“Told you this place was good.” Archer’s bite took out a quarter of his own burger.
Good was an understatement. “I know you said you’ll run a deep background on me, but is there anything you need to know that can help speed the process along?” When his eyes blinked with surprise at her question, Cassie told him, “I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m an open book, Mr. Nash. And the faster you and your men rule me out as a suspect, the faster we can start looking for the actual killer.”
“Call me Archer.” He took a sip of tea, his Adam’s apple working as he swallowed. “And that’s good, because there’s going to be a lot of questions getting thrown your way over the next few days.”
“From you?”
“And my team.” He nodded. “I plan on meeting with them once we’re done here, but I thought you and I could cover some of the basics in the meantime.”
“Such as?”
“Let’s go back to your marriage.”
Russ’s lifeless face flashed before her eyes, but just as she’d done every other time since that unthinkable night, Cassie ignored it and focused on the present. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Everything? Wow, um…okay. Let’s see….” Her wide eyes fluttered with several blinks. “Where do I even start?”
“I find the beginning’s usually the best place.”
Cassie’s focus slid back to his, her lips curving into a slight grin at his smartass remark. “The beginning. Right.” She cleared her throat. “Okay, well…Russ and I met when I was twenty-five. It was our senior year in law school. He and I had a couple classes together, along with Eddie—the third partner in our firm. Anyway, halfway through the semester, Eddie finally got up the courage to ask out my best friend, Lori. A year later, Russ and I were married. Lori and Ed eloped in Vegas six months after that.”
“You said your in-laws didn’t like the idea of you and Russ dating. Why is that?”
“Money.”With them, it’s always about money.“They had it and I, well…” Cassie swallowed. “I didn’t.”
“Rich boy falls in love with the girl from the wrong side of the tracks despite his parents’ objections?” Archer guessed.
The corners of her lips turned upward in a sad smile. “Something like that.”
“How did his folks react?”
“Exactly as I’d expected.” She cleared her throat again, this time to purposely shift into her best Alastair Montgomery impression. “She’s fine to sleep with, Russell. But that girl will never meet the Montgomery standard. Have all the fun you want, but whatever you do, make sure you don’t knock her poor ass up.”
Archer’s pretty eyes rounded with shock. “Your father-in-law actually said that?”
“Ex-father-in-law, but yeah.” She nodded. “And he meant every word of it, too.”
“Yet Russ still married you.”
“He did.” She’d been so happy the day he’d proposed. “At first, I thought it was the most romantic thing he could have ever done. Going up against a man as rich and powerful as his father couldn’t have been easy. But Russ did it. For me. For us.” She gave a quick, nervous lick of her lips. “Or so I let myself believe, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“It took me a long time to see it. Much longer than it should have. But after that first year of our marriage, I realized Russ hadn’t gone against his father’s wishes because he was hopelessly in love with me. I mean, I believe he loved me in his own way, but…” Her shoulders fell with a sigh. “Looking back, it was never the kind of love a man should show toward his wife.”
“So defying his father’s order not to marry you was what? A giant ‘fuck you’ to his old man?”
Those rosy lips he’d love to taste curved upward. “More like a show of strength,” she clarified. “For Russ, I was simply a means to an end. A way to prove himself to Alastair. He needed to show he had the backbone his father had been longing to see. And likethe idiot I was, I fell for the façade.” Heat crawled into her cheeks as she lifted her glass and took a sip of lemon water in an effort to cool away her embarrassment.
“The news said you were in the process of getting divorced. Who filed?”
“I did.”
“When?”
“Nearly a year and a half ago, now.”