4yloKCgpGSwqa3RmpqtnaKofKmt0aWcsmWUlsOqsNKopWabn6S9pr6O