“You’ve never lost me, Cornelia,” a deep voice said.
Nell’s phone slid from her suddenly nerveless fingers, landing on the bed. She eyed the screen that bore a number that was not Vivian Templeton’s, but instead belonged to the woman’s grandson.
“I thought you were Vivian,” she told Archer when she’d picked up the phone again. She flipped on the lamp because talking to Archer while sitting in the dark just didn’t seem like a thing she ought to do. “What do you want?”
“Still haven’t learned the art of pleasant chitchat, have you?”
A moth dared to enter the room and she swatted the air around it with her legal pad, encouraging it to reconsider. “Archer,” she said warningly.
“How’s it going with the cat?”
The moth flew up to the ceiling and landed there, upside down.
She really hated moths.
“The food is getting eaten by something,” she allowed. “But I’m still not convinced it’s being eaten by your mysterious cat.” She kicked off her tennis shoes and climbed up onto the mattress. It was overly soft and dipped deeply wherever she placed her feet, which meant it was an exercise in balance just to keep from tipping over.
“Tired of driving out there yet?”
She steadied herself with her fingertips against the wall above the fake-wood slab of a headboard and stretched higher with the pad of paper. But the moth was still out of reach. “I’m not tired of anything except your harping about it.” She went up on her toes to try again but missed when the moth flitted a couple of inches farther away.
Nell’s precarious stance wobbled. Her shoulder hit the wall and her breath rushed out of her lungs.
She was pretty sure the moth was taunting her.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Nothing.” When the phone refused to stay tucked between her shoulder and ear, she hit the speaker button and tossed the phone down onto the bed. “I have a moth in my room.”
“At Vivian’s?”
“Just because you talked about all the rooms she has doesn’t mean I’m automatically using one of them.” She gingerly adjusted her stance on the mattress and tossed her notepad toward the moth. She didn’t really want to smash it and leave moth bits clinging to the ceiling. That was as unappealing as having a living one clinging to the ceiling. She just wanted it to decide to go elsewhere.
The pages fluttered and the notepad plummeted downward, knocking into the lampshade and sending it askew. The moth’s wings didn’t move an inch. The chalky thing remained right where it was.
“You found an apartment already? That was fast.”
She gave the moth a baleful look.
The jouncing of the mattress had sent her phone skittering off the side and onto the outdated shag carpet. She hopped off the bed. “I’m at the Cozy Night,” she said a little breathlessly. She moved the phone to the nightstand, ignoring the blue oath her announcement earned.
“Does my grandmother know that?”
Nell wrinkled her nose at the phone as if he were able to see her. “I haven’t hidden it if that’s what you’re implying.”
He swore again, sounding genuinely irritated. “I’m not implying anything. The Cozy Night’s a dive.”
Annoyance bubbled inside her, too. “Just because it’s not up to your lofty standards doesn’t mean there is a single thing wrong with it. It’s clean, affordable and—”
“—and riddled with moths.”
She glared up at the grayish body clinging to the ceiling. “One moth,” she argued, “and they throw themselves against lights in even the finest places.” She yanked her hair out of her eyes, feeling like she wanted to yank it out of her skull. “And how is it that I get drawn into the most ridiculous debates with you?”
“Because you’re lucky?”
“Is there anything else you wanted, Archer? Besides my assurance that I’m feeding your invisible cat, that is.”
“If you only—” He broke off with a sound that she didn’t have a hope of interpreting. “No,” he finally said. “There’s nothing else.”
She picked up the phone, moistened her lips. “Then good night, Archer.” Before she could second-guess herself, she brushed her finger over the screen, ending the call.
And told herself she imagined hearing “for now” in the moment before the phone disconnected.
Chapter Six
“Everything good in Weaver?”
They were sitting in Gage Stanton’s Denver office and Archer looked over at his friend. He was sitting behind his desk, feet propped on the edge as he continued making notes on the Rambling Mountain material that he and Archer had been reviewing all that day.
“No.” He pocketed his phone and plucked a slice of pizza from the box that Gage’s secretary had delivered earlier before she’d left for the day. “But it’s good enough.”
He didn’t like the idea of Nell staying at that cheap motel but he didn’t know how on earth he’d be able to change the situation.
Irritated with himself as much as with her, he sank his teeth into the pizza and tore off the tip. The slice was cold. Colder now than the bottle of beer he’d been nursing for the last hour.
Gage dropped his feet to the floor. He scrubbed his hand down his face and tossed aside his pen. “Why did I think it was a good idea to develop a guest ranch on Rambling Mountain?”
“Because you’re a sucker for a pretty face?”
Gage grunted. “Sucker for a good employee who has defected on me, more like.” He reached for his own slice of cold pizza. “April quit working for me more than a month ago, remember? She’s busy with Jed now planning their wedding. She dumped all that money into this guest ranch business and can’t think about anything else except orange blossoms and wedding dresses.”
Archer figured that was somewhat of an exaggeration.
He knew the wedding planning was well in the works, all right. He’d gotten the invitation from April Reed a few weeks ago with her handwritten note saying that she fully expected him to be there to help her and Jed celebrate.
Or else.
Typical April. If it weren’t for her, Gage would have
