Archer wasn’t particularly concerned about the police. But he knew Nell would regret getting caught up in the fray once she was sober. Her fall from the bar hadn’t stopped the other two women from dancing, and a dozen people had begun pounding their fists on the bar in tempo with the drums.
He decided her missing shoes weren’t worth the time it would take to find them and he hitched her up once more around the waist as he headed toward the door. It wasn’t all that easy when she seemed determined to go the other way, but he prevailed, finally pushing through the doorway and getting her out onto the sidewalk, where the police siren was close enough to be deafening. Blue-and-red lights danced over the vehicles parked at the curb.
Including his own truck.
The sound of the siren at least seemed to quell Nell’s efforts to escape and she didn’t fight him when Archer lifted her up into the truck. “If you don’t want to go back to the condo, where do you want to go?” He braced himself to hear Muelhaupt’s name, but she didn’t say anything.
She just shook her head again, looking sad and pale and pathetic.
He didn’t need Nell Brewster tugging at his heartstrings. Those days were supposed to be long gone, too.
“Fine,” he muttered, and yanked the seat belt around her, clicking it into place. There was no point in calling his stepsister on Nell’s behalf. Ros always took her sweet-ass time returning his calls. Which was one of the reasons why he generally went with the in-person route with her, despite the fact that it annoyed her no end. “Hotel it is.”
Nell didn’t react. Her eyes were closed.
When he closed the door, she leaned heavily against it, and her cheek smashed inelegantly against the window.
If he weren’t so concerned, he would have been amused. Would have considered snapping a shot of her on his cell phone just for the pleasure of tormenting her with the image some day off in the future.
But Nell had never been one to tie one on.
She’d always been too uptight for that.
He quickly rounded the truck and sketched a wave at the police officers who were now leaving their vehicle and heading quickly toward The Wet Bar.
“Hey, Arch.” The senior partner—a woman named Donna Rhodes—greeted him with a resigned look. “You coming from in there?”
“Yeah. Probably over occupancy, but nobody’s naked and nobody’s fighting.”
“Yet.” That came from the younger partner—a guy named Marcus Welby. He was so young that Archer couldn’t help but wonder if his parents were aware they’d named him after an iconic television character from decades past. “Place is dull as ditchwater on weekdays but come the weekends?”
The two officers entered the bar as a second patrol car pulled up with its lights also flashing.
Archer didn’t hang around to see what would happen next. He got in the truck and left the scene before it had a chance to actually become a scene.
When he was a couple of blocks away where the sirens weren’t as loud, he pulled over again at the side of the road and nudged Nell’s shoulder with his fingertips. “Hey. You conscious over there?”
Her answer was a resounding snore.
He sat back and exhaled. “Well, hell, Arch. Now what are you going to do?”
Chapter Two
Her mouth tasted like a rabbit had taken up residence inside, and maybe even decided to die there, too. Her eyes felt gritty—too gritty to dare trying to open. Her dry lips matched the dire condition inside her mouth. And her head...oh, the pain in her head was something to behold.
Nell groaned, grimaced and gingerly rolled onto her side. At least the pillow was smooth and wonderfully cool against her cheek as she hugged it close and tried to block out all of the wholly unpleasant sensations involved with waking.
For a brief moment she had a vague thought she might have the flu. But memory surfaced quickly enough. She didn’t have a virus. She wasn’t sick.
She was paying the price for drowning her miseries the night before in a veritable vat of alcohol.
She snuggled her face deeper into the cool, squishy pillow, seeking comfort and escape from the hideous hangover.
How long had it been since she’d suffered even a fraction of this misery? Five years? Ten? There’d been a lot of cocktails at Ros’s thirty-fifth birthday the year before, but—
Ros.
Nell rolled onto her back and sighed, though it came out more like a groan. She and Ros just needed to clear the air. They’d been friends for so long that Nell couldn’t imagine her life without Ros in it. She was the only “family” that Nell even had. Her and Martin.
Her head pounded anew at the thought. He’d been a father figure to her, whether he’d ever intended to be or not. He had certainly been her mentor when it came to the law. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have never even gotten into law school. Instead, she’d probably still be working at a used-book store.
She gingerly rubbed her aching forehead, knuckled her eyes, then after a quick, bracing breath, shoved back the covers and swung her bare feet off the bed.
Instead of feeling the warmth of soft sculptured carpet under her toes, though, she encountered a solid surface. A cold, smooth, solid surface.
Her eyes flew open despite the grittiness and she squinted against the light streaming through the mullioned windows next to the bed.
Her bedroom had carpeted floors. And it definitely did not have mullioned windows.
Horror was congealing inside her stomach and she breathed carefully, very afraid that she was going to be sick.
Where was she?
There wasn’t one single thing about the bedroom that was familiar. Not the floor—a deep brown wood, she saw through her slitted eyes—or the navy blue sheets and pillowcases on the bed. The nightstand next to the wide, wide bed—hers was the same full-size thing she’d owned since college—was also wood. Good, solid, maybe even an antique.
