She read through it once, highlighting the key elements with her marker. When she was done, almost the entire sheet was yellow.
“You always did have a heavy hand with the highlighters.”
Nell stared up stupidly at Archer, who’d appeared seemingly out of nowhere to stand beside her table. She frowned at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be cat-sitting somewhere?”
His eyes crinkled slightly and he dragged a chair from the adjacent side of the table and straddled it right there next to Nell. “What’re you working on?”
She would have liked to produce some reason not to tell him, but there wasn’t one. Not a good one, anyway. “Swift Oil annually awards a couple major grants. This year they’re both focused on education. I figure the library fits the bill.”
“That explains this.” He lifted the edge of the mostly yellow page. “But it doesn’t explain why you’re doing it here.” He made a point of swiveling his head around at the stacks surrounding them.
“Three boys in the motel room next to me who like playing video games. Very noisy video games.”
“Ah. Now I see.” He reached across her to pick up the first page of the grant instructions and his arm brushed against hers.
She wanted to gnash her teeth.
She hadn’t succeeded that day with Squire Clay.
She’d failed to find a dress at Classic Charms, because when she’d gone by, the small store had been closed for the day.
And now, when she needed to be entirely focused on the grant-writing task at hand, all she was able to focus on was him.
She had only a couple of hours before the library closed, and she needed to make the most of them. Midnight was going to arrive in five hours whether she was prepared or not.
Doing her best to ignore Archer, she pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and clicked her pen a few times. She pondered for a while, then wrote out her first sentence, which was simple and straightforward.
Weaver needs a new library.
She scratched it out, tossed down her pen and gave him an annoyed look. “What are you doing here?”
“Lawyers need libraries like flowers need rain.”
She rolled her eyes. “You have a more than adequate library in your own house. You showed it to me last night.”
He smiled slightly and brushed a lock of her hair away from her cheek. “Caught me. I was over at the sheriff’s department. Saw your car parked here when I was leaving.”
“So?”
“So, I thought I’d see how things were coming along.”
“Nothing’s changed since the last time you saw me. I haven’t managed to raise the rest of the money we need.”
He looked amused. “That would have been quite the accomplishment if you had. Vivian would feel compelled to give you a raise in pay.”
“I also haven’t gotten Squire Clay to agree to attend Vivian’s cocktail party tomorrow. He’s the last holdout on the council.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not surprising, either. Lot of murky water under that particular bridge.”
She raised her eyebrows, waiting, but he didn’t elaborate. Instead, he angled his head as he read through the second page of grant instructions.
If she didn’t get to it, not only would the library close right around her ears, but she’d end up missing the deadline.
She picked up her pen again. “Weaver needs a new library,” she wrote again.
She scratched out the second, identical line, which had only served to prove how singularly unimaginative she was.
Archer’s fingers brushed hers as he slid the pen from her hand. “I’ll help.”
She stared. But then reason intruded. Of course he’d help. It wasn’t Nell herself who’d prompted his offer. The library project was spearheaded by his grandmother.
And it wasn’t smart to look a gift horse in the mouth whether or not her self-protective instincts urged her to keep him at arm’s length. “Do you know anything about writing a grant proposal?”
“No. But I know Lincoln Swift at Swift Oil.” He gave her a quick grin as he tossed aside her pen and crumpled her carefully highlighted pages into a ball. He nudged her chin when she opened her mouth in protest. “Don’t say anything you’ll live to regret.”
“But—”
“My sister Maddie is married to him.”
She blinked. And then she closed her mouth and quickly began stuffing all of her materials right back into the binder.
Chapter Nine
“Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support.”
Archer watched Nell pump Linc’s hand and hid a smile. The only times he’d ever seen his imperturbable brother-in-law perturbed had been when he’d been caring for his little niece Layla a few years ago when she’d been abandoned on his doorstep, when Maddie had been in labor with their own son, Liam, and now, in the face of Nell’s fervent appreciation.
“I’m glad to help,” Linc was saying. He managed to extract his hand from Nell’s. “I wish I could just tell you that Vivian’s project could receive Swift Oil’s grant, but I’m married to one of her granddaughters. That automatically excludes her project from consideration. But that doesn’t have to stop me from putting the screws to my business associates who aren’t related to her. They can dig deeper into their pockets, too.”
They were at the stately house located squarely in the middle of Braden where Linc and Maddie lived. Only Maddie—who was a social worker with family services—had been called out on some emergency, which left Linc alone on Liam duty.
“Any and all support is really appreciated.” Nell was beaming at Linc and it spilled over into the glance she gave Archer.
