Page 4 of Love At Peace

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 naïve.”

“I’m not naïve either!”