Page 8 of Hero Next Door
I quirked an eyebrow, waiting, but he just huffed and turned away. One last glare at Richard and he hopped back into his truck and left the same way he’d come, in a cloud of dirt and gravel.
I watched him go, feeling torn neatly in two. Something about Dev had touched me last year, in ways I didn’t think anything could touch me. And I’d thought I’d touched him, too.
I’d thought we shared something in that truck in the rain.
But he hadn’t said anything about that. No, he’d come up here not because he recognized me or wanted to see me, but because he was mad at the developer I was talking to… and concerned about the house?
And he lived right over there. I glanced at his house, all heavy timber and red paint—the stereotypical ranch house—and shuddered.
I’d never thought Dev Hawthorne was a hot head. But I guessed I didn’t actually know him that well. Maybe I didn’t know him at all. And now that I’d seen him in action, seen the fury in his eyes and heard it in his voice, something was telling me that he was a problem. He seemed incredibly pushy, and that didn’t work for me. He’d also reached into my chest last year and touched my heart—and I didn’t trust that, either. Especially if he had a temper like the one he’d just demonstrated.
No, I’d been questioning my resolve to sell the place, but if Dev Hawthorne was going to be my neighbor if I stayed…
If he was going to be right there all the time, living right across the valley with his burning eyes and tall, straight frame and the full lips that I’d almost kissed…
That was trouble. Trouble I didn’t have time for. Which meant I was right to sell this place. Because I’d never be safe with someone like that—someone who might see through me—living right there.
CHAPTER5
Dev
Itore into town, making right for Stone’s Hardware—and the bar attached to it.
Yes, it was strange that they shared the same roof. Yes, it had made for problems more than once when someone had too much to drink at the bar, got in a fight, and realized that there were hammers, shovels, and even axes several rows into the hardware part of the building. But it was a small town, and that meant that more often than not, the guy who owned one business also owned another one—or knew the guy who owned the other one and wanted to split rent on the building he’d bought at some point.
Everyone in Arberry treated everyone else like they were family, anyhow. Having several businesses in the same exact location generally just made the whole shopping experience easier.
I skidded to a stop outside the building in question, taking up two parking spaces and not giving one single damn, and jumped out of the truck, still fuming.
Who the hell did that guy think he was? He’d started putting pressure on the Wheatings the moment he heard they might be thinking of selling their property, and hadn’t given any consideration to the situation that had made that decision necessary. Hell, I’d heard he was waiting in their driveway when they got home from appointments at the doctor’s office, just standing there smiling as they returned with the worst news a couple could hear.
Standing there with an offer on their land in their weakest moments, telling them he knew they didn’t have much choice in the matter and that they might as well sign the contract with him now while they had some bargaining power.
My fingers curled into fists at the thought, rage boiling in my blood. The Wheatings were my family, and anyone who treated them badly was asking for trouble.
My mother had moved to Tory, one town over from Arberry, before I was even born and I’d grown up there, a member of the community from Day 1. But I’d also been part Indian, courtesy of the father who hadn’t bothered to stick around, and that had made me an outsider. When we moved to Arberry, it was no different.
No, no one had ever said anything to me directly, but it hadn’t taken long for me to notice the sideways glances or the mothers who hadn’t wanted to invite me to their homes for lunch. I’d heard the girls laughing in high school and been on the losing end of more than one fight where people didn’t want to guard my back.
The Wheatings had never treated me as anything other than human. I’d become friends with Connor Wheating on the first day of high school, when we moved here, and we’d never stopped protecting each other. His mom and dad had become my mom and dad, and thinking of Richard Wright mistreating them or trying to take advantage of them…
The moment I’d heard what he was doing, I’d gathered everything I’d been able to save during my time in the Marines and saved their ranch. And then I’d told him exactly what he could do with his offer on their land.
I should have expected him to just move to the next ranch over when it was available. He was just that sort of person. I should have seen this coming.
But I never would have been able to guess that the next ranch over might have included Parker Pelton.
God. I’d been doing everything I could not to think about her or the things she’d done to my body when I saw her in front of that house up on the hill, but now that I’d gotten there…
God.
No, I didn’t know the girl all that well, aside from what you learn about someone you went to high school with—and never actually talked to. Sure, I’d been acquainted with her for a moment last year when she and her friends were stuck in town. Yeah, I’d been paired up with her for the Mud Run and had thought it was ridiculous, putting two people who’d spent high school ignoring each other into the same truck for that event.
Sure, there’d been a moment up there on the mountain.
A moment I’d dreamt about for at least six months afterward, my breath caught in my chest every time I woke from the memory of her warm brown eyes staring up at me from where she was laying across my lap.
Sure, that had happened.
