going to get himself involved with a local who also lived on his property and happened to be a police officer.
Who had a great many brothers and surrogate brothers who would probably take him to task in painful and unpleasant ways.
No thank you.
A lot of women were pretty. And a whole lot of women would look at his chest if they were standing there right now.
She wasn’t special.
He took another swig of beer.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked.
Her cheeks went pink. “No. Just... The roof. Thank you.”
“No problem.” He handed her the empty beer bottle, and their fingertips brushed together, like they had done last night when they had exchanged food and drink. Damn. Her skin burned.
“Great,” she said. “Thanks again.”
She walked almost self-consciously steadily into the house, leaving him standing outside. The breath rushed out of his lungs in a gust.
Until that moment he hadn’t been aware that he’d been holding it in.
She was still annoying. It didn’t matter that she had said that she would help with his brother. It didn’t change the fact that she was an irritation and a complication.
And he was only here to fix her roof. Nothing more.
CHAPTER SIX
PANSY CHECKED HER reflection in the bathroom mirror again. She was waiting for her interview at City Hall to start. The first of multiple panel interviews she was going to have with the selection committee. Her hair was neat, her uniform was perfect.
And she felt off balance.
She had felt off balance since she had come home to find West Caldwell shirtless on her roof.
And then, he had come down from the roof shirtless. And she... Suddenly all of her jittery feelings when he was around made a lot of really irritating sense.
Her sisters had been right.
She thought he was attractive.
Somehow, her mind had been able to ignore the fact that he had broad shoulders and big muscles while he had been wearing a T-shirt. Her body had internalized it for sure, but her brain had blocked it out.
But when he had come down that ladder in all his half naked glory, the muscles on his back moving and shifting with each motion, it had all sort of fit together.
She had been prepared to be frosty to him, something, anything to combat the foreign, riotous attraction that was moving through her body, and then he had told her about his brother.
Everything in her had gone soft. Like it had been melted by the scorching heat of his body, and also by his...humanity.
Because as he was standing there looking like a god of cowboy mythology—if such a thing existed—he had also exhibited something more vulnerable and sympathetic than he had before.
He cared about his brother. He was worried about his brother.
And she had a soft spot for brothers like him.
Who cared enough to shift their lives around to make sure their siblings were taken care of.
Because her whole life had depended on that. On her brother Ryder being the way that he was. The kind of man who gave up his dreams, his independence, to make sure his younger siblings could have a stable life.
If not for him... They could have been separated in foster care. Moved around. They would’ve had to leave Hope Springs Ranch.
She wiggled, shaking her hands out. She didn’t need to go thinking about him now. She had too much adrenaline coursing through her system as it was. She didn’t do entanglements.
She didn’t do...men.
Well, she liked men. It was just that she didn’t have any experience with them. Somewhat by design. Though, that was getting to the point where it was a little bit silly. But it was one of those things that had just gotten away from her.
Because when you were raised by your overprotective older brother dating was difficult. And then when you became the youngest police officer the city had, and also the only woman, it got even more complicated, and all she had wanted was to be taken seriously.
She certainly didn’t need to go pulling over a former boyfriend or hookup. And now it was one of those things that she had just left a little bit too long.
But not this. You’re not going to leave being police chief too long.
Yes. And that mattered a whole lot more than her...
Her situation.
A situation that felt exacerbated by West Caldwell’s body.
She gritted her teeth and put it out of her mind as she walked out of the bathroom and headed down the hallway toward the room where they would be