Heat crawled up Courtney’s face, and when she spoke again, her voice trembled. “I’m not in love with Matt Lyndon, okay? He’s too young for me, and he’s not looking for commitment right now. We’re friends.
“But when Allison suggested that I’d be stupid not to bring over casseroles every night and try to trap him into marriage…I don’t know, I—”
“What? She suggested you should trap him in a marriage?”
Courtney nodded. “Worse than that. I got the feeling she had tried to trap him and failed. And when I realized that, I just saw red.” She blew out a breath. “I know I was in the wrong. And I know I need to apologize.”
“Okay. I expect you to do that. And I also want you to be very careful with Matt.”
“I told you, Matt and I are friends. Besides, he’s what? Twenty-five. He’s a baby.”
Willow stood up. “Courtney, if you want to lie to yourself, go right ahead. But you and Matt are not friends. If you were, you wouldn’t have lost your temper the way you did.”
Chapter Fourteen
Over the next week, Matt argued with his mother about his apartment no less than ten times. And when he wasn’t arguing with Mom, he was spending long hours at work as a means of distracting himself from the woman living next door. Work seemed to be the only panacea for the daydreams that distracted him whenever he let his concentration slip. He’d imagined himself making the journey across the hallway hundreds of times, but he never could decide what he should say if he knocked and Courtney answered.
Would he explain that he’d also been a social outcast during high school? Would he tell her about his broken heart and Allison Chapman’s endless cruelty?
No. He. Would. Not.
So instead he followed David around, writing meeting notes, proofing filings and motions, and preparing his cousin for every meeting and every court appearance as well. After regular office hours, once he’d finished any work David had assigned him for the day, Matt chased down the leads Arwen’s whistle-blower had provided.
By Monday of the following week, Matt had found a potential client—a landowner who had been assessed an absurd fine and now faced a choice between forfeiting his property to the county or selling out to GB Ventures. But even though the situation was unfair, the facts made the potential case difficult. And besides, Matt wasn’t a litigator.
He needed advice, and he couldn’t go to Dad, and he wasn’t about to call up the managing partner. So on Monday afternoon, during a lull in David’s schedule, Matt strolled into his cousin’s office and shut the door behind him. “You have a minute?” he asked.
David looked away from his laptop screen. “What? Is there a problem with Klempert vs. Klempert?”
“No.” Matt crossed the room and sat in one of the leather-covered wing chairs. David’s office was sumptuous in comparison to Matt’s small cubbyhole. David had two gigantic windows overlooking the parkland in front of the county courthouse a block away.
Matt swallowed hard. “I have something I’d like you to see.” He handed David a folder that contained all the relevant facts pertaining to Avery Johnson’s property, located north and west of town.
Mr. Johnson was a hillbilly from a long line of hillbillies who had lived up on the ridge since before the Civil War. He owned a parcel of land off the unpaved section of Good Shepherd Road, where his family had been raising chickens and pigs for more than a hundred years.
But a year ago, on a three-to-two vote, the County Council outlawed the raising of pigs in that area. Not too surprisingly, Avery Johnson refused to comply with this rule. So the county fined him, and now the fines amounted to more than Johnson’s land was worth. GB Ventures had already approached Mr. Johnson with an offer to buy his land. Mr. Johnson was holding out for more money.
On its own, that wasn’t much of a case. But it turned out that GB Ventures had bought a huge parcel of land off the paved section of Good Shepherd Road, adjacent to Mr. Johnson’s land, six months before the County Council outlawed pig farming. For the last eighteen months, GB Ventures had been building million-dollar homes right next to Mr. Johnson’s pig farm. Clearly GB Ventures wanted Mr. Johnson and his smelly pigs out of the way, and they’d gone to the chairman of the County Council, Bill Cummins, to make it happen.
David read these facts while the grandfather clock in the corner of his office ticked the minutes away in ominous fashion. As he read, David’s eyebrows lowered in a frown Matt found difficult to read. Was he angry or outraged? Or possibly both?
Minutes passed with no other sound except for the ticking clock and David’s methodical turning of pages. Matt’s hands started to sweat, and he wondered if he’d done the right thing.
Finally, his cousin looked up. “Didn’t Uncle Charles tell you not to pursue this?”
Damn. He’d hoped David would see the injustice. Matt nodded. “And August Kopp also said there was a potential case here. I told Avery Johnson to contact the Blue Ridge Legal Aid Society, and he’s done so. So, we have a client if we want one. And for the record, I did this after hours. On my own time.”
“How did you get the information about the penalty amounts?”
“Arwen knows someone.”
“So Arwen spent time on this too?”
Matt nodded. “She’s the one who discovered this, David. You know that. But she’s only worked on it after hours.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“I want us to take Avery Johnson’s case pro bono. And I want to sue the county for abuse of power, or maybe the unconstitutional condemnation of private property.”
David let go of a long breath and leaned back in his chair. “Matt, I understand your outrage, but you have no experience in this sort of thing. And neither do I.”
“Mr. Kopp does.”
David nodded. “Yeah, he does.
