Nell had noticeable hair, too. But until lately—until she’d left Cheyenne, in fact—the last time Archer had seen any kind of real happiness in her spirit had been when she was in law school. When, if she weren’t studying, she’d been working in a dinky off-campus bookstore that she said reminded her of the one her mother had owned.
They’d finally reached the street where his truck was parked and he set the wrenches in the back seat. She’d already climbed in before he could open her door and he sighed a little inside.
Carter Templeton had raised his kids with some hard-and-fast rules.
One: you returned anything you borrowed, especially tools and money.
Two: men took off their hats indoors and held both chairs and doors for women, regardless of whether they were two or two hundred.
Three: you protected others. The people you cared about. The people who couldn’t protect themselves. Even the people who didn’t realize they needed protecting.
He got behind the wheel and drove across town to his parents’ house. Nell was quiet, seemingly lost in her thoughts.
“You don’t mind stopping at my folks’ house, do you?”
“What?” She gave him a surprised look. “Of course not. I haven’t seen Meredith in—” She was shaking her head. “I don’t know. Too long to remember.” She was silent while he drove through an intersection. “Braden’s grown a lot since I was here with Ros.”
“Lot of time has passed since then. Lot of changes. Fortunately, whatever Braden doesn’t have, Weaver does, and vice versa. Folks around here may not have everything they want, but they pretty much have everything they need.”
“Except a sufficiently large library.”
He smiled slightly. “Except that.” They passed a large darkened building with boarded windows. “And that.” He jabbed his thumb at the window. “Movie theater. Closed at least a year ago.”
“Free access to a public library is more important than commercial access to a movie house.”
“Tell that to the people spending fortunes making movies.” He turned a corner. “And people around this area who have to drive to Gillette or Sheridan just to see a movie in a real theater. Would be like someone in Cheyenne having to go to Denver.”
She peered out the side window. “Is that building still your uncle’s pediatrics office?”
“I’m surprised you remember.”
She rubbed her arm. “He had to give me a tetanus shot that summer when I cut my foot—”
“—climbing the fence at the schoolyard with Ros. I remember.”
“That leaves us both surprised, then.” Her voice was light.
His, not so much. “I remember a lot of things, Nell.”
He felt her gaze, but she didn’t say anything.
And then he was pulling up in front of his parents’ house. He parked and got out, retrieving the set of wrenches from the back seat. Nell was still sitting with her door closed and he pulled it open. The interior light came on, shining over the top of her dark head like some sort of halo. “Come on.”
“It’s late,” she started to protest. “I shouldn’t—”
“—avoid Meredith and let her find out about it,” he said over her words. He reached in, and ignoring the consternation on her face, unsnapped her safety belt. He gestured. “Come on.”
Nell’s waist tingled where his arm had grazed it and she briefly debated whether it was worth taking him to task for undoing her belt without asking.
It wasn’t.
When it came to debates with Archer, she rarely won. She finally huffed, swinging her legs around so she could slide out of the truck. She couldn’t explain the reluctance she felt accompanying him inside his childhood home. “You could at least warn them.”
“We don’t need warnings in my family.”
“I’m not your family.”
“No matter what’s going on between the two of you lately, you might as well be Ros’s family, so that counts, too.”
Maybe that was the problem. Seeing Meredith Templeton would bring home all over again the pain Nell felt where Ros was concerned. “You wouldn’t say that about Martin.”
“That’s because he gives cockroaches a bad name.” Archer took her arm and tugged her up the walkway toward the house. It was the same one she’d visited all those years ago.
Just a normal house. Not overly large. Not overly small. The kind of house that was comfortable and filled with family members who squabbled and laughed and always, always loved. Being here that summer after her mother had died had been a balm for Nell’s aching soul.
And she couldn’t believe how choked up she felt as he reached the front door and walked right in with only a loud knock and a “hello,” to announce their arrival. The hand he’d kept on her arm now caught her hand, brooking no argument as he pulled her inside the house. “I brought a guest,” he said as he walked across the foyer.
“In the kitchen!” a bright, feminine voice answered, and a moment later, a familiar face popped around a doorway.
Meredith Templeton’s eyes widened at the sight of Nell and her smile widened even more as she hurried toward them, bringing with her the scent of lavender and patchouli and the faint jingle of bells from the bracelet she wore around one ankle. “Nell! Well my goodness, what a delightful surprise.”
Nell caught the way Meredith looked beyond her, as if she hoped to see someone else—namely her eldest daughter—accompanying them.
If Meredith was disappointed that she didn’t, she hid it well as she lifted her cheek toward Archer’s kiss. “I didn’t even know you were back from Denver!”
“A few days now.”
“You make it so difficult to keep up with you. If it weren’t for the calendar Jennifer sends me, I’d never know where to find you.” She lightly swatted his shoulder and turned in a brightly colored swirl of flowing fabric. She stretched out her arms. “Honey, what a
