Page 27 of Hero Next Door
She didn’t finish the sentence, and I knew why.Since we nearly kissed in your truck and I turned and ran the other way,was what she wasn’t saying.
And that was just fine with me. I didn’t want to remember that day any more than she did. I didn’t want to remember how betrayed I’d felt as she and her friends high-tailed it into the darkness, doing their best to forget Arberry and everyone who lived here.
Still. She’d asked a question, and I actually had an interesting answer.
I launched into the story of the ranch. All the paperwork to make sure I bought it but kept the Wheatley family on as consultants and co-owners. The complications of keeping Mr. and Mrs. Wheating in the house while Connor ran off to Nashville to chase his own dreams. Learning everything there was to learn about ranching and the horses and the cows while simultaneously trying to unravel all the knots Connor and Mrs. Wheating had tied into the books.
It had almost been beyond me, and I still wasn’t sure I had a handle on it.
“The ranch is running right now though, isn’t it?” she asked. “Everything over there looks so organized.”
“Itlooksorganized, yeah,” I said. “But we’re not there, yet. There’s still... a lot of work to be done.”
And that was all I was going to say about that. Because telling her what work needed to be done would just lead to reminding her how much I needed her to maintain Butterfly Glen the way it was.
And the last thing I wanted was for her to think I was depending on her for anything. Sure, I was helping her right now, and I was hoping for the best.
But I’d learned a long time ago that people had a habit of disappearing when you needed them most, and Parker Pelton had already disappeared on me once.
CHAPTER14
Parker
Iglanced at my phone over breakfast, saw that I had two more calls—!!!—from the developer who had been stalking me, and hissed with dissatisfaction. The man was impossible. I’d already talked to him once and told him that I wasn’t sure I was interested in selling to someone like him, and he’d evidently taken ‘not sure’ to mean ‘done deal.’
He’d been calling me at least three times a day since then, and now he was saying that he was actually in town and waiting for a meeting.
I hated men who couldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I hated them even more when they ran right over your ‘no’ and gave you all the reasons that you didn’t actually mean it. I’d experienced men like that. Men who thought their will was the only one that mattered, and who were so convinced of their own superiority that they weren’t willing to listen to anyone else.
My instincts were screaming at me to block his number and be done with it. But my business sense was arguing against it. There was, after all, a chance that he might be useful, arrogance or not.
After all, I did need to sell the place to someone.
And on that note...
I flipped open my email and glanced again at the message that had come in yesterday while we were up on that mountain talking about tours and ranches and how much adulthood had caught us by surprise. This wasn’t from a developer but from a more localized real estate agent. Someone who had history in the area and actually had a home several towns over. She’d heard that the ranch had changed hands and had heard through the grapevine that I might be interested in selling it. When she emailed and inquired as to my intentions, I told her that we were renovating it to be a B&B instead of just a house, with the thought that people might want to take vacations here.
She’d promptly told me that she had someone who wanted to buy it as a B&B, and I hadn’t known what to say.
It was exactly what I was hoping for. Someone who would buy the place as a B&B and maintain the land the way Scarlett had kept it. Keep the house, keep the horse barn, keep the view.
Give Dev his security about this land not becoming a million homes.
Okay, so that last one wasn’t actually part of my reasoning as he’d never told me he was worried about that sort of thing, but it made sense, right? And why else would he be helping me the way he was? He’d shouted at the developer I had with me on that first day, and I didn’t think that was just because he didn’t like the guy personally.
I mean he definitely hadn’t liked the guy. But I thought it was about more than that. And it made sense. If this land was developed into a bunch of McMansions, it would destroy his operation. The noise and pollution and the loss of the natural land just to the side of his own pastures...
It would destroy him. And he’d worked too hard to make his ranch work for me to do that to him.
I shook my head, surprised at the turn my thoughts had taken, and went back to the email. My finger hovered over the option to reply... but then I cleared out of the app and put my phone down.
I appreciated that the agent had someone who would maintain the B&B. And I’d get back to her about it.
Once I’d made up my mind to let go of the place.
* * *
I’d barely finished my hot chocolate when Avery called and told me that—surprise—she needed me to go to Nashville with her. Evidently the record label had thought better of letting her get away with a week’s worth of absence and had requested—ie, demanded—her presence at some sort of recording session with another artist. They hadn’t given her a way out but had told her it would only take a few hours, and she called me immediately, saying that if she was going to do this, she wanted her manager with her.
