Her Surprise Hero

by Abby Gaines

  “Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, woven by the Daughters of the American Revolution,” Melanie informed her proudly. “There’s a little bit of my great-great-grandmother in there. Not literally, of course.”

  “It must be valuable,” Cynthia said. “Wouldn’t it be better off in a museum?” She didn’t relish seeing the bloodthirsty scene every time she crossed the room.

  “The museum’s full up and the rug’s always been right here on this floor,” Melanie told her. “We value our traditions here in Stonewall Hollow. Now, you have your own bathroom.” She pointed to a door in the far corner. “Judge Cartwright had it installed after he—” she lowered her voice to a loud whisper “—lost control of his bladder. That was three judges ago,” she added hastily, seeing Cynthia’s alarm.

  Anxious to move on from judicial incontinence, Cynthia pointed to another oak-paneled door, adjacent to the bathroom. “What’s in there?”

  “That’s just a broom closet.”

  Cynthia’s head snapped around. Had they heard? Could they possibly know?

  Melanie met her shocked expression with a look of polite inquiry.

  Of course they don’t know.

  “It seems an odd location for a broom closet,” Cynthia explained.

  “I don’t think there are any actual brooms in there these days,” Melanie said. “The janitor keeps all of that stuff down in the basement.” She crossed the room, opened the door. “Nope, just a couple of file boxes.” She smiled brightly at Cynthia. “Now, how about I make you a coffee?”

  “Coffee sounds great.” Turning resolutely away from the closet, Cynthia made for the desk and sat down. The leather creaked, but its wornness made it comfortable. She noticed a small bronze statue of Lady Justice on the mantelpiece. The blindfolded, toga-clad woman held the traditional sword and set of scales. She was a symbol of blind justice, or as the inscription on the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., put it: Equal justice under law.

  That was what Cynthia needed, a fair shot at recovering from what her dad called a “glitch,” at getting back to her life as soon as possible.

  Melanie returned with the coffee. “The mayor will be in to see you around lunchtime—he wasn’t expecting you so early.”

  Cynthia listened while her assistant outlined the other visitors she might expect today. “And I daresay Ethan Granger will pop in,” Melanie finished.

  “Who’s he?”

  But Melanie was now running through a list of courthouse staff that Cynthia would never remember. She did manage to latch on to the name of the clerk of the court, Jim Hopkins.

  “When can we expect the attorneys to resume cases?” she asked when Melanie paused for breath.

  “The ones that were underway before Judge Piet took sick, those guys should be ready to go,” Melanie said. “The new ones, we need to start issuing court dates. It’ll be crazy around here for a while.”

  “How big is the backlog?” Cynthia had imagined a state judge in one of Georgia’s least populated counties would deal with the occasional overnight arrest and spend the rest of her time sentencing traffic offences and hearing civil disputes.

  “Maybe a couple hundred cases,” Melanie said. “But there’ll be more, don’t you worry. Summer is our busy season—all those kids out of school and back from college, with nothing to do but hunt trouble. I tell you, by the time September rolls around, the Sheriff is ready to check himself into a nut farm.”

  The walls of the spacious chambers began to close in on Cynthia. “Fine,” she said thinly, envisaging herself working all hours to stay on top of Stonewall Hollow’s crime wave. So much for de-stressing.

  At her request, Melanie brought in the transcripts of the most recent hearings, along with the cases that had been on the docket right before the former judge took ill. There was also a stack of restraining order petitions, ex parte orders and various other petitions that required more information before Cynthia could make much sense of them.

  She got down to work. Her assistant was right, the town was in the middle of a mini crime wave. The docket was five single-spaced pages. Even allowing for the usual no-shows and continuances, she couldn’t imagine how her predecessor had hoped to get through so many cases in one day. And these were only the misdemeanors—traffic violations, property offences and simple assaults. Felony cases were heard in the superior court in the next county.

  Melanie had said a lot of the defendants would be young people, college kids. Cynthia had spent her college years in the Harvard library; she’d never been in on student pranks. Now, she had to pass judgment on people whose age she’d been not so long ago. And on older people, whose experiences, again, she hadn’t shared. In the past, she’d have assumed she could make the transition with ease, but right now, nothing felt certain.

  She drank three cups of coffee, belatedly aware her veins were buzzing. The courthouse clock struck noon, and she took the chime as a cue to push away the transcript she was reading and kick back in her chair.

  Before she could relax, she heard her door creak open. A trim, middle-aged man entered, hand outstretched. “Judge Merritt, welcome to Stonewall Hollow. I’m Mayor Larsen. Richard Larsen.”

  “Please, call me Cynthia.” She shook his hand.

  He took a seat uninvited, rubbing his palms together like a boy scout trying to start a fire. “Well, well, a lady judge, right here in Stonewall Hollow.”

  He might have been saying, “An alien invasion, right here in Stonewall Hollow.”

  Didn’t this town have television?

  “Move over, Judge Judy.” The mayor answered her unspoken question. “We have Judge Cynthia.”

  She wasn’t sure what was worse: people doubting her competence because she was a woman, or expecting her to become a pop culture icon of justice. “I’m afraid my courtroom won’t be of much entertainment value.”

  The mayor’s face fell, but he said, “Of course not. Sheriff Davis will stop by later, fill you in on things. I know he’s hoping the courthouse will be open for business again by next week.”

  “We’ll be open for business tomorrow,” Cynthia said. They’d need to be, with that backlog.

  Mayor Larsen blinked. “Uh…excellent. Some big-city efficiency coming to town.” He chuckled. “When folk get word of it, you’ll have a few people bending your ear. Everyone’s got something to say about the way this place works.”

  Cynthia wasn’t sure what he meant. A small town might be less formal, but surely the place worked in accordance with the Georgia legal system? She let it go, offered a few platitudes about how she was looking forward to working with the locals.

  “You’ll want to come down hard on shoplifters.” The mayor cracked his knuckles. “Morale is always better when we’re tough on crime that affects small business owners.”

  Store owners’ morale wasn’t her responsibility. “I’ll judge appropriately” was all the commitment she would make.

  “Excellent.” He beamed his approval as he said his goodbyes.

  The moment he left, Cynthia extended her arms out in front of her, spreading her fingers wide to stretch her stiff muscles.

  Mayor Larsen’s head popped back around the door; she whipped her hands down.

  “You’ll need to talk to Ethan Granger,” he said. And was gone.

  After the mayor, she had a visit from the clerk of the court. “Ask me anything about the docket,” Jim Hopkins challenged her, white teeth gleaming against his dark face. “See if I don’t know the answer.”

  She dredged up a couple of questions, which he answered rapid-fire.

  Then came a social worker from Albany who’d been assigned a handful of cases in Stonewall Hollow, and the sheriff. Each visitor barged in, her only warning the squeak of unoiled hinges. What counted for discourtesy in Atlanta must be a local custom in Stonewall Hollow. They all wanted to tell her “how we do things around here.” All three mentioned the importance of talking to Ethan Granger.

  “Who’s he?”
Cynthia asked each time. She received three wildly varying answers. Ethan Granger was a saint, a one-man rehabilitation service, or wasting his time on a kid who’d never amount to anything.

  That last view was the sheriff’s. He clapped his hat to his chest and announced, “I like Ethan, make no mistake, everyone does. But this time he’s bitten off more’n he can chew.”

  Him and me both.

  The sheriff explained how his department worked—flat out, all the time—and the names of the D.A.s. Cynthia propped her chin in her palm and tried to focus. When he shared the good news that Cynthia’s court would hear an overflow of cases from a neighboring county, she was tempted to jump into her Volvo and hightail it back to Atlanta.

  As the sheriff left, with as little ceremony as he’d arrived, steel bands of pressure tightened around her forehead and wrists. Maybe she should have taken those pills her doctor had prescribed. They were in the glove compartment of her car, she could duck outside and…

  No. She was cut from the same cloth as her father, and Jonah Merritt would never do that. Even after his cardiac surgery, he’d restricted his meds to the minimum. He liked to keep his mind clear, and would want her to do the same.

  Dad’s not here.

  She’d spent her life living up to her father’s expectations and she wasn’t about to drop her standards now that a few hundred miles lay between them. Besides, he had a knack for finding out things. When Cynthia was eight years old, she’d taken the credit for a painting her father had admired on the classroom wall. Somehow, her dad had discovered it was her friend’s handiwork. His disappointment had been far more painful than the swat he’d dealt to Cynthia’s backside.

  She lifted her fifth—or was it her sixth?—cup of coffee to her lips and noticed her hand was shaking. Not to mention her heart was pounding like a gavel in a courtroom riot. Cynthia clattered the cup down onto the desk; coffee slopped over the side.

  “Blast.” As she pulled a tissue from her purse, her elbow connected with the cup, knocking it off the desk.

  “Dammit.” Cynthia jumped to her feet as coffee spilled across the Civil War carpet. Her first day on the job and she’d ruined a priceless rug. “Don’t move,” she warned the spreading stain, then jogged to the bathroom.

  She returned with a fistful of paper towels and spread them over the mess. The coffee seeped through the paper.

  She needed a sponge. Melanie would know where to find one…yikes…what if the coffee had obliterated Melanie’s great-great-grandmother’s handiwork?

  Cynthia’s eyes strayed to the broom closet.

  No sponges in there. No brooms, either.

  Just a cool, dark, quiet space where no one would tell her how to do her job or alarm her with stories of ratcheting crime rates….

  Cynthia snapped her gaze away from the door, unable to believe she was seriously tempted to hide in another broom closet.

  On the other hand, maybe there was a sponge in there Melanie didn’t know about….

  She took three steps before she came to her senses. Stay away from the closet.

  Out in the reception, she heard a shrill female voice. “A lady judge? What in the world will happen next?” As if the end of civilization was right around the corner, and Cynthia was personally responsible. “Has Ethan been in yet?” the unknown woman asked.

  Cynthia’s head throbbed. It was so bright in these south-facing chambers. The sun hadn’t let up all day and the air conditioner was distinctly underpowered. If she could find some shade…she eyed the closet.

  “I’m looking for a sponge,” she said out loud. “That’s all.”

  She pulled the door open. As Melanie had said, the space held two file cartons. On the left-hand side was a stack of deep shelves. There could be an old sponge somewhere in there, she reasoned. She stepped inside. The dimness immediately eased her headache. Before she could think about it, she pulled the door closed.

  Blessed silence. Dust motes tickled her nose. Oh, yeah, she was definitely crazy…but right now, she didn’t care. Cynthia reached through the darkness and patted the dusty shelves. Her fingers traveled all the way into the corners. No cleaning materials. She sat on the stacked file boxes and took a calming breath. There, that was better. But if she stayed in here another second, she’d be repeating history. She shook out her fingers to loosen the tension.

  As she reached for the door handle, she heard the sound that had driven her crazy all afternoon. The creak of the door to her chambers. A man said, “Judge Merritt?”

  Cynthia froze. Go away.

  “She’s not here.” He raised his voice, presumably calling to Melanie.

  That’s right, I’m not here. So, leave.

  “Are you sure?” Great, now Melanie arrived. As soon as Cynthia got out of the closet, she was ordering a lock for the door. “She was at her desk a moment ago. I would have seen if she’d come out. Maybe she’s in there.”

  For one awful moment, Cynthia imagined her assistant pointing at the closet. Then she realized Melanie must mean the bathroom. If they went to check, Cynthia could slip out…

  “I can stop by later.” The man’s voice was deep and slow.

  Great idea, Cynthia encouraged him.

  “Oh, dear.” Melanie sounded as if she was moving away. “The judge must have spilled her coffee. I’ll go find a cloth.”

  The door squeaked as Melanie left. Had the man gone, too? Cynthia held her breath, listening.

  The dust motes chose that moment to turn hostile. She scrunched her face in the effort to control her sinuses. But it was no good.

  Cynthia sneezed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THANKFULLY, IT WASN’T a proper sneeze, more a teeny explosion of breath. No one could have heard—

  The closet door was wrenched open. Light flooded in.

  “Well, hello.” A man loomed in front of Cynthia. “Judge Merritt, I presume?” Puzzlement, laced with amusement, all wrapped up in a deliberate, country drawl.

  Cynthia processed broad shoulders and a cowboy hat that he removed as she bustled forward. “I was trying to find a sponge to clean up the coffee I spilled.”

  “With the door shut.”

  Worn denim-blue T-shirt, faded jeans, work boots. Probably not a lawyer.

  “It swung closed behind me,” she said.

  He glanced at the door and moved his hand toward it. If he dared test its swing, she’d find some way of sending him to jail for ten years. He met her narrowed eyes and dropped his hand.

  “I heard you come in,” she continued, “and I thought it would look odd if I came out of the broom closet. Closet,” she amended hastily. “It’s just a closet, no brooms.”

  “And no sponge,” he suggested.

  She nodded once. His brown eyes wandered over her, making Cynthia want to squirm. She held herself rigid.

  “You’re right,” he agreed, “it does look odd.”

  “Exactly why I didn’t come out,” she said sharply. She proffered a hand. “I’m Cynthia Merritt.”

  When her hand met his, she realized hers was dusty. That didn’t stop him clasping it in a firm grip that made her palm tingle.

  “Ethan Granger.”

  This was the man everyone wanted her to meet? She put aside her embarrassment and scrutinized him with equal frankness.

  Cynthia was tall at five-nine, but Ethan had several inches on her. His hair was the rich, dark brown of the tilled earth she’d seen as she drove through the remotest parts of Georgia; his gold-flecked irises managed to be both warm and intense at the same time. Rugged. That’s how she’d describe his face, which held an entirely different kind of strength from her father’s. His tan suggested he worked outdoors, and lines at the corners of his eyes told her he either laughed a lot or he squinted into the sun. She chose the latter—the firm set of his jaw said he took life seriously.

  But even allowing for lax small-town standards, Ethan Granger didn’t look like a social worker, a probation officer, or anyone involved in the judicia
l process.

  “You have dust on your forehead.” Ethan pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and held it out.

  “Thank you, but I’m fine.”

  “Shall I do it?”

  She grabbed the hanky from him and wiped her forehead.

  “You missed some.” Ethan took the handkerchief and dabbed at a spot above her left eye. For a big-handed, blunt-fingered guy, he had a gentle touch.

  Goose bumps puckered her forearms, despite the powerful afternoon sunlight. Great, first she was in the broom closet, now she was having a sensual reaction to a stranger. She took a step back. “I’m sure it’s fine now.”

  He gave her an unhurried smile; he was the best-looking man she’d met in a long time, no question. “You’re welcome,” he said.

  Melanie trotted in, carrying a dripping towel. “I can’t find the judge, but I brought this.” She came to an abrupt stop. “Judge Merritt. There you are.”

  “The judge was looking for a sponge,” Ethan said. Cynthia froze. “In the bathroom.”

  Cynthia let her shoulders relax. “Thanks for bringing that, Melanie, just what we need.”

  The woman knelt to wipe the rug. “I see you’ve met Ethan,” she observed, with a kind of proprietary pride.

  “The judge and I were just about to get down to business,” Ethan said.

  Cynthia bristled. Letting her off the hook about the closet didn’t give him the right to call the shots.

  “Lovely.” Melanie glanced up from her sponging. “While I’m here, Judge, Mrs. Marks from the Stonewall Hollow Heritage Society came by to invite you to tomorrow night’s potluck.”

  Mrs. Marks owned the shrill voice that had driven her into the closet, she guessed.

  “Half the town’s likely to be there,” Melanie prompted her. She gripped the edge of the desk and used it to pull herself to her feet, with a huff of effort. “My sister and I always bring a ton of food, so you don’t need to worry about cooking.”

  “Thanks, but I have a lot of reading to catch up on.” Cynthia waved in the direction of her desk. “Could you pass on my apology?”

  As Melanie left, Cynthia brushed her hands down her skirt, leaving a trail of dust. Ethan’s glance followed the movement. Was he about to start wiping her skirt? She bolted for her chair.