Accidentally on Purpose, Page 24

  Chapter 21

  #BigGirlsDontCry

  The police came quickly and arrested the two men, taking statements from everyone involved. The story they got from the suspects was questionable at best, leaving Elle with more questions than answers.

  In the middle of the chaos, Archer tugged her to a quiet corner and met her gaze. “Do you need a doctor?”

  “The cops already asked me but I’m fine.”

  “Elle.” He slid a big palm to her stomach. “I’m going to ask you again. Do you need a doctor?”

  “No. No,” she repeated when he just looked at her. “I’m really okay.” Maybe pregnant, but okay. At least physically. In truth, she hadn’t really let herself think about the implications of being a few days late. Not yet.

  Managing to slip away a few minutes later, she walked down the stairs to the courtyard, her goal being a moment alone before she hunted down Morgan for some answers.

  The fountain water was shimmering beneath the bright sun as she passed by. Several people were milling around, including a young couple holding hands and laughing as the guy teasingly held up a quarter to toss in.

  “You sure you’re ready for true love?” the girl asked him.

  He gave her a goofy smile.

  Elle tried to picture Archer giving her that same goofy smile and couldn’t.

  And then Archer himself was suddenly right there, pulling her around to face him. The dark mirrored lenses of his sunglasses glinting in the bright daylight. “Where are you going?” he asked, his gaze roaming over her face, which was stinging like a son of a bitch. “I wanted to treat your cut and ice your face.”

  “I was going to do that.” And she would. Right after she fortified herself, shored up the brick walls around her trembling foundation. She was thinking some of Tina’s muffins would be a really great start.

  Archer stroked the hair from her face, looking over her features, his own tight. “Are you dizzy?” he asked. “Do you feel sick? How many of me do you see?”

  “No, no, and the one of you is more than I need at the moment,” she said, pushing his hand away. “And stop looking at me like you’re itching to toss me over your shoulder and drag me back to your cave.”

  “I’m more likely to toss you over my knee,” he said, his voice sounding amused now.

  An older woman standing near them gasped and glared at him.

  Elle realized that given what her face looked like, she probably thought Archer had already beaten her, and she found a smile on this shitty day.

  Archer didn’t look amused in the slightest. “We’re just messing around,” he said to the woman.

  “Males your age have no manners,” she said. “In my day, women were wooed with flowers and handwritten love letters. Now it’s all chains and whips and handcuffs.” She pointed a bony finger in Archer’s face. “You men wouldn’t be so amused by the whole BDSM trend if we were the ones holding the floggers!”

  And with that, she huffed off.

  “She actually thought I was going to beat your ass,” he said, sounding shocked. “She took one look at me and laid judgment.”

  She laughed. “Oh, put on your big-boy panties and deal with it.”

  He shook his head and looked into her eyes. “And you. You’ve got a black eye coming on and you’re laughing. Why aren’t you upset?”

  “I am. But I held my own and that felt good.” She flashed a smile. “Thanks for the stapler-to-the-head tip.”

  He let out a reluctant smile. “You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”

  “Amazing enough to buy me muffins?”

  “Tell me you want more from me than that,” he said.

  They’d just been joking but suddenly she could tell he wasn’t and her smile faded. “Can we just start with the muffins?”

  He stared at her for a long beat and then nodded, surprising her by sliding his hand down her arm to link their fingers, holding her hand as they crossed the courtyard to Tina’s coffee shop.

  Tina’s welcoming smile faded at the sight of Elle. “Sit,” she said, pointing to a free table. “You sit right there and don’t move.”

  Less than a minute later Tina was back at their small table with an ice pack, a basket of muffins, and a steaming tea.

  “I love you,” Elle said fervently.

  “Right back at you,” Tina said, and then she turned to Archer. “Whatever you want, on the house, both of you.”

  “Coffee will do it for me,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Tina didn’t budge. Instead she put her hands on her hips and stared at him. “You got this, right?”

  Archer’s gaze slid to Elle’s for a beat and then back to Tina. “I do.”

  “You need any help kicking ass and taking names?”

  “If I do, I’ll let you know,” Archer said, taking Tina’s request as seriously as she’d uttered it.

  Tina nodded curtly, squeezed Elle’s shoulder, and went back to get Archer his coffee, which she brought right away.

  Archer thanked her and then reached across the table and peeled the ice pack from Elle’s eye, looking it over before gently pushing it back to her skin.

  “Am I going to live?” she asked, trying to lighten the moment.

  “Yes, but I might not.” He shook his head, a very small smile curving his grim mouth. “Christ, you actually swung a fucking stapler at a guy twice your size . . . when you told me that, my heart nearly stopped.”

  “Heavy-duty stapler,” she said. “Just like you taught me.”

  He let out a low laugh.

  “I got him pretty good,” she said proudly.

  His eyes were just as proud. “That you did, slugger. You didn’t need me, you had it under control on your own.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But boy, was I ever happy to see you. You got my call.”

  “I got your call. And now we have more questions than we do answers.”

  There was that we again but she nodded. “I know. And Morgan’s not answering her phone.”

  “Because I thought this should be done in person.” Morgan had appeared at their table looking pale and shaky. “I need to tell you both something.”

  And just like that, Elle knew the men really had been telling the truth. Morgan had been pulling a Morgan—she’d been holding back.

  On everyone.

  Archer nudged out a chair for Morgan. “I’m thinking you’ve got more than one thing to tell us,” he said evenly.

  “Yeah.” Morgan sat like her legs were too weak to hold her and then dropped her face into her hands.

  “Stop with the dramatics and just tell us,” Elle said with what she thought was remarkable calm. “Tell us what you’ve neglected to mention. You’re still in Lars’s life. Or he’s in yours.”

  “How did you know?” Morgan asked, voice muffled.

  “I know everything,” Elle said, wishing that was really true. For instance, she’d like to know if she’d get straight A’s this semester. Or if she had a big enough tax refund coming that she could buy a new pair of boots.

  Or if she was really doing as she feared and starting to trust Archer with the one thing she’d always promised to withhold—her heart.

  He met her gaze and she tried like hell to hold it, to be cool, but he was scruffy and delicious sitting there all badass and pissed off that she’d gotten hurt, and she wanted to jump his damn bones, so she broke eye contract first. “Talk,” she said to Morgan.

  Archer watched as Morgan lifted her pale face and snatched a muffin from Elle, who gathered the basket close to her like it was a pot of gold.

  Even he wasn’t dumb enough to take food from Elle. And the most ridiculous thought came to him. If she was pregnant, say with a silky haired, blue-eyed little girl, he was a dead man.

  Morgan sighed, took a huge bite, and swallowed. “I told you I’d gone to rehab a couple of times and that was true. What I didn’t tell you was that in between I had a few rough patches where I . . . well, continued on in the family business of gr
ifting to keep myself afloat.”

  “Hey,” Elle said. “Not everyone in the family is a grifter.”

  “Fine,” Morgan said. “I’m the only screw-up. But I’m serious about that all being so last year. I’ve been working hard at the jobs I could get, but nothing’s paid enough to support myself. I can’t do it on my own. I need a village. I need my village . . .” She looked at Elle.

  But Elle shook her head. “You know,” she said. “Yesterday I might’ve believed you. Why are you here, Morgan? What do you really need from me, because clearly it’s not just a job referral.”

  Morgan sagged like her lungs were balloons that had just popped. “Lars contacted me and asked for my help, one last time.”

  “To which you said, ‘when hell freezes over,’ right?” Elle asked.

  Morgan bit her lower lip.

  “Right?” Elle repeated.

  Morgan blew out a sigh.

  “Oh my God, Morgan.” Elle tossed up her hands. “Seriously?”

  “Listen, I wasn’t thinking straight, okay? I was having trouble making rent. I don’t have any friends I can trust and you . . .”

  “I what?” Elle asked, eyes narrowed.

  “You deserted me.”

  It wasn’t easy to catch Elle off guard, Archer knew, and given that she probably still had adrenaline overloading her system from what had happened upstairs, he set a hand on her arm. Not that he would stop her from jumping over the table to go for Morgan’s throat—hell, he’d help her hide the body if that’s what she needed from him—but he just wanted her to think it through first.

  “I didn’t desert you,” Elle said to Morgan, possibly through her teeth. “You deserted me, remember?”

  “I was trying to protect you.” Morgan eyed the muffin basket that Elle was still hugging.

  “No muffins until you tell me the rest,” Elle said. “Tell me what you did and I’ll buy you your own damn basket.”

  Morgan hesitated.

  “I just beat a man over the head with my stapler,” Elle warned. “Start talking or I’ll do the same to you.”

  Archer lifted a brow.

  “What?” she said defensively. “She’s my sister. I can talk to her like that.”

  Morgan stilled, her eyes going suspiciously watery.

  Elle narrowed her gaze. “What now?”

  “You just called me your sister,” Morgan whispered and put a hand over her own trembling mouth.

  Archer watched Elle struggle to hold on to her anger and fail. She could be as cold as ice when she needed to be, but she also had a heart of gold. He’d always thought that a weakness, but now he was starting to see it was really the opposite. It was a strength. And it made her a far better person than he could ever be.

  Elle reached out and slid her hand into Morgan’s. “You are my sister,” she said gruffly. “You’ll always be my sister. And if you meant any of what you said when you first came into town—”

  “I did,” Morgan said fiercely.

  “Then tell me everything,” Elle said. “Everything, Morgan, or so help me—”

  “I know, I know. Stapler upside the head.” Morgan nodded. “Okay, so you know Mom and Lars worked together back in the day. He had her doing cons for him, for a bigger payout than she could get by herself. She often pretended to be a Russian gypsy who could read fortunes. She went around finding ‘family curses’ and promising to remove said curses, which of course she always located in their priceless, heirloom jewelry. Sometimes she had me play the part of the curse expert on the phone—”

  Elle frowned. “How did you let him sucker you into that?”

  “It was Lars. But all I had to do was make a few calls to the mark. And again, this was years and years ago. But as we both know, one of the cons went bad. The police got involved and Mom rolled over evidence to stay out of jail. Lars wasn’t so lucky. He was out on bail and then the case got delayed but eventually he went away for a few years. When he got out, he immediately messed up and violated parole and then went back for a few more years. He just recently got out again, and he somehow has it in his head that I still have the pot of gold—or in this case, a suitcase full of jewelry from that job.”

  “Which you don’t,” Elle said. “Because all you had was the brooch, and I returned that the night we all got caught.”

  The now infamous night, a night Archer had always looked at as a tragedy but that wasn’t true at all. It was the night that had brought Elle into his life.

  “You don’t still have the loot,” Elle repeated tightly to Morgan. “Right?”

  Morgan sucked her lower lip into her mouth. “Not a whole suitcase.” She grimaced. “But I do have a nineteenth-century pocket watch that supposedly belonged to Russian royalty.”

  Shit, Archer thought. Here it came.

  Elle stared at her sister. “Why?”

  “You’re not going to understand.”

  “Try me,” Elle said tightly.

  “You don’t let emotions rule over logic,” Morgan told her. “You have a healthy mistrust of feeling deeply for anyone, and honestly, I wish I was more like you.”

  For the briefest flash, Elle looked like she’d been slapped, but she recovered quickly. “Tell me about the watch, Morgan.”

  Morgan rolled a shoulder. “He cheated on me. Once way back during the time of the first con, and then again when he was out on parole. I was angry and betrayed. I wanted him to feel some of that. So yeah, I took the watch. I’m not exactly proud of it and I didn’t do it to sell the thing out from beneath him or anything like that—although I thought about it. But it was more of a . . . victory prize. He didn’t want me, he threw me away. Mom told me to think of it as my tip.”

  Elle just stared at her. “If Mom taught us anything from day one, it was to never hold on to anything, not for sentiment, not for love, not for profit, not for anything because it would take you down, every single time.”

  “It wasn’t for profit,” Morgan said as she closed her eyes. “But it was for sentiment.”

  “What does that mean?” Elle asked.

  Morgan opened her eyes and looked at Elle. “I kept the watch because it reminded me of you.”

  “Me?”

  “Because it was from that night,” Archer said quietly, understanding Morgan more than he expected.

  “The watch goes with the brooch you returned,” Morgan said to Elle. “And now I’ve set Lars on your trail because he thinks that I have more than that. I’ve broken your trust and screwed everything up.”

  Elle sighed. “This isn’t all on you. It’s also on Mom.”

  “And me. I did this,” Morgan said. “But I can fix it.”

  “No,” Archer said. “But I can.”

  They both turned on him at that, two sisters unexpectedly unified. “This is our problem,” Morgan said. “My problem.”

  “She’s right.” Elle met his gaze. “I can’t let you get involved, Archer. Not again. God knows what we’ll ruin for you this time.”

  He took her hand in his, needing her with him on this. “This is right in my wheelhouse, Elle. I need you to let me and the guys handle this.”

  “Only if you let me in,” she said. “I’m not letting you do this without me.”

  “Or me,” Morgan said, equally stubborn.

  Well, hell. This had all the makings of a complete clusterfuck but he had these two women looking at him, trusting him, and all