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Maddie stood. “I did, sir.”
“Thank you. Now, Mr. Sawyer, did you or did you not get into a loud public argument with Miss Chamberlain in the early morning hours of this past Saturday?”
Maddie glanced over for the first time to where Emmett was standing. He was looking just as handsome as he had earlier, but he was paying no attention to her. He looked at the judge. “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” Judge Griffin said. “Thank you for not wasting the court’s time by denying it. Now, what to do with you both? Given that Mr. Sawyer has already amassed several thousand dollars in noise citations over the last few weeks, it seems to me as though a five-hundred-dollar fine will not make an impact on either of you.”
Maddie held her breath.
“But jail time seems hardly suitable for something like this. In the end, no one was injured and no property was damaged.”
She finally exhaled. No jail.
“Neither of those options seem to address the issue at hand, which is that the two of you can’t seem to get along. This little war of yours is tying up city resources. Considering that neither the house nor the bar is going to pull up their foundations and move anytime soon, something has to be done. And I think I’ve got an idea.”
Maddie’s sense of relief was short-lived. What could the judge possibly do to force them to get along? Her mind flashed back to her childhood and the oversize T-shirt her mother used as a punishment to force two quarreling siblings to play nicely together. It created a two-armed, two-headed, four-legged monster that would immediately stop fighting so they could get away from each other. That’s probably where her brother Simon had gotten the idea about the handcuffs. She worried that something like that would be exactly what the judge would call for.
“You will both serve community service. I think twenty-four hours served over the next month ought to do it. Since you both operate your own businesses, we’ll spread it out into smaller chunks. Twice a week for four weeks, you’ll spend three hours assisting your community. You’ll pick up trash at the park, you’ll volunteer at the senior center or the library . . . and, as a matter of fact, we’ve been having some vandalism trouble around town lately. You’ll clean that up, too.”
Maddie had expected as much. While picking up trash was not ideal, it could’ve been much worse. Just another reason for her to hire someone to help at the shop. It sounded like some of her afternoons and evenings would be taken for the next few weeks. There was just one thing she didn’t understand—how would this resolve her feud with Emmett?
The judge looked at both of them and a sadistic smile crossed his face. “And one last thing. You’ll be serving every single hour of your community service together.”
Hell. He was in absolute hell.
Emmett slipped out of the courtroom quickly with Logan on his heels. They pushed thro
ugh the crowd waiting to go in next, and made it out onto the steps before he stopped to finally take his first big breath since the sentence was handed down.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help, Emmett. I should’ve known that Judge Griffin wouldn’t be interested in anything we had to say. He’s known for that.”
“It’s not your fault,” Emmett said with a shake of his head. “I called you twelve hours before I was due in court. Even if the judge had let you speak, I didn’t exactly give you time to prepare.”
“At least let me treat you to breakfast,” Logan offered.
“Breakfast sounds good, but I should really treat you. You’ve already insisted that you won’t take any of my money for this. If you buy me breakfast, you’re actually in the hole.”
Logan chuckled and slapped Emmett on the shoulder as they started down the sidewalk toward Ellen’s Diner. “A small price to pay to watch one of the Chamberlains knocked down a peg, I assure you.”
“What’s your beef with them?” Emmett asked. Most people in town seemed to think the Chamberlains were pretty great. Aside from Maddie, Emmett didn’t have a problem with them, and he hadn’t had a problem with her until she started fussing with his livelihood and his sleeping patterns.
Logan sighed and shook his head. “That’s a very long and unpleasant story I won’t bore you with, but our families have had a long-standing disagreement.”
“I thought it was just about the law firm rivalry. A business thing.” The last few months everyone had been buzzing about Logan’s sign outside of Dressin’ Up.
“You’d think so, but the law firm rivalry is the result, not the cause. I deliberately went into law just so I could steal his business away.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, ’fraid not,” Logan said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that grudges are light and you can carry them forever. I can very happily spend the rest of my life making Norman miserable. And I’m here today to support you not only because we’re friends but because if Maddie is miserable, I’m certain Norman will be, too. He’s partial to his girls, so this is a big hit to Daddy’s pride.”
Emmett stopped, his eyes narrowing at his lawyer. That was serious. No wonder Logan had jumped to come with him to court today. Law school meant years of hard study. At one point, he’d considered it himself, but he took the financial route instead. Logan had gone through all that for revenge? There was more to this story than he was letting on. Maybe after a couple of beers he could get Logan to spill the whole sordid tale.
“I’m sure she’ll be plenty unhappy over that sentence,” Emmett said. That wasn’t the best way to start off when the whole point of this extended exercise in torture was for them to get along. “Really, I wish he’d just sent me to jail. A day or two in prison is preferable to spending a whole month scrubbing penises off the wall with that woman.”
“Well, you could always fail to appear for service. That’s an automatic contempt charge and you’d spend a night in jail for sure. Probably wouldn’t get you out of the community service in the end, though, so as your lawyer, I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“I know,” Emmett said with a resigned sigh. “There’s no getting out of this. If there was a way, I’d have thought of it by now.”
