The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch - Maisey Yates Page 0,51

to get to know you,” she shot back.

He gave her a half grin, and a kick of something she didn’t want to acknowledge made her stomach feel fluttery. She liked sparring with him.

But she felt down and crispy after her day, and there was something about flinging herself at him that made her feel something. Something better. Something better than stale and sad and alone.

“No,” he said, that grin sliding into something wicked. “No reason at all.”

“Are either of you hungry?”

She asked the question to avoid having to deal with the heat that was coursing through her body. Because feeding people was as decent an answer to unpleasant emotions as anything.

Why feel something unwanted when you could eat cheese instead?

A reasonable question as far as Pansy was concerned.

“No that’s all right,” West said at the same time Emmett said, “Sure.”

“I’ll do grilled cheese,” Pansy said.

She went inside the house, and began to cook, and it occurred to her as she was midway through flipping the second grilled cheese that she had never really taken care of anyone before.

She and her siblings had depended on each other. They had created a home, a life, had taken all their broken pieces and glued themselves back together so they could go on. It had been survival. Cheerful and raucous at times, but survival nonetheless.

There were things they’d done for each other—punch a bully in the nose if he dared pick on someone in the family.

There were things they’d done for themselves—pack lunches, do their own laundry. And no one had ever cleaned their rooms.

When it came to dinner, Iris and Sammy had taken on the task. Transportation, discipline, signing teacher’s notes...well that had all been Ryder.

She was one of the younger kids. And the position of the younger kids in the family was quite clear. West had taken care of himself primarily, as far as she could tell.

She wondered if he had ever taken care of anyone else before, or if Emmett would be the first.

Maybe his wife.

But, she hadn’t heard anything about his marriage that made it sound like...that made it sound like they really did things for each other in that way.

One of her early memories of her parents was her dad coming home after a long day of work and telling her mother to go sit down because she had been on her feet all day. As if he hadn’t been.

But they had been like that with each other. They had checked in with each other. They had cared for each other. They hadn’t kept score when it had come to who had been carrying what share of the load.

At least, they hadn’t done it in front of the kids.

So Pansy knew that marriage could be that way. Good and balanced. Real.

And even though she hadn’t really made a space for marriage in her own life, she knew that it could be good. West’s marriage didn’t sound good.

Framing him for fraud aside.

She went back outside with the grilled cheese sandwiches, and a beer, plus a bottled water.

She set all of the things down on the picnic bench and table right out front of her house. Because she was not handing West anything. Not again.

They needed to not touch.

She was too confused about all of that to add another spark to the fire that was making it feel like her body wasn’t her own.

“Barbara has requested that you do some service at the Community Center. She’d like you to come help weed and plant flowers.”

Okay, maybe like was overstating it. But she had agreed to allow him to do that, and Pansy hoped that the opportunity to use the young man for free manual labor would make her a little bit easier to deal with in general.

And maybe, eventually, she would even understand the point of all of this.

Though, Pansy doubted it.

She’d had a lot of years to become thoroughly set in her own ways and Pansy didn’t imagine she was going to magically become forgiving and generous now.

But if they could come to some sort of...truce.

Pansy didn’t need Barbara on her side for any of this to go her way, but she didn’t like the resistance.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to school, though.”

“Good,” she said. “You can do that too.”

Emmett looked at West. “Don’t look at me,” West said. “I want to keep you busy. Because I don’t want to have to deal with you and your idle hands becoming a devil’s workshop.”

“Are you ninety?” Emmett asked, clearly bristling under