She swallowed, looking down at the toes of her shoes. A dim portion of her mind acknowledged that they really were sort of unflattering.
The rest of her was humming along with the internal tune of jangling bells.
“Anyway,” he continued, “none of us even knew Vivian existed until she showed up here out of the blue one day. She’d buried another husband—”
“Dear Arthur.”
He nodded. “Dear Arthur. And she said she wanted to make things right. At first, Hayley was the only one who’d have anything to do with her.” He shrugged. “Stands to reason, I suppose, my sister being a psychologist and all.”
Nell knew that Ros had always been less antagonistic with Hayley than she was with Archer, but then Hayley didn’t go out of her way to antagonize their stepsister the way Archer did.
“Vivian even lived with Hayley for a while,” Archer continued. “She’s a good family therapist, but not even she was good enough to heal the rift between Vivian and my dad and uncle.”
“Things got better, though. Right? Vivian talks about you and your sisters and cousins all the time.”
“It got better with us grandchildren,” he allowed. “My dad and Uncle David tolerate her because the rest of us have said they have to. But I doubt they’ll ever be able to really let go of the past. Some things run too deep for healing.”
“Seems sad to me. Your dad and uncle are missing out on knowing the person she is now.”
“It’s just the way it is. What would you do if your father suddenly turned up after all these years? If he offered an apology for the way he bailed on you and wanted everything to be hunky-dory again?”
The question hit her hard and she winced a little.
“Sorry.”
“No.” She turned to face him and the grill, though her thoughts were suddenly in the past. “It’s a fair enough comparison.” She chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment. “I’d be hard-pressed to accept it,” she admitted eventually.
“There you go,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to bust my dad’s or my uncle’s chops for feeling the way they do. Their relationship with Vivian is different than mine or my sisters’ or my cousins’.”
She angled her head, studying him for a moment. “You’re pretty nonjudgmental for a lawyer. Maybe you should be a judge.”
He chuckled. “No thank you. Too much politics to deal with for my taste.”
“Yet you’re dating Judge Potts.” Her stomach churned a little.
“I date lots of women besides Taylor,” he countered mildly.
“You’re not getting any younger—”
“Flattery. Nice.”
“—don’t you ever think about getting married?” As nettling as she found her own curiosity, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “Settling down and doing the fruitful-and-multiplying thing yourself?”
“Despite the setups Meredith keeps trying to throw my way, maybe I’m not the settling kind, either.”
She felt oddly tense. “You think I’m not the settling kind?”
“Are you?” His gaze slid over her face. “How many men have you ever let get under your defenses? And don’t say Muelhaupt,” he added abruptly. “He’s a mouse compared to you.”
She made a face. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He had the nerve to laugh. “Do you even know how impressively intimidating you are?”
She felt her eyebrows climb up to the middle of her scalp. “Intimidating! If I were the least bit intimidating why am I the one who has gotten herself basically banished from Cheyenne for daring to speak the truth?”
Her impetuous words rang out to be quickly absorbed into the night air. But not quickly enough.
And there was nowhere to escape the intensively close look he was giving her. “What truth is that, Cornelia?”
Her mouth ran dry. She opened her lips to say something, but her words failed her.
Telling him what Martin had done would only prove how gullible she’d been. And if she started getting pity from Archer Templeton, she wasn’t sure she could stand it.
The sudden flare of fire that streamed into the air from the grill broke the spell and she swallowed, ridiculously relieved when he turned back to the food.
“Get me a couple plates from inside, would you?”
She quickly went inside, grateful for the opportunity to flee even if momentarily. In the seconds it took her to get two more plates and take them out to him, she’d scrabbled together a minimum of composure and he’d conquered the spitting fire.
She held the plates while he transferred the enormous steak to one and the vegetables to the other and then carried them inside while he shut down the grill.
When he found her still standing—hovering—at the table when he came in too, he frowned slightly as he pushed the kitchen door closed.
She almost wished she were somewhere else. “I wasn’t sure which spot was yours,” she said.
His expression lightened then. “They’re all the same, sweetheart.” He pulled out the chair closest to him and gestured for her to sit.
She slipped into the seat, but he didn’t immediately join her at the table. Instead, he walked out of the room and returned a few moments later with a bottle of wine that he’d already uncorked.
He unceremoniously plunked a clean, stemless glass in front of her and splashed a generous measure of red wine into it. Then he repeated the process for himself and finally took the other chair.
He lifted the glass. “What should we toast to?”
She circled her fingers lightly around her own glass. “Do we have to toast to anything? We could just give it a pass.”
“How long has it been since you
