run by a single owner-operator. Mallory had tried to talk Katelyn into choosing a similar, bigger facility nearer to Macon, where the two of them had grown up and Mallory had lived up until now.
But no. Katelyn wanted this hippotherapy facility. And the discharge planners had told them that the therapist was highly qualified—certified in both traditional physical therapy and hippotherapy, and she had certification in counseling. Plus...it was close to Katelyn’s college. Maybe her old school friends would encourage her to get better and get back into her classes.
Mallory surely hadn’t been able to accomplish that.
“Can you help me with my chair, Mal?” Katelyn’s grin was so big, it practically hung off either side of her elfin face. Mallory’s heart melted, and her reservations about the place evaporated. Believing it was half the battle—maybe Katelyn would be able to walk again here.
“Okay. We’re early, though—”
“I want to see it! I want to go pet the horses!”
Mallory shuddered. Horses were great from a distance—beautiful and graceful. Close up, though?
She loved animals—how many dogs and cats had she and Katelyn fostered over the years? Horses, on the other hand, had big teeth and sharp hooves and eyes that seemed to stare straight through you. She was embarrassed to admit such a phobia, but there it was.
Still, she knew better than to argue with her little sister. The therapist could establish the rules, and Katelyn would certainly listen to her more than she would Mallory. After all, Katelyn had demonstrated time and again that she thought Mallory was an uptight fussbudget who worried too much.
I didn’t worry enough.
She took in Katelyn’s excitement. Her sister was pink cheeked for the first time in months, her coppery hair, so like Mallory’s own, fluffing out around a thinner, still-gaunt face. It was like looking at their mom’s photo as a teenager. Katelyn and she had both inherited their mom’s auburn hair, but Katelyn had drawn the delicate elfin features of their mother, while Mallory resembled their dad’s side of the family, taller, with stronger features.
She sighed and opened the car door. The cool morning air snaked in and she pushed up to a standing position. The cramped confines of her little convertible had been trouble on her knees. She patted the red painted finish, thinking again of the happier day her parents had given the car to her as a high school graduation present.
Not even a year later, and they were gone. She’d struggled to make the payments, not willing to let this last gift from her mom and dad go the way the house had. Now it was paid off—hers forever, or as long as she could keep it going.
She hauled Katelyn’s wheelchair out of the tight fit of the trunk. A bag containing their bare essentials and Katelyn’s many, many medications was the only other thing stuffed in there. Mallory had hired her former boss’s husband and his truck to bring the rest of Mallory’s belongings to the apartment Mallory had found in town.
Today...today was a chance to get Katelyn introduced to her new therapist and then settled into the apartment.
She struggled to get the chair unfolded and wheeled up beside Katelyn’s door. The wind had picked up, and now it sliced into her and yanked at her hair, pulling it out of the French twist. She’d hoped to appear neat and tidy and organized when she met the staff—the only way people ever took you seriously, she’d found.
Katelyn would have opened the door, but Mallory waved at her to wait. No need for Katelyn to get chilled while Mallory struggled to set the stubborn brake—
“Here, let me—”
A man’s hand appeared over hers, big and muscular, competently setting the brake and yanking the chair into instant submission. Half embarrassed at her ineptitude and half eternally grateful, Mallory pushed the hair out of her eyes and extended a hand.
“Thank you—I’m not sure I’ll ever get the hang of—”
And then she looked him in the face, saw who he was.
Tall, even against her five-foot-eight-inch frame. Solidly built, with the arms to prove it, which, courtesy of the short-sleeved T-shirt he wore even on this chilly morning, were bare and tanned. The cleft in the chin, the sky-blue eyes, the close-cropped hair—and yes, even the cowlick at the crest of his head.
There was no doubt about it.
This was Andrew Monroe.
“WH-WHAT ARE you doing here?” she sputtered.
Before Andrew could answer, Katelyn’s attempts to get out of the car on her own diverted Mallory’s attention. She swung around from Andrew to see Katelyn dragging herself and her useless legs out of the car and to the too-distant wheelchair.
“Wait, Katelyn! Stop!” Mallory warned. “The chair—”
Andrew was two steps ahead of her. While Mallory stood frozen with panic at a possible fall, Andrew had picked up the chair and moved it closer to the car. And then he stepped back, leaving Katelyn to scramble into the chair as best she could.
Just like he did with the fire.
Over the months since the accident, Mallory had thought about what she would say to this man if she ever saw him again. The idea that he would abandon a helpless kid in a burning house... It boggled the mind. Her rational mind could see his point—but her rational mind left her whenever she heard Katelyn’s pitiful moans and screams of pain.
So yeah. Mallory did blame Andrew Monroe for Katelyn’s agony, for her lifetime sentence in a wheelchair, for each and every angry scar that rippled across her feet and legs and body.
Katelyn was happily oblivious, jabbering away with Andrew, asking about each of the horses, talking ninety to nothing about the farm. Andrew was already pushing Katelyn away from Mallory toward the stables.
“Wait!” Mallory called. “Where are you going?”
Andrew stopped, and Katelyn craned her head around to stare back at her. “Inside, silly,” Katelyn said.
“Katelyn—do you know who this is? Do you know what he did?”
For a moment, Katelyn’s expression was one of perplexed bewilderment. “Yeah. This is Andrew. He saved my life, Mal. He was the one. Sure. I’ve only been emailing and text messaging him for—gosh?” She looked up at Andrew, her perplexed expression now replaced with a wide grin. “Two months?”
Andrew shrugged his broad shoulders. “About that. Maybe not quite that long.”
“He was the one who sent me the brochure. His sister owns the place. She’s gonna help me walk again.”
Wind whistled around Mallory, but it was shock and surprise that nearly knocked her to the ground. Emailing? Text messaging? And Katelyn had done all this...and hadn’t said a word.
Because she knew you’d have put it a stop to it if you found out.
“Honey, Katelyn, Katie-bug...” Mallory rushed forward and knelt beside Katelyn’s chair. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. We can go to that other place. I mean, they have even more horses than this—”
“No.” Katelyn’s bottom lip jutted out, making her look six rather than nearly eighteen. “This is the place. I can feel it, Mallory. This is where I’ve got the best chance. Andrew says—”
Mallory didn’t care one whit what Andrew Monroe said. She closed her eyes, closed her mind, tried to find calm and peace and some line of reasoning that would budge Katelyn.
She opened her eyes again as she heard Katelyn say, “And there’s not as many patients here, see? I can get more one-on-one treatment with Maegan. Plus, I’ve been texting Maegan, too, and she’s given me lots of tips and—”
For