by Maisey Yates
“Well okay, that is something,” he said.
“It wasn’t all easy stuff growing up here,” Gabe said. “But we made it through. And we’re...family. For whatever that’s worth.”
“I guess it’s as good a reason as any to band together.”
“Sure. But this ranch...the boys that are here... The family is expanding, and that feels good too.”
“You know...our friend who died, Ellie’s first husband,” Caleb said. “He was part of our family even though we weren’t blood related. And I think because of him this school exists. Because of him, because of McKenna. Because of expanding our ideas of what it meant, and who we might feel responsible for. Our dad was irresponsible, and he did a whole bunch of stuff that my wife would divorce my ass for. But I think from that we’ve made something good. And I guess that’s the thing. You can let bad things take hold, take over. Or you can decide who you’re going to be and why. I think we all damn well decided.”
And because of that they were helping Emmett.
Because he had come here. Because he had reached out. It was all a decent enough endorsement for the idea of family. In whatever shape it came.
Well, he was grateful for it when it came to Emmett, anyway.
“I figured I’d help give you a hand this morning, if you were all right with that.”
“Sure,” Caleb said, draining the last of his coffee. “I’m not staying long. I gotta get back to the ranch.”
“Why?” Gabe asked. “Time to feed the Christmas trees?”
Caleb took plenty of crap for running a Christmas tree farm. It had been so lucrative for him, that while his plans had been to expand into beef, he had ended up sticking with the trees.
“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that. You know, I work my own land, Gabe, not just something that Dad built.”
“You’re an ass,” Gabe said.
“Yeah,” Caleb said. “That’s well established. And the only person in the world I really care about doesn’t mind.”
He winked and Gabe rolled his eyes. Then the fight seemed to be over.
So this was having brothers.
It was weird.
But he didn’t mind it.
“Let’s get to work,” Gabe said.
They did, and West allowed it to drown out thoughts of Pansy, and the fact that he wanted to call even though he was pretty sure she wouldn’t want him to.
And that he was also pretty sure he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.
But there was ranch work.
And ranch work was a good thing to have when you didn’t want to think about your problems.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHE WASN’T A VIRGIN.
As Pansy sat at her desk at the police station she could only think that phrase over and over again.
She was no longer a twenty-seven-year-old virgin.
She had dealt with it handily in the arms of West Caldwell last night.
She kept having to remind herself, because it seemed so strange. Like she was having an out-of-body experience, except her body felt so many things.
She’d had a small breakdown last night. Curled in on herself and felt utterly wrecked from the inside out. But, she had found herself this morning.
What she had done was kind of a big deal. But she could finally also understand what Sammy had said about it not being a big deal.
She was realistic. She knew that she and West did not have a future. She didn’t want a future with West. Her future was here at the police department, and on Hope Springs Ranch, and in general the life that she had planned out for herself didn’t have room for a man in a permanent sense at the moment.
Maybe someday.
And when that someday came she would be grateful always that she’d had West to give her that experience.
It wasn’t hearts and flowers.
It was a dusty old couch in a barn. And there was something fitting about that too.
She was glad that he hadn’t handled her with too much delicacy. Glad that he hadn’t treated her like she was fragile or breakable, because life had done a good job of breaking her as it was.
She’d pieced herself back together a long time ago and found a life that made her proud. A life that felt like it had purpose.
A life that had been affected suitably by the death of her parents and had given that loss purpose.
She had allowed it to make her better. To make her stronger.
Because if she didn’t... There was no point to anything.
Because of that she’d been made strong. And she hadn’t wanted romance and all that anyway.
She didn’t need it. She wasn’t that kind of girl, not really.
It was okay. She didn’t want to be or need to be. What he’d said to her before she’d gone into her house had stuck in her head.
Had anybody tucked her in at night?
No. But then she remembered that she’d survived it. And, there was no point being upset about what you didn’t have. It didn’t bring it back. It didn’t fix what was broken.
You just grew into the kind of person who didn’t need it. He should know that as well as anyone.
So yeah. A little bit rough, a little bit careless on a couch in a barn, completely unplanned, seemed about right for her first time.
She wasn’t going to regret it. Life was too short for that. And while she clearly wasn’t the kind of person who rushed out to have experiences just for the sake of them, now that she had one, and it was decent enough, she wasn’t going to waste any time feeling upset about it.
Anyway it was difficult to feel upset about it. Rough and careless, yes. Totally out of character, yes. And completely and utterly mind-blowing, possibly because of all that.
She stood up from her desk and finished the paperwork she was going over, then headed out the door to her police car. It was a beautiful day.
A beautiful day to not be a virgin.
She felt slightly giggly and decided that she deserved a drink from Sugar Cup. After all, a little bit of celebrating herself didn’t seem like a bad idea. Not after that.
She was really doing this. Owning it. She felt very un-Pansy about the whole thing, and she was really quite cheered about it.
She was normally so rigid, so concerned with everything going a certain way. To have found some sort of relief from that in the aftermath of such a reckless and huge decision was welcome. She diverted herself away from her car and headed toward the coffeehouse, pushing open the door and stopping when she got inside.
Because who was in there, but West and Emmett.
This was her deepest fear. That if she hooked up in a small town, she was going to have to continue to run into that person whether she chose it or not. And it was all well and good to be casual about the whole thing when West was a memory and seeing him again was theoretical. It was quite another to be casual when he was right there and it was in public, and she was having to see him for the first time since she had gotten naked with him with other people around. With his half brother around.
She was just about to back out the door when he looked up over his coffee cup and his eyes collided with hers.
“Pansy,” he said. “Why don’t you join us?”
“I’m on duty,” she said, indicating her uniform.
And when he looked at her his eyes were full of heat. He took a leisurely tour of said uniform, and all the places it clung to her body. And it made her face hot.
“I can stay for a second,” she said.
She walked over to where he sat and crossed her arms. “Aren’t you going to order a drink?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I usually get a Big Hunk.”
“Emmett,” he said, handing Emmett a five. “Can you
get Officer Daniels a drink?”
To her surprise, Emmett rushed off to do just that without giving his half brother any back talk. “He likes you,” West said. “Probably because you were against him going to jail.”
“Oh yes,” Pansy said. “I find that does tend to make a person popular.”
“Why don’t you sit down?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not going to stay.”
“I’m happy to see you,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s...good to see you.”
“How are you?” he asked.
She ignored the feeling of pressure behind her eyes, in her throat. “Are you...asking after my health? As if you might have broken me?” She gritted her teeth to try and keep from blushing. She didn’t know that would actually help to stop a person from blushing, but she had to try something.
But if he was going to bring it up...if he was going to try and take control of it in some way, well, she wasn’t going to let that happen. She would go ahead and face it head-on, if she had to.
“It seems like the thing to do. Like the kind of thing a gentleman might do. Which I can only sort of speculate about.” He shrugged. “All things considered.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Good to know. Good to know that I left you feeling...fine.”
She looked over and saw Emmett was still standing near the counter, waiting for her drink. “It was good,” she said, not quite sure of the protocol to all of this, but she knew that men had somewhat fragile egos so she supposed that she ought to tell him that it was good rather than fine.
“Oh I know it was good,” he said. “Women don’t come apart like that if it’s not. It was good for me too. Thanks for asking.”
“Oh.” Well maybe his ego was healthy enough he didn’t need the affirmation. And she hadn’t thought it could be...less than good for men. She hadn’t even wondered what he’d thought of it. Why should she, anyway? He’d had lots of sex, presumably.
It was her watershed moment. Not his.
“I hadn’t been with anybody since before I went to prison.” His eyes flicked over his half brother. “I just wanted you to know that.” He met her eyes then, that startling blue that had captivated her from the first. Apparently it was a moment for him too. She had no idea how to process that. “It’s been a long time for me, and I don’t want you to think that’s just something I do. It was. A long time ago. But then I got married. Then I went to jail. And I never wanted anybody. Until I met you.”
She hadn’t expected that. It made her feel...not quite like she was the only inexperienced one. It made her feel like her initial thoughts about the whole thing had been turned on their head.
Because if he had felt like she was different, then maybe it really was different. Maybe it wasn’t just her being a virgin. Maybe it was true.
And all right, maybe it was a little bit sad that she wanted to think that. And Sammy would probably tell her it was a failure at being casual.
But surely, she could be casual while wanting to think that she mattered a little bit?
“I never met anyone I really wanted,” she said, the words making her throat tight. She questioned herself when she said them. Questioned if she should have spoken them out loud. But she had. So it was too late to get all wound up about it.
“How?” he asked.
She floundered for a second, because she didn’t really know the answer to that. Not when being with him had felt so right. So easy. When her attraction to him hadn’t been something she could control. She couldn’t claim any kind of superior willpower. Not when it had never been tested. She couldn’t claim she’d never been around a good-looking man. Her house was a stampede of sexy cowboys at any given time.
Obviously, she was never going to look at her brothers or cousins that way. Or Logan, for that matter.
But they were friends with a host of rodeo cowboys, and Pansy had seen a lot of masculine, hot cowboys up close.
So it wasn’t like there hadn’t been good-looking men.
“I wear a bulletproof vest,” she said.
She had meant it as a joke, but it landed somewhat serious, and she couldn’t even dispute the double meaning.
He opened his mouth to say something, but then Emmett returned with her coffee.
“Here you go,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. “I better go. Have a good day. Both of you.”
Then she realized it was probably Emmett’s first day of the school. “Oh,” she said. “How was your day, Emmett?”
The kid looked stunned, and he just stared at her with his eyes wide. Then he blinked a couple of times. Hard.
“Good,” he said.
“I’m glad.”
She took one last look at West before turning away and heading back out the door.
But she felt like she had left a part of herself behind, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do about that. Wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
But it didn’t matter. Because she had a job to do.
And one thing she could not allow was for West Caldwell to become a distraction from that job.
What she really didn’t want to do was to prove her past self right, and prove that she couldn’t actually handle sleeping with somebody and conducting business around town.
Are you actually going to sleep with him again?
She didn’t know. She didn’t know if she could handle something this big, that filled her up so completely, dominating her thoughts right now. No. She could not have sex with him, have an emotional breakdown and spend half the day completely preoccupied thinking about him. And that made her sad.
But it was the way it was. And anyway, they’d both had a good time. He’d...broken his dry spell. She’d had her first time. It was good enough.
She took a sip of her coffee and looked down the main street of town.
Her town.
It was good enough.
It had to be.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HE HAD ONLY seen glimpses of Pansy over the last couple of days, and he really hadn’t expected to see her at the community center that weekend when he showed up with Emmett. But there she was. Plain clothes and pretty wearing a gray T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans that showed off her slight curves.
Her hair was up in that ponytail that she favored.
His hands itched to take it down.
His hands itched to do a hell of a lot of things. But of course he couldn’t do any of them, since she seemed to want to avoid it all. Him and everything that had happened between them. The heat and fire that had burned between them.
Hell.
He practically pushed Emmett out of the truck and he got out on his side. And when his eyes were finally able to find a resting place other than Pansy, the reason that she was there became clear.
Barbara Niedermayer was standing there with her arms crossed and a sour expression on her face.
It was clear to West that Pansy had come to run interference.
Not that one sour faced woman was going to be a problem for West. But, being civil might be. So he had a feeling it was a decent thing that the police were there to enforce civil rest. Or whatever.
“Good morning,” Pansy said. “We have some tools for you right over here.” She gestured broadly toward a rake, shovel and a wheelbarrow. West knew Pansy well enough to know that nothing about this tone was sincere. And he had a feeling that she was doing her best to forcefully steer the way the interaction was going to go.
He’d never met so much intent packed into such a tiny frame before.
Damned if he didn’t like it. Damned if he didn’t like her. She had started out as a burr underneath his skin and she had transformed into...well. Something. If he were a different man he might have attributed some softer feelings to it.
&
nbsp; After that, Barbara took hold of Emmett and began to give him instruction. And that was when Pansy turned and addressed West directly for the first time. “Glad you came. Grab a shovel.”
“I only saw one shovel.”
“There’s always an extra shovel, West.” Her words were overbright and so was her smile. He didn’t trust it. “We are demonstrating our commitment to the community.”
“Really?”
She seemed to produce an extra shovel out of nowhere. “Really,” she said, thrusting it in his direction.
That was how he found himself digging weeds out of flower beds and turning the soil, trying to get rid of the nasty plants that had taken hold and lain dormant since the previous spring. It seemed like a metaphor.
He’d never liked poetry or anything of the sort, so he chose not to dwell on it too much.
There were no answers in a flower bed. At least...none that West was interested in.
Though he cast a sidelong glance at his sidekick, who was named for a flower, and decided this was a hell of a strange situation.
“When you were in school did the other kids tease you for your name?” he asked.
She looked over at him, some strands of hair from her ponytail falling in her face. She blew them away, and shook her head, digging the shovel down deep. “Of course,” she responded, looking at him like he was an idiot. “What don’t you get teased for in school?”
“Good point,” he said. And it was.
“Yes. I got teased for my name. No, it’s not why I became a police officer. But yes, it is kind of a handy thing to always be packing heat when your name is Pansy.”
He laughed. “I bet. I mean, I’m a cowboy named West. Insert your joke here.”
“But you haven’t always been a cowboy,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, I basically have been,” he said. “I might have worked in an office for a while, but it didn’t change what I was.”
Saying that seemed weird. He could see that man clearly in his mind, but it was hard for him to accept that the man was him.
