Sweet Justice

Katelyn was happily oblivious, jabbering away with Andrew, asking about each of the horses, talking ninety to nothing about the farm. Andrew was already pushing Katelyn away from Mallory toward the stables.

“Wait!” Mallory called. “Where are you going?”

Andrew stopped, and Katelyn craned her head around to stare back at her. “Inside, silly,” Katelyn said.

“Katelyn—do you know who this is? Do you know what he did?”

For a moment, Katelyn’s expression was one of perplexed bewilderment. “Yeah. This is Andrew. He saved my life, Mal. He was the one. Sure. I’ve only been emailing and text messaging him for—gosh?” She looked up at Andrew, her perplexed expression now replaced with a wide grin. “Two months?”

Andrew shrugged his broad shoulders. “About that. Maybe not quite that long.”

“He was the one who sent me the brochure. His sister owns the place. She’s gonna help me walk again.”

Wind whistled around Mallory, but it was shock and surprise that nearly knocked her to the ground. Emailing? Text messaging? And Katelyn had done all this...and hadn’t said a word.

Because she knew you’d have put it a stop to it if you found out.

“Honey, Katelyn, Katie-bug...” Mallory rushed forward and knelt beside Katelyn’s chair. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. We can go to that other place. I mean, they have even more horses than this—”

“No.” Katelyn’s bottom lip jutted out, making her look six rather than nearly eighteen. “This is the place. I can feel it, Mallory. This is where I’ve got the best chance. Andrew says—”

Mallory didn’t care one whit what Andrew Monroe said. She closed her eyes, closed her mind, tried to find calm and peace and some line of reasoning that would budge Katelyn.

She opened her eyes again as she heard Katelyn say, “And there’s not as many patients here, see? I can get more one-on-one treatment with Maegan. Plus, I’ve been texting Maegan, too, and she’s given me lots of tips and—”

For a while now, Mallory had thought it was herself who’d been inspiring and motivating Katelyn. She recalled the gritted-teeth determination that fueled Katelyn after every one of her black, dark episodes, and Mallory had foolishly thought she’d been the one to bring her sister back from the brink.

But no. All along, it had been the Monroes. A dynamic duo, from the sound of things.

Mallory let her gaze move from Katelyn’s earnest face up to Andrew’s. If for one moment, she’d caught him gloating, seen even the faintest hint of a self-satisfied smirk on his lips, she would have snatched that wheelchair around and dashed for the car.

Instead, she could only see patient forbearance on his face. He wasn’t angry or defensive or smug. His hands rested lightly on the wheelchair’s push bars. Suddenly, Mallory remembered how strong and comforting his grip was the night of Katelyn’s accident, before she’d gone all ballistic on him.

Wouldn’t it be terrific if she could actually believe in that quiet strength he exuded?

“Mallory?” he said now. “What will it be? Do you want me to help you get Katelyn back in the car? Or...”

She closed her eyes again, breathed in, breathed out. Weighed her options.

She was here. And Katelyn was happy and believed this place, these people, could help her. And all of their meager belongings were stacked in boxes in a tiny apartment not too far from here, and Mallory had a job here to pay the bills.

What did it matter if she let Katelyn try it? Even if she did decide to move her, at least this way Katelyn would be getting some therapy in the interim. Mallory didn’t have to fix this today.

“If this is what you want.”

Katelyn squealed with delight. “It is! Oh, thank you, Mal, for not being a pill about it!”

Already Andrew was once again pushing Katelyn toward the stables, and already Mallory was regretting her decision. Where was her resolve? What had her dad always said? “Don’t let your wishbone be where your backbone should be.”

She wasn’t giving in. She was... This was a tactical retreat, that was all. She could be the bigger person here, she decided as she followed Andrew and Katelyn down the pea-gravel path to a white door set in the end of the building.

The warmth inside wrapped around Mallory like a welcome blanket, easing the cold in every part of her save her feet. She glanced down at what felt like two ice blocks shod in her most comfortable heels and kicked herself for wearing them. Heels? To a stable? Boy, she looked dumb. She had been so anxious this morning to get Katelyn from their motel room to here that she’d thrown on her usual “uniform” of a slim skirt, a white blouse, a blazer and...yes, heels to a stable.

The room they were in was more like a living room than an office waiting room—cheery and comfortable, with rough-hewn walls like the inside of a log cabin, sprawly leather furniture, and a kitchen/dining area off to the side. Large paintings of horses and farm life graced the walls, and framed photos of disabled children with a dark-haired woman and various horses were scattered throughout the room. The windows along the back were large and looked out onto the same green paddocks that Mallory had seen earlier. Outside, the horses still ran like four-year-old kids, mindless of the cold.

She found herself drawn to the warmth from a set of gas logs in a corner fireplace, and not just because Andrew had backed Katelyn up to it, as well. Now, for the first time in months, she took the opportunity to look at the man who had left her sister to die.

He wasn’t a monster. In her mind, Mallory had made him harder, more calculating. She realized that now as she noticed how compassion seemed to soften the crisp lines of his face. Kneeling beside Katelyn, Andrew was making sure that her little sister was settled in. He tucked a throw from one of the couches around her as if she were seven, not seventeen going on eighteen.

That was reassuring, especially since Katelyn had let slip that the pair of them had been exchanging emails and text messages. Mallory switched her scrutiny to Katelyn. Was Andrew another of Katelyn’s frequent “crushes”? It would certainly explain why her sister had wanted to come here, if she’d developed feelings for Andrew. Katelyn could fall so hard and fast with such little encouragement and be convinced that this fellow, this guy, would be her Prince Charming forever.

Mallory smothered an inward snort. There were no Prince Charmings. As soon as a guy heard you were raising your little sister, he was out of there like a shot.

Andrew straightened up into a standing position, and it reminded Mallory afresh how tall and imposing a figure he made. “Hey, my sister’s finishing up a phone call. You guys look as though you could do with some coffee. C’mon, Mallory, and I’ll show you where we keep the coffeepot.”

She followed him into the kitchen area, neat and tidy, surprised to find the counters topped with real butcher block instead of the usual kind. Sliding her hand along the smooth finish, she thought of her dad and his woodshop in the garage, and how he’d been working on a butcher-block island for her mom when...

“You like? Came from trees right here on the property. My brothers and I made these counters ourselves—had the trees sawed into lumber and kiln dried.”

Mallory looked up to see Andrew holding a cup of coffee out to her. She slid her fingers along the silky surface of the counter one final time, realizing the hours of sanding that had gone into creating its satiny finish. As she took the cup from Andrew, she said, “They’re beautiful. I don’t recognize the wood. Is it some sort of maple or oak?”

“Nope, poplar. Ma would have killed us if we’d cut down any of the big oaks on the place. A stand of poplars had to go to make room for the stables, so Maegan asked us if we could use the wood in the construction. Sugar? Cream? It’s here. And how does Katelyn take her coffee?”

From the other room, Katelyn called out, “Katelyn takes a little coffee in her cream, that’s what Mal tells her. We can’t all be tough and fierce and grown up and drink our coffee black like Mallory.”

Mallory felt her cheeks heat up. “Think melted coffee ice cream, and you’re on the right track,” she agreed. “And despite what Katelyn says, I do take a little cream and sugar in mine on occasion.” She didn’t add that the reason she often drank her coffee black was to save time and money—coffee was expensive in its own right, and Katelyn could drink enough cream and sugar in her coffee for two.

“Melted coffee ice cream? That’s an atrocity to good coffee!” Andrew protested. He winked at Mallory, and Mallory found herself grinning back at him. “Especially mine— you could drink it black. Here, I can’t do it to the poor unsuspecting stuff. You’d better.”

Quickly she dumped enough cream to float a small boat and a mountain of sugar into the cup. There—exactly the sweet, sticky mess that Katelyn liked.

“Whoa! You weren’t joking... Put that in an ice cream churn, and you would have coffee ice cream.” Andrew meanwhile had filled a mug that proclaimed “But first...coffee.” True to his earlier words, he drank his coffee without fussing over cream or sugar.

His gaze met hers over the rim of the mug: his eyes bright blue, and despite the compassion she saw there, a trace of frank scrutiny still remained. She felt, impossibly, as though he were weighing her true worth against some high personal standard...and had not decided yet whether she measured up. Flustered, she let her own gaze fall to the butcher-block counter.

Once again, the memory of her dad came back to Mallory, and his cautionary quip about wishbones and backbones. That day, so many years ago, her mom and dad had left together for a weekend out of town. She’d been irritated that they expected her to look after Katelyn when what Mallory had wanted to do was go to the beach with her friends.

The last thing she remembered her dad saying as he affectionately ruffled her hair was, “I know it stinks to have to be stuck here, taking care of your sister, but you’ll do a good job, and your mom needs some time away. Besides, keeping up with Katelyn builds backbone, right?”

Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe if she could let Katelyn stay here, she didn’t have any backbone at all. Maybe letting the man who’d abandoned her sister to this fate to begin with was the same as if she’d called up that landlord who owned that death trap and asked if he had any more properties to rent.

No, letting her stay here was worse. Their lawyer had said as much: the landlord was culpable, sure, but any jury would see that the condition of the rental house had screamed buyer beware.

The fire department, though? It was their job to rescue people, to get them out of harm’s way.

And then, as she let her fingers reflexively grip the smooth butcher-block, it clicked for Mallory. This whole thing was an elaborate con on Andrew Monroe’s part. It would have been like Katelyn to spill everything she knew about the long conversations their lawyer had had with them.

“You know about the lawsuit, don’t you?” she blurted out.

CHAPTER FIVE

“LAWSUIT?” ANDREW GULPED down the scalding coffee in a slurp rather than his intended sip. It burned all the way down to his stomach. “What lawsuit?”

Maegan’s cheery, “Good morning! You must be Katelyn!” floated through the living room and into the kitchen area. He heard Katelyn’s bubbly reply, and the subsequent chatter of conversation. Yep, he’d been right. Katelyn and Maegan would get on like a house on fire.

Mallory was a different story. Here she was, dressed to the nines in an outfit that looked straight off some fashion runway for working women. Who showed up at a stable with heels and a string of pearls? He’d known women like that—even made the mistake of dating a few before he wised up.

Yep, if Andrew had a type, it was high-maintenance Miss Fashion Plate right here in front of him. Lucky for him, he knew that if he scratched off her shiny, polished surface, he’d probably find her core to be all, “What’s in it for me?”

One of these days, he was going to figure out that he needed to settle for a good, sensible woman who was comfortable in a pair of jeans, who knew how to stretch a dollar and wasn’t all about appearances. Until then? He should steer clear of Mallory’s shiny-as-a-new-penny good looks.

Especially if she was considering a lawsuit.

Hearing Maegan talking to Katelyn, Mallory seemed torn. Well, gosh, that went right along with what Andrew had deduced already—Mallory still seemed to focus on him as the cause of Katelyn’s woes, was still more interested in placing blame than moving forward. After all, here she was, letting her sister’s cup of coffee chill on the countertop rather than getting it to her while it was still warm.

Mallory must have read his thoughts, because she snatched up the coffee, turned on those spindly heels and marched into the den. He heard her as she joined the conversation, noted with some surprise that she seemed to be knowledgeable about the realistic limitations of what Katelyn could accomplish here.

An image of those melted bunny slippers came rushing back to Andrew. Had he left her to die? If he’d called it in when he first heard Katelyn above him—

No. He’d done his job; he’d followed protocol. At some point, you had to cut your losses, evaluate what you had left and make a plan to move forward. He was done blaming himself for that day.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t be sure Katelyn got the best therapy possible—and Maegan, pesky Irish twin sister or not, was exactly that. He’d seen miracles happen here—kids walking when their doctors had given up on them, an autistic boy speaking after five years of nothing but grunts and shrieks.

The wheels of Katelyn’s wheelchair squeaked against the hardwood floor as Maegan moved the operation to a treatment room for her evaluation. She’d warned Andrew that assessment would tell the tale, whether there was any possibility for Katelyn to improve. The kid deserved a break, and Maegan could help her. He knew it.

Even if Mallory Blair didn’t seem to know the treasure she had. She must have taken one look at Happy Acres and found it missing the sleek professionalism of a bigger, ritzier operation. A city slicker like her?

She must think we’re all stupid hicks.

What lawsuit? What plan was bubbling away in that avaricious mind of Mallory Blair’s? Because he knew her type: money, money, money. Had to have money to pay for that car and those clothes and that haircut. Oh, and those shoes—yep. He hadn’t grown up with all the sisters he had not to be able to tell those heels, with their fancy design right on the stilettos, were pricey. From the tip of her coppery hair to those teetering printed heels, Mallory Blair screamed high-dollar woman.

He considered who here in Waverly might know about any lawsuit the Blairs could have filed.

Dutch would certainly know—“Dutch” Van der Gooten, the Levi County in-house counsel. Andrew spied a grocery/errand list on the fridge and made his decision: the horses were fed, the stables mucked out, Maegan didn’t have another patient coming in until after lunch.

He snatched the list off the fridge, shot off a text to Maegan to let her know he was going into town and forwarded the rehab phones to his cell phone. Grabbing a jacket off the hook by the door, Andrew headed for his truck.

A few minutes later, the downtown section of Waverly came into view, with its three-layer-cake of a courthouse, complete with a frilly little cupola that held a clock tower. He made the block around the town center and continued along the main road lined with recently rebuilt mom-and-pop style shops, past his future sister-in-law Kari’s bakery and Mr. Hiram Sullivan’s jewelry store. The pocket park’s interactive fountain was off, drained of water to protect it against the unusual deep freeze they’d had the past few nights, and, save for a few brave pansies that had weathered the cold, the space looked flat and empty against the crisp January blue sky.

Andrew turned his truck out of the more picturesque downtown area to some newer government buildings that had been built in the 1970s. They were squat and ugly and, to Andrew, like most folks in Waverly, a crime against architecture. He scanned the parking lot in front of the tallest one, a three-story brown brick that still managed to look short.

Yep, Dutch’s motorcycle was parked in his usual slot. How a guy as smart as Dutch could ride a motorcycle to work on a day as cold as this boggled the mind. Andrew slammed the truck door and hurried into the warmth of the building.

Dutch’s assistant waved him on in, a testament more to the fact that she knew they were buddies outside the office than to him being available. The two of them had played travel ball together for years in the youth and high school leagues, before Dutch had parlayed his considerable talent at batting into a baseball scholarship.

“Hey, Monroe!” Dutch flashed their old sign for a fastball as Andrew came through his office door. It had been Dutch, a catcher a couple of years older than him, who’d made Andrew a better pitcher than he should have been. “What’s hanging? You here about the county-city softball tourney? I’m in, man. I am definitely ready for ball.”

“With Daniel on the team, I’ll probably be warming the bench. He’s still got some life in that arm of his.”

“That old dog?” Dutch grinned. “You can take him. I’ve caught for both of you, and sure, he was good when he was young, but he’s nearly forty now.”

Thirty-eight or not, Andrew’s older brother, Daniel, was probably better at pitching than Andrew would ever be. After all, Daniel had given up a good shot at the major leagues to come back and follow in their dad’s footsteps when their dad, the fire chief, was killed in an arson fire years before. Now Daniel was the chief.

Andrew didn’t waste time arguing baseball. He dropped down into the stackable office chair that was de rigueur for most of the county offices. “I had something else I wanted to know. Have you heard about any lawsuits against the department? Or the county?”

Dutch’s easy smile faded. He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his neck. “What kind of lawsuits?”

This was the part of Dutch that Andrew didn’t know as well, the lawyer side. Already Andrew could see his friend running the angles. Something about law school had turned Dutch into a more calculating guy than Andrew had known as a kid. Or maybe that cynicism had always been there and law school had brought it out.

“Um, well, you remember that big fire in October? The one where the girl got burned?”

“Yeah. The one where you went all cowboy and went back in without being checked out. Believe you me, I reamed out Daniel and the captain on the scene that day. Could have been a nightmare worker’s-comp claim if you’d gotten hurt. But you’re not suing, are you? Nah, didn’t think so. Lemme see, the house was a total loss and the landlord was livid beyond belief. He’s not suing us, either. Not that I know of.”

“What about the girl? Katelyn Blair?”

“I don’t know of any lawsuit that’s come down the pike from that. No records have been requested, and they’d better have let me know if any ambulance chasers have been sniffing around. Why?” Dutch sat up and drilled him with the same intensity he’d had during their state championship game, when Andrew had a runner on second and had allowed a walk to first.

If Dutch hadn’t heard of any lawsuit... But Mallory had said, “You know about the lawsuit, don’t you?”

Andrew started outlining the situation, realizing when he had to backtrack several times to get to the real beginning that it was more complicated than he had admitted to himself. Dutch held up a hand.

“Whoa. Let me call Daniel.” Dutch hit a speed dial on his phone and propped himself up on the desk, his elbow planted firmly on a pile of manila folders.

Andrew couldn’t forestall a groan. He hated having his big brother dragged into this, because Daniel would go all boss man on him, not just boss man in the fire-chief sense but boss man as self-appointed head of the family.

Sure enough, Daniel was glowering when he came through the door a few minutes later. He moved a box of files from another chair in the office and plopped the chair down alongside Andrew’s.

“Now, what’s the five-alarm emergency that I had to zip over here for?” he asked Andrew. “Especially when you could have told me whatever it was at supper last night.”

“Hey, it wasn’t me— Dutch thought—”

“Dutch knew he needed to get the facts,” Dutch interrupted. “And I wanted to hear Daniel’s input. So. Proceed.” Their friend leaned back, his expression as intent and calculating as before.

Andrew began again. The false starts had given him some rehearsal and he managed to get the story told in a more efficient, concise way. He held his breath as he waited for Daniel’s reaction.

“You don’t know of any lawsuit?” Daniel asked Dutch. “Nothing’s been filed?”

Dutch shook his head. “Zip. I take it you didn’t know about Andrew’s big idea here to have a potential plaintiff do therapy at your sister’s place?”

“Hey!” Andrew sat forward. “I had no idea that sister of hers was planning on suing! I was trying to help Katelyn. What? Am I supposed to say, ‘Uh, no, you might sue us so you can’t even think about having Maegan do your therapy?’ That doesn’t make a dab of sense.”

“He’s got a point,” Daniel said. “I mean, it’s a cock-eyed situation now, but at the time, he was— Well, heck, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if he had mentioned it to me. Maegan’s excellent at what she does, and I would have felt it unethical to recommend someone else when they would have been my second choice. Besides. Maybe this Mallory Blair won’t sue.”

Dutch held up a finger. “Ah, but that’s why I’m the county’s in-house counsel, because unlike so many, I operate from the standpoint of defensive pessimism. She has mentioned the possibility of a lawsuit as if it were a done deal—ergo, there is a lawsuit. And that means complications. Maegan could be called to testify against the county—against your department, Daniel, and against you and Eric in particular, Andrew. My legal recommendation? If I were you, I’d suggest that this might prove to be a conflict of interest and you should help her find another rehab facility.”

Andrew swore inwardly at the thought that he’d dragged Maegan in the middle of this mess with Mallory Blair. If the woman were the litigious sort, she’d as likely sue Happy Acres as she would the county.

The idea of cutting Katelyn loose rankled him. And it wasn’t only Katelyn’s enthusiastic response this morning to seeing Happy Acres for the first time. No, he thought back to the night he’d first met Mallory, to the single tear that had trickled down her cheek when she’d confessed that she had no family.

The two girls were alone. Mallory had lost her dad, just like Andrew had, but she hadn’t had a family like he’d been blessed with to help her through it. Mallory Blair couldn’t be all bad—a tad obsessed with money and appearance, maybe, but Katelyn had told him that her big sister had raised her, and Katelyn had turned out okay, right?

Katelyn...who wouldn’t have been so badly injured if he’d only called it in a half minute sooner.

He pushed the thought away. “No. I’m not going to ask Maegan to do that. Katelyn doesn’t deserve that—she deserves the best possible treatment, and Daniel’s right— she’ll get it here. If she’s got any shot at all at walking again, it’s going to be with Maegan. And you know, Daniel’s right about another thing. I’ll bet all Mallory wants is for her sister to be happy and healthy, and once she sees what all Maegan can do, the idea of a lawsuit will fade.”

Dutch rolled his eyes. “Such Pollyanna attitudes. Whistle right by that churchyard, why don’t you? Daniel? You want to set your little brother straight?”

Daniel scratched his chin and stretched out his long legs. His poker face was much better than Andrew’s had ever been, and for a long moment, Andrew waited for his decision. “I can see your point, Dutch. It will be a mess if she does sue. Plus, you’ve got more experience with these things than either of us. Maybe being a lawyer means you’re like a hammer. Everything you see, well, it’s gotta be a nail.”