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Roarke
“Todd’s inside,” Gavin told Eric.
He nodded. “I was sitting with him in the back before I saw the apartment and all. I’ll go talk to him, Heather.”
She cast a vacant stare at the busted door but shrugged. “Thanks,” she mumbled quietly.
I was shocked that she was familiar with any words of gratitude.
Looking her over once more, finding more details each time that I did, I noticed how ragged and tired she seemed. Maybe she’d had a long day. Perhaps too many people had pushed too many of her buttons the wrong way.
But, damn, was she something else.
Uppity. Sassy. Even, dare I say it, bitchy.
Yet the longer I looked, the more I wanted to know why.
“You want to head out?” Gavin askes, elbowing me to get my attention.
“Hmm?” I flinched, jarred from checking out this raven-haired smart-ass. “Yeah. Sure.”
I didn’t want to go back in the bar, nor did I want to linger out here. Jerry was on his phone, his back to us as he kicked at the busted door that led up to his rental.
Once Heather and Eric walked inside, presumably to chat with Todd about one of the vacant cabins, I followed Gavin toward his truck.
“You all right there?” he asked after we got in and he started the engine.
“Me?” I shrugged. “Yeah. I’m fine. Why?”
“You seemed sort of stuck back there.”
Stuck? I wrinkled my brow.
“Stuck on her.”
I laughed hard. “On her?”
“Here you are, saying you’re not in the mood for any woman, yet one look at her and you’re stuck.”
Rolling my eyes, I turned toward the window. “I was not stuck on her.”
“You couldn’t look away.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“I saw what I saw.”
I crossed my arms, peeved, but not angry. “And so what if I did look at her? That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It doesn’t?”
I glanced at him. “It doesn’t,” I replied, deadpan.
“Well, if there’s any woman you do want to get stuck staring at, I wouldn’t recommend her.”
That little seed of curiosity flamed to life again. “Why not? Who is she?”
He chuckled, turning on the long road toward the ranch. “Aha. You are interested.”
“What are we? Teenagers? Come on. I am intrigued. How could I not be when she came on so strong like that? Something’s sure up her ass to be that bitchy.”
“Heather James.”
“And she’s from around here?” I can’t see how. I moved here three years ago and more or less met most of the townsfolk soon enough. If I met that woman before, I wouldn’t have forgotten her. I doubted many men could, even with her sassy attitude.
“Yeah, born and raised, actually.”
“Huh. First time I saw her.”
“She hasn’t been around lately. Her family grew up here, I think. She’s an only child, and both her parents died just after she graduated high school.”
“Damn. That sounds tragic.”
“They won some trip from a raffle or something. Their plane crashed over the ocean.”
Very tragic.
“Not that anyone would miss them in Burton.”
Now, this was getting juicy.
“Her dad was a drunk asshole. He was a trucker. Her mom worked at the school, as a janitor, and she had such a crappy personality. Mean. Petty. Quick to accuse others of making her life hell...” He shrugged. “I never spoke with them.”
“Not even Heather?” It seemed like his wisdom and knowledge fit only in the “heard of her” category. He seemed to be around her age, though, so it was plausible to assume they were acquaintances in a town as small as Burton.
“No. She was younger, just a freshman when I was a senior. She kept to herself a lot, all through grade school and stuff. Not really social.”
Gee, don’t color me surprised.
“And lots of people talked shit about her parents. She was often the butt of jokes.”
“Ah. Good, ol’ small-town drama,” I teased.
“Anyway, Heather never made it a secret that she wanted to get the hell out of town.”
I scoffed. “Well if everyone teased her and she didn’t fit in, I guess no one could blame her.”
“No. That’s true. It seemed inevitable that she’d want to get out of town. It’s not like she’s the only one.” He turned again onto another dark road and yawned. “Lots of classmates want to move away. Better jobs—for those who aren’t planning on staying for Grand River. Better opportunities and all. Heather was definitely one of them. It was like she made her desire to get out of here her whole identity.”
“That obsessed with it, huh?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “And she had the means to get out. Honors student, debate team, extracurriculars for scholarships. I think something happened with her parents lying about something on a form though, that made her miss out on a scholarship, but she stayed in town long enough to get an associate’s degree or something. She worked a lot and never went out.”
I guess that explains why I never saw her before. When I moved in, I was set in my ways of having fun and moving on from my divorce. I, too, worked a lot. It wasn’t so far of a reach that our paths never crossed.
“Then she moved to Chicago.”
“That’s a distance.” It wasn’t as much of a distance as the one I wanted from Texas, when I moved here, but it was still a significant distance.
“I’ll say it is. No wonder she looked tired. I bet she just made the drive today.”
“Why’s she back then?” I recalled her dejected resignation when she said she’d look for another place to stay tomorrow morning.
Gavin rubbed his hair, sending the light blond strands standing straight up. “I’m not sure. Eric didn’t mention it to me. Not that he would have.”
He wouldn’t have. Eric was a quiet man at work and didn’t seem to talk to anyone.
“Why would Eric know if she was coming back to Burton?”
“He’s her cousin. I think he’s all the family she’s got left. All the family he’s got left, too.”
“Ah.” As the nighttime scenery flew by out the window, I did the math. “Wait. She’s how old then?”
Tired or not, she was a gorgeous woman. I’d have to be blind to miss her beauty. Above the attitude, unmasked by her sass, Heather James was a hell of a sexy woman. Long black hair with enough wave to it that she almost seemed exotic somehow. Wild and untamed. Those vibrant eyes, commanding me not to look away. Hourglass figure and huge tits—what more could a man like me want to look for?
Despite how tired she seemed, there was no way to hide how attractive she was.
On the outside, of course.
“I thought you said you weren’t interested,” Gavin joked as he pulled onto the Grand River road.
“I’m not.” I scowled. “I’m just saying she looks young.”
“Uhhh, I’d guess that she’s gotta be twenty-four? Wendy was a grade above her, so... Yeah. Probably twenty-four.”
In other words—young.
“Too young for you?” he teased.
I left my watch on the scenery to smirk at him. “I’m just asking questions. I’m not interested.”
He shrugged, too much of a friend not to push it. “I mean, hell. Age is just a number, anyway. Right?”
I guessed it was. “Maybe, maybe not.” Veronica was a year older than me, but she hated the jokes that she was a “cougar” to pursue me.
Heather was twelve younger than me though, and that was a big bridge to gap. By the sounds of it, she’d just graduated. Moved to the big city and couldn’t eke a living there. And now she was coming home with her proverbial tail between her legs.
“Anyway. I’m not interested.” I’d be stupid to be interested in a woman with a chip on her shoulder. It amused me that her opinion of Jerry mirrored mine, that she also deemed him to have weasel-like characteristics, but she definitely had an issue with everyone.
“I’ve had a lifetime of drama with my ex and I’m not in any rush to try to have a retake on what a committed relationship is supposed to look like.”
“Hey, never say never,” he said as he slowed onto another road that would angle back toward my cabin.
“I think I will,” I joked back. “Heather James will not be on my radar, man.” No woman would be.
When Gavin first mentioned one of the ranch cabins as an option for Heather, I almost groaned. I rented one of them, and having a hoity-toity city girl nearby didn’t sound like an ideal situation. Out here, near the woods that border this boundary of the ranch, I didn’t have to deal with many people. Other guys had moved out of cabins for a better place downtown. Some, like Eric, bought houses to flip and call their own. Others yet, like Gavin, moved into family-friendly homes.
I liked the peace and quiet out here, and I supposed I could be possessive about not being bothered. But having a woman in this man’s world on the ranch felt extra wrong.
“I hope Todd doesn’t think about giving her one of the cabins near mine,” I mumbled.
“Nah. I doubt he would. Her car isn’t made for driving on this road too far.”
That was true. I hoped it was. Her little sedan’s suspension would pay the price sooner than later if she were to drive close to my area often.
While cabins were located out here for ranch hands to rent, they were all spread out with a relatively decent amount of space. Privacy—total privacy—wasn’t possible, but some mature trees went a long way in blocking view of the small structures.
Gavin yawned again, and within a few seconds, just as my cabin came into view, I caught the contagion and yawned as well.
“We need a good night of sleep,” he said.
“Easier said than done,” I groused.
“Eh, just scroll on your phone until your eyes tire out. That’s how Wendy beats insomnia sometimes.”
I shrugged. “I’ve tried that before.” With my phone on my mind, though, I pulled it out of my pocket and checked the notifications. At the top of the screen was a line noting an email that came into my inbox.
From her.
It was strange how a pronoun could offer so much meaning with the correct emphasis. In this case, anger. Annoyance. Irritation. All of the above applied to my ex. I wondered if I would ever get to the point where I could say her name and not taste a burn of acid in my mouth. If the syllables that made up her name would ever fail to make my gut tighten with fury.
“What’s wrong?” Gavin asked, noticing that I sneered at my phone.
“She emailed me, again. Or rather, she forwarded a lawyer’s email to me.” I didn’t bother to open it again and skim the contents. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Veronica would be a terminal curse on my soul, pestering me and bothering me until the end of our days.
Our vows of ’til death do us part were severed when we divorced three years ago, but I suspected that her commitment to making my life a living hell would be a lifelong goal.
“Delete it,” Gavin advised.
I ignored it instead, shoving my phone back in my pocket as I rubbed my hand over my face.
“You don’t have to let her keep harassing you—”
I looked up when he stopped speaking. Following his line of sight and wondering what made him go quiet so suddenly like that, I narrowed my eyes out the windshield.
“And I don’t have to let whoever that is harass me either,” I growled.
The silhouette of a woman greeted me.
Someone had opened the front door to my cabin. My sanctuary. The little corner of this world where I wanted to be left in peace and quiet.
“Now what?” I said as Gavin parked.
What the hell is wrong now?
Something had to be wrong, because there was no way in hell I’d ever allow someone to think they had permission to let themselves in on my turf, without my supervision.
After the living hell Veronica put me through with that divorce, I’d fight tooth and nail to guard my privacy and solitude.
