Love At Peace (Hometown Heartstrings #3)

Chapter 2

Roarke

N evaeh and David?

I shook my head, not to argue with what Heather told me, but to maybe knock sense into it. I wasn’t telling her no . I was trying to remove the doubt I couldn’t stop.

My niece and her ex?

That was a farfetched claim that had no place in her supposed explanation of why she had to leave town again. Of why she had to run from what we were starting.

“You heard what ?”

I had been afraid of Nevaeh’s name popping up, but not in that context.

Last night, when Heather told me that she wanted space and instructed me to leave her cabin, I did so without argument. She’d received a hell of a surprise when Janelle called her and said that data had been compromised. That wasn’t a good situation for any bank employee to be in. Then when Heather made a connection that Nevaeh was the only person who’d ever been by her work laptop unsupervised, I feared that could be true.

It just didn’t make sense. I couldn’t understand why Nevaeh would try to compromise data anywhere. She was a thief. Lying came easily to her. If she were to mess with any files or software anywhere, it’d be to make herself a quick buck. Not fuck up a charity log.

“Nevaeh, your rude, thieving, teenaged niece. I heard that she’s been hanging around—”

I shook my head again, holding my hand up higher to quiet her even though I’d just prompted her to answer me. “You heard ? You heard that Nevaeh was hanging around with someone. That’s all?”

“That’s not all!” she shouted, walking up to me. Fury glittered in her green eyes as she narrowed them to slits. “She’s hanging around my ex. Davd. The asshole who—”

She cut herself off, and I gritted my teeth at being deprived of that description. The asshole who did what? Still, even in this heated moment, she couldn’t tell me anything. She still had to keep me at arm’s length when all I’d wanted to do was help her.

“You heard that they’re together.” I grunted a weak laugh. “You heard. You mean a rumor?”

“It’s not a rumor.”

I crossed my arms. “So you’re saying you saw them together. You saw, with your own eyes, my niece and your asshole of an ex together.”

“No.” She pushed her lips into a thin line. “No, that’s not what I said. I didn’t see them. I’ve been nervous and on edge to see David since he showed up here, but I didn’t see him with her.”

“And you’re banking this meltdown or freakout, or whatever the hell you want to call this, on a rumor?”

“It’s not a rumor,” she argued. “This isn’t fun and games. This isn’t high school or a childish routine of he-said-she-said.”

“But you just ‘heard’ that they are together. And you assume that must be fact.”

“No.”

“Make up your mind, Heather.” I rubbed my jaw. It was already so tense and aching from how fiercely I clenched it. That was how pissed I was. Rumors were more than a pet peeve of mine. So much of the headache I suffered with my ex-wife was from rumors about this and rumors about that. “You said that you heard they were together. And you want to make me think that you’re not assuming anything. Come on. I know you’ve already got it out for her—”

“I don’t have anything out for anyone!”

“You probably spent all night working up a case against her with whatever happened to your computer.”

She growled, gripping her purse strap like she wanted to wrench it off and use it to strangle me. “I wasn’t. There is no arguing the fact that she was the only person who had access to my damn laptop! Stop trying to gaslight me into seeing things how you do.”

Gaslight? Fuck, was that what David did to her? I wasn’t trying to persuade her or gaslight anything, and I hated that she could accuse me of such.

“Fine. I’ll give you that. Yes, Nevaeh was by your laptop unsupervised. So is the cleaning person the bank hired who comes in at night.”

She shook her head. “The bank is under surveillance. They’d be caught on camera if they went on anything.”

“What about a hack? Someone interfering from fucking Timbuktu? Anywhere.”

She didn’t retort on that point.

“You don’t have proof that Nevaeh, specifically, did anything. That’s all I’m trying to point out about that. Yes, she had the means. But that doesn’t necessarily equal immediate guilt.”

She looked away for a moment only to resettle her glare on me again. “Fine. Fine, Roarke. Fine. You want me to dismiss the fact she could’ve gotten into my work stuff. Fine!”

I opened and closed my mouth, trying hard not to lash out in this line of the argument.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s hanging around—”

“Fact?” I blurted. “Is it a fact? You just said you heard it. A rumor. You can’t tell me that you’re so weak to believe rumors.”

“I’m not weak, dammit.”

Okay, I was messing this up. “Then na?ve.”

“I’m not na?ve either!”

Shit. I took a deep breath and tried to steady my temper. She was pushing all the right buttons to make me livid and defensive here, and it was all because I’d deemed her worth fighting for. I didn’t want to see her go. Not just because I was slowly falling for her and caring too damn much about fostering this connection that felt so right between us, but also because she seemed to need the support she was starting to find here. With me. With Todd. With Nance and Fergus at the bank.

She was fitting in, and based on what Gavin explained about her past, I wanted that for her. I wanted her to have a place to belong—even if it wasn’t with me. If she wanted to stop this between us now, so be it. I wouldn’t force a woman into anything. But I hated the idea of her giving up on being here in her hometown at all, on the run again.

“You’re trying to tell me that you can’t stay in Burton because of a rumor you heard. You’re willing to put more stock into secondhand knowledge than what you see and know.”

“That’s not true.”

“How is it?” I argued. “You hear a rumor and freak out.”

“No. That’s not what’s going on here.”

“You just said it. They were your words.”

She frowned, seeming to consider my perspective, but she was too stubborn to relent. Keeping her chin up high, she shook her head and refused to back down. “You want to harass me about what I see? I saw that your niece was in there near my laptop.” She pointed at the cabin behind me.

“Did you see her on your laptop?”

She growled, dropping her head back to squint at the darkening sky.

“For fuck’s sake, Roarke. What has she ever done to deserve your defense?”

I had no answer. I couldn’t reply to that honestly. Nevaeh was sketchy. She was shady. She wasn’t untrustworthy at all, so my defense of her didn’t make sense.

But I couldn’t stop arguing with Heather’s points. If I didn’t stand up and insist she could be wrong, then she’d have no resistance from anyone or anything to stop her from running.

“You want to talk about what I know?” she challenged, tilting her head to the side. “I know David. I know what he’s capable of. What he does. How his sick, twisted mind works.”

She had me there. I didn’t know a damn thing about that arrogant jerk from the big city. It seemed that there was nothing to learn about him either. Marty had looked. I’d shelved the idea of getting a PI to investigate him. I didn’t know David or what he could be like, and I wished, so badly, that I did. Regret and disappointment hit me hard with the acknowledgment that Heather refused to tell me about her ex or her past.

Maybe it was too traumatic.

Perhaps she was just that independently stubborn not to speak up.

I couldn’t tell, but her silence aggravated me all over again.

“I know how David schemes and makes an agenda. He came here, all the way from Chicago, to chase me down to come after me.”

“If you’re so convinced that he came here to follow you and stalk you, why would you be so quick to think he’s with Nevaeh then? Based on a rumor, no less.”

“Because he can’t be trusted. He does everything with an ulterior motive. Nothing is simple with him and there is always a hidden agenda.”

“Against you?”

She shrugged, scowling at the ground. “All I can say is that I don’t trust this situation. I told you what I wanted to do. I explained that I wanted to lie low and not engage with him. That I hoped he’d get bored and leave town. Don’t act like I’m being a moron, or weak, or na?ve to dislike the news of your niece getting close with him.”

Because you think they’re going to team up against you? That makes even less sense. “Nevaeh isn’t close to you .”

“She was when I was stupid enough to take pity on her looking sick. She was when I volunteered to let her rest at my home.”

“I don’t understand how that has to automatically mean that she—or he—will try to—”

“There’s no trying, Roarke. Someone did go on my laptop.”

“For him?” I furrowed my brow. Nevaeh wouldn’t. Right?

“I don’t owe you answers, Roarke.” She slashed her hand through the air. “I don’t have to explain shit to you. I’m not comfortable with my ex stalking me or being so near.”

“Yet you won’t let Marty or the law help.”

“Because they can’t!” she yelled, shoving her fists down as she locked her arms at her sides.

“Bullshit.” I shook my head.

“I—” She closed her mouth and breathed hard through her nostrils. “I don’t have to get into this with you.”

“Why not?” I shouted back. “Why does it have to feel so good to keep me in the dark? Huh? Why is your first instinct to shut me out?”

She blinked quickly, looking away.

“I want to help you, Heather. I’m not the enemy.”

Why can’t you see that?

I didn’t understand how she wouldn’t know that, how she couldn’t feel it when we were close. When we lay in each other’s arms. When we closed our eyes and kissed. It made no sense that we could be in sync physically and intimately but so distant mentally and emotionally.

“She is making herself my enemy,” she bit out. “And he will always be my enemy.”

“Why?” I asked. “Tell me. Please, Heather. I don’t want to see you suffer and be scared like this.” I took one step forward as my heart banged wildly in my chest. Seeing her caught in panic like this caused me to ache at the injustice of it all. “I want to help but I can’t if you don’t tell me what is wrong. What he did or how I can help—”

“I never asked for your help!” Tears clung to the edge of her lids as she screamed it at me. “I never asked for your fucking help!”

Retreating at the raw fury in her words, I stepped back once. Twice. I held my hands up, hating that I’d done what I vowed not to.

I’d pushed her to snap at me. I’d prompted her to lose it like this.

Seeing her like this, angry and vocal, almost made me want to keep going. That if we let this argument scale higher and tenser, she’d blurt out the big, bad secrets she didn’t want me to know.

But I couldn’t.

The damage was done.

She called Nevaeh and David her enemies, but I was certain she wanted to include me on that list too.

In a blur, she pushed past me, rushing for her door.

I didn’t move, watching in stunned silence as she unlocked the door and slammed it shut after herself.

Hearing the sounds of her cries from inside, I tried to stay strong and know that this fight was both of our faults. Too many miscommunications. Too many secrets on her part. Too much determination to help on mine.

She cried, locking herself away from me.

And I’d never hated myself more.