Judging him.
The urge to stand up straighter and salute irritated the shit out of him.
“It’s an invite to a retirement party,” Mollie said, coming into the office behind him to set some more paperwork on his desk.
He lifted his head and looked at her. “How do you know?”
She shrugged. “It’s your second invite. You must’ve not answered the first and when they sent another, I got curious.”
“You opened my mail?”
“It’s my job,” she said. “He added a note this time. It says ‘get your ass home.’”
Archer tossed the envelope to his desk and strode to his corner windows. He’d chosen this office because from here he could see the courtyard and also the street. He liked to have all angles open. A bonus was that beyond the streets of Cow Hollow down the hill, he could see straight to the bay.
“You want me to RSVP for you?” Mollie asked.
“The phone’s ringing.”
“Oh!” She froze, ear cocked. “Oh shit, you’re right!” And with that, she rushed out of the room.
Archer tossed the invite into the trash can.
When a second set of heels clicked into the room, he craned his neck, watching as Elle walked to the trash can and scooped out the invite, homing in on it like a beacon. Given that she did some side work for him with decent frequency, she wasn’t a stranger to his office. In fact, she made herself at home with a ’tude that spurred on his. “Feeling brave?” he asked.
“Your dad’s retiring next month?” she asked, reading the invite.
He closed his eyes and resisted the urge to bash his head against the window. “Why do you always answer a question with another question?”
“You should go to this,” she said softly, lifting her gaze to his.
Archer was pretty sure that was a very bad idea. He hadn’t been home much. It was easier to stay away. Eleven years ago he’d been a rookie fast-tracked cop on a joint task force. When it’d all gone bad and he’d had the blink of an eye to jeopardize the entire sting to get a girl out safely, he hadn’t hesitated.
This hadn’t been out of character for him. He’d always followed his own inner moral code on what he thought was right and wrong. The problem was that those codes didn’t always line up exactly with the letter of the law.
The girl had been underage, trying to return something her sister had stolen. Not that it mattered. She’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time—which was not to say she’d been unaware of the danger she’d put herself in. She’d known. And she’d done it anyway. And it had been that show of bravery and loyalty and desperation to do the right thing that had gone straight to Archer’s heart.
Yeah. He’d still had one back then.
He’d met Elle’s eyes. They were the same baby blue as they’d been that night. Deep and filled with secrets.
“When was the last time you saw him?” she asked.
“Christmas. We had dinner.”
She nodded. “And the time before that?”
Stubborn as hell to the end, like a terrier on a bone. “The Christmas before that,” he admitted.
She didn’t chastise him. She didn’t judge. She just nodded, her gaze hooded now. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“No need.”
She shook her head. “It’s sweet of you to try to shield me but I know it’s my fault.”
This caught him completely off guard, something else only she tended to accomplish with any regularity. “Two things,” he said. “One, I’m not sweet. I don’t have a single sweet bone in my body. And two, this is not your fault. It’s mine.”
She just stared at him, holding his gaze prisoner in her own. He knew she believed herself to be a fortress. Locked up tight, never giving herself away.
But he also knew her, maybe better than anyone else, which meant he’d catalogued her tells a long time ago. She was worried about him, which for the record he hated. “Look, just forget about it, okay?”
“If you promise to go to the retirement party,” she said.
Had he just likened her to a terrier? Make it a pit bull.
“Promise me,” she said softly.
He was human. He made mistakes. But he tried very hard to not repeat any of those mistakes. And yet he kept looking right into her eyes and falling into them. Every time.
“Archer.”
He knew she wouldn’t give up or shut up until he agreed, so it might as well be on his terms. “Fine. If you promise to not talk about it again, I’ll go.”
She gave a slow nod and turned and walked out of his office.
“Hey,” he called after her. “You never said what you wanted.”
“Since you made me spill my tea, I came for some of the coffee Mollie makes you guys every morning.”
Shaking his head, he turned back to the windows but he didn’t see the view. He saw the events of that long-ago night flipping through his brain like a slide show—specifically what had happened after the bust had gone bad. Elle, huddled into herself in torn clothes, bleeding from various scrapes and cuts, eyes flashing with false bravado, body trembling. She’d run further into that run-down park and he’d really had to work at finding her.
She’d been on a swing, sitting very still. Very alone.
He’d told himself he’d done enough just letting her escape the scene, that he needed to walk away, but he couldn’t, even though his own ass had been toast in a very large way. After all, he’d just detonated his entire life and yet there he stood worrying about the girl who’d been the accelerant on the fire he’d bombed his career with.
He’d wanted to take her to a doctor but she’d refused to go anywhere with him. So he’d given her his own pocket knife and told her she could use it to protect herself against him if she felt the need.
Then he’d taken her to an urgent care clinic and had her checked out. She’d needed stitches on her cheek where she’d been hit hard enough to split the skin but that had thankfully been the worst of her injuries. He’d then taken her home and put her to bed on his couch, where she’d slept like the dead.
Or like a girl who’d not been safe in so long she’d forgotten what real sleep felt like.
He’d known this because he watched over her for hours. In the morning he’d made her breakfast and then gone to take a shower. When he’d come out, she’d been gone, the agate stone sitting on top of the folded blankets he’d given her to sleep with.
He’d been suspended from the force, and rightfully so. He’d fucked up big-time on multiple levels and his father had just barely managed to keep him on the force at all.
But Archer had quit. He’d realized he wasn’t cut out for having his hands tied just because his idea of right and wrong didn’t match up with someone else’s.
This hadn’t gone over so well. In fact, his dad had been so furious they hadn’t spoken for several years afterward, not aided by the fact that since his mom had died of cancer ten years ago, they’d never been able to see eye-to-eye. Without the sweet, loving peacemaker of the family around, there’d been no one to mediate.
Eventually they’d managed to be in the same room again without the inevitable fight over Archer’s habit of making bad choices. They even spoke on occasion now. Holidays. Birthdays. That time a few years back when his dad had been shot in the leg on the job that was still the guy’s entire life. And Archer got that. Just as he got that his hardcore cop dad was never going to understand that Archer had done what he’d had to.
Or why.
And yet he’d just promised Elle he’d go to the retirement party, where he’d likely have to face much of the entire force.
One of these days he was really going to have to figure out this strange hold and power Elle had over him.
But not today.
Chapter 5
#EverythingIsBetterWithChocolate
That weekend Archer and some of the guys went camping. It was something they tried to do every few months when they all had a few days off at the same time. It involved four-wheeling, fishing, and usually some form of stupidity since they were all so competitive. But hey, no one had died yet and they’d only needed an ER trip that one time back when someone had dared Joe to climb a tree and he’d fallen out of it, breaking his collarbone.