Sitting in her office, Keera was finishing up her work when there was a tap on her door. She smiled when Ethan walked in. He wore a scowl, which wasn’t necessarily unusual, but it also meant this was most likely going to be an unpleasant conversation. With her nerves already tied up, she almost wished her phone would ring so she could get out of this conversation.
“I’m surprised to find you alone,” Ethan said as he grumpily sat down in the chair in front of her desk.
“I don’t normally have company in here,” she told him.
“Yeah, but your watchdog is always hovering these days,” he grumbled.
“Max?” she asked, confused. She often did bring Max in with her when Arden was doing something with the kids. She said it was to help him, but the reality was that she really liked the dog. Now that Ethan had mentioned it, she wished Max was with her.
“I was referring to Arden,” he said as if she were a small child who needed everything spelled out for her.
“Arden’s been protective, since it appears someone has a vendetta against me,” she told him.
“Your office was broken into once. That doesn’t mean you’re in jeopardy,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
“And my apartment,” she reminded him.
His eyes rounded as he sat up in his chair. “When was your apartment broken into?”
“It was a week ago. I came home, and two people had broken in, trashed my place, then hurt my neighbor as they escaped. They still haven’t been caught,” she said with a frustrated sigh.
“Why didn’t you call me immediately?” he said, then his eyes narrowed. “Because you called Arden.” The last sentence wasn’t a question.
“For one thing, you just got back yesterday from out of town. And for another, I didn’t call him, but I think his brother did, because he was at my place fast,” she admitted. “But I was grateful he was there because the cops didn’t want me staying there, and I had nowhere else to go.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed more as his mouth gaped open. “What do you mean you had nowhere else to go?” Before she could answer, he fired off another sentence. “Are you staying with Arden?”
Color heated her cheeks as she looked at her desk. This was the reason she didn’t want people to know she was at Arden’s. They were going to make the same assumption she knew Ethan was. It mortified her. Even in this day and age, someone in her position, at the head of a school, could certainly be branded with a scarlet letter A.
“Please keep your voice down,” she begged. “I don’t need my personal business broadcast throughout the school. You know how rumors fly in a small town.”
“I thought we were friends. I don’t understand why you’d keep something like this from me,” he told her. Now he seemed hurt on top of being irritated. Keera wasn’t trying to exclude anyone, but Arden had pointed out that the fewer people who knew, the easier it would be to catch whoever was at fault.
“I’m sorry, Ethan. I should have spoken to you right away. You’ve been nothing but good to me, and if this has to do with the school instead of just me, you should certainly be in on it.”
On top of everything else she was feeling, the last thing she wanted was a load of guilt. But Ethan seemed to be more concerned with how he was feeling than her safety. That should bother her, but at the moment she was far more concerned with assuaging this man’s feelings.
“Arden hasn’t shared a damn thing with me about how this investigation’s going. I think he forgets I’m the vice principal of this school, and that I’ve worked here a long time. I have a right to know what’s happening.”
There was so much accusation in Ethan’s eyes. Though Keera knew she didn’t owe anyone details of her personal life, she did feel that she owed Ethan information that could pertain to the school. He had been there much longer than she had, even longer than Arden.
“Are you and Arden a couple now?” Ethan asked. He’d calmed his voice, but she couldn’t tell what he thought about the possibility of her dating Arden.
“No,” she said too quickly, then forced herself to calm. “He’s just a friend, and he wants to get to the bottom of this.” There was no way Ethan needed to know her personal business or what she and Arden had done together.
“I could be helping you,” Ethan insisted. “Just because Arden has his family’s money doesn’t make him better than me.”
Keera wondered what had happened between Ethan and the Forbes family to make the man so bitter. Maybe it was just a matter of envy. She’d seen that a lot when her family had been wealthy. A lot of people thought money would solve all their problems. She knew firsthand how untrue that actually was.
“I appreciate you offering, Ethan, I truly do. I’m just trying to get this solved so I don’t need help from anyone,” she told him. “It’s very difficult for me to accept.”
“Apparently it’s not too hard, since you’re staying with Arden,” he said, a smirk on his lips as if he knew what that entailed and exactly how she was thanking Arden for his generosity.
Fury rushed through Keera, and she had to push it back down. She expected those who didn’t know her to think these types of things, but she’d thought she and Ethan had respect for each other. Apparently not.
“I might be temporarily staying with Arden, but I assure you, what I do when I’m outside of these school walls is no one’s business,” she told him, her shoulders coming back, fire in her eyes. She took pride in the fact that he looked away first. He should feel ashamed for making snap judgments against her.
“He’s not the guy you think he is. He has a lot of people fooled,” Ethan told her, still refusing to look her in the eyes.
Keera didn’t know how to react to this. She didn’t know Arden, not that well. Everything she’d seen of him spoke of a good man, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Ethan had known Arden and his entire family for a long time. But with the way Ethan had been acting over the last few weeks, his opinion wasn’t valued.
“How long until you go back home?” he asked when she didn’t respond to his last words. He seemed to be backpedaling. He even looked up and gave her a semblance of a smile.
“I don’t know. The people destroyed nearly everything in my place. I was able to salvage some clothes, but all the furniture was ruined, along with the flooring. They couldn’t have been there more than twenty minutes, but the amount of destruction they caused was equivalent to that of a tornado.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, seeming to mean the words. “I would’ve been there for you had I known.”
“I appreciate that more than you can imagine,” Keera told him. “There’s not a lot of people in this world we can count on, so it’s always nice to have someone like you in my life.”
Keera realized as she said the words, making the man smile, that she wasn’t sure she really wanted him to be a part of her life anymore—at least not outside of work. He was just so bitter, and he was now making her uncomfortable.
He stood and walked toward her office door. Maybe he could feel the tension in the room, or maybe he’d come in and said what he needed to, and now he was making his escape. She wasn’t sure, but she did know she had no desire to stop him.
“Next time, make sure I’m the first phone call you make,” he told her as he paused at her door.
Keera’s shoulders tensed again as he looked at her. She wanted to tell him that wasn’t going to happen, but what were the chances of anything more occurring? Pretty slim, in reality. It had been very quiet for the past week, so maybe the culprits had found whatever it was they were looking for and they were done with her.
“I will,” she said. The lie felt bitter on her tongue.
Ethan’s chest puffed out as he smiled for a moment too long before exiting her office. It took several moments for Keera’s heart rate to lower and her skin to stop prickling. Ethan wasn’t a bad man, but there was something about him that irked her now. Maybe it was because he was so antagonistic toward Arden, someone she cared about.
Keera wasn’t sure what it was. She’d learned long ago to take her time in trusting another person. That’s why she didn’t quite understand her newfound trust in Arden.
That wasn’t true. If she was being honest, she’d have to admit she couldn’t deny Arden was someone she could turn to in a time of need. She wasn’t sure how long that would be the case, but right now he was the first person she thought of when everything was going wrong.
What was more frightening than that, was the fact that she thought of Arden when everything was going right, too. As a matter of fact, she was constantly thinking about Arden and his dang dog. The two of them had wedged themselves inside her wall of protection. She didn’t want to put the wall back up.