Page 38 of Hero Next Door
And then I realized how ridiculous all of this was. Parker Pelton was coming to my house for dinner, sure, but I’d spent enough time around her to know that she wasn’t the candlelit dinner sort of girl. She was going to take one look at this mess, laugh at me and tell me I was ridiculous, and then turn and walk the other way.
I blew out the candles, grabbed the plates and silverware, and moved them into the kitchen, where I laid them out again on the small kitchen table next to the window that overlooked the valley. Then I went back and got the wine.
Parker might not be a candlelit-dinner sort of person, but something told me shewasa wine person. Besides, I’d already opened the bottle. It wouldn’t do anyone any good for it to go to waste.
Supposedly, the stuff was expensive.
I set the wine on the table, remembered that I hadn’t moved the wine glasses, and was walking back to get them when I heard a light tap on the door.
Oh my God, she’d come. She’d actuallycome.
Why the hell did that make entire body buzz with excitement? I’d done scarier things than this. I’d been at war, for God’s sake, hiding from the enemy and taking fire and dealing with car bombs and...
And none of that felt like it compared to hearing Parker at my door and knowing that she was waiting for me to answer the phone. None of it felt nearly as important as what was about to happen.
CHAPTER22
Parker
Iwatched my hand knock again, my touch so light that I wondered whether he’d even be able to hear it. And I wondered at the light knock. Was I hoping he’d miss it?
Or was I hoping he was standing right on the other side of the door, waiting for me
The thought had my yanking my hand back and peering through the glass window of the door, looking for him. Then I realized that if he was there, I probably looked like a complete maniac right now, all peering through his windows, and took a quick step back.
Jesus Christ, what was I doing? I’d heard just yesterday that this man had actually pursued a developer and given him my number, pushing him to call me about my property. He’d been showing me my path out of town after he spent all week seeming like he wanted to me to stay—or at least keep the property.
He’d cooked me breakfast and then thrown me to the wolves. Metaphorically. And then he’d cut and run this afternoon the moment I...
Well okay, fair enough, I told him to go. I told him I didn’t need him, and I wasn’t even polite about it. So maybe I couldn’t really blame him for having done what I told him to.
Except that I did. I was surprised as hell when he didn’t come after me and try to fix things, because I’d been so sure that he would. I’d been crushed when I returned to the first floor to find that he was gone, his standard parking place in the driveway empty. I’d hated that I was crushed, but that hadn’t changed the fact that I’d suddenly felt emptier.
And I guessed that emptiness was why I was here. I wasn’t used to needing another person in my life. The truth was, it had been a long time since I’d let anyone close enough to my heart to touch it. Aside from Avery and Olivia, who I couldn’t get rid of if I tried. But when it came to trusting a man? Opening up to him and letting him see the secrets that lived inside me?
No, I’d never let that happen. It had caused too much damage in my life already, letting men that close.
But Dev had managed to work his way under my skin despite my best defenses, and when it came right down to it, I sort of liked having him there. I liked knowing that if I said something, he’d roll his eyes and look at me like I was crazy, while saying something that let me know he actually agreed with me. I missed his stupid jokes and him always pretending he was this big manly man while he did things like cook blueberry pancakes.
I missed feeling like he was standing between me and anything that might come to hurt me.
“God,” I groaned. I sounded like such a sap. Worse. I sounded like a hapless damsel in distress in some stupid book
I’d never been a damsel in distress.
Before I could come up with a way to stop being such a damsel, though, the door in front of me opened, and there was Dev, in all his chocolate-curled, broad-shouldered, dimpled-chin glory. His eyes were serious and his mouth wasn’t laughing, and he...
“You look almost as nervous as I feel,” I said, before I could think better of it.
He chuckled. “Girl, I’ve been on midnight missions in the desert against people who wanted to skin me alive, and I’ve never been more nervous than I am right now.”
That made me laugh, though I wondered when the hell he’d done anything like what he’d just said, and the laughter broke the tension. We both grinned at each other, somehow falling right back into the place we’d made for ourselves over the past week.
Like the bad things had never happened.
“Come in,” he said, holding his arm out. “I have lots of food and wine that’s evidently too expensive to drink.”
“What are we going to do, turn into Monopoly men if we drink it?”
