It would be typical Archer behavior.
She followed him up the steps to the wood deck lining the front three sides of the house, past a fancy gas grill that put the little charcoal thing next to the pool at the Cozy Night to shame, and through a door that opened into his kitchen.
It was hard not to gape a little, because it looked like a kitchen that actually got used. A lot.
Not because it was messy, though there were a few dishes stacked in the sink, but because the pots hanging from a rack over the stove looked slightly worn. Well used. Because there was a jug of utensils—mismatched ones—sitting next to the gas stove. The ones tucked inside a fancy stone container that had sat next to the stove in the condo she’d shared with Ros had all been carefully matched and had stayed that way for the simple reason they’d never been used.
A rustic loaf of bread sat on a scarred cutting board and the coffeepot—the real kind, not one of the fancy pod deals that she was used to—sat on a cast-iron stove grate.
There was a farmhouse sink, a doublewide stainless steel refrigerator and a sturdy wood table in the middle of the room. The counters were butcher block, the floors were slate, and the colorful modern painting hanging on one wall was probably an original.
She peered at the slanted signature in one corner below the swirl of squiggles covering the canvas. Soliere.
She’d never heard of the artist. But that didn’t mean anything. She’d never bothered with art studies. She’d been more interested in passing the bar exam.
Feeling bemused, she set her car keys on the table. “This is, ah—”
He waited, eyebrows raised, and she felt her cheeks flush. “Is...what?”
“Nice,” she finished a little helplessly.
His lips twitched. “Meredith would thank you.”
Meredith. His stepmother. Ros’s mother.
For some reason, it relieved Nell to know he’d had help with the kitchen. As if he, too, might share some of her kitchen incompetence.
“How is Meredith?” She’d first met Ros’s mother when she’d been a teenager. But the last time she’d seen her had been at least a few years ago.
“Happily wallowing in grandparenthood.” His tone was dry. “Every one of my sisters is diligently practicing the ‘be fruitful and multiply’ thing these days. Well, except for Rosalind.”
“Wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Nell murmured.
He gave her a quick look. “Ros is pregnant?”
“No.” Then she shook herself. “Not that I know of, anyway.” It hurt to think that as things stood now with Archer’s sister, Nell would be the last one with whom Ros would share that sort of news. “She mentioned that her boyfriend was interested in starting a family. That’s all.”
Archer looked thoughtful for a moment. Then his eyes glinted as he rested his hand on the refrigerator door. “Interest you in something to drink?” He waited a beat. “Champagne?”
She gave him a look. She needed no reminder that her last interlude with champagne had landed her in his guest room. “Water is fine,” she overenunciated. And had a flash of Montrose’s face in her mind as a result.
Archer’s smile twitched and he reached into a cupboard instead of the fridge. He filled the glass he pulled out with water from the tap and set it on the table next to her car keys. “There is something else I need to break to you, though.” His voice turned serious.
Unease crept through her. Something worse than his grandmother’s brain tumor? “What?” Caution practically dripped from her voice.
“I only have the one steak.”
Her shoulders sagged as unease trickled away. “You are—” she jabbed her finger into his shoulder “—impossible.”
“It’s a big one, though,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “One of those cowboy cuts.”
She didn’t know a cowboy cut from a finger cut. But she did know that her stomach was growling.
She rubbed her palms down the sides of her skirt. It had already been so late when she’d gotten away from Vivian’s that she hadn’t wanted to take the time to change before driving out here to feed the cat. “Is there somewhere I can wash up?”
He looked like he wanted to start laughing again. “Worried I don’t have indoor plumbing?”
“If you don’t stop laughing at me, you can start worrying what I might do to you if I get my hands on one of those pots hanging behind you.”
“I don’t laugh at you, Cornelia. I laugh with you.”
She gave him a deadpan stare. “Am I laughing? I wasn’t aware.”
He chuckled and gestured over his shoulder toward a darkened doorway. “Second door on the left.”
She went through the doorway and startled when a softly golden light automatically went on.
A farmhouse with tech.
Trust Archer Templeton to have it.
She found the bathroom and washed up, staring at her reflection in the oval mirror hanging above the pedestal sink. He obviously had a predilection for them. She didn’t care how many pedestal sinks he had in however many bathrooms.
She just needed to remember she shouldn’t have a predilection for him.
She returned to his kitchen, resolutely keeping her curiosity about the rest of his house under control. He was standing at the butcher-block counter wielding a knife, and for a moment she watched the play of muscles beneath his shirt.
She moistened her lips, hovering there, feeling warm inside. Why, why did he have to be the one to ring those bells?
“Don’t just stand there,” he said without looking around at her. “Salad makings are in the fridge. Tomatoes are on the counter in a bowl. In case you don’t recognize them, they’re the round, shiny red things.”
She flushed and yanked open the refrigerator door. Her idea of preparing a salad was to tear open a bag of the premade stuff.
There wasn’t any such animal in his fridge, though.
She pulled out a bunch of romaine from the crisper drawer and carried it over to the counter near where he was working. She had seen a cooking show a time or two. Or at least had flipped past a cooking channel on the hunt for something more interesting. She could fake it.
She peeled off the rubber band keeping the lettuce leaves contained and hesitated.
Archer stopped chopping and set a large, holey bowl on the counter next to her. He began chopping again.
Garlic. That she knew simply because of the penetrating aroma. And he already had a neat stack of thinly sliced onions.
She slid her gaze back to her own task at hand and separated one leaf from the rest of its pack. She was as unsuccessful at blocking him out of her peripheral vision as she was blocking out how enticingly companionable it felt to be standing there with him.
She focused even more attention on the lettuce, methodically tearing the leaf into bite-size pieces that she dropped in the bowl. She repeated the process with a couple of more crispy leaves and was feeling quite proud of the precisely sized results. Then she finally ran the bowl under the faucet and shook it as dry as she could get it.
In the same amount of time that she’d taken to tear up a few lettuce leaves, however, Archer had filled his cutting board with a huge mound of chopped vegetables.
His eyes crinkled with amusement when he caught her comparing her small pile with his. “Size doesn’t matter.”
She managed to keep her response contained to a bored, raised eyebrow. “That’s what all men say.”
He gave a soundless laugh and swiped half of his cutting board bounty into another bowl. He dropped a pair of salad tongs on top and handed it to her, then carried the cutting board and the rest of its contents, along with the enormous steak, out of the kitchen.
She pressed her tongue against her teeth and eyed the painting on the wall. The squiggly lines racing around the canvas might as well have bee
n the pattern of her crazy heartbeat.
Afraid he’d come back in and find her standing there like that, she hastily dumped her lettuce pieces in with the rest of the veggies and flipped it all around a few times with the tongs.
It was the only kind of salad she really liked. One that was less green stuff and more chunky vegetables. He’d even sliced the kernels off a fresh cob of corn.
The man had probably never poured prepared salad out of a bag in his life.
She set the salad bowl in the center of the table and then poked around the kitchen enough to find a couple of plates and flatware.
She set them out on the table and then, with no other reason to keep hiding in the kitchen, followed him outside.
He was standing in front of the grill. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows and his shirttails were hanging loose over his jeans.
She had a mad desire to slide her hand beneath the shirttail and run her palm up the length of his spine. To discover if his skin still felt as warm and supple where it stretched over sinewy muscle as she remembered.
She lifted her glass so fast to take a drink that she managed to spill water down her chin and the front of her blouse in the process.
“Having a problem there?”
She wanted to sink through the deck and the Wyoming earth beneath.
She swiped her chin and set the glass on the wide beam of wood at the top of the deck railing. The steak was sizzling on one side of the grill, sending up a delicious aroma that had her mouth watering. At least she hoped it was the primary reason behind that particular reaction.
Yes, Archer was insanely attractive. Always had been. But she flatly refused to believe he could actually make her mouth water.
“Want a taste?”
He was holding up a chunk of red bell pepper with grill marks on it and before she could even offer a yay or nay, he’d slid it past her surprised lips.
It was deliciously charred and terribly hot. She chewed quickly, gingerly, chasing it with the rest of the water in her glass. “Give a girl some warning,” she managed when she finally swallowed. But then she ruined her protest by stepping closer to him and the grill. “Can I have another one?”
On the other half of the grill, he’d dumped the vegetables atop a thick piece of foil and was slowly turning them with the tines of a long-handled fork. He jabbed another chunk of pepper and handed it to her.
She carefully took it from the fork, holding it between her fingertips. While she waited for the morsel to cool a bit, she studied him from beneath her lashes. “When did Vivian discover she had a tumor?”
“Before she moved to Weaver,” he answered immediately. “I think it’s what prompted her to come to Wyoming. Feeling her mortality. Wanting to set things right between her and my father and uncle.”
Because of the summer after her mom died when she’d accompanied Ros on her forced visitation with Meredith, Nell knew enough about his family to remember that his father, Carter, was a retired insurance agent and his uncle was a pediatrician. And that they’d lived in Wyoming for as long as Ros knew, anyway. “Why did things need to be set right?”
“Vivian wasn’t always the philanthropic, kindly old lady you know and love.”
Nell let out an abbreviated laugh. Vivian was, indeed, philanthropic. But in just the last week Nell had learned the woman was not at all the “kindly old lady” type. She was sharp, decisive and demanding. She also wasn’t above manipulation when a situation called for it, which explained the cocktail party that she’d decided to throw.
“It’s too early to love, much less claim to know her very well, but I do like her,” Nell said. “She’s a force, just like you said. Kind of hard not to be impressed by her.”
“True enough.” He adjusted the heat under the vegetables and leaned against the rail next to her.
She told herself it was just coincidence that his hand happened to land on top of hers where it rested on the smooth wood. Particularly when he moved it away again a moment later to fold his arms across his wide chest.
She quickly averted her eyes from the way his shirt tightened around his biceps.
“My father and uncle, on the other hand, find very little to admire about their mother.” He crossed one boot in front of the other in a casual stance. “They railed against their rigid upbringing. Blamed her when their father—Sawyer Templeton—died. They had an older brother who took off when he was still a young man and then he died too, and that was yet another thing to blame her for.” He dropped his arms and selected his own steaming-hot piece of squash, blowing on it briefly before sinking his teeth into it.
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.
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