Sweet Justice. Cynthia Reese

      “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