Chapter Fourteen
LETTING ARCHER TALK HER INTO THE MIDDLE OF LAKE ODESSA ON A two-person dinghy certainly wasn’t the worst decision Cordelia had ever made.
This month, anyway. It didn’t occur to her until they were a good hundred yards from shore that she didn’t have an escape if he wanted to start prying and asking questions she didn’t want to answer.
Plus, she’d never learned how to swim, but that was the least pressing of her current worries.
The pads of her fingers dug into the thin plank of wood that made up one of the bench seats. “What do you plan on doing with me now that you’ve got me out here?”
“I have so many options.” He gave her a roguish grin. “Might be hard for me to decide.”
If he was thinking of pushing her in the water as some kind of joke, she’d take a chunk of him with her on the way in.
“Please try to be serious for once in your life,” she said.
Undeterred, he reached into the thin plastic box lining the inside of the boat and pulled out two rods. “I thought we could do some fishing.”
“Fishing?” Cordelia held the rod between two fingers, like it might bite her if she brought it any closer. “What would we want to do a thing like that for?”
“Because it’s relaxing.” He chewed on the end of a toothpick as he baited his hook and cast his reel into the water. “I can show you how if you need help.”
“I most certainly do not.” Cordelia sniffed.
She’d never actually been fishing—dirt and worms represented everything she stood against—but she’d be a June bug in a chicken coop before she ever let Archer Reed-Smythe think he’d gotten the better of her.
She pulled a worm from the dirt cup and tried not to gag as it curled its fat, slimy body around her finger.
The worm wriggled around her hook, and she dropped her line before he could change his mind and crawl off.
She’d save casting for another time. Unfortunately, the worm immediately lost his hold on the hook and sunk to the bottom of the lake, but that was all right.
She didn’t want to deal with the horror of catching something.
Archer peered over the edge of the dinghy, his gaze landing on her empty hook, but he didn’t say anything. He just gave her that grin.
“Oh, bugger off,” Cordelia said.
Archer laughed. “I knew this would be a good idea.”
After several extended minutes of silence, Cordelia bobbed her line up and down on the water and drummed her fingers against the metal hull of the tiny two-person boat just to break the tension in the air.
She’d always been comfortable with the quiet.
It was the only time she could ever hear herself think.
But being out on the water with Archer and the gently lapping waves wasn’t the same kind of quiet as alone quiet, and it made her want to fidget just to fill the space where there ought to have been words.
“Any thoughts on this heat we’ve been having?” Cordelia asked. Talk about the weather was about as basic as one could get, but she had to fill the void somehow.
“It’s summer in Texas.” He didn’t elaborate beyond that.
“How about the Cowboys? Think they’ll have a good year?”
Archer raised an eyebrow, knowing damn well she didn’t give a hoot about football. “Are you trying to chase the fish away on purpose? I’m not sure if we’ll have a prayer of catching anything if you keep making this much noise.”
She shifted on the wood bench. “I’m not usually like this.”
“I get it. I make you nervous, don’t I?” He winked at her from under the brim of his Stetson. “Sorry I wasn’t born uglier.”
She choked on the laugh that bubbled up without her permission. “I think you get a rise out of baiting me. You make me nervous, but not for the reason you’re thinking. I’m just waiting for you to toss me overboard.”
“My momma raised me better than that.” He took their fishing poles and packed them up, resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t be catching anything other than hell today.
“She tried her best, anyway.” Cordelia tilted her head as she studied him. “Did you really bring me out here to fish?”
“Yes and no.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “I thought we could use some time away from the prying eyes of the rest of the town to clear the air.”
“If you’re talking about what happened in your office—”
He held up a hand. “I consider that matter closed. I wasn’t lying when I said I have no problem with the word ‘no.’ But there is still the matter of my father’s death between us.”
Cordelia gulped on the cork that tried to clog her throat. “I’m not sure if that’s a thing that’s between us, seeing as I hadn’t seen your daddy since I was half as big as a minute. Don’t tell me you’re listening to Edna.”
“This ain’t about Edna. Everyone knows the Abernathys are so crooked they’d spit up a screw if they swallowed a nail.
” He lowered his voice as if the fish had ears.
“But I know he was with Daisy that night. She done told me she was expecting him that day. He wouldn’t have changed his mind, and he never wrote sermons on Friday evenings. ”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree.” Cordelia shifted her gaze to the water. “Daisy didn’t kill your daddy. She wouldn’t even kill a fly if it landed in her oatmeal.”
He sat back, his eyes clouding over like he was disappointed, but what did he expect from her?
If she told him about the wine, he’d go to the sheriff and they’d be done for.
“I’m not saying Daisy is a killer. She’s like an inappropriate auntie to me.
But I think y’all know something and you’re not saying what it is. Who are you protecting?”
That was too complicated a question for her to ever answer honestly. “Can we just head back? I’ve still got my shopping to do.”
He paused for a beat. Two. Then he shook his head. “All right. I can take you back to your car. Do you mind if we stop by my office first though? I just have to check on a few things.”
“Sure. No problem.”
The drive back to town was awkward at best. Archer kept turning the radio off and on, like he didn’t know if he wanted to fill the silence or not. Maybe he just didn’t want Cordelia to ask him any more inane questions. Eventually, he settled for silence.
He turned to her, his arm stretching across the back of the bench seat so that his fingers dangled precariously over her shoulder. “Can I ask you something?”
She pursed her lips. “You’ve been asking me things all day, not sure why you’re bothering with permission now.”
“Did you really think I’d toss you in the water?”
The question took her aback. Of all the things she expected him to have a serious moment over, this fell near last on the list. “It’s something you would’ve done once upon a time.”
“When I was ten?” His brows pinched, like this news upset him as much as the Cowboys missing the playoffs. “Do you honestly think I haven’t changed at all in twenty years?”
“No.” Not exactly. Though she’d changed plenty in the last twenty years.
Hell, in the last twenty days. So why couldn’t she give Archer the same benefit of the doubt?
“It’s like . . .” She twirled her wrist as she collected her thoughts.
“When I left this town, everyone in it kind of stayed frozen in my mind. I left and changed and did other things, but when I came back, it’s like I expected everyone else to be the same. Even if that’s not how it works.”
“That’s fair. It must’ve been hard, leaving the life you knew.”
She faced the window. “Not really.”
Starting over when you had nothing to lose wasn’t quite the same as losing what you had and starting over.
She never mourned Sarsaparilla Falls. Every bit of trouble she’d ever had here was on account of her momma and her ghosts.
And while Cordelia had inherited the trauma as surely as she’d inherited the Chickadee, there was only so much haunting someone else’s ghosts could do to a person.
She thought setting herself up to be someone entirely different from Sherilynn was a much better use of her time. Though the older she got, the more she began to realize that you could only stray so far from your roots. They had a way of dragging you back, eventually.
Archer cleared his throat, and when Cordelia glanced at him, he rubbed his jaw. “What if I said I wanted to take you on a proper date?”
She would say it was unexpected, if she’d been able to say anything at all.
She wasn’t a fool; she understood Archer found her attractive.
But she also understood he was the sort of man who liked to keep his life casual, while everything about Cordelia, down to her linen pantsuits and well-organized lists, screamed high maintenance.
They were about as compatible as a rattlesnake and a jackrabbit.
Hoping to cut the tension vibrating against her bones and lighten what felt like a serious change in the nature of their mildly contentious relationship, she gave him a cheeky grin. “How long did it take you to work up the nerve to ask me out?”
“Since the first time I saw you again at the pool, after two decades of not seeing you.” He glanced at her. “Why are you looking at me like you want to punch me on the shoulder and call me champ?”
She frowned. “I was trying to keep things casual.”
“Not a good fit for you, is it?”
“I’m not the one making this weird.”
“Darlin’, you changed the game when you walked into my office wearing nothing but a trench coat and a few scraps of lace.” He gave her a teasing grin. “I still can’t properly look that courier in the eye. My outbox is a mess.”
Her face flamed with the memory, and she grasped for a quick subject change. “Have you ever thought of shaving your mustache?”
“No. Why?” The corner of his mouth twitched. “You don’t like it?”
As she drank him in, her eyes tracked each individual hair on that thick brush over his full lips.
His mustache would probably feel like sandpaper on her skin, but she didn’t find the visual unappealing.
She bet he had real soft lips. Cordelia had always been a sucker for gentle kisses.
They made her stomach dip, like she was floating.
“I hate it,” she whispered.
He held her gaze, his voice low and rougher than the dirt road leading to the Chickadee. “If that’s how you look when you hate a man, I think Saint Peter himself would be willing to crawl through a den of sin if it meant reaching you on the other side.”
She pulled her hair over her shoulder, letting the thick curtain of it shield her reaction to him. That was just his way. A natural-born flirt. That didn’t mean he was getting to her. She was smarter than that, more careful. Always had been. It kept her safe.
Archer pulled up in front of his office and parked his truck. “You’re welcome to come in. I promise it will be much less eventful than last time.”
Lord, help her.
He came around to the passenger side to open the door and help her out like a proper Texas gentleman.
She tripped, pitching forward, and he held her arms to steady her.
Staring up at him, close enough to share a breath, she once again studied the curve of his lips and thought about how nice they would feel pressed up against hers.
“Delia.” He said her name like a beggar asking for mercy. Slowly, as not to startle, he reached up and traced the line of her jaw before tucking her hair behind her ear.
This was it. She was going to kiss Archer Reed-Smythe. The boy who had terrorized her as a child and grew up to be more man than she could possibly handle.
Her eyes fell closed. She pushed up on her toes.
An open invitation. He cupped her face, a gentle slide of his calloused palms against her cheeks, and sucked in a quick breath.
She swore she could get drunk on that sound.
Of him wanting her and being just a little bit scared of her too. There was power in being a woman.
“Oh my God. The pastor’s son and the madam of the Chickadee?” The grating, high-pitched voice sent Cordelia stumbling backward right before Archer was about to kiss her. “I guess that apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.”
His arms fell to his sides, letting her go, but there was no mistaking the irritation in his gaze as it landed on their intruder. “Honey. What are you doing here?”
Honey Stevens swished her hips as she crossed the parking lot, eyeing Archer like he was a hog roasting on the spit and she’d brought her own fork. “I came by to see if you’d found any more information on your poor daddy.”
He ground his teeth. “As I told you before, I’m not in charge of this investigation. It’s a local matter, and it would be a conflict of interest in any case.”
What he didn’t say, but was heavily implied, was that even if he was at all involved in the investigation, he wouldn’t be telling her squat.
Honey seemed to take the hint though. Her expression turned cold as she eyed Cordelia.
“I’m surprised to see you associating yourself with a suspect.
Aren’t you worried about what people will think? ”
“Can’t say I give a damn.” Archer aggressively chomped on his toothpick, snapping it between his teeth. He spit the ends out. “If that’s all, we’re going to—”
“Wait.” Honey gripped his arm, and Cordelia’s eyes narrowed as her hold lingered, her fingers flexing over the cut of his biceps.
“I didn’t want to say this in front of present company .
. .” Again, she eyed Cordelia like she was an egg-sucking dog, and Cordelia had to remember the good breeding she’d never had just to keep her temper in check.
“But word on the street is that someone called in an anonymous tip to the sheriff’s office about a large stock of arsenic up at the Chickadee. He’s headed there now.”
The blood drained from Cordelia’s face. She knew it wasn’t the arsenic that killed the pastor, but no one else knew that.
Of course they’d gotten rid of the wine bottle, but it hadn’t occurred to any of them to check the motel for arsenic.
It wouldn’t be out of the question for Great-Aunt Penelope to have kept some on hand.
Rodents could be a problem out in the country.
Without another word, she left Archer and Honey behind as she ran the two blocks back to the H-E-B and peeled out of the parking lot, tires still smoking and the echo of Archer’s voice calling for her in her wake.