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Roarke
I was curious about Heather. Of course, I was. Over the course of the next week, I had no opportunities to ask about her. It wasn’t my reluctance to get involved with anyone. It was the simple manner of having no free time.
Work was brutal. Some of the horses were getting injured because the newer ranch hands didn’t know their way around them. Then half of the cattle were getting out through the fence that wasn’t as secured as we thought it was.
Overtime sucked up my chances to hang out with Gavin and ask about Heather. Then more shifts were offered with double pay when half the damn crew got sick. Freaking viruses. They were the worst—both for staff and for the animals. It spread like wildfire and there was often not a damn thing anyone could try to do about them.
All the extra shifts and the overtime wages would give me a nice padding. I was far from destitute, despite how much Veronica made it her life’s mission to ruin me financially.
Speaking of her... I was sick and tired of the harassment. If she wasn’t emailing me or trying to text me from unidentified numbers, she was siccing her damn lawyers on me.
It was all bullshit. I’d paid good money for my attorney to represent me, and he’d handled the case well. Veronica could take her pestering crap somewhere else. She had no ground to stand on opening up parts of the settlement. She had no damn reason to try to overturn a ruling that had been in my favor.
We’d both sacrificed in our divorce, and she didn’t have any right to continuously act like I’d done her wrong. Like she was the victim and I had to pay up more.
It had to be a pride thing. Or a matter of principle based in her delusional, insane mind.
All I knew was that if she filed for another claim of “emotional abuse,” I would go insane.
She’d cheated on me.
She’d lied about a fake pregnancy test to me.
She’d gotten knocked up with one of the horse breeders at her daddy’s ranch on her own.
It was laughable that she’d ever tried to get more money from me. She’d been born with it. Veronica Gedding had been raised with a silver spoon in her mouth and taught to live her life looking down on anyone who wouldn’t do as she wanted.
Well, I fell in the latter there. When I caught her cheating, I was done. Then when she tried to complicate and worsen her lies, then turn the tables to accuse me of being the bad spouse treating her badly, I was so done that I’d moved on in a heartbeat.
Love was destroyed. Hope was squashed. She had ruined me with ending the vows of our marriage like that, and yet, here I was, years later, still getting calls from her legal team to try to make my life hell all over again.
I doubted that she’d ever stop trying to stir up trouble, but at least I could forward the emails and share the voicemails and texts with the law firm who’d represented me in the case. In that way, I could—and should—pass the buck on the headache that was my ex-wife.
What I couldn’t dismiss or expect someone else to handle was my niece.
Nevaeh had come back, and for four nights now, she was staying on my couch. No answers were forthcoming. She was still cagey and tight-lipped, not giving me any clues as to what she wanted, what she’d been up to, and why she was even in Burton near me.
I was growing to just live with the constant frustration of her crappy communication skills and stubbornness to be secretive, but that wasn’t right. It wasn’t a solution. She couldn’t camp on my couch forever. Although it was “nice” that she’d taken ownership for that protein shake spill and cleaned the cushions thoroughly. She said she’d do it as a favor “for me” whereas I saw through her actions and knew she was cleaning the cushions just so she’d have a place to sleep.
Sooner or later, one of these days, she had to learn to grow up and be self-sufficient—without breaking the law or stealing.
Any free time I had, I spent it on her. I wasn’t sure if it could qualify me as a dutiful uncle or make me feel like a proper relative. But I didn’t give up on her. She needed a future, a job. Something. When I wasn’t working, and when I was up at night with this annoying insomnia, I searched for job help programs. Welfare sort of things. Help had to be out there somewhere, because I couldn’t subject myself to her volatile behavior. I knew better than to enable her or give her money, but she had to take the first steps toward making something out of herself on her own.
I had. I’d made a secure life for myself here. Maybe one day, it’d be nice to buy a house, but for now, what else did I need? This cabin was small but with ample room for a bachelor like me. I had a savings in the bank, and I didn’t care much for extravagant things like traveling or having four-wheeler toys and expensive, useless hobbies like archery or DIY crap. I was no Bob Villa.
Even though I had no time to look into Heather or inquire about why she acted the way she did, I saw her. In and out of town, we noticed each other in passing. She had to have gotten a job at the bank, because whenever I happened to stop in town or was driving through it, I often caught sight of her walking to or from the bank in office wear. Other times, she was walking from the coffee shop with Nance and Fergus.
She’d notice me, too. I wasn’t sure how she could always know when I had my attention on her, from a distance. Perhaps it was nothing more than the phenomenon of feeling that sixth sense of someone watching. Any time I glanced at her, she’d inevitably turn her head toward me and slip into either a blank expression of boredom or a slight scowl of annoyance.
Our mutual loathing was intact.
And it didn’t fit with this new awareness that I wanted to explore with her.
She was right to react the way she had when we’d done the unthinkable. I hadn’t consciously made a move on her. For all I knew, I stayed on my half of the bed that one night. I hadn’t been aware of sliding toward her. I doubted she was conscious of her actions either. In sleep, we’d gravitated toward each other to wake up like that.
I groaned as I walked toward the bar to meet with Gavin. Any time I thought of the memory of Heather in bed with me, I struggled to erase it.
She was so warm, soft, and fitting against me like she was molded to match me. Her hair was softer than I could’ve imagined, carrying that damningly sweet hint of vanilla. For as spicy as her attitude could be, that sweetness was a hell of a taunt.
No. She’s right. Never again.
I hated that she’d reacted so rashly to get away from me. It wasn’t that I didn’t care for her rejection. But because she’d moved so erratically that she damn near tumbled off the bed head-first and got hurt. Maybe the tangle of sheets and the blanket broke her fall.
Heather told me that she wasn’t interested. She’d explained that as bluntly and directly as I had told her that I was done with women. Neither of us were putting ourselves out there. I was unavailable, and she’d expressed the same about herself.
But putting ourselves in the same bed...we’d gotten a little clumsy.
But if she doesn’t want to go looking for a man, why’d she kiss me again?
I couldn’t get far with putting all the blame on her. When we both woke up to the feeling of each other’s lips, we were equally shocked. I saw it in her eyes. She hadn’t planned on it, and with the jerky movement away from me, I deduced that she’d been under the spell of sleep, just like I had been. She’d been acting halfway unconscious, in that gray area of the time between sleep and being awake.
But I wasn’t any better. I’d kissed her back. We’d moved at the same damn time, not ready to be done with one kiss.
I didn’t want a woman in my life, and that made it all the more fucked up when I had to admit I was addicted to the thought of kissing her again.
“Roarke,” Gavin said as I walked over to him. He was already seated at the bar. ESPN was on overhead, but as I headed toward the vacant stool next to him, I scowled and shook my head.
“Hell no. I’m not sitting here and watching that crap.”
He chuckled. “It’s not Shanahan’s fault.”
“The hell it isn’t. If he had McCaffrey—”
Gavin held up his hand, laughing. “Easy, easy.”
I laughed along with him, sitting down and rolling my eyes. It didn’t take much to get me going about the only team I’d ever been a fan of. And once I started, there was no stopping me. Many nights had evolved into hours of only talking about the current NFL seasons, which sometimes got too heated when others chimed in with their opinions.
“Y’all feeling better?” I asked him as the bartender slid over my regular beer order.
“Yeah. Finally.” Gavin sighed. “The flu is brutal this year, man.”
All his kids had it. Then Wendy. His immune system was holding on for the last leg of that relay. All week, he was out of work.
“That’ll help,” I said with a glance at his whisky.
As if to prove my point, he coughed. “That’s the goal. Wendy’ll pick me up after she’s done at the salon. She’s there now.”
I nodded, sipping my beer. That part of being in a relationship was something I missed. Having a partner to rely on for the simple, little things, like having a designated driver if I wanted to drink a little more than usual.
Not enough to convince me out of being a bachelor though.
“Speaking of,” he said, furrowing his brow. “When she parked up the road, closer to the salon, I saw that dude again.”
“What dude?”
“That tall guy.” He narrowed his eyes, pensive. “He seems weird.”
“What are you doing, trying to take Marty’s job?” I chuckled. “The flu messed you up to make you wanna patrol town now?”
“He stood out,” he argued.
“Because he’s different?”
“Well...” Gavin shrugged. “Yeah. We notice when strangers come into town.”
“You welcomed me.”
He smirked. “Because I met you at the ranch, worked with you. Besides, you charmed your way into being a regular soon enough, sleeping with anyone looking for a new piece of meat.”
I rolled my eyes, hating that stigma of being a player. I wasn’t, but I supposed putting that ratio into perspective in a small place like Burton, it would seem like I was a man whore when I first came to town.
“What bugs you about this guy though?” I asked. “He can’t be the first stranger to come through.”
“No. You’re right. But he’s hanging around.”
That was weird. Burton wasn’t on the way to any sort of an attraction. This wasn’t a pitstop of tourists. “Does he have family around? Something to settle at the ranch?”
Gavin shook his head. “No. When I was at the pharmacy picking up something for Wendy, I stood in line with a few people from church. No one recognized him. I’m not the only one who’s noticed. Maybe it’s nothing. Who knows.”
I shrugged. Somedays, I wondered if this trait of small-town living would ever imprint on me. If I’d stay here long enough that I’d become a nosy, closed-minded busybody wanting to know everyone’s business. People like Gavin were like this in the sense that they wanted to know their surroundings all for the purpose of protecting their own. I got that. I could get behind that mentality, but I didn’t have anything at stake. It was just me, and temporarily, Nevaeh. I was responsible for myself and that was it.
If only I could make that stick.
I was here to live my life, work hard, and mind my own business.
Too bad it seemed easier said than done where Heather was concerned.
