Page 22 of Hearts at War

That little face-off on the sidewalk was far from my first argument with a woman.

Veronica and I battled constantly, in the privacy of our home near Dallas and out in the open, publicly. I wasn’t new to standing up to a bossy or vindicative individual, male or female.

The more Heather lingered on my mind, though, I couldn’t decide if she had been on a power trip to boss me around or if she’d been in the mood to be vindicative.

I failed to get a read on her when she crashed into me. With how quickly she snapped at me with what was seeming to be her signature sass, I assumed she didn’t give a shit about the run-in. It had been on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I was sorry. That it was my fault for skimming through my mail and not facing forward when I was walking.

But no... She just had to look at me like I was the nastiest piece of garbage on earth and—

“Roarke.” Gavin chuckled to my right. “Are you playing or not?”

I furrowed my brow, snapping out of my thoughts.

Shit. I hadn’t been paying attention at all. Poker wasn’t that complex, but I had checked out of this game with some of the ranch hands. A glance at my hand proved that I’d forgotten my own damn cards.

I cleared my throat. “Uh, yep. Yeah. I’m playing.” I grabbed my beer and drank.

“You gonna act like it?” he teased.

I played my hand and sighed.

It’d been days since I ran into Heather, and ever since, I hadn’t seen her at all.

Maybe she hexed it to happen. Like a witch. When she said she wished she never saw me again—bold, harsh words for not ever fucking knowing me—perhaps she’d made it come true.

A witch? I rolled my eyes at myself, wondering when I started being this ridiculous. Or maybe it was the Halloween spirit affecting me.

“What’s on your mind, man?” another ranch hand asked. “You’ve been out of it the last couple of days.”

“Your niece?” Gavin guessed.

There we go. Nevaeh was a good excuse to explain my distant mood. None of them needed to know that I had a woman stuck in my thoughts. “I just don’t know what to do with her.” They were all familiar with who Nevaeh was and that she’d stopped in Burton again.

“Did she show up again?”

“Who?” I frowned at my buddy. “Heather?”

He furrowed his brow. “What?”

Fuck. “Nevaeh?”

“Yeah, did Nevaeh show up again since that first night?” he asked, eyeing me curiously.

Saying Heather’s name was a dumb mistake. I cleared my throat and nodded, not looking at him. Screw this game. I didn’t have the clarity of mind to watch the others for their tells.

“She did.” The other night, Nevaeh showed up, riding a damn ten-speed bike, of all things. She crashed on my couch, again. She didn’t speak much, again. Then she was gone, again. “She claimed she had ‘errands’ to run. And that was the last I saw of her.”

The others shook their heads. A couple argued about who bet what.

While they smoothed out the issue, I couldn’t help but compare the two. Nevaeh ran off and didn’t stick around, literally acting like a ghost—

Really? A ghost now? I was being ridiculous.

Heather, on the other hand, was just never there. A worry grew in the recess of my mind that this could be nothing more than a case of wanting what I couldn’t have. The lure of the forbidden. Being tempted by the unattainable.

Sure, she was attractive. I doubted she even tried to present herself in any sort of style, but what snagged me was her clear and complete lack of interest. She was the first woman not to want me in a long time. I’d never consider myself a ladies’ man. I wasn’t some heaven-given-gift-to-women idiot, thinking so highly of myself like that. But it was different. After so many women here in Burton eyeing me like candy just because I was one of the few single men, it was a change of pace to encounter a woman so totally uninterested in me.

Maybe to the point of hexing us to never cross paths again.