Page 23 of Passion in Bloom

She narrowed her eyes, getting sassy. Then she shrugged. “I don’t know.”

You don’t know as in you don’t know who David is or you don’t know as in you’re trying to keep information I want to know from me?

Either way, it didn’t matter. I knew David would be looking for me. Even if he’d found the cabin I was renting, he’d want to glean all the details he could about me to most accurately track me and make me sweat.

I left, not bothering to try to get anything else from her. She wouldn’t tell me anything if I seemed too desperate to know.

As I hurried to my car, keeping an eye out for David, for Marty, too, I fumed and let my frustration scale higher and hotter.

All I wanted was to keep to myself. That was my goal when I was younger, and now, I wanted the same. To be left alone to live my life. Not to have nosy people in town poking into my business. I didn’t have a record to hide. I’d done nothing wrong. But the more interest that was shared about me, the more David could get to me.

“You just had to get into my business, huh?” I muttered as I drove out of town.

If Roarke hadn’t asked Marty to talk to me, I doubted I’d be in the cop’s focus at all.

“We have one little casual...incident, and you think that gives you a right to butt into my life?” I growled, talking aloud almost in a rehearsal.

“You think you can sic the cops on me, have people talking about me?” I whispered, firing up to blast these questions at Roarke.

I headed directly to his cabin, letting every bump and rattle in the rough path back there keep me alert and primed to tell him off.

If he thought he could take it upon himself to help launch a damn investigation about me, he had another thing coming.

I narrowed my eyes, tightening my grip on the steering wheel as I drove.

And for once, something other than fear ruled me.

I just hated the sliver of excitement that tingled beneath the surface of my anger.

Because looking forward to seeing Roarke was not something I needed in my life at this moment.