The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch - Maisey Yates Page 0,52
the authority West was doling out. Authority Emmett wasn’t used to, but Pansy could tell he desperately wanted.
She related heavily. To being lonely. To missing something from your life like that. And while she’d had no problem letting Ryder be there for her, she’d watched it play out differently with the others.
Sometimes you resisted what you needed because of how much it hurt.
“No. But I do remember what it’s like to be your age. And, having caused my fair amount of trouble, I can tell you right now I don’t want to have to clean up after you.”
“My mom doesn’t care.”
“No, our mom doesn’t care,” West said. “But I do. That means I’m not going to let you run around like a hellion. I’m not going to let you make a mess of your life.”
“Who said I was making a mess of anything? It just is what it is.”
“Nothing is what it is, unless you let it be. You can have different. I know you can.”
“Says the guy who ended up in jail.”
West shook his head. “Finish your food, go work on the fence.”
Emmett stuffed the last of his sandwich into his mouth and got up, walking away from the table and back toward the work site, where he got back to the task at hand with an almost dramatic flare.
“So it’s going well,” Pansy said.
West crossed his arms, the corners of his lips turned down. “I miss the simpler days. When I would park in a bad spot you would write me a ticket. When I wasn’t taking care of a surly teenager.”
“I’m glad you found him,” she said.
The alternative was too sad. Just thinking about Emmett out there all alone... No one should ever be alone.
West shrugged. “You found him. Not me. I’m thankful for that. Don’t get me wrong. Doesn’t mean that it’s easy.”
Pansy nodded. “Well. As far as I can tell there’s very little about life that’s easy. He needs you, though, whether he can show it or not is another matter. And there are certain things that good people do. And one of those things is...be there. When your family needs you. You’re doing that.”
“I think you just came perilously close to calling me good.”
Pansy was never spontaneous, but as she looked at West she said just the first thing that popped into her head. “I suspect you’re about as good as you are bad.”
Their eyes caught, and his mouth curved into a smile that made the word wicked echo inside of her.
She didn’t know anything about men. But she knew that she liked kissing this one. Knew that the parts of him that were bad called her maybe even more loudly than the parts of him that were good, and that scared her.
Because it reminded her of when she was young and she had a restless, wild spirit that she’d made a concerted effort to change.
West called to that spirit inside of her, the one that she had shut down deep. And it was tempting. So tempting to just not control it anymore.
To throw caution and everything else to the wind and explore what was bad in him.
That, she had a feeling could be very good.
She didn’t know why she had that feeling. Maybe it was a host of tangled up bad boy stereotypes and TV and the fevered fantasies of her own body, which currently seemed to be reminding her that she had left the whole virginity thing far too long.
It was the silliest, most trivial thing to be thinking about. While she had the concerns of the new job hanging over her head, and West had the concerns of his half brother to deal with.
But she was thinking about it anyway.
It was amazing how the curve of that man’s lips could twist her thoughts.
Could tie her stomach in a knot and make her feel like a foreign entity unto herself.
“That’s probably the highest praise anyone has ever given me,” he said.
“Well, it’s not very high praise,” she pointed out.
“I don’t suppose.”
She pushed an anxious breath out of her lungs, hoping it would ease some of the tension in her. “If it weren’t for my siblings... I would have ended up in foster care. And that can be good. I mean...it’s not ideal. But... I wouldn’t have been able to grow up on my family ranch. I would’ve lost my parents and my home. It’s not a small thing that you’re doing. Stepping in for him like this. It could change his life.