Amanda's Blue Marine by Doreen Owens Malek Read Free Book Online Page A

or throw a fit or otherwise disgrace herself. She was going to show him that she had rebounded from her initial reaction to the accident and was now fine.
    When she got back to the table a pot of tea with a little mug of milk was sitting at her place across from Kelly. A grilled cheese sandwich sat on a plate next to the mug.
    “You ordered this for me?” she asked Kelly.
    He nodded. “Isn’t that what you usually get for lunch?”
    The thoughtfulness of the gesture almost undid her again. She nodded mutely, tried to take a bite of the sandwich and then put it down again.
    “What is it, Amanda?” he asked her quietly.
    “I was so mean to you when you showed up at the accident. You’d think that I would be able to handle a little crunched metal five years after the fact. And taking it out on you was unforgivable.”
    “I forgive you,” he said, smiling slightly.
    “I thought I was over it.”
    “You’ll never be over it. You just learn to live with it.”
    Mandy sighed. “So I’ve been told. I went through a lot of therapy just to drive again. Eventually I was able to do it in an emergency when my father was hurt and we couldn’t wait for an ambulance. I was the only one there to drive him to the hospital. After that I was all right. But of course I didn’t have another accident until today.”
    “Losing your friends must have been hard,” he murmured.
    She nodded. “I felt responsible. The kid who hit us was drunk and I checked out clean at the scene, but that didn’t stop my friends’ parents from filing a class action wrongful death suit against me.”
    “Why?”
    “For money. They weren’t going to get a nickel out of the drunken teenager who hit us, but if they could prove I was a negligent driver who contributed to the outcome in some way my daddy would have to pony up for some big bucks.”
    He didn’t answer, merely studied her soberly.
    “And then the judge hearing the case severed the actions, so I had THREE lawsuits pending against me.”
    “And three dead friends,” Kelly said.
    She nodded.
    “What happened?”
    Mandy shrugged. “In the end the suits got nowhere but I had to endure a lot of hostile questioning from the opposing attorneys. Their constant implication was that I was a spoiled rich girl out joyriding in my daddy’s expensive car who was somehow responsible for the deaths.”
    “And you still finished school and became a lawyer,” Kelly said dryly.
    “I realized from that experience that I could do it.”
    “Do what?”
    “Hold my own in the big leagues,” she said simply. “But I was worried the whole time that the suits were going to cost my father dearly, in terms of money, reputation, credibility. Just defending the cases was a fortune, and if I had lost it would have been much worse.” Mandy sighed. “Everyone involved knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. They only went after me in the first place because of the Redfield name. It made me a target.”
    “Who knew there was a downside to having money?” Kelly said softly.
    Mandy poured tea into her cup and added milk to it. “I learned that lesson the hard way,” she said.
    A waitress arrived with a coffee pot and refreshed Kelly’s cup.
    “ No ser un extraño, hermoso,” she said to him. “Don’t be a stranger, handsome.”
    “ ¿Cómo es su marido, Rosa?” he replied. “How’s your husband, Rosa?”
    She stuck her tongue out at him and left.
    “What’s her problem?” Amada asked, trying hard not to smile. His dismayed expression when the waitress showed up so suddenly had been amusing.
    “I thought she’d quit her waitressing job,” Kelly said in a frustrated tone.
    “Apparently not. What happened?”
    He shrugged. “I got a little too friendly with her at the Christmas party here last year. They put on a spread for the cops at the holidays, it keeps the patrol cars checking on the premises and the riffraff away. I’d had a few drinks, she was a new hire and I didn’t realize she was