The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch - Maisey Yates Page 0,1
wasn’t into his brand of humor.
“Damn straight,” she said. “Seventy-five. Max speed on an unmarked rural road is fifty-five.”
“Well, see,” he said. “I’ve been living out in Texas for the past sixteen years.” He maximized his long-ago acquired drawl for effect. “Everything is bigger there. Including the speed limits.”
“A shame you’re not in Texas anymore, Dorothy,” she returned, sharp and tight.
“You sure you want to mouth off like that? I pay—”
“You pay my salary?” She sighed heavily. “Try again. Please come up with something slightly more original if you’re going to try to insult me or take shots at me in any way. And I’m going to warn you. People are not as original as they think they are. This is a universal truth. Now, go ahead, mister. While you dig for your license and registration, feel free to create a comeback that will dazzle me.”
“You sound a bit jaded for a...” he looked her up and down “...nineteen-year-old. And also, it’s a bit rich that you’re dogging me about clichés. What’s with the aviator sunglasses?”
“I like Top Gun.”
His eyes fell to her name tag. There were no discernible female curves beneath that dark blue uniform shirt and her flak jacket beneath. “Officer P. Daniels.”
“Officer Daniels will do.”
“What does the P stand for?”
“Pissy and not paid near enough to banter with you.”
She was quick. That didn’t make her less annoying. He produced his license and his registration, and she walked back toward her cruiser, where he knew they liked to run information, or maybe in her case check her lipstick.
Maybe he would say that to her when she came back.
“You have a lot of speeding tickets,” she said. “Mr. Caldwell.”
“A fair few.”
“A fraud conviction.”
“An exoneration,” he responded.
“That doesn’t show up.”
“A quick internet search will show it. I was in the news.”
She huffed a laugh. “Well, let’s hope this doesn’t end with either of us being in the news.”
“That would be ideal,” he said.
He looked at her name tag again, and for the life of him, couldn’t figure out why her name was pulling him up. It sounded familiar, and he didn’t know why.
“Well, I can’t really let you off for good behavior, since according to your record, you don’t have much of it.”
“And here I heard small towns were supposed to be friendly. This is how you welcome new residents?”
“Only when they insist on leading their own Parade of One down one of my highways in a big ass Ford truck, paying no mind to the speed limit.”
“Well, damn. That kinda runs roughshod over my grand marshal fantasies.”
“A shame. It’s an expensive ticket, too.”
Expensive ticket. Didn’t the hell matter to him. He had money to burn, and he was investing a lot of it in his brother’s school that he ran on the Dalton family ranch. But he was also working at getting his own place up and running. He had just bought his own property, and his own house that had...
“But what does the P stand for?” he asked.
“It’s not really relevant.”
“Penelope. No. That’s not right.” He squinted, trying to remember the paperwork that he’d gone over earlier in the week. A tenant agreement had been in there with all the mortgage stuff. And just then, he remembered the name. It was a stupid name, and that was why it had stuck out.
“Pansy.” He snapped his fingers. “Officer Pansy Daniels.”
Brown eyes widened. “What?”
“I believe I’m your new landlord. You going to write that ticket or not?”
* * *
BY THE TIME Pansy got to her brother’s house that night, she was still reeling over her interaction with West Caldwell.
When she had pulled the truck over earlier today she had imagined it would be a routine stop. But then she had approached the vehicle, and he had been the kind of good-looking that had punched straight through her bulletproof vest and left her without air. Which was disturbing, because Pansy wasn’t really prone to fits of breathlessness over men or anything else.
Life had beaten the ability to be surprised right out of her from an early age. She was tough, because she had to be. Because every last one of the Daniels siblings had to be. Raising themselves on Hope Springs Ranch hadn’t been easy.
They’d had each other, but they’d had a whole lot of hard too.
She didn’t often consider her name one of those hardships. Not anymore. She had gotten over her peers making fun of her at a pretty early age. And anyway, now she carried a gun, so