Page 16 of Hero Next Door
Right before she left town without ever looking back.
I jerked my hands down and took a step backward, trying to force my heart back to the spot where it was supposed to live. “Well, that’s what I meant,” I said, trying to put something into the silence that had been growing between us. “That wood is obviously rotten. We need to add that to the list. Have it checked. See where we need to shore it up.”
She visibly shook herself, getting control of whatever she’d been thinking, and nodded. “Check the wood. Check. Um... right. I’ll add it to the list.”
“You do that,” I told her. “And really I have to be going. Got lots to do back at the ranch. Got to... Yeah.”
I turned without even really saying goodbye—and definitely without finishing what I’d thought we were going to go over this morning—and nearly ran for my truck in my hurry to get away from the way this girl made me feel.
And the fact that she’d made me feel it once before, and had then run for the road the moment I started feeling it.
CHAPTER8
Parker
Ididn’t even have a chance to close my mouth—or pick my jaw up off the floor—before he was jumping into his truck and screeching out of the driveway, dust and rocks flying up in his wake.
The same way he’d left the first time he was up here, now that I thought about it.
What, he couldn’t just leave like a normal human being? It always had to be this big, dramatic thing where he went flying out of the driveway like someone was actually chasing him or something?
I glanced back at the wood of the patio, now broken and cracked for a seven-foot stretch, and shook my head. “Typical,” I muttered. “They come around and break your things and then run like the devil before you can do anything about it.”
I turned and started walking for the front door, very carefullynotthinking about the moment we’d been sharing when he suddenly decided he needed to get home. And trying very, very hard not to assume that the moment—and the emotion I’d seen rushing across his face—were the reasons he’d actually run.
* * *
By the time I was sitting down at the kitchen with a notebook and another mug of hot chocolate, I’d changed that thought somewhat. Or rather, I’d added to it.
I didn’t want to think about the moment that had been happening between us when Dev suddenly left. I didn’t want to think about the way his eyes had turned soft and gentle with concern when he thought I was hurt, or the smile he’d been suppressing when I teased him about what his plans had actually been on that porch. I definitely didn’t want to think about the butterflies that had been chasing each other through my body, fluttering along underneath my skin with a buzzing that was almost more than I could stand.
I didn’t even want to consider how close his body had been to mine, the heat of him brushing against me like sunbeams on a warm summer day. I didn’t want to remember how good it had felt to be in his arms.
To see concern on someone else’s face and know that the concern was for my well-being. To feel protected. Cared for.
Taken care of.
I shook my head firmly and took a sip of the hot chocolate, turning my eyes down to the notebook and the pencil in my hand. I’d just told myself that I wasn’t going to think about it, and here I was using that statement as an excuse to think about it.
Stupid.
Stupid and self-destructive.
Dev might have saved me from falling through the patio. Falling through a crackhe’dcaused. But I barely knew the man and I certainly couldn’t expect anything of him. I’d stopped depending on other people once I got old enough to know better—and old enough to know how much damage they could do to you if you let yourself get too comfortable.
I’d run from the last man I was stupid enough to depend on, the day I turned eighteen. And I’d been taking care of myself ever since. And doing it quite well, thanks. Just look at me: a thriving career, a name that was starting to be passed up the chains to the higher-ups in the company. I was in charge of a quickly rising star and I knew she’d take me all the way with her.
All because of my hard work. All because I’d taken my life in my own two hands and stopped depending on other people.
Now was not the time to throw that away on some pretty face with a hero’s complex.
I was going to let Dev help me renovate the house and turn it into a B&B, but there was only one reason for that: I wanted to sell the property, and I didn’t want it going to some faceless developer who would tear down the house and build five hundred houses in its place. Dev was just a means to an end. A cog in the machine.
A renovating partner, so to speak.
All part of the process. All part of the plan. And nothing more than that.
Because this wasn’t my place. This town hadn’t been my place for years, and I didn’t want to come back to it. The house? Sure, it was mine for the moment. But it wasn’t the place where I’d be staying. And Dev wasn’t my man. Okay, we had some sort of chemistry. I’d be stupid to deny that. When he touched me, it set my skin on fire and made me feel like screaming with some emotion I didn’t understand.
