Free The Man She Once Knew by Jean Brashear

couldn’t catch her breath.
    Deal with it.
    It was true. She knew that, but damn it, she was trying to help him now, trying to make up for the damage. She’d been the one to come on to him, to lie to him.
    She’d been very good at lying. A demon at destruction, so unhappy in her life, so lost and miserable that when a naive, good-hearted boy had reached out to her, she’d yanked him into the cesspool with her. He’d been stunned to find out that she was three years younger, not one, but by then she was pregnant, and it was too late. She’d gotten caught up in the fantasy of Mr. and Mrs. David Langley and refused to consider adoption, abortion, anything but that cockeyed dream of a little family.
    What a laugh. She’d have made a lousy mother.
    And she hated remembering this, any of it.
    Nearly hated him for making her.
    Ruined my life.
    I did, David. But now I’m going to repay you, evenif I have to fight you to do it. It was all she knew to do to repair the damage.
    But how, if he wouldn’t talk to her?
    She sat up straight. By asking her own questions. Maybe the sheriff was satisfied that he knew the truth. Maybe Capwell was too busy; perhaps David was going to give up without a fight.
    But she wasn’t ready to. What would she tell Jessie Lee if she did? And David’s mother—how could she ever face the woman again?
    You owe him. She did.
    You can fix this. Jessie Lee’s blue eyes so certain. Who will help him if you don’t? Callie understood the little girl’s point. She just hadn’t counted on having to battle David, too, in the process.
    She was due at Albert’s office in a few hours to discuss the further disposition of Miss Margaret’s assets. If he hadn’t already demonstrated his distaste for David, she’d have sought his advice. For a moment, she contemplated consulting her boss, but she was certain she knew what he would say.
    Why would you get involved when you have your own mess to clean up?
    But he was also the one who’d ordered her to take some vacation, to make herself scarce for a while.
    Callie glanced at her watch and decided to drop in on Randy Capwell again, see if he was around and test the waters about joining him as co-counsel.
    Then she would return to Oak Hollow and start asking some questions of her own. She could think ofsome places to start: David’s mother, for one, perhaps going for a drink at the bar where the fight happened, for another.
    David might not want her help, but he needed it.
    For the sake of what they had once shared, she would play out this hand a little further.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    “A RE YOU CRAZY ?” T ED Bachman, administrative assistant to the D.A., asked her when she called the next morning to test the waters there. “You don’t have enough strikes against you, so you jump right into a lost cause?”
    She knew better than to call, but she couldn’t help herself. She had to touch base with her old life. Anyway, maybe her boss had changed his mind, so she’d started chatting with Ted about David’s case. For all the good it had done.
    “I have to do this. He’s…an old friend.”
    “Some friend.”
    What would he say if he knew David had refused to see her today? “It’s not a lost cause.”
    “If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, probability’s high that it is a duck,” he sneered. “C’mon, Callie, Lady Justice doesn’t tilt at windmills.”
    She didn’t feel much like Lady Justice lately. “It’s hard to explain.”
    “Cal, you used to be a prosecutor down to the bone. What’s happened to you?”
    “Nothing. I’m fine.” She was still a prosecutor, agood one. She could leap into her car, be back to the world she understood the next day.
    “Maybe it’s for the best, though.”
    A shiver of foreboding crawled down her spine. “What do you mean?”
    “Gerald needs a little more time, Cal. You put him in a real bind with that stunt.” His uneasiness frightened her. “If you came back now, you’d have to remain low