Back in Service. Isabel Sharpe

laugh. He knew her? He knew how to typecast her, he knew which buttons to push and he knew how to make her feel loathed and worthless. Thank God her parents had been psychologists and had taken time and care helping her through the pitfalls of childhood with her self-esteem intact. “Not very well. In any case, I’m pretty booked...”

      “Please, Kendra. I’ll beg if you want me to. You’re the first ray of hope I’ve had in weeks.” Matty sounded as if she was about to burst into tears. “I haven’t slept all night in so long I forget what it’s like.”

      Oh, geez. Kendra closed her eyes, torn between sympathy for Matty and her instinct telling her she wanted less than nothing to do with men like the Cartwrights ever again.

      “Just call him, Kendra. Talk to him. If you think I’m overreacting or it doesn’t feel right, then fine, you don’t have to take him on. We’ll go another route. I just don’t know what that would be at this point.”

      Kendra forced herself into motion, letting herself out of Lena’s house. Committing to one call was an easy out, not really saying yes or no, which Matty undoubtedly knew and was exploiting. She was a Cartwright, after all.

      Maybe Jameson had grown up some. Maybe Kendra had misjudged him all along, typecasting him as he had her. Hard to imagine, but Matty would know her brother better than Kendra did.

      “I’ll talk to him.” She climbed into the Lexus, started back down the hill toward her house.

      “Thank you. Thank you so much.” Matty’s relief was humble and real, no triumph in her tone. “He’s house-sitting at a friend’s condo. I’ll give you the address and his cell. Thank you so much.”

      “Sure.” Kendra sighed, feeling both noble and trapped. Lena would have a fit when she told her.

      “Um. There is just one more thing.”

      Uh-oh. “What’s that?”

      “I’d rather you didn’t tell Jameson that I’m behind this. Even though he and I are close, he’s...a little sensitive when it comes to family right now.”

      “Meaning he wants all of you out of his face even if you’re trying to help.”

      “That would be it exactly.”

      Pretty classic depression symptom. Though if Matty’s description of Jameson as the outcast was correct, he could also be protecting himself from the rest of the family’s judgment.

      Damn. This was almost intriguing. “Okay. I won’t mention you. But I’m not sure he’ll buy that six years after our graduation I suddenly want to catch up.”

      “Tell him you’re part of a new program the Air Force is trying out for soldiers on medical leave. Or that his commanding officer or surgeon heard of you through some doctor you work with here. Something that leaves him no choice.”

      Clearly Matty had thought this through. “So I should lie while I try to gain his trust?”

      “Oof.” Matty whistled silently. “Do you have to put it that way?”

      “Can’t you get your commander or some general to write a fake letter?”

      “Not me.” Matty laughed lightly. “I’m not in the Air Force. I’m an actress.”

      Kendra brought her car to an abrupt halt at an intersection before she realized there was no stop sign; luckily there was no one behind her. “You’re an actress.”

      “Between jobs I sell real estate, but right now I’m in a musical called Backspace at the Pasadena Playhouse. I have a small part, but it’s a job.” The pride in her voice was unmistakable.

      “It’s an impressive job.” Well, how about that. Her parents must have nearly dropped dead. A canker on the Cartwright family tree! And now Jameson injured and out of his training program? A regular crumbling dynasty. “I’ll come up with something.”

      “Thank you, Kendra. Please stay in touch. And send the bill to me. How much do you charge, by the way?”

      Kendra told her.

      “What? You’re kidding.”

      Kendra was used to surprise and had the explanation for her bargain-basement rates ready. “I want my services available to as many people as possible. I’m not in this to get rich. I like working with people, and I don’t want to be limited by fees so high that my clients are thinking every second has to count triple for me to be worth their while.”

      Happily, money was no problem. Great-Grandpa Lonergan had made a fortune in banking in the early twentieth century, and Kendra’s ever-cautious parents had had plenty of life insurance on top of that. She would never have to work, though she knew she’d always choose to.

      “How about I throw in two tickets to my show?”

      “You’re on.” Kendra pulled into her driveway on Via Rincon and parked outside the garage, gazing affectionately at the white stucco house with the red-tile roof her grandparents had built into the side of the hill.

      “You know, what you do is really remarkable.”

      “Thanks.” Kendra shrugged. It didn’t feel remarkable. It was her business, and like any business it could be frustrating, boring, annoying, but overall more deeply satisfying than anything she could imagine doing. For many clients who’d experienced loss, grief and loneliness had become so much of who they were, they didn’t want to let it go. Proving they still had plenty of life to live and plenty to offer others was about as good as it got.

      She took down Jameson’s number, punched off the phone and climbed down from the car. Jameson Cartwright, for God’s sake. One of the last people she’d ever imagined seeing willingly again, let alone in a situation where he needed her help.

      Following the curving brick path from the driveway, she passed her dad’s Meyer lemon tree, heavy with still-green fruit, and the jasmine bush bought by her mom, planted clumsily by Kendra and her brother, Duncan. It would burst into fragrant white blossoms in February. She let herself into the house and headed through the small dining room to the spacious kitchen, her mom’s pride and joy. Dropping her bag on the hardwood floor, Kendra dialed her best friend’s cell. If anyone would enjoy this story, it was Lena.

      “Hey, Kendra, what’s up, Byron giving you trouble?”

      “I don’t think he knows how to make trouble.” She helped herself to a can of lemon-flavored sparkling water from the stainless-steel refrigerator and pushed through the sliding glass door out onto the deck overlooking their pool, which overlooked their terraced hill lush with her mom’s rather overgrown gardens, which overlooked Redondo Beach and beyond that Los Angeles, the Pacific and the Santa Monica Mountains. “It’s a different kind of dog giving me trouble. Remember Jameson Cartwright?”

      “Yes. Ew. Don’t tell me he got in touch with you.”

      “Sister Matty called me. Jameson was injured on his first day of Air Force training last month.” She dragged out a chair from the iron table set her parents had bought soon after they were married and turned it toward the view.

      “Last month? What’s he been doing all this time? I thought everyone in his family ran to the Air Force as soon as they got out of diapers.”

      “Nope.” Kendra sank into the chair and propped her feet up on the railing. “He took two years off to run around Europe. Spain in particular.”

      “Two years? No kidding. So what did Matty want?”

      “She wants me to work with him.”

      “You’re kidding! That obnoxious, bullying... How come? What happened?”

      Kendra started smiling before she even opened her mouth. “He’s depressed because he tore up his knee at Keesler Air Force Base. Tripping over a cat.”

      Lena gasped, then her shriek of laughter nearly burst Kendra’s eardrum. “Oh, my God!