The toughest call he ever had to make

Following protocol during a fire that badly injured a young woman leaves Georgia firefighter Andrew Monroe racked with guilt. He hopes to make amends by helping Mallory Blair’s kid sister heal through equestrian therapy on his family ranch. The big obstacle is Mallory, who blames Andrew for what happened in spite of the daring rescue that placed his own life at risk. He knows that falling for Mallory is asking for trouble...especially when their mutual attraction ignites more conflict. But Mallory’s a fighter. Like her sister. Like him. Together, can they find a way to turn the past into hope for the future?

“That’s better. You don’t look so polished now. You look all rumpled and kissable.”

“I do?” Mallory tilted her head up, staring into clear, calm blue eyes.

Andrew cupped her jaw. His mouth on hers was soft, tentative at first, then more confident. It was a good kiss, a near perfect kiss, all the better because he didn’t push things, but let it happen naturally. She rested her cheek against his shoulder.

“Mauve is the pink trying to be purple,” she murmured for lack of anything else to say.

“Never can keep those straight.” His hand slid along her hair, tucking it back behind her ear. She felt his gaze upon her, smelled a hint of smoke on his skin.

He was wearing his uniform under the denim jacket, she realized with a start—navy blue with the insignia stitched onto the pocket.

The same uniform he wore when he’d abandoned Katelyn to that demon fire.

Dear Reader,

I still remember the night a kitchen fire devastated the heart of my parents’ home. Luckily, no one was injured. Others, including many firefighters on duty and off, haven’t been as fortunate.

In Sweet Justice, Andrew and Mallory find themselves dealing with the fallout of just such a fire, one that injures both a civilian and a firefighter. It all starts with a single bad decision with the potential to send hopes, dreams and futures up in smoke.

The worst thing about most structure fires? They’re imminently preventable. Writing this book has reminded me to be safe—and to check those smoke detector batteries!

Cynthia

Check out me and my fellow Mills & Boon Heartwarming sisters at heartwarmingauthors.blogspot.com.

Sweet Justice

Cynthia Reese

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CYNTHIA REESE lives with her husband and their daughter in south Georgia, along with their two dogs, three cats and however many strays show up for morning muster. She has been scribbling since she was knee-high to a grasshopper and reading even before that. A former journalist, teacher and college English instructor, she also enjoys cooking, traveling and photography when she gets the chance.

To my lovely gal pals—Leslie, Bobbi and Fran. Thanks for talking me down from the ledges.

Acknowledgments

Kathryn Lye and Victoria Curran are the best editors on the planet—this book wouldn’t have been possible without them. I also owe a huge debt to my Harlequin Heartwarming sister Karen Rock, who patiently brainstormed with me to work out the lives of the Georgia Monroes.

For technical help, thanks goes to Sergeant Tommy Windham and all the firefighters at the City of Dublin, Georgia’s Fire Department. Dr. Jean Sumner first gave me the idea of what injury Katelyn might suffer in a fire. Eric Carney and Stacy Watson graciously taught me what burn victims endure during rehab. All mistakes are mine!

Inspiration also came from the Love family—they’ve shown me what a wonderful thing a big family can be.

My critique partner, Tawna Fenske, as well as my readers, Jessica Brown, Wright and Dusty Gres, Kandice Williams, and Lee and Kathy Cheek, helped me tremendously.

And to my husband and my daughter—I owe you loan-shark big for putting up with my MIA self.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

BLACKNESS.

A solid wall of blackness.

Andrew Monroe crawled farther into the darkness, the grit of the floor biting into his knees, the heft of the fire hose under his right arm. His left hand secure on Eric Russell’s turnout gear, the only way he even knew his fellow crewmember was ahead of him.

And the girl they were trying to find? Who knew where she was? Or was she even here?

Eric had called out to her, but the only noise that penetrated the darkness was the rasp of their own breathing.

Captain had said that her roommates weren’t sure the girl, Katelyn, was still in the house—if you could call the tumbledown two-story much of a house. It seemed to go on forever, just room after room. It was like so many of the big old homes in this college town—taken over by students in search of cheap rent, and who cared if the place was nothing more than a firetrap?

The roommates, Cap said, weren’t even sure this girl, Katelyn, had even come home the night before. No one had seen her since yesterday afternoon.

She was probably out for an early-morning run or getting coffee or had slept over at a friend’s—at least, she was if she was lucky.

Whether she was in here or not, it was Eric and Andrew’s job to clear the structure and make sure no one was still in the house. So they started at the bottom, intent on working toward the stairs.

Eric moved forward, and Andrew crawled behind. He heard Eric’s muffled call for Katelyn again, then his waiting silence.

Only the sound of their air packs answered. Andrew’s heart sank. This was a mess, and he could sense time was running out for her if she was in here. She was just a college kid.

Nobody needs to die that young.

Eric pulled up short, and Andrew almost crashed into him. He stayed still, listening. Yeah—there it was again, ahead and above them...on the stairs?

A girl screaming. Even through his mask and the rest of his gear, Andrew could hear the panic in her voice.

Why do they always go up?

Was she coming down the stairs? In this smoke? She’d be dead—better for her to stay where she was until they could get a ladder setup outside, pull her from one of the upstairs windows.

He felt more than heard her as she dashed back and forth across the landing above their heads.

Hasn’t anyone taught you to get on your knees in a fire? Sheesh. You’re like a jackrabbit up there. Slow down, otherwise you run out of air. Get to a window.

Had Eric heard? Andrew signaled to Eric, who was in charge of their two-man sweep team. They needed to radio the captain. As the guy in charge, that was Eric’s call to make.

Once the girl was safe, Captain could assess whether it was worth the risk to save this heap of junk.

Eric and Andrew’s history of teamwork paid off. Andrew sensed that his buddy had either heard the girl himself or realized that Andrew had.

Eric moved—for his radio? To tell Andrew to make the call?

Andrew didn’t have the time to figure it out, because in the next breath, the floor next to Eric gave way. Hot air belched upward, along with a cloud of blackness tinged with an unearthly glow from the flames beneath them.

His buddy would have dropped into that glow if Andrew hadn’t had a hold of him. Even so, Eric slipped, his hands scrabbling for purchase, his feet digging into part of the floor that still held. Andrew tightened his grip on him, praying that the floor wouldn’t give way beneath them.

C’mon, c’mon, hold still!

For a heart-stopping moment, Andrew was sure they were going to tumble into the yawning pit of darkness below, the heat billowing up...

At least I’m not married. I won’t leave a wife like Dad left Ma.

Something in Andrew fought back at that and doggedly held on. They were too young to die in a death trap like this, Andrew was twenty-five to Eric’s twenty-eight. Fire couldn’t have them today.

Not today. Maybe someday, but not on my watch.

The big firefighter swung sideways and Eric’s head rammed into something thick and heavy. The sickening thud reverberated through Andrew’s fingers and arm.

Andrew seized the safety strap on Eric’s gear and began to drag him away slowly, every muscle protesting at Eric’s weight plus the added burden of air packs and boots and turnout gear. The intense heat from the fire and the strain left Andrew gasping.

One more tug. One more pull. And another. And another. Andrew’s arms felt as though they would be yanked out of their sockets if he didn’t get Eric to a safer spot.

But at least he’s breathing.

The blackness got even blacker and Andrew knew what that meant.

The fire’s spread.

As Andrew reached for his radio, he felt a shudder in the floor beneath him. He had to get them out before the whole place went. He scooped Eric under the arms again and began dragging him backward, along the line, to the door.

Above him, a girl was screaming, “Don’t leave me! Don’t let me die!”

Or was it his imagination? Was the fire playing tricks on him?

The front door and help felt an ocean away...and the girl, Katelyn? She might as well be on the moon.

He stopped for a breath. How much air had he used from his tanks to pull Eric this far? How much air did he have left? Unclipping his radio, he managed to wheeze, “Mayday! Mayday!”

Instantly his captain responded, wanting a size-up. Andrew got it out, all of it, Eric, the girl, everything, then returned to the task of dragging Eric closer to the door, inch by inch. Drag. Stop and breathe. Drag. Stop and breathe. Drag—

Hands closed over him—the RIT team Captain had sent in. They scooped up Eric as though he weighed no more than a feather, hauled him away from Andrew.

Above him, another scream.

Or was it only in his head?

Another hand gripped him, pulling him. Andrew’s muscles quivered with exhaustion, but even so a part of him wanted to go back for the girl.

He knew leaving her was the right thing to do. Other firefighters would put the ladder against the upstairs window, go in, find her.

He was done. For now he was done.

Outside, blinking under the glare through the gray October clouds, Andrew drew in deep gulps of cold air. Across the yard, EMTs swarmed over Eric. Head injury, laceration to his leg, maybe a punctured lung from a broken rib.

He didn’t even get to say goodbye before they had Eric on the bus and down the street.

His captain strode up beside him, radio halfway to his mouth. “Monroe! Where was that girl? They can’t find her. They’ve done a sweep, but no dice. I pulled them out—the smoke’s so bad, and they used up their air in nothing flat. That whole place is about to go.”

“You’ve got to go after her!” Andrew insisted. “Sounded as if she was on the landing above us—as though maybe she was trying to come down.”

The captain swore. “The way that floor caved, you can bet the stairs aren’t far behind.”

“I heard her,” Andrew repeated. “I’ll go. Send me. I just need a new air pack. I know where she is—at least where she was when I was pulling Eric out.”

The captain’s radio squawked, seizing his attention. He turned back, a look of indecision on his face for a moment, then he gave Andrew a quick nod.

Andrew didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a new air pack and shot up the ladder, nozzle in hand, with another firefighter, Jackson, behind him.

This time, he didn’t hear Katelyn. He climbed inside the window and pushed along the bedroom wall, pawing through what felt like a drycleaner’s worth of clothes on the floor. Around a heavy dresser. Over a squeaky toy.

Out the door. Down another hall, this one bare floor, no carpet. Heat seemed to radiate upward through the cracks in the floorboards, and he pushed back thoughts of Eric almost tumbling down into the blackness.

The floor would hold.

They would find Katelyn.

“Fire!” Jackson hollered out. “Stairs!”

Andrew pointed the nozzle and blanketed the area with water.

The smoke, amazingly, seemed to clear, and that was when he saw her—just the shape of her, just a suggestion of a form on the floor. It was a miracle he’d seen her—a second earlier, and he, like the earlier crew, would have missed her entirely.

Andrew crawled forward. Laid his hand on her.

Small. Scarcely bigger than Taylor or Marissa—and his nieces were only twelve.

Still, her deadweight slowed him down as he tried to drag her one-handed back the way they’d come. He was too tired—too exhausted from pulling Eric. He needed to use both hands.

It was almost as if Jackson could read his mind. He clapped Andrew on the back and grabbed the nozzle. Now Andrew set to work, dragging her along the line, back toward the bedroom, over the squeaky toy, through the clothes that would go like fat-lighter kindling once the fire reached this far.

And it would. The glow was getting bigger, marching up the stairs, toward the bedroom door. Jackson was hurrying him now, but he didn’t need to, because Andrew knew the score.

They had to get out, out before that fire ate through the staircase and took away the second floor’s main load-bearing wall.

Now for the window—daylight, even if it was only a rectangle of gray the color of galvanized steel. The hand-off to Tommy, who was waiting on the ladder—

And that was when Andrew saw how bad Katelyn really was. The disintegrated yoga pants from mid-shin down, the misshapen and blackened bedroom slippers, with their hot pink fur matted and melted. The soot-covered face slack and unresponsive.

I should have called it in when I heard her on the stairs. She was okay then. She was fine. And now... Is she even alive?

Andrew watched as Tommy made his way down the ladder. He watched for any hint that Katelyn was more than a corpse.

Too late. I was too late.

He clambered out onto the ladder and headed down, his heart somewhere in his boots.

Too late. The words echoed in his head with every step on every rung.

On the ground, more EMTs were waiting to take her from Tommy. Quick as a flash they had her on a backboard, a C-collar on—and Tommy was giving him a thumbs-up. His wide grin told Andrew there were some signs of life.

Elation flooded him, and he nearly collapsed on the ground by the ladder as relief pulsed through him.

She’s alive!

A win. This was a win. The house could go—and it probably would in a matter of minutes, whether he gave it permission or not.

He looked back over his shoulder to see Jackson on the ground and flames punching through the upstairs windows.

Yeah. Fire could have the house. But it couldn’t have Eric, and it couldn’t have Katelyn—at least not today.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CHILL ATE into Mallory Blair’s bones. The waiting room was empty except for an old man asleep on a couch. He was wrapped in about three dozen blankets and a plump pillow. She found herself fixated on those blankets, wishing for something warm to wrap around her.

Not a blanket to envelop her.

A pair of arms.

Not a pillow under her head.

A strong, rocklike shoulder.

She’d been here before—not here, not in this hospital. All she could think when she took in the institutional furnishings, the flickering fluorescent lights overhead, the overwhelming scent of citrus cleaner, was another hospital. The hospital where a doctor had come out and hemmed and hawed and finally told her that Mom and Dad were gone.

In one instant, the world she’d known—comfortable, secure, a future ahead of her— went poof. She’d gone from being—

Admit it, Mallory. You were a spoiled brat who had no clue how much you depended on your parents.

She hadn’t been all alone then.

Katelyn had been with her.

Mallory swallowed the sob pent up in her chest. If it came out, if she started crying, she’d lose it. She’d cry for hours or days or a lifetime, and she couldn’t do that. She had to be strong. She had to think and concentrate on what the doctor said.

If the doctor ever came back out.

What if she comes back out and tells you Katelyn’s gone?

Mallory was still trying to wrap her head around the little she knew. One minute she’d been hanging the new shipment of holiday dresses on the rack, running her steamer over them to remove the creases and folds, and the next, some stranger on a phone was telling her...

Accident, fire, medical evacuation by helicopter to a burn unit halfway across the state.

And here...after a two-hour drive through twisty Georgia roads she didn’t know, to find the right hospital in a city full of hospitals...

Down the hall came loud laughter. The corridor was full to bursting with a huge family, tumbling over one another like a box full of rambunctious puppies, more like a family reunion than a crisis. They’d had good news, she guessed. That or they were trying to put the horror of the moment out of their minds.

I should have never let Katelyn talk me into letting her skip her senior year and go on to college in Waverly. I should have insisted she choose a college closer to home. I should have found the money to pay for the dorm, not that firetrap of a house. It’s my fault—I pushed for that resident’s exemption for her, just to save money, and I shouldn’t have.

Mallory’s stomach rumbled. It confounded her how she could still be hungry when her sister might be dying behind those double doors up the hall.

Another sob fought its way past her hammering heart.

You might have all the time in the world to eat yet. If she tells you that Katelyn’s gone.

The couch groaned as the old man turned on his side, burrowing deeper into his nest of blankets. For a moment, Mallory found herself wondering about his story. What calamity had brought him to this place?

Down the hall, the crowd grew still louder, as one family member ratcheted up the volume level to best another’s. More people had come in to join them, and Mallory could see them greeting one another with hugs and back slaps.

This time, she didn’t even have a scared twelve-year-old sitting beside her in the waiting room. When her parents had died, there’d been no one left of their family except a hard-of-hearing great aunt on her mother’s side they’d never met, and two states away at that. Mallory remembered begging the social worker from the department of family and children services to please, please not put Katelyn in foster care. She could do it—she could take care of her sister.

And see how you’ve screwed that up.

She pulled her winter coat around her, wincing as the lining ripped in the shoulder seam. The coat was three years old and much mended, but the whole lining needed replacing. She’d been planning on doing it this weekend, in fact...but she wouldn’t now.

She had more important things to worry about than a tear in a coat lining. She needed to be grateful she even had a coat.

Is Katelyn cold?

Katelyn hated the cold—it had always been a battle between them over the thermostat, Mallory turning it down to sixty-five to save money, Katelyn slipping behind her and jacking it up to seventy-two.

I’ll turn it up to eighty if you’ll just come back to me.

Another wail pressed up, out, like a caged animal testing its bars for weakness. She’d just managed to stifle it when she spotted a tall dark-haired guy, shoulders broad in a denim jacket, push through the crowd.

He smiled at the family as he passed, spoke for a few minutes, gestured with the hand holding a big brown paper shopping bag to the cooler he was pulling with his other hand.

He was about her age, and he had a kind smile, the guy did. It seemed so much warmer than the room’s chilly, sterile air. She wondered how he was connected to the family, wondered what he had in the cooler. With that many people, they’d need a lot of snacks and drinks. They looked as though they were camped out for the night.

Like me. They’re not going anywhere, like me.

He continued on from the crowd, closing the gap between himself and the door to the waiting room with a few easy strides of long denim-encased legs. Mallory realized with a start that he was coming to join her. He must be planning on leaving the cooler here for the family.

The door creaked open. “Hi...are you with the Blair family?” the man asked.

“Uh—yes.” She stared at him as he entered, trying to figure out if she knew him from somewhere. Had the stress of the day made her fail to recognize him?

No. She’d never forget his easy smile, the cleft in his chin, the bright blue eyes that seemed to bring a summer sky’s joy into the chilly waiting room. His dark hair was closely cropped, but it had grown out enough since his last haircut to have a cowlick right at the crest of his head. Mallory’s fingers itched to smooth it down.

“You’re Katelyn Blair’s...sister?”

“Yes.” She struggled to a standing position and extended a hand. She’d been sitting so long and so stiffly that her knees threatened to collapse on her. “I’m Mallory Blair. You must be one of Katelyn’s friends.”

He dropped the handle of the cooler and gripped her offered hand with a big strong hand of his own, one with long square-tipped fingers that swallowed hers. “Andrew Monroe...and, no, I don’t know your sister, exactly. I was one of the firefighters who was at the fire this morning. I wanted to see how she was doing.”

Tears stung her eyes at his thoughtfulness. She gripped his hand with both of hers and pumped it with a fierce energy. “Thank you, thank you—thank you so much for getting her out, for giving her a chance—”

She had to drop his hand to swipe at her eyes. “I’m sorry—I’m just a—a mess.”

Andrew guided her back to her chair and eased her down in it. He sat in the chair beside her. “I can imagine. She’s going to be okay, then?”

“Oh—I don’t know. They haven’t told me much. They said...” Mallory drew in a shaky breath and knotted her fingers in her lap. She noticed a chip in her nail polish—polish she’d carefully put on just the night before, when all was right in the world.

“Yes?” Andrew prompted. The way he said it was full of patience and encouragement, as though he knew she didn’t want to say the words lest they finally seem real.

“She’s on a vent. And her feet and legs—they’re badly burned. She has twenty percent of her body...burned. The pants she was wearing...and the shoes... They melted in the heat of the fire. How hot does it have to be to melt shoes?” Mallory shook her head and closed her eyes tight in a vain effort to banish the image from her head.

“They were bedroom slippers,” Andrew said. “Some sort of pink furry ones.”

She looked up in surprise. “Bunny slippers. They were bunny slippers. You saw her, then? When they pulled her out?”

His cheeks flared with color, and he ducked his head. “I—er—me and another firefighter, we were the ones who pulled her out. And you’re right. It was a really hot fire. This place—” he waved one long arm to encompass not just the waiting room, but the burn center itself “—it’s great. They can do miracles here.”

“You know it, then? It’s a good place?”

“Yeah, oh, yeah. My dad...”

A spasm of pain crossed his face as his words trailed off. He chewed on his bottom lip.

“Your dad what?” Mallory said. She needed to hear something hopeful.

“Well, he was here. There was this warehouse fire, see, and he got trapped in it—”

“Oh, so that’s why you’re a firefighter,” she guessed, laying a palm against his forearm. She should have realized it would be something like that, him giving back after seeing a family member hurt.

“Well, sort of, I guess. He was the fire chief. He—he went in to help rescue another firefighter.”

“He’s okay now?”

“Uh...no, I’m afraid not. He didn’t make it. But—” He turned to her, his own hand covering hers where it lay on his arm. “He was a lot worse than Katelyn sounds—he had burns on nearly three quarters of his body, and, well, it would have taken a miracle for anybody to survive that.”

Mallory sagged back into the stiff, unforgiving chair. It wasn’t quite high enough to rest her neck, and too straight to find a good position in. “Oh. I’m sorry. This has to be hard for you to come here.”

She couldn’t have done it—gone to the hospital waiting room in Macon, back home, where she’d heard the news of her parents’ passing. Maybe she should have been strong enough, but ever since then, she’d given a wide berth to hospitals of any sort, especially that one.

Andrew’s face creased into an aw-shucks-it’s-nothing smile. “No. I wanted to come. When you’re part of the club—this awful, awful club—you know what somebody else is going through, and you... Well, you want to make it better. I’m just sorry you haven’t had more encouraging news.”

“I haven’t had much news at all, but I expect they’re busy, and I... To tell the truth, I haven’t been here that long—only since about, oh, a little after noon.”

Andrew chuckled. “It’s after five o’clock already. You’re lost to Hospital Time.” He squeezed her hand, seemed to realize what he was doing and then moved his own from hers. Mallory felt the waiting room’s chill air bite into her at the absence of his warm hold.

Andrew was ducking down, pulling up the bag. He placed it in his lap. “My mom put a care package together for you—she’s good about stuff like that. She thought you might need a few things.”

“Oh, she shouldn’t have—” Mallory protested.

“No, she wanted to. She remembers, see? How it was with her when Dad was...well, here. And she knew the family probably wouldn’t want to leave, not this first night anyway. Say, where is the rest of the family?” He craned his neck around, spied the old man. “Am I disturbing your... Is that your dad?”

Mallory’s throat closed up on her, and this time, she couldn’t hold back a tear as it slid down her cheek. Embarrassed at her loss of control, she swiped it away. “Uh, no, that’s somebody else. This is it. Just me. Katelyn and I lost our parents in a car wreck nearly five years ago.”

“Oh, man.”

Andrew’s eyes held so much compassion that she had to look away. “It’s okay. We get by.”

And they had. Until now, they’d made it. It had been tough. It had meant short-selling the house they’d grown up in, letting go of some dreams, working two jobs at times, getting creative to make her paycheck stretch. Katelyn always complained that Mallory pinched pennies so hard that they’d spit out nickels.

She’d kept Katelyn out of the foster care system, and she’d managed to put food on the table, and keep Katelyn in school...

I’ll do anything. Anything. Just please, please, pull through, Katie-bug. Please.

“Well, uh...” Andrew cleared his throat. “Ma wasn’t sure how many folks you’d have with you, so she sent a lot.” He reached down and patted the cooler.

“I—I don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing to say. Here—this bag, it’s got, hmm, let’s see...a blanket, a pillow...oh, and Ma sent a toothbrush and toothpaste and some hand sanitizer.”

“Oh, wow. I was just wishing for a blanket. She must have read my mind.”

“Ma says to tell you that the nurses will give you another blanket if you ask—the waiting room can get kind of cold. Oh, and don’t forget that the Southeast Burn Foundation will put you up. Just ask the nurses, and they’ll get you hooked up with the right person. They’ve got this hospitality house for the families, and they provide one good meal a day.”

Mallory felt herself blinking back still more tears. So much kindness, and when she’d been feeling pathetically sorry for herself.

“Ma knew, if you were anything like her, that nobody could pry you away from this place tonight, and you’d probably headed up here without much thought of anything but getting here.” Andrew patted the lid of the cooler. “She sent, hmm, fried chicken, butter beans, mashed potatoes and sliced tomatoes, and some apple cobbler for dessert. Oh, and tea. I hope you like iced tea, because she sent a whole thermos of it.”

“There’s no way I can possibly eat all of that...”

Andrew nodded toward the man on the couch, who was now snoring gently. “Share it, then. That old fellow looks as though he could use a good meal. And the apple cobbler will keep for your breakfast.”

“Please, won’t you have some with me?” Mallory asked.

“Uh...” Andrew ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Ma’d skin me alive if she knew I’d eaten up some of the food she sent you.”

“I don’t want to eat by myself.” The confession surprised her. What was it about Andrew Monroe that made her feel so...not alone?

“In that case, even Ma would tell me to join you,” he said with a grin and a definitive nod. “She’d surely want me to encourage you to eat.”

She managed a small portion of the delicious supper, swallowing it past the lump of fear in her throat. Every time a person in a white coat or scrubs walked by the door, Mallory found herself tensing. Her mind simultaneously prayed they were coming to tell her something and hoped they would go past if it were bad news.

Then, as Andrew was helping her stack the food back into the cooler, the door opened. There stood the doctor, her phalanx of white-coated interns and medical students behind her.

Mallory froze. She felt Andrew take the plastic container of mashed potatoes from her. She turned and numbly accepted the doctor’s outstretched hand in its proffered shake. The woman sat in the chair across from her.

“Okay, well. She is...stable. It’s been a real battle, I won’t lie. We’ve got her on three pressors to keep her blood pressure up, and she’s continuing to need maximum support from the vent. We’ve assessed the burns to her legs and feet, and, as I told you before, we’re dealing with twenty percent of her body surface. The burns are...well, the majority of the higher ones are at least second degree, and she has third-degree burns on her feet. That is serious. Also...do you know if she came in contact with a live electrical wire? She has burns on her hand and torso that appear to be from electric shock.”

Mallory shuddered. “I—I wasn’t there—I—”

“No,” Andrew spoke up. “I was part of the responding fire department. The house didn’t have power. We always check and get the power company to shut it off. There’s no way she could have gotten an electrical shock. She was fine when I heard her—she was conscious and alert when I had to evacuate a fellow firefighter of mine. She got burned in the time it took for us to go back in after her.”

The doctor gave him a dubious look. “The burns on her hand and arm and torso are consistent with, say, a frayed extension cord. Maybe she came in contact with an exposed wire and it knocked her unconscious? It’s the least of her worries, but it makes me concerned that we may have missed deeper wounds.”

“I can assure you,” Andrew insisted. He was leaning forward now. “There was no power to that house, not that I know of.”

The doctor held his gaze, turned to take in the curious faces of her flock of junior doctors, and shrugged. “I’ve seen a lot of electrical burns in my time. And this? Despite what you say, it looks like one. We’ll treat it as we see it and keep an eye out for anything else.”

She rose from her chair and looked at Mallory. “Do you have any questions?”

“When can I see her?” Mallory husked. “And—and is she—she...” She couldn’t form the words.

“You can see her briefly in a few minutes, but I warn you, we have her in a medically induced coma. The next twenty-four hours are critical. Please rest assured that we are doing all we can. It’s a miracle that she’s made it this far, but...well, if it makes you feel any better, we’ve seen worse burns.”

Then she was gone, her coterie with her.

“That makes no sense,” Andrew muttered. “How could she get an electrical burn? She was fine—well, not fine, but—”

“I don’t understand.” Mallory managed to pull her focus back to Andrew’s words. “What happened?”

“It was—well, a little hairy. See, the guy with me fell through the floor.”

Mallory put her hand to her mouth. “Is—is he okay? Is he—is that why you’re here?” The idea that she’d not even thought of anyone else being injured shamed her.

“Oh, yeah—it was a scare, I tell you. I pulled him up, got him to the front porch. And he’s fine. A cracked rib, a bump to the head. He’ll be raring to go in a day or so.”

“Oh, well—that’s good.” Relief sluiced over Mallory.

“Yeah, so—well, just before my buddy went down, we heard her—your sister. We were in the foyer, right at the stairs. She was calling for help on the landing above us, running around like a jackrabbit. Instead of going out a downstairs window, she must have gone upstairs, maybe to escape the smoke? And then she panicked, maybe couldn’t find her way out? I know she was conscious and alert then, and the power was switched off. We always check. Anyway, I had to get Eric to the front porch. I got him out, let the EMTs check him out and then I told the Captain I’d go back in and look for her.”

“Wait...wait.” Mallory struggled to understand the timeline. “You heard her? Right above you? And...you left her? You left my sister in a burning house?”

“Well...yeah, it’s protocol.” Andrew shrugged one shoulder. “Order of priority. We go after fellow firefighters first, civilians second and property third—a really, really distant third. And she obviously had air—so that meant we had time.”

The warmth Andrew had given her with his reassuring smile and his care package coalesced into an icy block within Mallory.

“Protocol?” she choked out. “Why would your...protocol dictate that a civilian is saved after a firefighter?”

Andrew blinked. “A firefighter wouldn’t be down in the first place if it weren’t for having to go in after the civilian. And—I mean—he’s my buddy. I got his back, he’s got mine. He would have done the same for me.”

“You’re saying...that since my sister is a—a civilian, she gets left in a burning house?” This blindsided Mallory. It didn’t square with her idea of firefighters running into houses that were aflame or rescuing cats up trees. It didn’t sound in the least heroic.

“I guess you could say that,” Andrew said slowly. He had a wary look on his face, as though he realized all of a sudden that he had said the exact wrong thing.

“I am saying that!” The ice grew inside her, a cold fury that rivaled the chill outside. “You took the time to help your buddy to the front porch, and you ignored my sister?”

“It was a bad injury, and the stairs were too much of a risk for us to go up that way, so Captain said we’d use a ladder—”

“You just said your buddy was fine—a broken rib, a bump on the head—didn’t you? Did I hear that right?”

Andrew stood up, took a step toward the door. “Uh, maybe it was a bad idea, me coming here. I just—felt bad. You know. For Katelyn. Because she—” He broke off, ducked his head.

“Because you left her. All this—” She swept her hand at the cooler, the blanket. “It’s because you feel guilty, right? You knew you shouldn’t have left her.”

Andrew passed a hand over his hair, not meeting her eyes, his mouth grimacing. “I didn’t want to leave her. I do feel bad. But—I mean, my buddy. I had to take care of him.”

“Your buddy is fine! And Katelyn—Katelyn may die.” Split-second decisions—with no thought to the consequences—like the guy in the eighteen-wheeler who’d thought he could make the light and instead T-boned her parents’ car.

And now another decision just like that—another one was going to cost her the last bit of family she had left on this earth. “You were there,” Mallory sobbed. “In the house. And you heard my sister calling for help—”

Andrew’s face tensed. “Look, I don’t expect you to understand. You weren’t there.”

“Apparently,” she shot back, “you weren’t there, either, not for my sister. Your buddy? Well, he had gear, right? Gear to keep him from getting burned, and a mask to help him breathe, and—and training—he knew what to do in a fire—it was his job—but my sister...she’s just a kid! And all she had on was—was yoga pants and the pink bunny slippers I gave her for Christmas—”

Mallory felt the dinner she’d just eaten rise in her throat, her stomach churning. She put her hand to her mouth and ran from the room. She had to get away—away from Andrew Monroe.

CHAPTER THREE

Three months later

THE EARLY-JANUARY sky stretched out in a deceptive azure blue over the country road Mallory drove down, the sun bright as it shimmered across the asphalt. A sky like that called to mind balmy temperatures, not the forty degrees it was, made even colder by the brisk breeze that feathered through the tall thickets of pines on both sides of the road and buffeted the canvas top of her convertible.

Beside her, Katelyn riffled through the stack of papers. “Yeah, this is the road. See? Stanton Mill Road.”

Mallory dared a glance at the brochure from the therapy facility that Katelyn had shoved into her line of vision. The ugly scar on her sister’s small hand—a starburst with a long tail—gave Mallory a fresh jolt.

And that’s the least of her scars. Mallory pushed away the thought. No, she had to be positive. Katelyn was here, in this car, able to talk, able to get around in her wheelchair. She’d come so far, first at the burn center, and then in an in-patient rehab facility.

And maybe this last round of therapy would actually get Katelyn up, out of that wheelchair, and on her way back to college.

Focusing her gaze back on the road ahead, Mallory said, “So we just keep our eyes peeled for the sign—Happy Acres Farm? Right?”

As if she didn’t know. As if Katelyn hadn’t begged and wheedled and pleaded, like she was so good at doing. When she’d first mentioned it, Mallory had thought she’d lost her mind. Hippotherapy? She’d never heard of it.

Somewhere, somehow, Katelyn had gotten hold of the shiny, colorful brochure featuring uplifting photos of kids and grown-ups on horses.

Katelyn had always been crazy about horses—why, Mallory couldn’t say. Anything that big and hulking, that could tumble you off and trample you, couldn’t really be a pet, could it?

Whether it was Katelyn’s horse obsession or someone’s assurance that hippotherapy would get her out of that wheelchair, the brochure hadn’t left Katelyn’s possession. Over time, the corners had become dog-eared, the folds so frail that one of them had to be mended with cellophane tape. The brochure had become Katelyn’s talisman. Happy Acres Farm, the thing she’d work toward when nothing else would motivate her, when she’d wanted to simply give up.

Mallory couldn’t blame Katelyn for those times. Her sister’s screams of agony as nurses cared for her burned legs and feet still echoed in her head. And even now, Katelyn had days of unrelenting pain.

There’d come a point during a particularly bad day of therapy when Katelyn had given her scarred legs and feet a disgusted grimace.

“Nobody’ll ever want me,” she’d said. “I won’t ever be able to walk again. What’s the point? Maybe I should just be happy with what I’ve got. I’m alive, okay? Isn’t that enough for you, Mallory?”

It wasn’t. Mallory had to give her sister her life back—she owed it to their parents. Their mom and dad would expect that, would want her to do whatever she could.

Even if it means getting lost in the middle of the pinewoods of south Georgia trying to find a horse farm.

“Hey! There it is!” Katelyn pointed. She jumped up and down in the seat beside Mallory. “See? Happy Acres Farm! You found it, sis!” She gave Mallory an ebullient punch on her arm.

Sure enough, a big wooden sign with a silhouette of a horse announced the facility. Mallory followed a long post-and-rail fence down to the sign and bumped along the gravel driveway. Here she saw the green metal roof of low buildings—stables, she assumed, and hopefully an office.

“Oh, wow! It’s pretty, isn’t it? Ooh, Mallory! Look! Horses!”

It was pretty—Mallory had been worried that the place wouldn’t live up to the bucolic photos in the brochure. The rehab facility surely hadn’t—no happy, smiling staff members and triumphant patients to be found in all their time at that facility.

Happy Acres Farm appeared as advertised. Horses frolicked in the cold, crisp air across pastures of impossibly green grass. Beyond them, a pond reflected the blue sky, with clouds of fog still hovering close over its surface.

The stables—if that was what the long, low building was—were fastidiously neat, light green, with dark green trim and shutters. Everything seemed perfectly groomed—and perfectly deserted.

Where were the other patients? Where was the staff shown in the photos? The discharge planners at the rehab facility had warned Mallory that Happy Acres Farm was a small clinic, run by a single owner-operator. Mallory had tried to talk Katelyn into choosing a similar, bigger facility nearer to Macon, where the two of them had grown up and Mallory had lived up until now.

But no. Katelyn wanted this hippotherapy facility. And the discharge planners had told them that the therapist was highly qualified—certified in both traditional physical therapy and hippotherapy, and she had certification in counseling. Plus...it was close to Katelyn’s college. Maybe her old school friends would encourage her to get better and get back into her classes.

Mallory surely hadn’t been able to accomplish that.

“Can you help me with my chair, Mal?” Katelyn’s grin was so big, it practically hung off either side of her elfin face. Mallory’s heart melted, and her reservations about the place evaporated. Believing it was half the battle—maybe Katelyn would be able to walk again here.

“Okay. We’re early, though—”

“I want to see it! I want to go pet the horses!”

Mallory shuddered. Horses were great from a distance—beautiful and graceful. Close up, though?

She loved animals—how many dogs and cats had she and Katelyn fostered over the years? Horses, on the other hand, had big teeth and sharp hooves and eyes that seemed to stare straight through you. She was embarrassed to admit such a phobia, but there it was.

Still, she knew better than to argue with her little sister. The therapist could establish the rules, and Katelyn would certainly listen to her more than she would Mallory. After all, Katelyn had demonstrated time and again that she thought Mallory was an uptight fussbudget who worried too much.

I didn’t worry enough.

She took in Katelyn’s excitement. Her sister was pink cheeked for the first time in months, her coppery hair, so like Mallory’s own, fluffing out around a thinner, still-gaunt face. It was like looking at their mom’s photo as a teenager. Katelyn and she had both inherited their mom’s auburn hair, but Katelyn had drawn the delicate elfin features of their mother, while Mallory resembled their dad’s side of the family, taller, with stronger features.

She sighed and opened the car door. The cool morning air snaked in and she pushed up to a standing position. The cramped confines of her little convertible had been trouble on her knees. She patted the red painted finish, thinking again of the happier day her parents had given the car to her as a high school graduation present.

Not even a year later, and they were gone. She’d struggled to make the payments, not willing to let this last gift from her mom and dad go the way the house had. Now it was paid off—hers forever, or as long as she could keep it going.

She hauled Katelyn’s wheelchair out of the tight fit of the trunk. A bag containing their bare essentials and Katelyn’s many, many medications was the only other thing stuffed in there. Mallory had hired her former boss’s husband and his truck to bring the rest of Mallory’s belongings to the apartment Mallory had found in town.

Today...today was a chance to get Katelyn introduced to her new therapist and then settled into the apartment.

She struggled to get the chair unfolded and wheeled up beside Katelyn’s door. The wind had picked up, and now it sliced into her and yanked at her hair, pulling it out of the French twist. She’d hoped to appear neat and tidy and organized when she met the staff—the only way people ever took you seriously, she’d found.

Katelyn would have opened the door, but Mallory waved at her to wait. No need for Katelyn to get chilled while Mallory struggled to set the stubborn brake—

“Here, let me—”

A man’s hand appeared over hers, big and muscular, competently setting the brake and yanking the chair into instant submission. Half embarrassed at her ineptitude and half eternally grateful, Mallory pushed the hair out of her eyes and extended a hand.

“Thank you—I’m not sure I’ll ever get the hang of—”

And then she looked him in the face, saw who he was.

Tall, even against her five-foot-eight-inch frame. Solidly built, with the arms to prove it, which, courtesy of the short-sleeved T-shirt he wore even on this chilly morning, were bare and tanned. The cleft in the chin, the sky-blue eyes, the close-cropped hair—and yes, even the cowlick at the crest of his head.

There was no doubt about it.

This was Andrew Monroe.

CHAPTER FOUR

“WH-WHAT ARE you doing here?” she sputtered.

Before Andrew could answer, Katelyn’s attempts to get out of the car on her own diverted Mallory’s attention. She swung around from Andrew to see Katelyn dragging herself and her useless legs out of the car and to the too-distant wheelchair.

“Wait, Katelyn! Stop!” Mallory warned. “The chair—”

Andrew was two steps ahead of her. While Mallory stood frozen with panic at a possible fall, Andrew had picked up the chair and moved it closer to the car. And then he stepped back, leaving Katelyn to scramble into the chair as best she could.

Just like he did with the fire.

Over the months since the accident, Mallory had thought about what she would say to this man if she ever saw him again. The idea that he would abandon a helpless kid in a burning house... It boggled the mind. Her rational mind could see his point—but her rational mind left her whenever she heard Katelyn’s pitiful moans and screams of pain.

So yeah. Mallory did blame Andrew Monroe for Katelyn’s agony, for her lifetime sentence in a wheelchair, for each and every angry scar that rippled across her feet and legs and body.

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.”

Dutch shrugged. “Even a broken watch is right twice a day.”

Daniel cocked an eyebrow. “In that analogy, are you the broken watch or are we?” He didn’t wait for Dutch. “I think we can thread the needle here with a little watchful waiting. You keep your ear to the ground for any signs of a lawsuit, and maybe check out the well-heeled Ms. Blair for any past litigation. And meanwhile, we can let Maegan do what she does best—make patients better. Besides, if it did come to a lawsuit, we did everything by the book that day. We followed protocol, and my guys—even my little squirt of a brother here—were bona fide heroes, and they have the commendations to prove it.” Daniel rose to his feet and clapped a hand on Andrew’s shoulder. “Bottom line is, Mallory Blair wouldn’t have a sister at all if it hadn’t been for Andrew.”

Unexpected pleasure rushed through Andrew at Daniel’s rare compliment. The city had indeed awarded Eric, Chase Jackson and Andrew commendations for bravery following the fire. At the time, it had kind of embarrassed Andrew, and he figured it was mostly because Eric had been hurt, and he and Jackson had only managed to get Katelyn out.

Daniel’s praise? That meant something—something that helped take the sting out of any accusing glare Mallory Blair might shoot his way.

CHAPTER SIX

FRANTICALLY MALLORY DUG through yet another box. Nope, no pots and pans, even though it was labeled clearly with the word Kitchen scrawled in her hand. She must have mixed it up with this box of sheets and towels in her hurry to get everything out the door before the landlord charged her another month’s rent.

“I’d help you if I could—” Katelyn grunted with effort as she tried to shove another stack of cartons over to maneuver her wheelchair through the clutter of moving boxes.

At the sound, Mallory stopped and looked up. “Don’t! You’ll knock those over and hurt yourself!”

“Mal...” Katelyn sighed. “Forget it. Let’s order a five-dollar pizza. I saw a take-out place as we drove through town. Just tonight, can we please, please, please not scrimp?”

For a moment, Mallory was so tempted. She, too, had seen the pizza place, and the last tenants had thoughtfully left a fridge magnet with the number on it. There was the phone... One call, and someone would be winging his way over with a hot, cheesy pizza that Mallory didn’t have to lift a finger to get.

Reality came crashing down. “Katelyn... I don’t have five dollars.” The confession humiliated her.

“What? C’mon. We’re not that broke. Are we?” Surprise and disbelief flooded Katelyn’s eyes...and when Mallory didn’t deny it, alarm quickly followed. “Are we?” she insisted.

“Yeah. We are. I’m between jobs, sweetie. I won’t get paid for another two weeks, and I had to use our savings for the first and last months’ deposit.”

“Well...what about your slush fund?”

Mallory couldn’t help but smile. Her “slush fund” was an emergency twenty she had tucked behind her driver’s license. “I used it to pay Kyle for the gas to move us down here.”

“Oh, man, if you used your slush fund, we are broke.”

“Well—we’re not totally broke, but I have to have gas money to get you back and forth to therapy and me to work. If worse comes to worst, I can ride your bike or even walk. It’s only a couple of miles from here to downtown.”

“A couple of miles! That’s an hour’s walk! And not even you could bike in heels. No, Mallory, you’re not going to walk. We’ll... Man. I so did want a pizza.”

“Yeah. I can taste the pepperoni. I have some flour and yeast, and we have that block of mozz. And I scored a couple of cans of tomato paste on sale. I think I’ve still got it—somewhere...” Mallory surveyed the sea of boxes. “We’ll have pizza, Katelyn. Maybe not pepperoni, but we’ll have pizza.”

Katelyn made a sudden choking sound, and Mallory realized she was trying not to cry. Mallory weaved her way back through the boxes and knelt down beside her sister. “What? Are you hurting? I can get your meds.”

Katelyn screwed up her fists and scrubbed at her eyes. “I hate this. I hate it. I can’t even help you look for the blasted tomato paste. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t been so stupid, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt—”

“No. No, honey. It’s not your fault. The house burning down wasn’t your fault. You being left there—that wasn’t your fault, either—” Was it Andrew Monroe’s? Would it make it easier somehow to blame someone for the circumstances of their life?

Yeah. Yeah, it would.

“Can I— Is there any way I can lie down for a while? I’m sorry, Mallory, but I’m so tired...”

Katelyn did look tired. Her earlier energy seemed gone, and now dark circles ringed her lower lids and her pink cheeks had faded back to chalky white, with her freckles standing out in stark contrast. “Sure. The bed’s the one thing we can actually get to.”

Mallory helped her sister to her cramped bedroom, felt her back ache even at Katelyn’s slight weight as she assisted her out of the wheelchair and onto the bed. Katelyn was already drifting off as Mallory pulled the covers up to her chin—over those poor scarred legs and feet.

Mallory felt her own throat close up and she choked back tears as she watched Katelyn settle into sleep. The facility had warned her that Katelyn still had nightmares and that her sleep “wasn’t of good quality,” as the discharge planners had put it. Mallory wasn’t surprised that her sister was tuckered out by seven o’clock.

Rest. And a settled, stable home life, away from medicinal smells and beeping monitors and nurses that said, “This may hurt a little,” when they really meant it would be agony. Yeah, that was what Katelyn needed.

Mallory sighed. She had an apartment to settle and arrange, and a first day on the job tomorrow. Katelyn needed that, too.

By eight, Mallory had discovered that the tomato paste and other canned goods weren’t in any of the boxes labeled Kitchen, and that her usual organizational skills must have taken a leave of absence when she’d been packing up.

Still, she’d made some progress. The pots and pans were found and liberated, the glasses unpacked.

The last one in the box, a big brown iced-tea tumbler, she set carefully down on the dinette table and examined for nicks or cracks. With a sigh of relief, she realized it had come through the move unscathed. It had been her dad’s favorite glass, much to her mom’s despair, as it hadn’t matched anything else in their kitchen.

Neither Mallory nor Katelyn drank anything out of it. It stayed in the cupboard with the other glasses, a reminder of all the times Mallory had toted a tall glass of iced tea out to her dad’s garage workshop.

With a gentle finger, she skimmed the smooth brown surface—it had been some leftover of the 1970s that he’d found for a quarter at a garage sale. Touching it felt as if she was touching him, that he was a breath away, ready to wrap her in his arms for a reassuring bear hug and a promise that things would get better.

The loud, unfamiliar brring of the doorbell startled her out of her reverie. The rental manager? A neighbor?

Mallory wended her way through the maze of cartons to the door. This apartment complex hadn’t appeared too friendly—it was a low-income subsidized complex where people seemed suspicious of newcomers. She’d chosen it in spite of the atmosphere, because it had a stackable washer and dryer, and it was handicap accessible.

Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe there were neighbors out there who cared enough to introduce themselves.

She looked through the peephole and took a step back.

There, on the tiny stoop, stood Andrew Monroe.

And he was holding a take-out pizza carton.

* * *

ANDREW WAS DEBATING between leaving the pizza on the porch and ringing the doorbell for a third time when finally the door swung open.

The Mallory Blair it revealed looked nothing like the one he’d seen before. Gone was the polished wardrobe, and in its place a faded T-shirt and jeans. Her hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, save for one strand of auburn silk that had escaped across her cheek. The biggest change was her glasses—the dark rims framed her intense green eyes and made her look like some glamorous scientist in a television commercial.

“Hi,” she got out. The awkwardness was apparent. “I— How did you—”

“Katelyn’s address on her chart. I honestly thought—” he glanced around at the other low brick duplexes. “I thought maybe you’d written down the address wrong. It didn’t seem to fit with...uh, what you’d live in.”

Did her chin jut out a bit? Yeah, it did.

“This was handicap accessible. And it’s just temporary,” she cut him off in a stiff voice.

He shifted the pizza to his other hand. “Well, uh, it occurred to me that maybe, what with moving in and all, you guys could do with a pizza.”

Okay, so he was a rat and he was actually using the pizza as a pretext for spying on her, which was exactly what Dutch had advised against. In fact, the lawyer’s last words that morning had been “Stay away from Mallory Blair. Far, far away, understand? The less you have to do with her, the better.”

Apparently, though, Andrew couldn’t have picked a better thing to bait Mallory with. The way she was regarding that pizza... Man, her mouth was practically watering. She seemed to be of two minds as to whether she should accept his Trojan horse, but one mind was definitely winning.

“Well, come on in, but please excuse the mess. And Katelyn is asleep, if you’ve come to see her.”

Andrew followed her in. “No, no, it was you—” He broke off and pretended to stub his toe on a carton to cover up his nearly blurted-out confession. This spy business was for the birds.

“What? Are you okay?” She had already bent down and appeared ready to whip off his steel-toed work boot to inspect for damage.

“Yeah, but I hope the same goes for whatever’s in the box.”

Mallory glanced at the label, which proclaimed it to be Mallory’s Shoes. “Oh, yeah, it should be fine. Well—if I marked it right, that is. Apparently I labeled more than a few things wrong, but my old landlord was insisting that I move out before the next due date or pay a full month’s rent. I asked if I could pay for a few extra days—”

She broke off as she entered the tiny kitchen, as if she were suddenly aware of what she was saying and to whom. To fill the silence, Andrew supplied, “No dice, huh? Maybe he had other folks wanting to move in?”

Mallory shrugged. “Maybe. I got us out just in time. What’s a few mislabeled boxes, right?”

“The pizza okay on the table?” He went to move a big ugly brown glass, but Mallory leaped to intercept him as if the thing was a priceless antique.

She cradled it against her chest, her cheeks pink with embarrassment. “Uh...it was my dad’s. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s only... When we had to sell everything...after... Well, there wasn’t much left, which was just as well, because we didn’t have much space. So...that’s my inheritance. My dad’s favorite iced-tea glass.”

Something about the way she held it so protectively moved Andrew. He cleared his throat, looked away. “Crazy, isn’t it? The things we hold on to? For me, it’s my dad’s reading glasses. He’d started needing them right before he died, and, well... I still have them. Sometimes...sometimes I take them out and put them on and try to see the world like he saw it. Silly, huh?”

“No,” she said in a rush, full of energy and force. “No, it’s not. Not when it’s the only thing you’ve got left to hold on to.”

Now her mouth curved into a rueful grin. “I do have something we can actually use to drink out of, so let me put this away. Will ice water be okay?”

Andrew kicked himself for not thinking to bring a liter of cola. “Uh, I wasn’t planning on staying— I just was dropping this—”

“No, I insist. Do, please, have a seat. Uh—but, you’ll have to move that box—”

“No worries.” He smiled and waved her away. “You get that ice water, and I’ll clear the chairs for us.”

After she set two more reasonably sized drinking glasses—dainty stemmed water goblets—on the table along with a couple of ornately decorated china plates, he noticed that she quickly folded cloth napkins into an elegant restaurant-style. “Wow,” he commented. “Fancy, aren’t we?”

“Well, of course, in honor of your generosity, only cloth napkins will do.”

“Not even Ma brings out the cloth napkins much anymore,” Andrew commented. “And she’s a stickler for things like that. I’m impressed that you’ve been able to find the china and the napkins in all your boxes.”

“That’s about all I’ve been able to find, that and the pots and pans. I thought I’d gotten things down to the bare basics after our last move, but apparently not. And I even held a yard sale before this move.”

“You move a lot, then?” Duh, that was smooth, Monroe, he thought to himself. To prevent himself from saying anything else, he took a bite of the pizza—still warm, despite the drive and the wait outside for her to answer the door.

Mallory must have been starving, because her pizza slice was history, and she was reaching for another. “This is good! I should wake Katelyn up...”

“If she’s asleep, maybe she needs rest more than food. Maegan said she worked her pretty hard today.”

“Your sister...” Mallory’s eyes filled. “She’s wonderful. So patient and thorough. I wish we could have had a therapist like her at the rehab facility. I’m sure Katelyn would have already been walking if we had.”

“Maegan is good, and I’m not saying that because she’s my sister. Katelyn’s in excellent hands, Mallory.”

“I—I can tell.” Mallory put the second slice of pizza down on her plate and fiddled with her napkin. “She’s so good at motivating Katelyn, and that’s not always an easy task.”

Andrew was surprised at Mallory’s comment. “That’s...well, your sister seems pretty driven to me. She seems to want to get better and to be willing to put the work and effort in.”

Mallory took a bite of the pizza, chewed it thoughtfully, and only after she’d washed it down with a swallow of city water did she answer, “Yes, and no. She has great intentions. She gets started with a bang, but...she’s not... I wish she would stick with things, you know? Finish things.” She trailed off and seemed lost in thought for a few minutes. And then, abruptly, she answered the question he’d posed a few minutes earlier.

“I only move when I have to. You know, if the rent goes up at the lease renewal. Try squeezing all the things that came from a house into an apartment. Or even a quarter of the things. After every move, I want to sell everything down to a Zen-like bareness. Then I think, ‘Gee, I might need that...or what if I miss that?’ I sound like a hoarder, don’t I?”

Andrew laughed. “You sound like Ma. She has a use for everything. She even saves old toilet-tissue cores so that she can use them to make seed pots for starting our tomatoes early.”

“Really? Toilet-tissue cores? How does she do that?”

“You cut the tube in half and then cut flaps into the end of the tube, and then—”

“It folds like a little box! Neat! That’s smart!”

Maybe he’d misread Mallory. In her jeans and T-shirt, she seemed more like the girl he should aim for—not the type of glamour girl he had a weakness for.

But she had said lawsuit, and Dutch was convinced that such a word was seldom uttered in vain. And the two of them were sitting here eating pizza off fine china plates and cloth napkins...and she couldn’t seem to part with an entire box of shoes despite her quest for, what had she called it? Zen-like bareness?

So...who was the real Mallory Blair?

And why was he so intrigued by the apparent contradiction? Hadn’t Dutch warned him to stay far, far away?

CHAPTER SEVEN

ANOTHER HARD LOOK at her finances the next morning had caused Mallory to leave the car and its precious half tank of gas parked at the apartment in favor of Katelyn’s old rusty bike. She carefully rolled her work clothes and stowed them along with her heels into a backpack Katelyn had discarded some years before.

Thank goodness Katelyn could manage on her own for a few hours. She debated waking her sister before she left, but decided against it. Better to let miffed little sisters lie—and Katelyn had certainly been miffed with her the night before.

She had awoken about a half hour after Andrew Monroe had made a sudden departure, as abrupt and unexpected as his arrival had been. “Why didn’t you wake me?” Katelyn had said churlishly as she’d gobbled up her share of the reheated pizza. “Maybe I wanted to see him, too!”

She had accused Mallory of running off Andrew because she didn’t like him—which hadn’t been fair. Mallory hadn’t chased off Andrew. He’d just...gone, before she even had a real chance to wake Katelyn. It was as if a light switch had been flicked. One minute they had been eating pizza together, and the next, whoosh! Suddenly, the man had headed out the door as though he was responding to a fire.

Maybe it was because of the nap, or maybe because missing Andrew had amped up Katelyn, but whatever the reason, she hadn’t been able to go back to sleep before midnight. She’d watched sullenly while Mallory had slowly continued to get the apartment’s contents out of boxes and into some semblance of order. Mallory knew that eventually her little sister would come out of her blue funk, but it bugged her that the Monroes—both Maegan and Andrew—could have such an impact on Katelyn’s mood.

No, for now, she’d let Katelyn catch up on her sleep. She didn’t have therapy until late this afternoon, after Mallory completed her first day on the job. She left a note and Katelyn’s lunch to be warmed up in the microwave, stowed her own lunch, a PB&J, in her backpack along with a thermos of water and her work clothes and then struck out.

The morning air was frigid but the biking warmed her up fairly quickly. Mallory wasn’t a practiced cyclist, but she’d done this before when funds were tight. She only wished that the helmet she’d scored at a yard sale wasn’t so aggressively princessy. Katelyn had laughed at it when Mallory had brought it home, saying it had so many sparkles and bling that it looked like a unicorn had sneezed on it.

As Mallory rode into the downtown area, her spirits rose. She liked this little town with its cheerful awnings and bricked sidewalks. She could imagine kids playing in the fountain in the summer, and the whole place seemed alive and vibrant and inviting with its mom-and-pop-style businesses. It wasn’t like the dying downtown back in the city—there, for years, the center of town had slowly spiraled into pawn shops and adult-video stores, and only now were the locals finally fighting back.

She’d spied a deserted farmer’s market pavilion as well on her way in, and that gave her hope for cheap vegetables later on. Cheap was good, as broke as they were, and Katelyn needed good food to help her regain her strength—not junky food like Andrew Monroe’s pizza, despite how tasty it had been.

And free and impeccably timed. Don’t forget that. I should write him a thank-you note.

It still bugged her that he’d left so abruptly. Had it been something she’d said? Something she hadn’t? He’d disappeared as suddenly earlier that same morning, nowhere to be found after she’d talked over Katelyn’s evaluation with Maegan. It had to be about the lawsuit.

The lawsuit.

She was still of two minds about that. When an old coworker had visited the hospital and urged her to talk to an attorney, Mallory hadn’t wanted to even think about it. Katelyn had been still fighting for her life, and something about suing anybody at that point seemed almost guaranteed to jinx her progress.

Her coworker had insisted, even to the point of bringing an attorney that she knew to see Mallory in the hospital.

Chad had sat down with her, put her at ease right away. “You’re not taking anything from anybody,” he’d pointed out. “They took something from you. They took Katelyn’s health away, now, didn’t they? Shouldn’t they pay the medical bills?”

And so she’d allowed him to look into things. He’d been enthusiastic about the merits of the case—a fireman admitting that he’d left a poor helpless teenager in a burning building? Surely any jury would award them the medical expenses and give them a little money to help recompense Mallory for the days she’d had to be away from work to stay with Katelyn.

Those medical bills... Every single day in the ICU was another ten grand, and it went on and on, setback after setback. Mallory had only been able to afford the bare-bones catastrophic insurance plan for her and Katelyn, with a deductible that was ten thousand dollars, and her coinsurance after that was 40 percent of the negotiated rates of service, until an out-of-pocket max of twenty-five thousand dollars. Already the monthly payments for that deductible and her 40 percent were eating into their tight cash flow, but what else could she do? File bankruptcy? Her parents would have never countenanced that.

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