“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 grifting 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 they wanted was for him to do the same. “We do this my way,” he warned. “Which means you’re both still staying with me.” He looked at Morgan. “No more vanishing. If you leave this building, you go together or you take one of my men with you.”

  “Can I have the cute one with the tats?” Morgan asked.

  “Reyes?” he asked. “Definitely not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ll eat him alive,” Archer said.

  “Well of course I will,” Morgan said on a laugh. “But I promise you he’ll like it.”

  Elle rolled her eyes.

  Morgan cocked her head in her sister’s direction, still looking at Archer. “You must be doing something wrong if that annoys her. Need some pointers?”

  Archer was rethinking his stance on strangling her when she laughed again and stood up. “Okay, I’m going upstairs to earn my keep.” She paused. “But I just want to say again . . . I’m sorry. I know that’s not good enough, that I should’ve trusted you sooner. But I really am sorry.”

  And then she was gone.

  “You do too much for me. I hate that you’re doing this too,” Elle said.

  “You do plenty for me in return.”

  “Such as?” she asked.

  “Keep me human.”

  She looked a little stunned at the admission and he couldn’t say he didn’t feel the same. He stood up, dropped some money into Tina’s tip jar, and then pulled Elle out of the shop. He tugged her past the fountain and into Old Man Eddie’s alley, thankful to find it empty.

  Gently he pressed Elle up against the brick wall and kissed her. It was a relentless need, driven by worry for her safety, by the strange sensations in his chest that flooded him at her nearness, and by a driving need to wrap her up in his arms and never let go.

  Elle surprised him by seeming to have the same need because she wrapped her arms around him just as tight and deepened the kiss. When her tongue touched his, her taste invaded his senses and he lost his mind a little bit. He wanted to eat her up. Every inch of her.

  She pulled away breathless, shaking her head as if to clear it, laughter glinting in her blue eyes. “Trying to kiss some sense into me?” she asked, her fingers still tangled in his hair.

  “Trying to kiss some sense into me.” God’s truth. “You’re killing me here. You need me safe, right?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “So can you try to understand that I have the same need for you?”

  She studied him intently and then slowly nodded. “Yes.”

  He trailed a finger down the curve of her cheek, across her lips, and down her throat, absorbing her shiver with his body. “Is that a yes, you’ll let me keep you safe?”

  “Yes, I’ll try not to kill you while you do.”

  She was playing, but he wasn’t. Couldn’t. He cupped her face. “Tell me you understand.”

  Still not breathing all that steadily, she nodded. “I do. Just as you should understand that if there’s any dirt on my backside from this alley wall, you owe me a new dress.”

  That night Elle stared at the L-shaped couch in Archer’s living room. It was comfy but if she was being honest with herself, she didn’t want to even bother with the pretense of getting ready to sleep on it.

  Once again, Archer was in the shower. Morgan was on the couch, watching her with a knowing smirk.

  “Shut up,” Elle said, and she stalked into Archer’s bedroom, shutting the door harder than strictly necessary.

  She climbed up on the great big mattress and got under the warm bedding, hugging Archer’s pillow to her face, inhaling his scent deeply. God, he smelled amazing. If she could bottle it, she’d make a million bucks . . . She didn’t know how long she’d lain there drifting on that thought when she realized she wasn’t alone in the room. And given the way her nipples got happy, she knew exactly who’d joined her.

  Chapter 22

  #HashtagGettingLucky

  Archer stopped short at the sight of Elle facedown on his bed, apparently trying to inhale his pillow. She froze as if sensing him, and rolled onto her back.

  “Your bed is comfortable,” she said.

  “Thanks, Goldilocks.” Smiling, he moved to the edge of the bed, admiring the sight of her in it. “Were you just sniffing my pillow?”

  “No.” She sighed. “Maybe a little. You always smell so good.” She sat up and let the covers fall to her hips. She was in one of his T-shirts and—he was hoping—nothing else.

  “Tired?” she asked.

  “Not even a little,” he said as he sat on the bed, planting a hand on either side of her hips, caging her in.

  She pulled him in and he let her roll him to his back and pin him to the mattress. She was looking quite determined as she bent over him, holding his hands down on either side of his head.

  “I wanted to surprise you,” she said, shaking her head like she was surprised herself. “I don’t even like surprises.”

  He flashed a grin. “But you like me.”

  She shook her head again. “In spite of myself.”

  He flexed his hands beneath hers but let her hold him down. “You seem like a woman with a plan.”

  “I always have a plan. But this one involves us being”—she wriggled on him and he bit back a groan—“very quiet.” Then she oscillated her hips and the T-shirt rose up high enough on her thighs to flash him a tantalizing view of heaven on earth. “Can you be very quiet, Archer?” she murmured, bending over him to nip at his jaw.

  “I was born quiet.” He slid his hands from hers and up her shirt to cup her bare ass, wrenching a very satisfying moan from her throat. “I think the real question is—can you be quiet?”

  She bit her lower lip, clearly remembering just how not quiet she was whenever he got his hands or mouth on her. It made him grin. “Lose the shirt, Elle.”

  “My plan, remember?” And then she grasped his hands, pressing them to her breasts. “All you have to do is lie there and look pretty.”

  He choked out a laugh that turned into another groan when she slowly lifted the shirt over her head, leaving her in nothing but smooth, soft skin and seriously mouth-watering curves.

  “You’re gorgeous,” he said reverently. “The best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He met her gaze. “I’ve never wanted anything or anyone the way I want you.”

  She faltered for a beat as if stunned by this statement. “Morgan said I don’t let emotions rule me,” she said. “And she’s right—”

  “No, she’s not—”

  “She is,” she insisted. “But I feel when I’m with you, Archer. I feel . . . hungry. As in my mouth actually waters for you.” Then she leaned down and whispered in his ear. “And I plan on tasting every . . . single . . . inch . . .”

  He pulled in a ragged breath as she traced the shell of his ear with the tip of her tongue. She then spent the next several moments touching every inch of his body with her mouth, leaving the sole part that ached most for her until very last.