Page 12 of Hero Next Door
I turned toward Scarlett’s room, remembering her bathtub and thinking that after a long day of travel and drama, what I really needed was candlelight. Maybe some wine. And a bath.
* * *
By the time I woke up the next morning—after having fallen asleep in the bath and barely making the stumbling trip to the bed I’d always slept in when I was here—I was feeling like I’d always lived in this big old house. The creaks underneath my feet and over my head sounded like home, the scents of coffee and home fries as I made them the smells of my heart.
I mean, not literally. Those would be pretty weird smells for a heart. But you know what I’m saying.
I’d come here positive that I needed to sell the house. Be rid of it and the history that it came with. The handcuffs it was trying to put on my wrists as it tried to drag me back into this town.
A full day of access to the place had me second-guessing everything.
Not that the second-guessing changed anything. I took a sip of coffee and a piece of bacon off my plate, gazing through the mist on the ground toward the valley, and narrowed my eyes. Sure, the house felt like home. Sure, I loved the place and was lucky to have it.
For the moment.
But it was also really, really close to a town where I’d spent far too many nights under the bed, afraid of the lights coming on and footsteps in the hallway. Too close to teenage years spent with a guy who wasn’t much better.
Too close to the girl I used to be instead of the woman I’d become.
Besides, I thought with a snort and a bite of the bacon, this was thecountry. I’d left this behind for the lights of the big city. I’d become a powerful businesswoman—or at least someone who would one day be a powerful businesswoman—and there was exactly no benefit to coming back here and settling down in the country. I couldn’t work for Drive In from here, and I damn sure couldn’t start my own thing in this podunk town.
I’d run from the place once. It didn’t make any sense to waste all the effort that had taken, just to come back for...
For what? An old house that was way too big for me and probably needed a ton of repairs?
Moving back to this area might work for Avery, but that was because she had Jackson. I’d be moving back here for no reason at all. It didn’t make sense, and I never did things that didn’t make sense.
I yanked the paperwork from the lawyer toward me, scanning it quickly to see whether it said anything important. It didn’t. Just general language that said Scarlett had left me the place and had been of solid mind when she did so. All it required was my signature and the place would be transferred into my name rather than Scarlett’s.
My name. Which would give me the right to sell it.
I reached for the pen someone—Roxy Mason, or her assistant?—had left with the paperwork and quickly scratched my name in the spot that had been left blank for me.
“There,” I muttered. “Done.”
No, it wasn’t like anything really changed. But signing on that dotted line was the first step toward finding a buyer and selling the property to someone who actually wanted it. Richard Wright wasn’t the only agent who’d come calling. I had another offer sitting in my email, from someone else—whose name I couldn’t remember—and it was even better than Richard’s.
Hopefully that agent had a family who wanted the ranch for purer reasons than building five hundred houses that looked exactly the same. Because five hundred houses… No, that wasn’t happening. The idea that Scarlett’s house might be torn down, the land forced to support hundreds of McMansions...
I grew up in this house. Learned about dreams and music in this house. Heard someone tell me I could do whatever I set my mind to here. I found refuge from the storm, here. A heroine waiting with open arms for a little girl who wasn’t safe at home.
I would never sell to a developer who wanted to tear it all down.
The house started pounding, like it was trying to answer me, and I jumped, spilling coffee down my t-shirt. I cussed, grabbing a napkin and trying to clean up the mess, and the pounding got even louder. Throwing the napkin down, I jumped up and ran toward it, realizing belatedly that the house itself couldn’t actually be pounding.
After all, it wasn’t haunted. I didn’t think.
The door, though. Yes, someone could be banging on the door, and that would be a lot more likely than the house suddenly figuring out how to talk.
I came to a halt in front of the door, skidding in my socks, and threw the door open. Then I gasped.
I hadn’t stopped to think who I was expecting to be on the other side of the door, but it certainly wasn’t Dev Hawthorne, looking flushed and nervous and windswept.
God, he looked amazing.
Not that it mattered. The last time I’d seen the guy, he’d been shouting at me.
I threw my shoulders back, tipped my chin up, and narrowed my eyes. “Did you come over to shout at me some more, Dev? Because I haven’t had enough coffee for that sort of thing yet.”
