Kara Lennox - For The Right Reasons

“I hope that’s all it is.” Bree already had her phone in her hand. “I’ll call her and see what’s what.”

The waitress brought MacKenzie’s milk and Bree’s coffee. Bree took a healthy gulp of the stuff, black, while waiting for Philomene to pick up.

“Hi, Philomene, it’s me, Bree,” she said after a few moments. “I’m at the diner with Eric Riggs from Project Justice. Please call me when you get a chance.” She was still frowning as she hung up.

“Look, Daddy, I finished.” MacKenzie displayed her coloring work. Although the colors were a little drab, she’d kept within the lines in her usual meticulous fashion.

“Very nice, sweetheart.”

Cautiously, she turned the page around and slid it toward Bree.

Bree smiled, and again her face was transformed.

She ought to smile more often, Eric thought.

“Very good work, MacKenzie. I think I might have something here...” She dug into her purse. “I do. Would you like a glitter heart or a gold star?”

“Heart, heart heart heart!”

Eric was touched. Had Bree put those stickers in her purse just for MacKenzie? Or... “You must have kids.”

A stark sadness flashed across Bree’s face before she masked it. “No, no kids. But I keep a few things on hand for children who come through the E.R.”

“So emergency medicine is your specialty?” She’d said earlier today that she’d met Philomene in the E.R., but he wanted to keep her talking about herself.

“Yes. I work at the county hospital.”

He wondered how many men faked serious illness in the hopes that lovely Bree would minister to them. Images flashed through his mind of Bree’s soft, pale hands touching him—in the most innocent, doctorly ways, of course.

God, what was he doing? He clenched his eyes shut until the images dissipated. He couldn’t afford to think of her like that. He needed to get her and her misguided agenda out of his life.

“Oh, no,” Bree said under her breath, her gaze fixed on the door.

Eric turned to look. A big, beefy guy with dark close-cropped hair in a well-tailored dress shirt and pants had just entered, accompanied by a shorter, more slender man with thinning curly hair and thick glasses. The shorter one’s clothes were rumpled, and as Molly showed them to a table, he walked with a slightly lurching gait, as if he had an issue with his hip or knee.

“Darn it, they’re headed this way.” Bree lowered her head and took another sip of coffee, playing with a strand of her hair to shield her face.

“Well, if it isn’t the crusading lady doctor.” The larger of the two men, clearly the alpha in this pack of two, had paused by their booth, proving Bree’s attempt to be inconspicuous hadn’t worked.

“Hello, Mr. Needles,” she said wearily, offering him a tight, almost hostile smile.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“Eric, this is District Attorney Sam Needles, the man who put Kelly in prison. Sam, this is Eric Riggs. He’s an attorney with Project Justice,” she said meaningfully.

Sam Needles didn’t take the hand Eric extended. Instead, he laughed. “Surely you’re kidding. You actually think Project Justice can get your no-good boyfriend out of prison? You ought to know that dog won’t hunt.”

Eric withdrew his hand, which had clenched into a fist. He didn’t know Bree very well, and he even agreed with Needles’s assessment of Ralston. But Needles had no call to be out-and-out rude.

“Sam,” the other man said to his friend, “leave her be.”

“Eric, this is Ted Gentry,” Bree said in a friendlier tone of voice. “He’s our county coroner. Normally a perfectly nice man, though he could keep better company.”

Gentry grinned. “Sam’s okay if you catch him on a good day. And he said he’d pay for dinner.”

“Least I could do, after you let me keep all the fish we caught,” Needles said with a hearty laugh.

“We did some fishing last night out at Willowbrook,” Gentry explained. “Sheriff’s got a place there. I like to catch ’em, not eat ’em.”

Sam Needles sobered. “Don’t drag me back to court, Bree. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.” He sauntered off.

Gentry shrugged apologetically. “You know how it is. If he says a man’s guilty, he doesn’t like being proved wrong.”

“A common trait among prosecutors,” Eric said amiably, though he was far less accepting of Sam Needles’s behavior than he let on. The fact was, the prosecutor’s attitude got Eric’s back up. He felt this tremendous urge to say, “Hell, yeah, Project Justice is taking on this case and you’re gonna eat your words.”

Even if Eric did agree with the guy.

But he kept still. He didn’t want any arguing, particularly not in front of MacKenzie, although she seemed engrossed in her coloring book and looked as if she’d tuned out the adult conversation.

“If you need anything from me, just let me know,” Gentry said. “I don’t like being proved wrong, either. But as I recall, I wasn’t able to contribute a whole heck of a lot to that case.”

“Thanks, Ted.” Bree gave his hand a quick squeeze.

A jolt of some uncomfortable emotion shocked Eric’s system; it took a moment before he realized he was jealous.

The coroner left to join his friend at a table thankfully far away from theirs. Bree watched them for a few moments. “Of course. They’re sitting down with Sheriff DeVille. Birds of a feather,” she grumbled, then turned to look at Eric. “See what I’m up against? Good-ol’-boy network can’t stand the thought that they might be proved wrong, by a woman, no less. ‘Crusading lady doctor,’ my foot.”

“It’s an attitude I’m familiar with. The coroner seemed a nice enough guy, at least.”

“He’s okay. We go way back, actually. We were in med school together. He’s kind of weird, but you’d have to be kind of weird to, um, do what he does all day.”

The waitress arrived with their food, and for a few minutes they made small talk. Under any other circumstances, Eric would have found Bree delightful. If this had been a first date, he would have wanted a second.

But he didn’t date. Even if he had been ready to trust another woman with his heart—and he wasn’t—there was no way he would make MacKenzie negotiate the minefield of Daddy’s girlfriends. She’d had to endure so many changes so quickly, not the least of which was discovering the foster father who’d cared for her the past three years had killed her mother. That was after losing her mother to murder, then having everyone tell her her own father had done it.

While MacKenzie was working on her scoop of vanilla ice cream, Bree tried to call Philomene again but still got no answer.

“I’m worried about her.”

“Philomene sounds like a woman who can take care of herself. I read up on the case, you know.” He hadn’t exactly had a ton of work to do so far at the foundation. “She came across as gutsy, standing up to her attacker, testifying in court against him—”

“Against the wrong guy. If you met her, you’d know she’s not very tough at all.”

* * *

BREE SEEMED INDECISIVE as she pulled out a credit card to pay for their meal.

“Wait, you don’t have to pay for dinner.” Eric was already reaching for his own wallet.

“Of course I do. You drove all this way, for nothing, as it turns out. I’m so sorry she didn’t show.”

“Crime victims don’t always behave rationally. If I’d been through what she has, I’d be scared, too.” Come to think of it, he was scared.

“But this was our one chance to get someone at Project Justice to listen. She understood that!”

Eric wished he knew what to say to make Bree feel better.

“I’m going to swing by her apartment and see if she’s home,” Bree said. “I don’t suppose you want to come with me—in case she’s there? Maybe I can still get her to talk to you.”