Match Made in Court

Match Made in Court
Janice Kay Johnson

His surprise family… Matt will do anything for his precious niece. Hanna’s his only relative, and he knows he can help her through the tragic loss of her parents. Getting custody of her, however, means challenging her aunt, Linnea – a woman far more enticing than he remembers. When their attraction threatens Matt’s guardianship, court seems like his only option.Joint custody is not the outcome Matt was expecting. Yet it could be the best thing that’s happened to him. Because being with Linnea and Hanna together feels right and good…and they just might be the family he’s always wanted.

Matt hadn’t had such a good time in years.

Hadn’t laughed like that in years either, he realised as they started towards Linnea’s house.

“It was a fabulous idea,” Linnea said in a quiet voice, her gaze warm. “Hanna was happy. She hadn’t been since …” She swallowed. “I’d better get her some clean clothes and take a quick shower myself before I start lunch.”

“You need it.” His voice came out huskier than usual and he touched a mud streak on her cheek. His fingertips tingled, and it was all he could do to withdraw his hand. It curled into a fist at his side.

She went very still at the fleeting, soft touch. Her eyes darkened as she stared at him. Then, without a word, she turned and hurried from the room.

Damn it, damn it, damn it! What was he thinking?

Something about her drew him in a way he hadn’t experienced in years, maybe never. Her air of fragility, coupled with a spine of steel. Yeah, all that, and her slender, graceful body, her generous breasts, the tiny tendrils of pale hair that curled against her nape. The whole package. He couldn’t understand how he’d been so blind all these years.

Matt wished he was still blind. He and Linnea had been on opposite sides in the courtroom last week, and they’d keep being on opposite sides unless he gave up his claim to Hanna.

And that was one thing he couldn’t do.

Dear Reader,

Whenever I peruse newspaper articles about domestic violence cases that end in tragedy, I tend to think about the families. More is split asunder than a couple. What about the grandparents on both sides who have become friends and who love any children? Sisters and brothers, in-laws and cousins who have all swirled together to become one family, but who now must take their places on opposite sides of a courtroom?

Don’t we all believe that romantic love can transcend any obstacle? But as Shakespeare showed us in Romeo and Juliet, family opposition can be one of the most heartrending obstacles of all.

When in the course of a tempestuous argument Finn Sorensen kills his wife, Tess, their young daughter, Hanna, in essence loses both her parents. She’s lucky in one way—Tess’s brother Matt Laughlin wants her, and so does Finn’s sister Linnea. But Linnea’s family has never liked Matt, and he despises them. Facing off in a bitter custody battle is a rocky way to begin a romance …

I hope you’re as fascinated as I am by the emotional tangles wrought by our childhoods, by family and by our ability to always understand why our hearts lead us so powerfully to make choices that don’t seem sensible.

Enjoy!

Janice Kay Johnson

About the Author

The author of more than sixty books for children and adults, JANICE KAY JOHNSON writes novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

MATCH MADE

IN COURT

JANICE KAY JOHNSON

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

LINNEA SORENSEN HATED being interrupted by phone calls during dinnertime.

This was why she not only had caller ID, she had an answering machine instead of voice mail. She could not only tell who was calling, she could find out what that person wanted before she decided whether to answer.

This morning, she’d put chicken paprika to cook in her slow cooker. Thank goodness because she was starved. She’d worked a full day at the library, then on her way home had had to walk the Millers’ two Irish setters, rain or no rain. Having been bored all day, they were thrilled to go outside, which meant they bounded and dove into the neighbor’s shrubbery and got tangled with each other. Her shoulders ached from the dogs’ straining against their leashes. of course, she had to go back before bedtime, but this time she could stand on the stoop and let them out in the tiny yard for a last chance to pee.

Wet, tired and chilled as she was, Linnea showered the minute she got home. She reluctantly put on a sweatshirt and jeans instead of her pajamas, dried her hair and then gratefully dished up dinner. She was just inhaling the glorious aroma and picking up her fork when the damn phone rang.

Of course it was her parents’ number that appeared. She was not talking to her mother right this minute.

Except that the distraught voice she heard hardly sounded like her mother.

“Linnea? Are you home? Something terrible has happened. Finn just called and—” She made a ragged sound that might have been a sob. “He says Tess is dead. That—that she fell and hit her head and …”

Linnea dropped the fork and grabbed the phone. “Mom?”

“Oh, thank goodness! You are there!”

“Tess is dead?” Honestly, Linnea liked her sister-in-law, Tess, better than she did her own brother.

“Surely he’s wrong, but … he was dreadfully upset. He says the police are there, and he wanted me to come and get Hanna. Your father isn’t feeling well. Can you possibly take her home with you tonight, Linnea? Until we know what’s happening?”

“Well, of course I can. He’d already picked her up from after-school care?”

“He said she’s there. I pray he’s kept her in her room so she doesn’t know what’s going on. Will you go now?”

“I’m on my way. I’ll call you when I know something.” Hands shaking, Linnea dumped the food back in the slow cooker and put the lid on. She slipped her feet into rubber clogs, grabbed her coat and purse and went out the door again.

Although she and Finn both lived in Seattle, it might as well have been in different worlds. His four-thousand-square-foot faux-Tudor home, which boasted a media room and five bathrooms, was in upscale Laurelhurst; her own two-bedroom cottage was in a blue-collar neighborhood in West Seattle. With the dark night and wet streets, the drive to Finn’s took her over half an hour. The entire way, her anxiety kept her hands tight on the wheel and her thoughts bouncing off each other, never settling.

Could Tess really be dead? Just from stumbling and hitting her head? What had she hit it on? A corner of the kitchen counter? or their raised slate fireplace hearth? Mom had worried so about that hearth when Hanna was little. But people didn’t die that foolishly and … meaninglessly. Did they? And why were the police there? Did they always come when the death wasn’t something obvious and expected, like an eighty-year-old with coronary disease having a heart attack?

Poor Hanna! Linnea adored her six-year-old niece, who—she sometimes swore—took after her more than either her mother or father. Not that Hanna was timid, exactly, but she was quiet and thoughtful. She often daydreamed, which annoyed her father no end. Finn was brilliant and ambitious, impatient with woolgathering and anyone whom he deemed “dense.” Tess, a successful interior designer, was creative but also tempestuous. in her own way, she had as strong a personality as Finn did. Hanna, it often seemed to Linnea, was a bit of a changeling.

Linnea saw the flashing lights when she was still a couple of blocks away from her brother’s house. The street was blocked at the corner, although officers were removing the barricade to let a fire truck lumber out. As she hesitated, the lights atop an ambulance went off, and it, too, started up and followed the fire truck.

Her heart constricted. Was Tess in the ambulance? But it definitely wasn’t speeding toward a hospital, which must mean Finn had been right. By the time he got home, it must have been too late to save her. Linnea hated the idea that he and Hanna had walked in the door and found Tess on the floor. She had a heartrending image of the little girl crying, “Mommy!” and running to her mother’s still, prone body.

People gathered in clusters on the sidewalks, all staring as if hypnotized toward Finn’s house. Neighbors? They were weirdly lit, seemingly by strobe lights—red, blue, white. Blink, blink, blink.

Linnea stopped at the barricade and rolled down her window when the uniformed officer walked up to her car.

“Ma’am, do you live on this street?”

“No, I’m Linnea Sorensen. That’s my brother’s house? Finn? He called me … well, really he called my mother …” He doesn’t care. More strongly, she finished, “I’m here to pick up my six-year-old niece. She shouldn’t be here with … with whatever’s happened.”

“One moment, Ms. Sorensen.” He stepped away and murmured into a walkie-talkie. When he came back, he said, “I’m going to let you through.”

She gave a jerky nod and rolled up her window. When he pulled the barricade aside, she drove through the opening. People’s heads turned as her car inched forward until she stopped behind one of—oh, God—five police cars. Why would there be so many, just because Tess tripped and hit her head?