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 keephis 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 youhate 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.
