Page 45 of Accidentally in Bloom

“Is arson an option?” Gray peeked around the corner into the living room.

“I wish. We need to get top dollar. I hope to send a big check to the IRS in about a month. Maybe then that dick debt collector will lay off.”

Gray whipped his head around, and his hackles raised. “Did he call again? Threaten you? Violet?”

“I can handle it.” She didn’t want him to think that she needed him.

Again.

“I know you can handle it, but sometimes it takes two people to handle it. Why won’t you let anyone help you, Rose?”

“Why won’t you let anybody help you, Gray?” Rose pointed her finger at his chest. He snatched her hand and held it, a gaze sizzling between them.

She felt that same magnetic draw to him again. Escape. Escape, now. You can’t get tangled up with him, and you keep getting too close dummy.

Chapter

Twelve

GRAY

Rose jerked her hand out of his grasp, and Gray felt his heart thud into his chest. They were playing a dangerous game with just the two of them there.

“Let's look around.” She shoved at her hair, a nervous tick he’d noticed when she was flustered.

“This is where you grew up?” He tried to create some distance between what his dick wanted to do and his duty: to close out Frank’s estate.

"Until I high-tailed it out at eighteen and didn't look back," Rose said as she wandered through the family living room and opened closets.

"The house is bigger than I thought. I never met him here. Frank always came over to mine.” He peeked around a tiny office with an old rolling chair. Stacks of yellowed paper covered a scratched-up wooden desk.

Rose opened the door to an old childhood bedroom that was practically a museum. Posters of boy bands and female role models hung up on the walls. The bedding was covered with a thin layer of dust. “This was mine.” She looked like a woman confronted with every single one of her demons at once.

Distract her. Make her laugh. Rile her up. Anything to get rid of that haunted look in her eyes.

“So, this was Princess Parker’s lair.”

She threw a dusty stuffed animal at him, and he caught it easily, laughing. A spark was back in her eyes. Good.

His eyes searched the room for clues about who she was and what made her tick. There was something he couldn’t shake about the combination of her brains and her sharp edges that hid a secret gooey middle she rarely showed. She was like a riddle he couldn’t stop trying to solve.

“Didn’t peg you for a boy band fan. I thought you'd prefer listening to dictators’ speeches for inspiration.” He toyed with the pencils on her childhood desk.

“I had crushes just like anybody else.”

“Probably on the hall monitors.” He closed the door behind them as they walked out into the hallway.

Neither of them peeked into the bedroom where Frank had passed in his sleep. Rose kept gaining momentum as she walked faster and faster through the house to the back door. He found her wheezing as she stood outside.

“Hey.” He put a hand on her back. “Just breathe, okay?”

She leaned over her hands on her knees.

“Don't barf on me, Parker.”

She laughed and gained her breath back. “I’m just... It’s a lot, you know?" She stood up and shoved her hair, rubbing her breastbone. “Let’s walk around the yard. Being there brought back all the old memories. I hated going near that bathroom.”

“Is that where your mom…” He couldn’t imagine witnessing that at such a young age.

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