that. Because if he could have contrived to get some physical interest in the little beauty currently holding on to him that’s what he would have done.
He hadn’t touched a woman in four years. To say that he was hard up was an understatement. And damn but he would like to break his dry spell. But apparently his body was only interested in one woman.
Since when had he become a connoisseur of any kind? Typically, he was a buffet man. Before prison he’d liked sex readily available, plentiful and right there for the taking. Offered up. He didn’t want to work for it, he didn’t want any of that.
And yeah, he had been married for a few years. He had no trouble being faithful when he took vows. He wasn’t picky. That was the thing. He liked women, which meant that attraction should be that simple. But he was having some kind of weird ass chemistry situation with his uptight policewoman, and he didn’t care for it.
He could spin whole fantasies out of a brief touch of their fingertips, out of the searing tension that came from sitting in a corner with her.
It made him feel like a boy.
Because only boys got excited over things like that. Stolen glances, accidental touches and the indrawn breath of what-if.
Grown men didn’t deal in what-if. It wasn’t about possibilities. It was about honesty, simplicity.
Except, here he was, bidding farewell to a sure thing to look for absolutely not a thing.
He couldn’t credit it, except that he couldn’t credit much of anything to do with his own behavior since he had gotten out of jail.
He wasn’t the same man.
A hard realization. Because he’d wanted to be. He’d wanted to go back to who he had been before Monica. He didn’t want to be changed by her or what she’d done to him.
But he was.
He was rootless, and he was adrift, and he had been looking for something to anchor him since he’d left Texas.
Pansy Daniels felt like an anchor, and he didn’t know why. But when he talked to her, he felt like she might understand half of what came out of his mouth, and he didn’t even understand half of it.
Or maybe that was all justification. Justification because he was horny, and for some reason only for her.
He wasn’t sure he much cared.
He pushed open the saloon door and went outside into the balmy evening. The sky was a deep blue, dotted with stars, streetlights not remotely powerful enough to begin to wash them out. For a moment he thought he’d missed her completely, but then he saw a flicker of movement head off Main and down the cross street.
Toward the police station.
He kept his pace, moving quickly down the sidewalk, and when he turned the corner, he called her name. “Pansy.”
The slim little shadow stopped.
“Don’t shoot me,” he said.
“I’m not carrying my gun,” she responded. She turned around. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” he said, the second time he had given her that answer in the space of a half hour. Because he didn’t know. He didn’t know why Texas was dead to him and he was drawn to Gold Valley. He didn’t know why he couldn’t get excited over the things that used to excite him. He didn’t know why he wanted to talk to this wound up little police officer and not to a woman who had made it plain as day that she was happy to play the part of buckle bunny to any cowboy she could find.
He didn’t know why he was standing out on a darkened street instead of getting drunk inside that bar. He could make a whole list of all that he didn’t know right about now.
“You were dancing,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was.”
The darkness felt like a layer of protection. Against prying eyes, against his own better judgment. And he was all for it.
“You should probably go back and dance with her,” she said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Pansy said, clearly mimicking his tone.
“I think you do know,” he said.
“Well, if you’re looking to get lucky, you should definitely be dancing with her. And not out here talking to me.”
Get lucky.
That was the furthest thing from his mind. Not sex, sex was very much on his mind, but wrapping it up in the term get lucky just didn’t work for him right now.
Because there was nothing lucky about the fact that he only wanted this woman. And there was nothing lucky about the fact