you. But, I’m not going to have you poisoning other people against me.”
The whole situation went flat, and Barbara grabbed her purse and stormed out of the office in a huff.
“You handled it well,” Chief Doering said.
“It doesn’t much matter. I’m in the middle of a tempest in the world’s smallest teapot. She’s going to make an issue out of this no matter what.”
“That comes with the job. But then, it comes with this job on every level.”
“I can handle it.”
“I know you can,” he said.
She wasn’t sure how empowered she felt at the moment, but it also didn’t really matter. Because she was going to see through what needed seeing through and she was going to behave in a way that would make her father proud.
West and Emmett were still sitting there at her desk when she exited the chief’s office.
“Is she going to make trouble for you?” West asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Pansy said.
“It does,” West responded.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t. She can do whatever she wants. I don’t have any control over her. I don’t have control over you either.” Pansy turned and addressed Emmett. “But I’m willing to stick my neck out for you, so I hope that you don’t disappoint me.”
She stared at the kid, and he stared back. She didn’t know if he had ever been challenged like this before. She wondered if his mom had ever done anything with him. Or if she had simply left him to his own devices.
She couldn’t say that her childhood had been perfectly well-ordered. Though Ryder had done his best.
Their lunch had been a peanut butter sandwich every day, until Iris had gotten tired of it and started preparing real food. And they hadn’t always looked the best. But the boys had done what they could. They had all taken care of each other. And no one had been left to their own devices. Not ever. It just wasn’t how they were. And it wasn’t how she was going to be with Emmett. She knew that West wasn’t going to be like that with him. If they did the right thing now they could make a difference. And that was...that was the point of all of this. It was easy for her to lose sight of that.
But it was the point.
“I have work,” she said. “If anything else comes up I’ll let you know.”
“I guess I’ll see you back at the house,” West said.
“Yeah.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” Emmett asked.
She and West looked at each other and Pansy exploded with a denial. “No. I live at the ranch. He’s my landlord.”
“You have a cop living at your ranch?”
“Yeah,” West said. “What’s the big deal?”
“You.”
“I told you,” West said. “I didn’t do it.”
“Have a good day,” Pansy said, walking out of the police station and leaving them there. She needed to get away from West. She needed to get out. Most of all she needed to try and figure out how to get her head on straight. Because in the last twenty-four hours things had gotten very strange and she didn’t know how she was going to set them to rights again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“YOU WANT to stay here?”
West posed the question to his half brother as they drove out of town toward the Dalton ranch. He was still wrapping his head around the whole situation and what he was going to do about it. But the first thing to do was to establish what the hell the kid actually thought was happening.
“Look,” Emmett said. “I’m not about to stay where I’m not wanted. But I wanted to see what the hell you were doing. You were in that fancy mansion in Texas, and you talked about me coming to live with you.”
“I know,” West said. “And I got sent to jail. I’m sorry about that. I know that you were mad at me, because I know that you blame me a little bit. I blame me too, hell. Mostly because it was my own bad decision making when it came to wives that led me there. But I didn’t break the law. It’s not my fault that I got put away, and I didn’t mean to put off having you come stay with me.”
“Your wife didn’t want me to come.”
“I know. And I was going to override her on that. You’re family.”
“Isn’t a wife family?”
“I guess. But mine wasn’t really. She didn’t have a lick of loyalty to me. That’s for damn sure. I might not have known that at the