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Roarke
Heather.
She was the one who’d triggered my security alarms to notify me of a break-in.
Glaring at me from my front step, she tipped her chin up and didn’t cower.
You.
I strode up to her, angry and annoyed, but mostly, I was confused.
“You’re contradicting yourself,” I growled. “You claim to never want to see me again but here you are. Trespassing on my property.”
She already trespassed and invaded on my mind. Now this?
What gives?
She shook her head vehemently. “This isn’t your property,” she retorted. Crossing her arms, she stayed right where she was. She didn’t budge from her stance on my step. Craning her neck to face me, she sent her long, damp black waves to bunch up at the collar of her hoodie. The plush fabric looked thick and warm, but she still seemed cold, pale and shivering a bit.
“These cabins are the Grand River Ranch’s property.”
I mirrored her stance, smirking right back. “Oh, thanks for that clarification. I’ve only been living here for the past three years waiting for a ‘local’ to explain that to me.”
She narrowed her eyes slightly, almost seeming to rethink her next remark. “The fact stands that this isn’t yours.”
“I’m renting it,” I bit out.
“I didn’t know that.”
Of course, she didn’t. I was always out the door and headed to work at the ranch before she got up. I was gone before the damn sun was fully up. Whenever I drove home, either from working or stopping in town, I never saw her out and about at cabin number nine. I wasn’t stalking her, but seeing her car parked in the same spot at that structure was all the clues I needed to realize that was the one Todd let her stay in.
“You didn’t need to know that I’m renting this place.” I didn’t want to broadcast where I stayed. My privacy mattered a lot more than her need to know. I was grateful that these cabins were a hefty distance from Main Street and the heart of Burton, but Heather was the exception, staying so close by.
Simply put, I didn’t want any woman to have easy access to me. Not anymore after I was put through the wringer with my divorce.
“Why are you trespass—”
“I’m not,” she snapped.
I growled, gritting my teeth as I took a step closer. We shared the limited space on this stoop. There wasn’t a whole lot of room to move while avoiding the other’s touch. Inches remained between us as I seethed and glowered at her. Her breaths hit my chin as she kept hers up, her lips firm in a pissy line.
Face to face like this, we lacked any chance to glance to the side or seek a break from this sizzling antagonism. I was familiar with scorned women. I wasn’t scared of a furious female who looked like she was two seconds away from throttling me.
But for the first time, my irritation ceased and intrigue filled me.
Just what the hell is your damn problem with me?
And why do I care?
“I wasn’t trespassing,” she insisted.
“No?” I tamped down my curiosity about how and why she riled me up so well. Crossing my arms and parroting her posture, I regarded her carefully. “Because from where I’m standing, and how it looks from the notifications on my security app—”
Her brow creased. “What— A security app?” She turned, scanning the perimeter of the windows as though she had to find a hidden camera. “You need a security app out here? Why?”
“Maybe to catch random strange women from breaking in?”
She shot me a droll smirk. “I wasn’t breaking in. She wanted to.” Lifting her arm, she pointed toward the east.
Fuck. It seemed like my first hunch was right.
I had no clue why Heather was here, but I bet Nevaeh had been, too.
“What are you talking about?”
She licked her lips and scowled. “I was at home, not even fifteen minutes ago, and this teenager knocked on my door.”
Dammit.
“What’d she look like?” I asked, despite feeling like I knew what she’d say.
“Pink and purple hair. Piercings...” She gestured a circle at her own face. “Everywhere. Black clothes.” She frowned. “Looked really cold and thin.”
Watch out. Don’t let her woe-is-me shit get to you, too.
“I had no clue who she was, but she insisted that she’d lost her key to this cabin. She claimed that she lived here and she wanted my help to get in.”
That sounded like Nevaeh all right. Since she’d come back to stay with me on and off, I removed the spare key outside under the mat. I simply couldn’t trust her in my space without my supervision, regardless if she was a child or adult.
“She made up this bogus line about the keys all being the same to the cabins. That I could use my key to get her in here.”
I scoffed. “And you believed that bullshit?”
Her glare narrowed on me. “No. But I was curious. When Eric brought me here the first night, my key did fit into the lock at another cabin. It wouldn’t open it, but it doesn’t seem so farfetched that the keys are similar.”
I shook my head. “Never mind that. You mean to tell me you’re so gullible and naïve to just believe this kid? To take her word for it that she lives here?”
“No. I’m not that fucking gullible or naïve. I wanted to see her to safety and evaluate what was going on.”
That told me quite a lot about what kind of a person Heather was. The desire to help someone out was a foundation to human nature. How people demonstrated that willingness to be altruistic never failed to marvel me. Heather, it seemed, was kindhearted enough to give a shit about a stranger in need.
“I didn’t know this was your place,” she insisted.
I believed her.
“Trust me—”
I warded her off from speaking with my hand in the air. “No. Don’t expect me to trust a woman ever again.”
She smirked. “Then believe me,” she amended, “I want nothing to do with you.”
Leaning down, getting in her face, I came more to her eye level. “Good. Keep it that way. I’m sick of women getting in my damn space.”
She huffed, almost smiling. “Yeah, count me out of your harems. I wouldn’t be interested in a jerk like you.”
“Glad to hear it,” I gritted out, peeved that she’d try to suggest I wasn’t good enough for a woman like her. That runaround was something I experienced daily with Veronica, and I’d be damned if I ever tried to win another high-maintenance woman’s approval ever again. “Because I’m not in the mood for your drama.”
“My drama?” She pointed at her chest. “This is all your shit to deal with. You’re the one with some punk goth girl desperate to break in to your place.”
I did not need a reminder that Nevaeh was my problem. And I didn’t appreciate her saying so.
“You stay out of my business,” I warned, angling closer.
She bit down on her lower lip and gave a slight growl of annoyance. “I never wanted to get into your business in the first place.”
“Then steer clear,” I suggested. “Don’t go where you’re not welcome.”
She reached up, rising on her toes as if scowling at me any closer could burn me faster. The wrath glittering in her eyes was potent, but instead of pissing me off further, it made me want to see how much more impassioned she could get. How much fury she could handle, snaring me to want to see her reach her breakpoint.
Because, fuck me, she was magnificent. Watching a woman fume, spitting mad and fiercely stubborn like this, had never turned me on more.
I licked my lips, readying to quarrel right back. Touching my tongue to my lip, though, I caught her attention. She lowered her gaze to my mouth. It was a second-long reaction, but when she lifted her eyes to mine again, I wanted to groan at the hint of desire lurking in those green orbs.
“Then go.”
Fuck this. No way. I couldn’t actually be thinking about...kissing her.
Ever so slightly, she leaned up closer, as if she was tempted to do the same. To kiss me instead of fight.
Just as quickly as she’d lowered her mask to show me that she wasn’t impervious to the same instant lust I felt for her, she dropped back down on her heels and spun away. “Gladly,” she snarled.
I watched her walk back through the darkness for no more than five feet.
“Dammit.”
I followed after her, keeping a yard behind her. Like a bodyguard.
“I don’t need an escort,” she sassed without slowing or looking back at me.
“Tough shit.”
“Stop following me.”
“I’m not. I’m walking you home.”
She snorted. “Didn’t you just lecture me about staying away from where I’m not welcome? Use that advice on yourself. I didn’t ask you to walk me home.”
“Tough. Shit,” I repeated.
She might piss me off—alarmingly as much as she drew me closer. But that was no excuse to ever let a woman walk through the darkness alone.
I was tiring of trying to be a hero and help Nevaeh, taking on this battle of protecting my niece from herself.
Yet I still had enough decency to extend that same goodwill to Heather, seeing her all the way back to her place regardless of her stubborn silence the whole walk there.
