Lawfully Unwed (Return To The Double C Book 17)

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  She wasn’t going to deny that, either.

  He knew it, too, judging by the soft laugh he gave.

  He waved at the second half of her cheeseburger. “You going to eat that?”

  “Yes.” She covered it protectively with her hand. “So don’t think you’re going to have it.” That’s what he’d always done back in law school, too. Finished whatever food was left alone for a moment. He’d always been ravenous and she’d never quite understood where he put it, since there had never been an ounce of extra weight on his broad-shouldered frame.

  “Just making sure you are,” he said blithely. “You’re very thin.”

  It wasn’t a compliment.

  Tina returned. “Hi, Archer.” She leaned her hip against the counter and smiled in a way that made Nell wonder just how serious the girl and the supposedly jealous boyfriend actually were. “What can I get for you?”

  “Just the coffee.”

  “You sure?” Tina’s cheeks turned a rosy pink despite her bold tone. “I’ve got a lot more to offer.”

  His chuckle was just the right amount of rueful not to cause offense. “One vice at a time, doll.”

  Tina sighed loudly and dramatically. “One of these days you’re going to realize what you’re missing.”

  He lifted his coffee cup. “No doubt.”

  She laughed and went off again to serve her other customers.

  “She’s way too young for you,” Nell muttered from the side of her mouth.

  “Calm your outraged sensibilities.”

  “I’m not outraged,” she retorted. “But I imagine Judge Potts might have something to say about your flirtations.”

  “I doubt that, too.” He folded his arms on the counter and leaned on them as he watched her. “I’m glad things are working out with Vivian.”

  “You could have warned me about her house, you know. It’s a little more than just big.”

  “Ten bedrooms at last count. She’s made some noises lately about adding another wing.”

  Nell nearly choked on her coffee. “For what?”

  “Who knows?” His green eyes stayed focused on her face in a way that felt intensely intimate. “Vivian knows her own mind. I’ve seen what she can do with her money for others. I say if she wants to build another wing for herself, it’s her business.”

  “Maybe it’s a wing for Montrose.”

  Archer laughed outright. “He’s a trip, isn’t he?”

  Nell couldn’t keep from smiling, too. “That’s one word for it.”

  “He’s devoted to Vivian, though. And she to him, I’d have to say.”

  Nell lifted her eyebrows. “Are they—”

  “God no,” he said immediately, grimacing at the thought. “That’s an idea that makes me want to wash out my brain. I take it she hasn’t mentioned ‘dear Arthur—’” he air-quoted the words “—to you, yet?”

  She shook her head.

  “He was her final husband and according to her, the most decent man to ever exist. And he was the greatest love of her life. Most of those good things she’s done with her money since she’s transplanted herself here have been because of the late, dear Arthur.”

  “How long ago did he die?”

  “Quite a few years now. None of us ever met him. But he’s a presence in Vivian’s life regardless of how long he’s been gone. She’s still trying to live up to his standard.”

  “I don’t know if that’s romantic or sad.”

  Archer shifted and his arm brushed hers again.

  Then she realized he’d pulled out his wallet and the cash he extracted and set on the counter was far too much for just a coffee.

  She bristled. “I can afford to buy my own lunch.”

  “Actually, it’s for the cat food.”

  “What?”

  “The cat.” He pushed the stack of bills closer to her. “Food,” he repeated as if she were thick.

  “We’re back to that again?”

  “He doesn’t have a name. But he keeps coming around to eat and I’m going to be gone for the next several weeks on a case. Wouldn’t want him to starve.”

  She didn’t touch the money. “Why is it up to me to get him fed? You spend a lot of time in Cheyenne and Denver. More time than here, probably. What do you do then? Surely you have someone else who—”

  “You just said it yourself. You owe me. And I know you like cats because you told me so a long time ago.”

  She remembered the conversation very clearly. Because it had been the same day she’d ended up in his bed.

  Not a guest room bed, either.

  She shifted, trying to squelch the memory of bells ringing. Cymbals crashing. “My last experience taking care of a cat was more than twenty years ago.” The cat she’d told him about. The one who had been her mother’s. The one who’d disappeared after she died.

  Only later, after her father had sold the bookstore, did Nell suspect the cat’s exit had been his doing, too.

  “It’s not complicated,” Archer said drily, completely ignoring her discouraging tone. “You pour some kibble in the bowl and the cat comes around and eats it.”

  “Don’t you live out toward Braden?” She distinctly remembered Ros mentioning it once. She’d been highly annoyed because she’d needed to see him about something and it had necessitated the long drive.

  “Yep.” He tipped the coffeepot over his mug again, getting the very last few drops.

  “I am not going to use your guesthouse,” she warned adamantly. “If that’s what you’ve got brewing in your mind.” There was absolutely no logic to that offer, if he’d even been serious about it in the first place. She wouldn’t be beholden to him, and he knew it.

  “It’s going to be a pain driving out there just to feed a cat, but that’s up to you.” He honestly sounded as if he didn’t care.

  She exhaled, impatient with herself for even allowing herself to get sucked into this. “There’s really a cat?”

  He gave her an innocent look that she didn’t buy for a second. “Would I lie?”

  Chapter Five

  Nell eyed the empty pet food bowl.

  She’d filled it with dry cat food the afternoon before, set it on top of the stone pillar where Archer had told her to set it, and now it was empty.

  She looked at the pillar. It was about a foot across and at least six feet high. Taller than she was. Not so tall that a cat wouldn’t be able to get up to it, though.

  It was part of a gate marking the entrance to Archer’s property. Archer said he never bothered to close the gate. He didn’t keep any livestock on his ten acres of land. He just liked having the space around the house.

  The house that Nell had chosen not to drive to. She didn’t need to see it up close.

  It was bad enough to know that the land where it was located was positively majestic in a stark sort of way. Scrubby brush grew in pale grayish-green shoots and sprigs of wildflowers clung around the bases of the boulders that dotted the relatively flat landscape.

  It looked like a home for dinosaurs and snakes. Not for a stray cat.

  Did birds eat cat food?

  It seemed like a more plausible reason for the empty bowl.

  Still feeling like she was playing in some silly game with Archer, she poured more food into the metal bowl and returned it to the top of the pillar.

  It was her second day of working for Archer’s grandmother. And her second day of driving nearly twenty miles out of town to feed his cat that may or may not actually exist.

  She was an idiot. That’s what she was.

  She twisted the top of the cat food bag closed and returned it to the back seat of her car, then got behind the wheel and drove to Weaver. Twenty miles in a metropolitan area wasn’t much of a big deal. Twenty miles on the very winding road running between Weaver and Braden, on t
he other hand, took a long time.

  When she reached the Cozy Night motel, where she’d been renting a room since Sunday night, it was nearly dark.

  Inside the room, though, the lamp worked just fine. She dropped her purse on the nightstand between the two beds—one which was covered entirely with suitcases containing all of the clothes that she hadn’t left in the storage unit in Cheyenne—and kicked off her shoes. It was warm and stuffy in the room after being closed up all day and after she changed out of her suit into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, she opened the door again to let the air circulate.

  It would cool off soon enough and she preferred fresh air rather than the rattling noise and forced chill provided by the air-conditioning unit that was located beneath the room’s only window.

  The Cozy Night wasn’t fancy. But it was clean and it was affordable, even if she ended up having to stay there for a month. Which was how things were looking when it came to finding an actual rental.

  The two listings on the board at Ruby’s Diner hadn’t panned out. Both had already been rented when she called. There were two apartment complexes on the other side of town, but they were both nearly full. The units available were either too large—and astonishingly, too expensive—or they weren’t coming available until next month.

  Nell still didn’t believe she’d have difficulty finding a place to live. Not in Weaver. But if she had to, she could continue staying at the Cozy Night for a while. It wasn’t perfect. With only a dorm-sized refrigerator and a hot plate, it wasn’t exactly equipped with kitchen facilities.

  But then again, she hadn’t exactly cooked back in Cheyenne, either.

  She extracted a bottle of juice from the refrigerator and carried it with her outside the room.

  There was an old-fashioned metal chair that had obviously been painted over a number of times—it was currently a not-unattractive shade of salmon—sitting outside the door of each room. Twenty-two chairs, stretching from one wing to the other. Depending on a person’s viewpoint, it looked either stylishly retro, or completely out of date.

  She sat in her chair with her legs outstretched and debated whether she could satisfy herself with a can of soup heated on the hot plate or if she needed to go farther afield. But having spent more than an hour driving back and forth to feed a possibly nonexistent cat with no name, going out again held little appeal.

  “Can of soup it is,” she murmured to herself.

  But later.

  For now, she relaxed in her chair—the metal bounced slightly if she shifted, sort of like a rocker—and sipped her juice.

  The motel was situated on top of a small rise on the road before it dipped down again toward what she’d termed “Old Weaver.”

  “New Weaver” was the Shop-World region. Cee-Vid was located in New Weaver. It was a large gaming company owned by one of Weaver’s longtime residents, Tristan Clay. She’d learned that from Vivian’s nemesis, Squire, who had indeed been sitting on that same stool in Ruby’s Diner that very afternoon. Tristan was Squire’s youngest son. He’d also told her about his other four sons, who all lived in the area, too.

  She’d run into the diner to grab a quick sandwich between errands for Vivian and he’d waved her over, patting the seat beside him.

  There was something decidedly engaging about the old man, even though he was one of the roadblocks in the way of Vivian’s library project. Something engaging but also something that struck Nell as a little sad. Maybe the fact that he talked about all of those sons, but still spent every afternoon having lunch in a diner?

  But what could a person learn about another person over a half hour? Considering her debacle with Martin, she was having a hard time trusting her own sense of judgment.

  From her salmon-colored perch, Nell watched lights begin to flicker. There were a lot more clustered together on the New Weaver side. The population of residents on that side of town was denser. Younger. They were the employees at Cee-Vid. At Shop-World. At the dozens of other small businesses that inevitably cropped up in everyday towns to support the growing needs of those citizens as they settled. Got married. Bought houses and had babies.

  An old, rusting car turned into the motel parking lot. Its headlights washed over Nell before it came to a stop in front of the unit next to hers. Even before the engine cut out, the back doors opened and three ginger-haired kids tumbled out.

  They spotted her and waved, but their steps didn’t really slow as they raced around the car toward the small, fenced swimming pool that the Cozy Night offered its guests.

  George, Blake and Vince.

  She’d met the boys on Sunday when their mom, Gardner, who was obviously an avid country music fan, had ordered them to help their new “neighbor” carry her suitcases in from her car.

  Gardner and her boys had been living at the Cozy Night for most of the summer now. Which was one of the reasons why Nell figured she could hack it for a while there, too, if it came to that.

  “Need any help?” she called to the young mother as she opened her trunk.

  Gardner shook her head. “I don’t have much, Nell. Thanks, though.” She ducked momentarily below the opened trunk, then straightened and slammed it shut. When she rounded the vehicle, she was carrying a single paper bag bulging with groceries. In addition to the dorm-sized fridge, Gardner’s unit next door possessed a double-sided hot plate and a microwave. “How’d your day go?” she asked as she unlocked the door of the unit next to Nell’s.

  “Good. Yours?” Gardner was a hairdresser by trade but was currently making her motel rent by working at an ice cream shop in New Weaver.

  The other woman hadn’t explained more than that when they’d met on Sunday. And Nell hadn’t explained any more about her own situation.

  “Not bad,” Gardner said as she pushed open the door to her room. “This heat has a lot of people in the mood for ice cream, so that’s the good thing. I’ll be out in a second. Want a cold drink?”

  Nell lifted her juice. “I’m fine. Thanks.”

  The other woman disappeared and emerged a few minutes later. She’d exchanged her “Udder Huddle” T-shirt and jeans for a plain blue one-piece swimsuit. She had a striped towel draped around her neck, but instead of following her boys to the pool, she threw herself down into her own salmon-colored chair and popped the top on a can of soda.

  From the pool area, they could hear the whoops and splashes from the boys.

  Gardner exhaled and stretched out her legs far enough that she could prop the toe of her sandal on the bumper of the car, right next to the worn-looking Ohio license plate. “Good thing they were wearing their swimsuits under their jeans today.” She sent Nell a humorous look. “I hope they remembered to leave them on when they were tearing off their clothes before jumping in. At one place we stayed earlier this summer, they didn’t.” Her lips twitched. “Needless to say, we were quickly asked to move along.”

  Nell chuckled. Aside from being noisy, she thought the boys seemed pretty well-behaved.

  “You should put on a suit and head over there with us,” Gardner encouraged. “I bought hot dogs. Thought I’d toss them on that grill that’s next to the pool. The boys’ll be starving despite the food they get at their summer camp.”

  Nell’s stomach rumbled right on cue. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”

  Gardner looked vaguely scandalized. “That doesn’t matter,” she said quickly. “I saw Mrs. Goldberg—over there from number eleven?” She pointed with her soda can toward the other wing of the motel. “She was in the pool last week wearing a pair of bright green leggings and a matching long-sleeved T-shirt.” She grinned. “She looked like an amphibian with white hair, but what the heck.”

  Nell laughed. It was hard to resist Gardner’s contagious smile. “Maybe.”

  An outraged yell sounded from the pool area, followed by a squeal and a whole lot of splashing. Gardner stood. “Sounds
like refereeing is required.” She adjusted her towel over her shoulder and jogged off, her sandals flapping noisily. A few moments later, her raised voice joined those of her sons. “George, how many times have I told you not to pick on Vince?”

  Nell let the noise wash over her.

  She was thirty-six now. She had no prospects for a relationship, much less one with daddy potential.

  But if she didn’t start thinking about these things now, when would she?

  When it was too late altogether?

  Nell and Ros had both gotten birth control implants in their arms several years ago. But even Ros—who was more committed to her career than anyone—was evidently thinking about having a baby. Was she hearing the tick-tock of a biological clock that before neither she nor Nell had believed actually existed?

  Was Nell hearing her own clock?

  The yelling over at the pool increased in volume and intensity. Nell heard Gardner shout, “Out. Right this minute. All of you!”

  Two minutes later, the sopping-wet lot of them were trooping back across the parking lot. Gardner’s beach towel was soaking, too. “Rain check on the hot dogs,” she said before she ordered her boys to march their rear ends into the room. The door slammed shut after them, not entirely cutting off their noisy arguments.

  Nell looked out over the lights of Weaver again.

  Maybe her clock wasn’t ticking as loudly as she feared.

  The lights lining Main Street had almost all come on now. She followed the glimmering line from New Weaver to old. Then she continued down the line as it dimmed again and disappeared with only an occasional headlight to mark the road’s whereabouts. Farther still was where Vivian’s mansion was located. And beyond that, the shadowy peaks of Rambling Mountain, where a man named Otis Lambert had lived in a ramshackle cabin on a barely functioning ranch for a considerably long life.

  Nell had never met Otis. Everything she knew about the apparently miserly old man she’d learned after his death.

  Regardless of what had happened with her career, she was glad that the old man’s will had surfaced. Glad that his wishes to donate most of his mountain—either to the state of Wyoming if they’d have it or the town of Weaver if not—would have a chance to be honored. The part of the mountain not being donated, the cattle ranch called the Rambling Rad, had been sold to a Colorado developer—Gage Stanton, with whom Archer had worked for years now. The money from the sale of the Rambling Rad went to the man who’d run the ranch and cared for Otis in his last few years of life. Jed Dalloway had continued taking care of the Rad after Otis died and while the probate had been in Martin’s hands, she’d had a few occasions to meet the man. She’d been impressed with his integrity.