The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch - Maisey Yates Page 0,24
it I swear I’ll let you know.”
“Why do you want to help me?” Standing there with the cold beer in his hand, and Pansy looking up at him with concern, he genuinely did want to know. She didn’t like him much, and yet, she was pledging to offer extra help on something that wasn’t her responsibility.
But then, he had told her about it because something in him had known that she would, and he didn’t know why he had known that, only that he did.
“Family is everything,” she said. “Family is what keeps you standing. Believe me.”
“That’s not my experience of family.”
“You’re doing that for your brother. You’re not forgetting about him, you’re not letting him go. I guess... Even if there isn’t anyone to do that for you it’s a good thing when you can do it for someone else. Family gets made all kinds of ways. Not just being raised together. Not just being blood. When my parents... When my parents died, you know my aunt and uncle died along with them. And so did my mom’s best friend. She was a single mom, one child. Logan. We grew up with him. He’s like a brother to me. Just as much as Ryder. And Jake and Colt are my cousins but they might as well be brothers too. We had to come together. We had to depend on each other. And we did. Family is what you make it. And what you do when times are tough.”
He nodded slowly. “Well, I’m doing my best to find out what family can mean.”
“Right. Connecting with the Daltons.”
“And McKenna. She’s a Dodge now.”
“I know,” Pansy said. “McKenna and Grant were a pretty hot topic of town gossip.”
“Is that so?”
“Oh yes. Grant’s wife died nearly ten years ago and everyone in town was pretty invested in him. Then McKenna showed up and... She changed him. She saved his life. I’m convinced of that. I mean, he was always going to live, but I think that was just surviving. Breathing. She made him alive.”
“That’s nice,” he said.
His half sister definitely seemed to have a great relationship with her husband even if it was one that kind of mystified him. Grant seemed like a pretty sincere guy, while McKenna was sharp, witty and a little bit spiky, which was why he liked her so much.
McKenna was like him. She had grown up on the outside of any real family. Though, she had made it into foster care when he hadn’t. He needed to make sure he spent more time with her. He had a feeling the two of them could relate.
“Thank you,” she said. “For fixing my roof.”
“Not a problem,” he said, taking another long sip of beer.
She was staring and it took him a moment to realize that she was watching him drink the beer. That she was staring at his mouth. And as he lowered the bottle, her eyes went down too, until they landed in the center of his chest.
They settled there for a moment, then bounced back up, a look of extreme embarrassment behind them.
Interesting.
In spite of himself, he felt the look of interest burn through his body, igniting his blood.
He didn’t want to be interested in her. He didn’t want an entanglement, and Pansy Daniels had entanglement written all over her. She was complicated. And if ever there was something he didn’t want, it was complicated.
Sex could be simple. Relationships he discovered could come with claws and snarls and brambles he had never even considered. He was not doing a relationship again.
Sometimes he wondered what the hell he had been thinking.
Marriage had been a foreign concept to him. His mother had never been married. He had never seen that kind of household. That kind of life.
And when he had met Monica—all pretty and blonde and soft—he had thought she was the kind of woman who would make the sort of household that he’d never gotten to be a part of before.
He’d had a whole fantasy of suburban life—upper-class suburban life, but suburban life nonetheless—and it had all been wrapped up in her.
He hadn’t been in love with her so much as he had been taken with the idea of claiming a life that had seemed beyond him.
And it had turned out that it was.
No. When he wanted sex, he would get himself a one-night stand. Go to the next town over. He was not going to get himself involved with a local. And he was sure as hell not