She peered through her windshield at his house, watching for another glimpse of someone inside while his voice reeled off his business numbers. “It’s Nell,” she said after the beep. “I’m in Cheyenne to empty my storage unit. Do you have someone staying at your house?” Then she hung up.
Crime wasn’t exactly rampant in the town. But Archer, despite porch lights, was often gone for long stretches at a time. She waited for him to call for an interminable ten minutes, and when he didn’t, she just exhaled and turned off the car engine. She crossed the street and skipped up the steps and walked across the porch, peering in through the front window.
The curtain panels on the inside were sheerer than she expected and easily afforded her a view of the woman standing near the fireplace.
Judge Taylor Potts.
And the man sprawled comfortably in his overstuffed chair. She could even see the cell phone clasped lightly in Archer’s broad, long-fingered hand.
She jerked back but not quickly enough to miss Taylor moving across the room to sit on the arm of his chair. To close her hand over his arm and lean closer to him.
Nell turned on her heel and darted down the steps. She raced across the yard. The street. Practically threw herself into her front seat and fumbled the car key into the ignition.
A moment later she roared down the block and around the corner, barely having the presence of mind to slow down because she was in a residential zone and the last thing she needed was a speeding ticket.
He’d told her he was still in Denver. That he had court all day.
Her fingers strangled her steering wheel as she drove to the storage unit. She should have known better. The man didn’t make promises. He just kept moving on, routinely changing one woman on his arm with the next.
Never leaving anyone behind with hard feelings.
Except her.
Chapter Thirteen
“I’ve been leaving you messages for over a week.”
Nell gave Archer a baleful look and turned away from him. She pointed accusingly at Montrose. “You said you’d warn me if he showed up.”
His grandmother’s chef and majordomo, wearing a white apron over his black suit, actually looked abashed.
It was unsettling enough that Archer felt mildly sorry for the way he’d bullied his way past the man when he’d opened the door at the small house where Nell had moved.
It had taken him a few days before he’d even been able to track down her address. It had been easy enough to find out that she’d moved out of the Cozy Night.
Not so easy to locate where she’d gone after that, particularly when his grandmother had abruptly departed for Philadelphia and taken Delia with her. Aside from his cousin promising him that it wasn’t for health reasons and confirming that Nell was still in charge of the library project, he’d gotten no more information from that quarter.
Between Gage needing him to deal with Noah’s latest situation and his caseload in Denver, he’d actually resorted to assigning Jennifer to the task of discovering Nell’s whereabouts.
It shouldn’t have been so hard in a small town like Weaver, but Nell wasn’t exactly known for her talkative nature when it came to her personal business.
The way she’d kept quiet about Martin and the Lambert estate was a perfect example of that.
And now, the fact that Montrose was at Nell’s at all was just one more reason why Archer felt like he’d landed in some alternate universe.
He followed her from the small kitchen where a pile of dough and flour was covering the only counter and out into a small, fenced yard. A rickety-looking picnic table was partially covered with a bag of potting soil and several plastic pots.
Even Nell looked different. She was wearing a sleeveless purple-and-green tie-dyed dress that looked as if it could have come right out of his bohemian stepmother’s closet. The knit fit her as closely as a T-shirt, and when he realized he was focusing a little too hard on the swell of her breasts pushing against the fabric, he finally managed to look elsewhere. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on around here?”
She gave him a thin-lipped stare. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He spread his arms, encompassing the entire alternate universe around them. “You’ve been avoiding me for days and now...all this?”
“I haven’t been avoiding you.” She grabbed a spade and jabbed it into the bag of soil.
He snorted. “What do you call it, then? I’ve been trying to reach you since I heard about the ethics complaint you filed against Martin. And what is Montrose doing here?”
“Teaching me how to make bread,” she said as if it should be obvious. She tossed down the spade in favor of crossing her arms over her chest, which plumped her breasts even more. “The real question is why are you here?”
He rubbed his forehead, trying to rid the feel and taste of those breasts from his memory, and paced around the cluttered table.
The fenced yard wasn’t large. She had room for the rectangular picnic table and benches, a folding lawn chair—the lounge kind—and the stack of books that sat on the grass beside it. On the other side of the small square of grass was an ancient garage. The door was open and her car was parked inside it. “Where else do you think I should be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe with Judge Potts.”
He spread his palms. “Why would I be with her?”
Her expression tightened even more. “You were with her last week.” Her voice was flat. “In Cheyenne when you told me you were in Denver, so you tell me.”
He’d been in Cheyenne to talk to the governor about Noah Locke when he’d gotten a message from Taylor. “The only conversation I’ve had with Taylor Potts has been about you.”
“She was at your house,” Nell said in a flat tone. “I left you a message that I thought someone was there, but that someone was you! The two of you.”
“Yeah, okay, so what?” In his present mood, he’d be damned if he’d tell her what he’d gone to the house to retrieve. Meeting Taylor there, too, so she could fill him in about the ethics case had been expedient. “You saw a conversation?”
“You told me you were in Denver!”
“When I called you that morning, I was in Denver,” he shot back in a clipped tone. It wasn’t often that he lost his temper but he was in danger of it now. He didn’t like being accused of being a liar. “I had to go to Cheyenne because of a client.”
“Right.”
“Don’t act like I’m the one who’s been withholding information. I knew you didn’t leave Pastore Legal because you hadn’t made partner,” he said. “But at first I figured it was your business. Same as whatever the hell caused your falling-out with Ros. Only thing I knew for certain was that Martin had to be at the center of it. He’s the only thing she’d hold inviolate, even above your friendship.”
He circled around her and her flinch as he got nearer added a finely honed edge to the mood that had been building in him for days now.
Ever since she failed to return the first message he’d left for her.
“But after everything I told you about Meredith, after everything that happened in your office at Viv’s the night of her cocktail party—”
Her dark brown eyes darted to his, then she looked away just as quickly. But she looked as wounded as he felt.
“—after everything,” he said through his teeth, “you still didn’t give me one damn hint about Pastore’s collusion. I had to learn it from Taylor. And now—” he spread his arms again “—now, you’re finally out of that godforsaken motel and you come here!”
“Where else would I go?”
Archer was at his wit’s end, and his voice rose, too. “To me!”
Her face went pale. “I don’t understand.”
“And you never have,” he said, feeling a harsh pinch inside his gut. “You won’t need anybody
. You obviously don’t trust me.”
“I—” Her lips slammed shut at the look he gave her.
“Even all this.” He flicked the bag of soil and one of the plastic pots tumbled off the table. “What is all this about? Cornelia Brewster 2.0?”
Color flagged her cheeks. “What if it is? I can’t practice law right now even if I wanted to. Not until the state bar decides whether or not to censure me. Your grandmother’s library is just a stopgap and one that’s not even going to last all that much longer now that we’ve gotten the official go-ahead. For all of my adult life the only thing I have focused on is the law. I’m thirty-six years old. Isn’t it about time I figured out if there’s something else I might like to do?”
“For God’s sake, Nell. Go work in a bloody bookstore. Or open one of your own. It’s what you’ve always wanted to do. Or have you forgotten telling me that when you were a month away from graduating law school?”
She stared at him. Color rose in her face, then drained away just as abruptly. She suddenly pushed past him, bolting into the house. He hadn’t taken two steps into the kitchen after her when he could hear the sound of her retching through the thin walls.
He shot Montrose a look. The man was sitting at the table, looking like he wished he were anywhere else. “Suddenly Nell’s your best friend?”
“She doesn’t take advantage of Mrs. Templeton,” he said in his annoyingly pompous way.
Archer raked back his hair. “She doesn’t take advantage of anyone,” he muttered. “Has she been sick like this before?”
Montrose’s lips pursed. Obviously he wasn’t going to say.
Which actually said all that Archer needed to know.
Annoyed with the chef, annoyed with her and most of all annoyed with himself, he went to find her.
She was sitting on the floor of a bathroom smaller than a coat closet, resting her head on her knees. Her curly hair looked darker than ever splayed across her pale shoulders.
He had five sisters. Four of whom had babies.
“Are you pregnant?”
Her head whipped up. Her eyes were like saucers of hot fudge. Glistening. Brown. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He flipped down the lid on the toilet and sat, even though the room really didn’t have enough space for the two of them. But it did mean she didn’t have a lot of room for escape.
“We did get a little carried away that night.” Understatement of the century. It was the only time in his life, except for the first time with her all those years ago, when he hadn’t given a thought to protection.
She tapped her hand on her opposite arm. “I have an implant. The never-fail birth control because you never fail to forget it.”
It took him a minute to identify the sensation inside him, because it should have been relief and it wasn’t.
She’d lowered her head again to rest on her knees and he started to touch her curls, but drew his fingers into a fist instead and pressed it to his thigh.
“That’s good,” he lied. “Would’ve had to marry you.”
She didn’t look at him, but her scoffing sound was more than clear. “You’re not the marrying kind.”
“Maybe not. There’s only one girl who ever made me consider it.”
She finally raised her head. Her face was still pale, but at least it wasn’t ashen the way it had been earlier. Her lashes were lowered, keeping him from seeing her eyes. “What happened?”
He shrugged. “She threw her lot in with someone else. You’re sure you’re not—”
“I’m not. Besides, just because a man is a husband, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s a good father. My own is proof of that.”
“Montrose says you’ve thrown up more than once.”
She finally gave him a look. “Montrose would never.”
“The fact that he didn’t confirm it was confirmation enough.”
She maneuvered herself around until she could push to her feet, but had to use his shoulder as leverage in the confining space. “You shove your career in a cement mixer for a while and see if it doesn’t cause you enough stress to throw up a few times.” She opened the crackled-mirror cabinet above the sink and pulled out a bottle of mouthwash. She swished some in her mouth, spat it out and returned the bottle to its spot. Then without looking at him, she sidled around his legs again and left.
He followed her back into the kitchen, where the dough was now resting inside an oval basket. Montrose was wiping up the flour covering the counter.
“I think I can take it from here,” Nell was telling him as she tugged the cloth from his resistant hand. “Thanks.”
“Once it’s doubled, you punch it down and let it rise again.”
“I know. I remember.” Archer felt as if he was hallucinating when she tucked her arm through the other man’s and maneuvered him out of the kitchen. “I’ll bring you pictures tomorrow to show you the results.”
“Bring the loaf,” Montrose ordered. “I’ve made fresh jam to go with it.”
Then he heard the door shut and a moment later, Nell returned to the kitchen. She picked up the cloth and started scrubbing at the flour still stuck on the faded pink-and-gray countertop.
“He has fresh jam.”
“And I hope it’s something pedestrian like good old strawberry and not weird like caviar basil or God knows what.” She gave a quick shake of her head.
“I wish you’d have told me about Martin,” he said quietly.
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “And let you know how blind I was?” She had one hand braced on the counter as she scrubbed with the other, her springy hair bouncing around her shoulders. It was longer than it had been a few weeks ago.
“Why did you wait so long to report it?”
Her shoulders sagged and she stopped scrubbing. She angled her chin and looked at him.
“Ros.”
She moved to the sink, a set expression on her face. “You’re not the only one who protects her.” She flipped on the water and rinsed her cloth. “For all the good it’ll do if he’s actually censured, too.”
“You don’t know for sure that you will be.”
“I should be.” She threw the cloth down into the sink and it hit with a wet splat.
He settled his hand on her back, right between her too-sharp shoulder blades. He felt her flinch but she didn’t move away. He spread his fingers upward to the base of her neck, where her muscles felt as tight as his, and he turned her toward him into his embrace.
He’d expected resistance. But instead, she actually leaned against him. Her arms slid around his shoulders and she pressed her forehead against his neck. He could feel the sigh she gave throughout her entire body.
He kissed the top of her head. But he didn’t dare do anything more because he’d already proved that he had too little control where she was concerned. “It’s going to be all right. We’ll get through this. One step at a time.”
She didn’t say anything. But her arms tightened around him. “I can’t believe you remembered I wanted a bookstore like my mother’s,” she mumbled against him.
He closed his eyes. “I remember everything.”
Her head moved, but only, it seemed, to burrow deeper against him. “I asked Greer to feed your cat,” she finally said.
He smiled faintly and brushed a kiss against her hair one more time.
* * *
Nell stared at the plastic stick in her hand.
Two lines for positive.
One line for negative.
And there were absolutely two fat, pink lines.
The test she’d done the day before had given the same results.
And the one before that, also the same.
She lifted her arm to glare at the spot where she knew the tiny implant was located. “So much for you.”
She dropped h
er arm and tossed the pregnancy test stick into the trash along with its two twins and eyed her reflection in the crackled mirror over her sink.
Did she look different?
Her face didn’t. As long as nobody paid any attention to her breasts that seemed to have outgrown their usual cup size overnight, her body didn’t look any different, either.
She pressed her hand to her stomach. “Not yet, anyway.”
Her eyes suddenly stung.
It was an annoyance that had been happening with increasing frequency the last few weeks.
She’d gotten teary over the library site being finalized. Over her fifth failed attempt to bake a decent loaf of bread despite Montrose’s tutelage. She’d even cried over the unexpected phone call she’d received from Gardner, who’d called to ask Nell for advice about the best way to protect her boys should something ever happen to her.
Her knees felt as watery as her eyes and she sank down on the closed toilet lid.
How was she going to tell Archer when not even two weeks ago she’d sat in this very bathroom insisting there was no possible way for her to be pregnant?
That’s good. Would’ve had to marry you.
His words echoed inside her head.
As soon as he’d said them—before she’d even given any thought to the possibility that her implant might have become too old to be effective—she’d realized that the only proposal she would ever want from him was one not prompted by a baby in her belly.
She was in love with Archer Templeton.
And she feared she had been for a very, very long time.
Nausea clawed at her and she leaned over the sink, running cold water over the insides of her wrists until it began to subside.
They were supposed to be giving their workshop at the wellness expo that afternoon. He was picking her up because he was coming all the way from Cheyenne anyway after he’d spent the last few days in meetings at the state capitol building.
Considering the frequency of her bouts of nausea, she didn’t know how she was going to make it through the drive to Braden, much less the afternoon-long workshop they’d be conducting, without him noticing.
Lawfully Unwed Page 18
