Page 122 of Archer

Her phone buzzed on the counter behind her, and she loosened her grip on me to check the screen. “It’s Alexis.”

I kissed her gently before stepping back. “I’ll finish getting the house closed up before the rain starts. Then, I’ll put some soup on and toss a salad for us.”

Harper smiled and winked as she picked up her phone. “I’m going to enjoy showing you how much I appreciate that later.”

I pressed both hands to my heart, drawing a small laugh from her lips as she answered her call.

Chapter 41

Harper

“Tell me you’ve seen the numbers.” Alexis’s voice came through my phone speaker warm and fast. “One-point-two million views. Harper, the comments are incredible. I don’t have enough words to properly describe the complete sensation you caused.”

I frowned through a wide smile. Her enthusiasm was a perfect tension breaker, but nothing significant had happened since yesterday. At least that I knew of, and that hadn’t exactly gone as planned. “The dock?”

“Yes! The dock. What else could I be talking about? You sat on a dock and played for the world as if it was your living room and the entire internet lost its mind. Labels will be fighting over you if yours has the audacity to continue their nonsense after that.”

I lowered onto the living room couch in a slump, torn between conflicting emotions and overwhelmed by everything in my life.

“I’ll take care of all that,” she said. “Now, your turn. How’d the other thing go?”

My silence ended her enthusiasm.

“Uh oh.” She sighed. “No arrest?”

“Not even a sighting,” I said.

“Oh, honey.”

My throat tightened.

“What happened?” Alexis asked.

“I don’t know. We had the whole place under surveillance, land and sea. He just didn’t bother showing up.”

“Huh. Maybe y’all are too good. He knew he couldn’t get past ya.”

I swallowed rising bile. Webb was always waiting for a blind spot.

“Well, hear me out. I wasn’t going to bring this up right away, because I know you have your hands full out there, but I think your performance provided irrefutable proof that you’re the next rising star in country music. Why not come back to Nashville and take advantage of the momentum while it’s hot?”

I stared through Knox’s back windows, at the palms beginning to sway in earnest, bending away from the water as if they already knew what was coming. “Not yet.”

“Well, noodle on it. Anything else going on?” she asked.

“There’s a storm coming,” I said.

“I saw that on the news. Are y’all staying safe?”

“Yeah. This house has survived a half-century of everything the ocean has thrown at her before. Tonight will be the same.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“Archer’s here.”

“And how’s that going?” Her tone held a suddenly mischievous quality.

I smiled against the receiver despite my every other concern. Archer wasn’t a problem. He was my closest friend in Carolina Bay. My confidant. My hero and protector. The man who’d wholly stolen my heart. “Archer is just about the only thing going well, actually. He’s one of the good ones, Lex.”