LITMIR.BIZ

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discuss any fault issues, ok?”

      “I’m not stupid.”

      She bit back the words she would have said if he’d been rude at home, then nodded to Carl. A few minutes later a blond teenager with cornflower-blue eyes and tear-streaked cheeks timidly stepped inside the door.

      Her father, a burly, scowling man in his fifties, hovered at her shoulder. “So what’s the story, here? Doesn’t look too serious.”

      Connor looked at Grace and raised a brow. She shook her head. They both knew what he was angling for—an admission that Ross was just fine and a quick, tidy resolution—but anyone in the profession knew that some injuries could show up later. Damage that could require long-term physical therapy.

      “Well?” the man insisted.

      “Daddy, please.” The girl moved tentatively to Ross’s side. “I hope you’re all right,” she said carefully, with a glance back at her father. She smiled tremulously at Ross. “I’m Mandy Welbourne. I’ve…um…seen you at school. I think we have third-hour algebra together.”

      His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and pulled the sheet up higher under his chin. “Uh…maybe.”

      “If…you need to be out of school awhile, I could bring you your homework.”

      “Mandy.” Her dad gripped her shoulder. “It’s time for us to go.”

      She bit her lower lip, then twisted away from his grasp. “I just want you to know how sorry I am. Really. I didn’t see you at all and—”

      “Mandy!” Her father glared her into silence then gave Ross a narrowed look. “The idea of someone riding a bicycle on those icy, rutted streets, with the wind kicking up a ground blizzard is incomprehensible. Absolutely incomprehensible. My daughter has suffered severe emotional trauma over this little incident.”

      He guided his daughter out of the room with a firm hand at her back, and Grace could well imagine what the man was going to say to the poor child after they were out of earshot.

      Connor seemed to think Ross would be fine, and maybe Ross and Mandy were both at fault for the accident. But if Welbourne thought he could bully a teenage boy into a fast resolution, he’d better think twice.

      With Grace in Ross’s corner, the man didn’t stand a chance.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      “IF YOU DO that one more time, you’re back in the cage.” Grant glared up at the rearview mirror and into Sadie’s unrepentant brown eyes.

      A second later, her pink tongue slurped his right ear and she rested her long nose on his shoulder…then eased a little closer until her head was pressed firmly against his neck.

      “I mean it.”

      But it was a hard call which was better: listening to her howls from inside her portable kennel or dealing with her kisses. After the first hour in the car his ears had been ringing and the steady thud of a headache started pounding behind his temple. He’d let her loose in the SUV then, but three Tylenols and another hour later, the painful cadence still hadn’t faded. For Sadie, long car rides were an anxious event, and she obviously needed all the reassurance she could get.

      “Just another fifteen, twenty minutes, a short stop at the office and we’ll be home.” He reached back and gave her a quick rub under the collar. “Not long at all. Then you’ll have a big fenced yard, and you can bark at birds all day long.”

      She slurped at his ear in gratitude, then leaned farther over the back of the seat and plastered her head against the side of his neck, her eyes closed.

      Grant sighed. The dog kisses were bad enough. What had to be a hundred pounds of dead weight on his neck and shoulder for the past hour was probably going to send him into physical therapy for life.

      “You know,” he said as he parked behind the law office in Blackberry Hill, “if you hadn’t been so hell-bent on barking at birds, you could have stayed with Phil. He’s the one who thought you were going to be a nice little house dog. Not me.”

      He reached back and snapped on the leash, then climbed out of the SUV and opened the back door. Sadie lumbered out and shook vigorously, sending a cloud of black fur into the air.

      Now the size of a small pony, as a puppy she’d been dropped off at a humane shelter with her litter-mates. The owner, who’d filled out paperwork on the pups, had apparently had a good idea of what was in store, after his Newfoundland carried on an illicit affair with the sexy Great Dane down the street.

      Massive size—and a hell of a lot of hair.

      Phil had had a few second thoughts as she grew and grew…but the barking, which violated a Kendrick city ordinance and resulted in fifty dollar fines every time a neighbor complained, had been the last straw. At two hundred dollars, he’d said she was on “probation.”

      At three hundred, Phil had advertised her in the newspaper to no avail. Which meant she faced incarceration at the city dog pound and a possible death sentence through no fault of her own.

      Grant had been unable to let that happen.

      She wandered at the end of the leash, nose to the ground until she did her business, while he debated what to do with her.

      Lifting the heavy, recalcitrant dog into that cage sounded like a recipe for disaster—she’d fallen for the lure of dog cookies once, but probably wouldn’t be so naive again.

      And God only knew what she’d do to the upholstery if she started pining for him again.

      During a quick rest stop, he’d walked her and then put her back into the vehicle so he could run to the rest room. She’d shredded his Wisconsin map, destroyed a Thermos and polished off a package of Oreo cookies.

      “Okay,” he said firmly, lifting her nose so she’d have to look him straight in the eyes. “You can come inside. But no funny business. Promise? Sit. Lie down. That’s it.”

      She promptly sat and swept the snow with her bushy tail.

      “Okay, then. Heel!”

      She bounded to the end of her leash and eagerly pawed at the back door, nearly jerking him off his feet.

      “You, my friend, are going to dog school,” he muttered as he unlocked the door. Walking past his dad’s office, he entered the smaller one he’d always used, fished a couple of dog treats from the pocket of his ski jacket and settled Sadie in the corner behind his desk.

      Where, hopefully, she would stay quietly until he finished the meeting with his client.

      Vance Young arrived a few minutes later, still wearing his gas station uniform and smelling of sweat, gasoline and motor oil. His scowl suggested that he was as volatile as the fuels staining his shirt.

      Grant led him into the office and waved him toward one of the chairs by the desk, then he picked up the files he’d left by the phone. “I wasn’t sure why you wanted to come in today, so I pulled all of these.”

      A muscle along the side of the man’s jaw jerked. “Those damn payments, that’s why.”

      “Payments?”

      “Warren said he’d take care of it. Straighten it out. The damn county is after me for back child support, and I sure as hell don’t plan to pay.”

      “Aah.” Grant thumbed through the files until he found the correct one. “What’s the problem?”

      “I said, I don’t plan to pay.” He spat out each word. “My ex-wife makes as much money as I do. She ain’t supporting another family like I am…and she’s living in sin with another man, right there with my kids. So what are you gonna do about this?”

      “Those factors don’t negate your financial responsibility as a father, Vance. Do you pay her alimony?”

      “Hell,

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