Page 35 of Hero Next Door
And I started to build a timeline for how much longer this was going to take. Because now that Gordon knew I was in town and Dev had evidently decided to start walking out on me for no reason, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in town after all.
I had just finished my third cup of hot chocolate when someone knocked on the door.
I had been in this house for less than a week and had spent far too much time answering the door, I thought grumpily as I got up. At least now it was light outside and I was actually expecting people. I felt a quick thrill of fear when I saw that the person on the other side of the door was a man, but a second glance told me that he wasn’t a man I actually knew.
He wasn’t Gordon.
“Can I help you?” I asked, taking in the suit and shiny shoes, and the sedan parked behind him. This wasn’t a contractor. This guy looked like...
“Name’s Kevin Farlan,” he said, smiling with far too many teeth.
Kevin Farlan. I knew the name, because he’d been calling me since I arrived here, offering to buy the land. He hadn’t taken no for an answer, no matter how many times I told him I wasn’t interested.
What the hell was he doing on my front step this early in the morning?
“Kevin,” I said, refusing to shake his hand. “I’m pretty sure I already told you that I wasn’t interested in your offer.”
He shoved past me and came into the house without an invitation. “You did. That’s why I’m prepared to double it. What do you think, Ms. Pelton? Double what I’ve offered you before, and we’ll make sure it’s a quick and painless transaction. I’ve been told you’re specifically looking for a buyer, and—”
Wait. “Told?” I interrupted. “By who?”
He turned and looked back at me, his expression a mixture of pity and condescension. “Does it really matter? I’m here to make your problems go away.”
I stepped away from the door and gestured toward it, indicating that he was free to leave the same way he’d come in. “The only problem I have, Mr. Farlan, is developers who refuse to hear me when I say I’m not interested in selling the property to them.”
He cocked his head in surprise. “Not interested? I saw Dev Hawthorne just yesterday, Ms. Pelton, and he told me that he wasn’t interested in selling, but that you most certainly were. And that you’d probably appreciate a deal that moved quickly.”
My mouth fell open, and my heart cracked right down the middle.
Dev had sent this man to my house. He’d kissed me and then walked out of my life... and then told the first developer he could find that I wanted to sell my land.
And it would have been really,reallyhard to misinterpret what that might mean.
He just wanted me to leave.
* * *
I flew through my room, jerking my things out of the closet and off the vanity and hurling them at the suitcase on the bed. One shirt ripped when I tried to jerk it off the hanger, and I didn’t even care. I jerked harder, and then harder still, and when it ripped in two, I threw both pieces at the bed.
I couldn’t believe this. I couldn’tbelievethis. After everything that had happened between us over the last week, and after he was the one who had convinced me to let him help me with the renovation, Dev was actually trying to usher me out of town. After the kiss that had pretty much blown up my entire world, he was just going to hand me right to a developer.
A developer just like the one he’d shouted at the first day I was here!
I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid. I’d thought Dev was one of the nice guys, one of those mythological unicorns you hear so much about. The ones that actually have healthy, beating hearts that can love, and who treat you like a treasured jewel rather than just a possession.
But no, he was just like every other man I’d ever been involved with. Lead you on. Make you think this is going to be something real. And then run out on you and knock you off your feet on the way out.
God, I was stupid. Stupid! How the hell had I let a man take advantage of me like this? I was the most careful person I’d ever met, and yet I’d fallen for Dev’s charm hook, line, and sinker.
Well, I was done. If he wanted me out, I’d leave, and he’d never see me again. I had a good life back in Nashville—a good life!—and I would go back to it and never look back. I’d sell this land to the first buyer that came along, and I wouldn’t even care what they were going to do with it.
I was done.
I stormed down the stairs, fuming and betrayed and so, so angry with myself, and started into the kitchen, trying to figure out how much of the food I could take with me. I didn’t know if I’d be able to get a bus back to Nashville today, but if I couldn’t, I’d just go to Avery and Jackson’s for the night. For two nights. For a freaking week, if I had to.
I wanted to be away from this house and all its memories of Dev. I wanted to be somewhere where he couldn’t find me.
I jerked to a stop in the kitchen, though, and looked down slowly. A flash of yellow and dusty blue. Gossamer wings. Long, absolutely still antennae.
