Page 126 of Daddy By Design

When I came back out, I found Archer scrolling his phone with the cat looking over his shoulder. He’d swapped his usual scruffy shorts and T-shirt for a white button-down shirt and dark-washed jeans.

“Well, shit. Did you dress up to go out with me?”

Archer looked up from his phone. “You know I like to make you feel special, baby.”

I shook my head, but I ducked back into my bedroom to swap my T-shirt for a black button-down shirt. “Should I put on cologne too?”

Archer’s cackle made me smile for the first time all day. He really was a good friend. One of the few I hadn’t dusted over the years. I stopped at the sink and turned off the water—damn cat—and pulled one of the cat’s favorite catnip snakes out of the cabinet.

Gizmo immediately leaped off Archer when I waved it at him and tossed it on my bed. He trotted after it and settled on one of my pillows like the little prince he was.

We took Archer’s beater truck he’d bought in his second week in town. The stonework on my place was a long-term project, but there was a fair bit of downtime while waiting on renovations to move along. Archer was happy to do some of his own sculptures in between.

All in all, he was happy to be freeloading.

I didn’t mind it. He kept me from spiraling as I had been on the west coast.

Watching him work stirred something in me I’d thought was long dead. But before I could actually pick up my torch, the impulse had scattered like sand on the shoreline.

“So, you really think you’ll be good living in this little-ass town forever?”

“Sure, why not?”

Archer draped his arm on the top of the steering wheel. “I don’t know. We can drive through your town in like seven minutes. Quite a bit different from living in Los Angeles.”

“I like the quiet.”

“There’s quiet, and then there’s tree frogs in the trees quiet.”

“Freaking you out?”

Archer gave me a sidelong look. “Maybe. Maybe if you had someone to distract you.”

“Don’t start that shit again.” I shifted in my seat and looked out the passenger window at the shops on Main.

“You know I’m not the settling down type, but you are a different animal. You never really liked the hook up life, Dev.”

The days I’d been the Devil of New York felt like a million years ago.

“And what the hell are you going to do out here once the house is done?”

“What’s with the deep dive?”

Archer shrugged. “I’ve seen your blueprints. Eventually, there’s going to come a point where you don’t have a room to remodel.”

“That won’t be for a good long time. At least not at the rate it’s going.”

“Excuses, Dev. You have three acres. You could at least make yourself a studio.”

“That’s over.”

“You keep saying that, but I don’t believe you.”

“Drop it, Archer.”

He sighed. “Fine. But don’t call me when you’re walking around that big house in the middle of the night like some Victorian bride who lost her man at sea.”

I glanced at him. “That’s oddly specific.”

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