The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch - Maisey Yates Page 0,53
Utterly and completely change his life. Knowing that someone cares about you enough to sacrifice for you changes everything.”
“I hope so,” he said. “I hope it’s enough to change him. I made it through without anyone. More or less. I don’t want him to have to. I don’t want him to have to make the mistakes I did. You can come back from pretty much anything. I’m a walking testament to that. But you know, I don’t recommend getting married to a person who would get you sent to prison.”
“Well...yeah, solid advice,” she said.
“There’s a certain amount of resilience that you get in life because you go through things that are out of your control. But I’d like to soften some blows for him.”
There was something about the glint in his eye that made her breath catch in her throat. She wanted...she wanted to reach out to him. She wanted to touch him. It occurred to her that only a couple of short weeks ago this man had been a stranger she’d pulled over on the roadside and given a ticket to. Now his face was so familiar she could close her eyes and trace it in her mind.
She had kissed him.
She swallowed hard.
“If you keep looking at me like that, Officer Daniels, I’m going to think that you’re issuing invitations.”
His voice went all low and husky, and she could feel it echoing inside of her body.
“Neither of us have time for any parties,” she whispered.
He chuckled, the sound warm and husky, rolling through her bones. “But I give such good parties.” He shook his head. “How much time do you think it would take?”
He was offering an express trip to sin, and lord she was tempted.
“Too much,” she said. “Too complicated.”
“Doesn’t have to be.”
She could think of nothing more ridiculous than instigating a physical relationship for the first time in her life when she was in the middle of such a critical moment.
“We both have a lot on our plates,” she pointed out.
“It’d be nice to have something there that wasn’t terrible, wouldn’t it?”
She looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Pansy...”
She jumped up off the bench. “I just remembered that I forgot to get something from town.”
“Liar.”
“I’m a police officer. I don’t lie.”
He looked at her, too long. Too hard. “I think you do. To me. But mostly to yourself.”
“I need milk.”
“Go get your milk.” She nearly fled, stumbling away from him and back to her car, and it was only when she was almost the whole way back to town that she could admit that he was right. That she was lying because she was afraid. Because she didn’t know what would happen if she took that step.
It was silly. And she couldn’t banish the panic that fluttered in her breast. Instead of figuring that out, she went into the community center, hoping that she would find Barbara there. She wasn’t disappointed.
“Emmett agreed to your plan,” she said. “He’s going to come and do community service for the next few weekends.”
“Good. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m unhappy with how this was handled. I’m not going to give you my support.”
Pansy only just managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes and opened her mouth to say something, but Barbara interrupted her.
“Your father was a good man, Pansy. And he honored the position that he had. But you’ve lost your way. You are not the person that this town needs. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you won’t be. You’re the wrong fit.”
Pansy had managed to stand strong in the face of everything this woman had thrown at her up until now. She had been able to stand up to anything, everything, except for this. Except for her saying that her father was fundamentally different than she was.
That she could never be all that he was.
Because deep down, she believed it.
Because it was true.
West had tested that thing inside of her that was so wild, and he had woken it up.
She wasn’t going to do what her father had done, because she couldn’t be the steady, perfect person that he was.
She didn’t know what to do about that. It was a crisis point in her chest that burned.
Failure.
Was this what failure was? It wasn’t about the job. It was about...her. She wondered if there was something broken in her that other people could just see.
Or maybe Barbara is just a horrible person?
She gritted her teeth. “Fine,” she said. “I’m not like him. I won’t ever be. There’s no