Nell gave Archer a baleful look and turned away from him. She pointed accusingly at Montrose. “You said you’d warn me if he showed up.”
His grandmother’s chef and majordomo, wearing a white apron over his black suit, actually looked abashed.
It was unsettling enough that Archer felt mildly sorry for the way he’d bullied his way past the man when he’d opened the door at the small house where Nell had moved.
It had taken him a few days before he’d even been able to track down her address. It had been easy enough to find out that she’d moved out of the Cozy Night.
Not so easy to locate where she’d gone after that, particularly when his grandmother had abruptly departed for Philadelphia and taken Delia with her. Aside from his cousin promising him that it wasn’t for health reasons and confirming that Nell was still in charge of the library project, he’d gotten no more information from that quarter.
Between Gage needing him to deal with Noah’s latest situation and his caseload in Denver, he’d actually resorted to assigning Jennifer to the task of discovering Nell’s whereabouts.
It shouldn’t have been so hard in a small town like Weaver, but Nell wasn’t exactly known for her talkative nature when it came to her personal business.
The way she’d kept quiet about Martin and the Lambert estate was a perfect example of that.
And now, the fact that Montrose was at Nell’s at all was just one more reason why Archer felt like he’d landed in some alternate universe.
He followed her from the small kitchen where a pile of dough and flour was covering the only counter and out into a small, fenced yard. A rickety-looking picnic table was partially covered with a bag of potting soil and several plastic pots.
Even Nell looked different. She was wearing a sleeveless purple-and-green tie-dyed dress that looked as if it could have come right out of his bohemian stepmother’s closet. The knit fit her as closely as a T-shirt, and when he realized he was focusing a little too hard on the swell of her breasts pushing against the fabric, he finally managed to look elsewhere. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on around here?”
She gave him a thin-lipped stare. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He spread his arms, encompassing the entire alternate universe around them. “You’ve been avoiding me for days and now...all this?”
“I haven’t been avoiding you.” She grabbed a spade and jabbed it into the bag of soil.
He snorted. “What do you call it, then? I’ve been trying to reach you since I heard about the ethics complaint you filed against Martin. And what is Montrose doing here?”
“Teaching me how to make bread,” she said as if it should be obvious. She tossed down the spade in favor of crossing her arms over her chest, which plumped her breasts even more. “The real question is why are you here?”
He rubbed his forehead, trying to rid the feel and taste of those breasts from his memory, and paced around the cluttered table.
The fenced yard wasn’t large. She had room for the rectangular picnic table and benches, a folding lawn chair—the lounge kind—and the stack of books that sat on the grass beside it. On the other side of the small square of grass was an ancient garage. The door was open and her car was parked inside it. “Where else do you think I should be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe with Judge Potts.”
He spread his palms. “Why would I be with her?”
Her expression tightened even more. “You were with her last week.” Her voice was flat. “In Cheyenne when you told me you were in Denver, so you tell me.”
He’d been in Cheyenne to talk to the governor about Noah Locke when he’d gotten a message from Taylor. “The only conversation I’ve had with Taylor Potts has been about you.”
“She was at your house,” Nell said in a flat tone. “I left you a message that I thought someone was there, but that someone was you! The two of you.”
“Yeah, okay, so what?” In his present mood, he’d be damned if he’d tell her what he’d gone to the house to retrieve. Meeting Taylor there, too, so she could fill him in about the ethics case had been expedient. “You saw a conversation?”
“You told me you were in Denver!”
“When I called you that morning, I was in Denver,” he shot back in a clipped tone. It wasn’t often that he lost his temper but he was in danger of it now. He didn’t like being accused of being a liar. “I had to go to Cheyenne because of a client.”
“Right.”
“Don’t act like I’m the one who’s been withholding information. I knew you didn’t leave Pastore Legal because you hadn’t made partner,” he said. “But at first I figured it was your business. Same as whatever the hell caused your falling-out with Ros. Only thing I knew for certain was that Martin had to be at the center of it. He’s the only thing she’d hold inviolate, even above your friendship.”
He circled around her and her flinch as he got nearer added a finely honed edge to the mood that had been building in him for days now.
Ever since she failed to return the first message he’d left for her.
“But after everything I told you about Meredith, after everything that happened in your office at Viv’s the night of her cocktail party—”
Her dark brown eyes darted to his, then she looked away just as quickly. But she looked as wounded as he felt.
“—after everything,” he said through his teeth, “you still didn’t give me one damn hint about Pastore’s collusion. I had to learn it from Taylor. And now—” he spread his arms again “—now, you’re finally out of that godforsaken motel and you come here!”
“Where else would I go?”
Archer was at his wit’s end, and his voice rose, too. “To me!”
Her face went pale. “I don’t understand.”
“And you never have,” he
