Secrets from a Happy Marriage
Page 35
In the end it might not make her safe. But it would make her good. Would do his memory proud. And that... Well, her real fear was that she might not manage that.
She would rather be carrying a gun either way.
“Just as long as you left some for me,” Pansy said. “I’m starving.”
She walked across the gravel drive, and the four ranch dogs seemed to sense her presence, running in from the direction of the barn barking with glee. The little pack was much like her family. Ragtag and thick as thieves. Comprised of a malamute, an Australian shepherd, a border collie mix and an unidentifiable rescue mutt Rose had found on the side of a highway.
“Yes, yes,” she said, bending down and petting the dogs. “I’m here.”
It wasn’t long before Logan followed up behind the dogs, his cowboy hat pushed up off of his forehead, dirt on his chiseled face, his blue eyes shining all the brighter for it. “Afternoon, Pansy,” he said.
“Hi yourself,” she said.
Logan wasn’t blood related to them, but he was like a brother to her all the same. His mother had been killed in the plane crash with her parents. He’d been staying with them for the duration of the trip, and he’d never left.
“Arrest any bad guys today?” he asked.
“It’s Gold Valley,” she said.
“And?”
“No.”
It wasn’t like they didn’t have crime, but actual arrests weren’t a daily occurrence. There was a handful of regular troublemakers who got into scrapes now and then but didn’t pose much of a threat to anybody in the community.
Of course, drugs were a problem; no place was immune to that. Then there was domestic violence, which crossed all economic lines.
There were crimes that, as far as Pansy could see, came from a certain kind of desperation. Then there were crimes that were just hideous. Insidious. Urban, rural, rich, poor. No place or person was totally safe.
She was lucky, living where she did, that she didn’t see a host of terrible things—the population was sparse, and there was a lack of anonymity in small towns that made it difficult to hide. But they had their issues.
“Thank you for your service,” Logan said dryly.
“I’m not in the military.”
He gave her a mock salute and headed toward the house. Pansy rolled her eyes. “Is Rose here?”
“Yes,” Sammy said. “She shouldn’t be far behind. I think she was out doing chores with Logan today.”
Logan, Ryder, Iris and Rose still all lived at Hope Springs. Sammy’s camper van had been parked on the property for the most part since she was sixteen years old. She would leave for a while to sell jewelry at different markets and fairs in the summer, but never for long.
Sammy wasn’t involved in ranch work, but the rest of the family who lived here was. It didn’t make sense for Pansy to live there, and anyway, she prized the independence. She followed Sammy and Ryder into the house, and the dogs trailed in behind them. She could hear her sister Iris shouting from the kitchen.
“They live here,” Ryder said. “Nothing you can do.”
Iris came out of the kitchen shaking her spatula. “It’s our home. They don’t need to have the run of it.”
Both Ryder and Logan looked at each other and shrugged.
Iris sighed heavily, looking to Sammy as if she would take a hard-line stance on animals running roughshod through the house.
“Don’t look at me,” Sammy said. “Remember, I tried to make a case last year for us having a house cow.”
As the oldest sister, Iris had taken on a stern matriarchal role, where Sammy had always been a feminine free spirit.
It didn’t matter that Iris was stern. Pansy loved her anyway. Or maybe, even loved her for it. She knew that her older siblings had really taken the hit for the kids.
The house itself was worn. Wood floors with the finish worn off in high-traffic areas, and claw marks from the dogs. Rugs that were shoved to one side, couches that bore the impressions of the people who sat on them in their very particular spots. There was a huge TV in the living room, a giant table in the dining room, with eclectic chairs all around. There were high ceilings and exposed wooden beams, large windows that looked out on the fields and mountains that surrounded the house.
And from the entry there was a prime view of a big sign that hung up over the end of the driveway that matched the one out on the highway: Hope Springs Ranch.
A cattle ranch they’d worked to run as a family, and keep family run, for generations. With her siblings having to take over much earlier than anyone had imagined they would.
For a long time, Pansy had hated the name Hope Springs. Because it had felt so ironically named when all of them had been left without much evidence that hope did a damn bit of good in the world.
But sometimes now she felt like she could see it. In the way the sun spilled over the ridge of the mountains, gilding the edges of the pine trees. In the way the cows looked dotting the fields, healthy and contained by strong fences. Evidence that the ranch itself had sustained them.
They’d experienced the kind of loss that could have destroyed them. But from it they’d made a life richer than most people could ever hope for.
“Did anything interesting happen while you were at work?” Sammy asked as she went into the kitchen, grabbed a stack of chipped plates and started to place them on the table.
“Well,” Pansy began, “I gave my landlord a speeding ticket.”
That earned her a moment of silence in the chaotic house. “You didn’t,” Logan said.
“I did,” Pansy confirmed.
“Before you found out he was your landlord?” Logan asked. “I mean, he’s the new guy, right. I remember that you were a little worried because old Dave Hodgkins was selling Redemption Ranch.”
“Yeah. I mean... I didn’t know that when I pulled him over. But I found out pretty quick. And then I wrote him a ticket.”
“Why?” Sammy asked.
“You probably could’ve negotiated for some money off your rent,” Logan pointed out.
The very idea of fudging the system that way made Pansy’s pulse quicken. “No,” she said. “I’d never do that.”
Pansy was absolutely adamant about following the rules. Doing the right thing. Honoring her father’s legacy.
Pansy Daniels knew exactly who she was and what she was about.
It would take more than a handsome lawbreaking landlord to shake that.
Copyright © 2020 by Maisey Yates
ISBN: 9781488056659
Secrets from a Happy Marriage
Copyright © 2020 by Maisey Yates
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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