Archer's Angels. Tina Leonard

thinking about Archer.

      It was good to be herself again.

      Only, tonight he’d changed her, made her feel beautiful. Given her appreciation of her woman’s body.

      She would never forget him.

      Chapter Five

      Three months later

      In Delilah’s kitchen, Clove straightened, her back sore. Cooking at Delilah’s was nice, especially because Delilah was so kind. So was Jerry, Delilah’s trucker boyfriend. Delilah hadn’t really needed another employee, but the fact that Clove was only in town for a short while, until her visa ran out, was a plus.

      Clove didn’t really need a job, but she wanted to keep busy and make friends. All the ladies at the Lonely Hearts Salon were very eager to make her feel at home. In fact, she liked it here much better than at Marvella’s, as Archer had said she would.

      Marvella had been nice to her, but Clove had begun to feel uneasy about the male clientele who came to the salon.

      “Triplets,” the young, pretty doctor had told her at the last appointment. “Congratulations. You hit the jackpot! The first triplets ever to be born in Lonely Hearts Station, I do believe.”

      Clove had staggered out of the doctor’s office, and she was still reeling. Triplets! She might have known that Archer Jefferson was capable of not only impregnating a woman, but doing it in an embarrassingly huge way!

      She’d moved out of Marvella’s the second she got home from the doctor’s office, telling Marvella she felt she’d overstayed her welcome. The truth was, if Archer had felt strongly about Clove not staying at Marvella’s when he barely knew her, she knew he’d really freak if he ever accidentally found out his progeny was gestating there.

      “I’ve really done it now,” Clove told Delilah, who was putting some plastic wrap over peanut-butter cookies Clove had baked.

      “Don’t worry,” Delilah told her. “You’re among friends here.”

      She was, but for the first time in her life, she was frightened.

      “Have you thought of telling the father?” Delilah asked.

      Archer had said, on many occasions, he didn’t want children. “He wouldn’t be happy. I’m skipping that conversation for now.”

      Besides which, she was already gaining weight. Her face was puffy and her breasts had swelled. If he’d thought her plain and unsophisticated before, now she was downright, well, more plain.

      “The thing is,” she told Delilah, “triplets are intimidating.”

      “You’d better believe it,” Delilah said. “Pregnancy can be intimidating. You’re doing it times three.” She looked at her kindly. “If you ever want to talk about the father, you can trust me to be silent.”

      Clove lowered her eyes. “I’m afraid you’d be surprised. It’s not anything I can share. But thank you.”

      Delilah nodded. “I’m going to my room now.” She patted her hand. “Have a cookie and a cup of hot blackberry tea. Go to bed soon, too.”

      Clove smiled at the older woman. “Thank you so much. For everything.”

      Delilah smiled and left the room. Clove sat at the table, with only the lamp lit, rubbing her stomach absently. She wore dresses now, with expanding waistlines. Normally, a pregnancy wouldn’t show at this juncture, but her three babies seemed to be thriving.

      If they were destined to be Archer’s size, she was in for a rocky road. She felt as if she was in the middle of going down a slide, and couldn’t stop, no matter how much she wanted to. There was no body double who could perform this stunt for her.

      Sighing, she pushed her oversize glasses up on her nose.

      “Hey,” a masculine voice said suddenly, making her gasp with fright. “What are you doing here, Clover?”

      She stood, her heart pounding, her gaze drinking in Archer as he walked into the kitchen. She’d managed to avoid him while staying at Marvella’s. She should have known she couldn’t hide from him now that she was at the Lonely Hearts Salon. “What are you doing here?”

      “Looking for cookies and milk. Came in the back way, as I always do, and a pit stop in the kitchen before bed is a necessity.” He glanced at the cookies on the tray in front of her, then his gaze caught on her stomach. She watched with some horror as his attention traveled to her swelled breasts, then back to her stomach.

      His eyes wide, he met her gaze.

      “Oh, you poor thing,” he said. “If you want me to kill the jerk, I swear I’ll bring an army of Jeffersons down on his head. He’ll wish he’d never done you this way.”

      “Archer,” she began uncomfortably. “I’m all right.”

      “You’re not all right,” he said. “If you were, you wouldn’t be unmarried, pregnant and living in a salon.”

      She swallowed. “I wasn’t seduced and then left, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

      He looked at her doubtfully. “Clover, listen. You’re a nice girl. Very trusting. But that’s just what a man can be capable of. Making a woman love him and then leaving her.”

      She blinked. “It was the other way around. Not that you love me, but…”

      He looked at her funny for a moment, as if someone had told a bad joke he didn’t get. A muscle near his eye twitched. Slowly, his hand unsteady, he reached to pull her glasses from her face. He pulled her ponytail down, his fingers trembling.

      She sensed him pulling away from her.

      “Oh my God,” he murmured. “Oh, no.”

      Clove’s heart sank.

      “This can’t be,” Archer said. “You can’t be her. You can’t be pregnant.” To say that he was horrified would be putting it mildly. She could see in his face that he still didn’t want to be a father. He was not in love with her. In fact, he hadn’t known she was who she was. “Tell me I’m dreaming,” he said. “A big, huge, ugly nightmare.”

      She blinked at his harshness.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, we went looking for you that night at Two-Bits. Well, Bandera was trolling for the bar-stool babe, and he took off with three stylists he met dancing that night. I was hanging around waiting for you to show up, thinking you needed a guardian eye. But you were the bar-stool babe.” He frowned. “I really thought you might need my protection.”

      “I was fine.”

      “That’s what you said that night when I asked you about birth control.” Archer told himself his heart wasn’t going to bust a valve; taking a deep breath, he made himself calm down. “You said you were fine.”