Page 40 of Passion in Bloom

“I’m not.”

I glanced up at him, noting his stern and serious expression.

“You told me to back off. To butt out. I am trying to. I can see you’ve got baggage. That you’re skittish and want your independence. Fine. You do you. But I’m not the kind of innocent bystander who can step back when someone is being bothered.” He cleared his throat. “If I can help out anyone in a time of stress, I damn well will try.”

It was admirable, that he could be that chivalrous. That he possessed such a deep sense of a hero complex, but I’d been burned by David pretending to have the same trait and it wouldn’t be a simple case of me lowering my guard again.

But Roarke is not David.

At this rate, I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to believe that and know it wasn’t just lust coaxing me to give him a chance.

“All right. You do you,” I parroted, throwing his words back at him. “But I do not appreciate you talking to our landlord and trying to sneak in security measures. Or having conversations about me and my residence here.”

“You cannot be this naïve, gorgeous. You cannot.”

“I’m not naïve,” I argued, despising how much I enjoyed the thrill of butting heads with him again.

“Then what’s your plan? Huh?”

I shrugged. “I don’t need to change my plan. It’s the same as it was before he showed up in Burton. All I want to do is keep to myself and mind my own business.”

“And you think that’ll work.”

I swallowed hard, not liking how brutal he was like this. But then again, it was smart to be challenged. It has to work. “I think he’ll move on sooner or later.”

“Why are you protecting him?”

I stopped short, glaring at him as we stood near his cabin. It slipped my mind how far we’d walked, just talking.

“Why are you protecting him?” he repeated. He shoved his hands back into his pockets. The somber expression on his lean face didn’t suggest that he’d let me off the hook without an answer to this direct question.

I didn’t owe him a reply. It was my business, not his.

Yet, I hated the idea that he could think that. That he could seriously, for one second, think that I actually wanted to watch out for David.

“I’m not,” I said.

“You’re not protecting him,” he said. It should’ve sounded like another question, but the echo was more of a confirmation of what I said.

“And you’ve convinced yourself that fighting back won’t work.”

I shook my head. No. No way in hell would fighting David end well. He had too many loopholes. He had too many connections, seemingly everywhere, to never get in trouble.

“You mean to tell me that you think that asshole would really give up and just let you go?”

I stared at him, wishing I could tell him that I did.

Deep down, though, in that fearful nugget of honesty in my soul, I felt certain that was a dream. A fantasy. Something that would never, ever happen.

“Do you think he’ll ever retreat and give up?” he asked, calmly and quietly as he stepped closer to me.

No.

But admitting that would seem too much like I was giving up.

If I couldn’t run and hide forever, what other option was there?