indicating her uniform.
And when he looked at her his eyes were full of heat. He took a leisurely tour of said uniform, and all the places it clung to her body. And it made her face hot.
“I can stay for a second,” she said.
She walked over to where he sat and crossed her arms. “Aren’t you going to order a drink?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I usually get a Big Hunk.”
“Emmett,” he said, handing Emmett a five. “Can you get Officer Daniels a drink?”
To her surprise, Emmett rushed off to do just that without giving his half brother any back talk. “He likes you,” West said. “Probably because you were against him going to jail.”
“Oh yes,” Pansy said. “I find that does tend to make a person popular.”
“Why don’t you sit down?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not going to stay.”
“I’m happy to see you,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s...good to see you.”
“How are you?” he asked.
She ignored the feeling of pressure behind her eyes, in her throat. “Are you...asking after my health? As if you might have broken me?” She gritted her teeth to try and keep from blushing. She didn’t know that would actually help to stop a person from blushing, but she had to try something.
But if he was going to bring it up...if he was going to try and take control of it in some way, well, she wasn’t going to let that happen. She would go ahead and face it head-on, if she had to.
“It seems like the thing to do. Like the kind of thing a gentleman might do. Which I can only sort of speculate about.” He shrugged. “All things considered.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Good to know. Good to know that I left you feeling...fine.”
She looked over and saw Emmett was still standing near the counter, waiting for her drink. “It was good,” she said, not quite sure of the protocol to all of this, but she knew that men had somewhat fragile egos so she supposed that she ought to tell him that it was good rather than fine.
“Oh I know it was good,” he said. “Women don’t come apart like that if it’s not. It was good for me too. Thanks for asking.”
“Oh.” Well maybe his ego was healthy enough he didn’t need the affirmation. And she hadn’t thought it could be...less than good for men. She hadn’t even wondered what he’d thought of it. Why should she, anyway? He’d had lots of sex, presumably.
It was her watershed moment. Not his.
“I hadn’t been with anybody since before I went to prison.” His eyes flicked over his half brother. “I just wanted you to know that.” He met her eyes then, that startling blue that had captivated her from the first. Apparently it was a moment for him too. She had no idea how to process that. “It’s been a long time for me, and I don’t want you to think that’s just something I do. It was. A long time ago. But then I got married. Then I went to jail. And I never wanted anybody. Until I met you.”
She hadn’t expected that. It made her feel...not quite like she was the only inexperienced one. It made her feel like her initial thoughts about the whole thing had been turned on their head.
Because if he had felt like she was different, then maybe it really was different. Maybe it wasn’t just her being a virgin. Maybe it was true.
And all right, maybe it was a little bit sad that she wanted to think that. And Sammy would probably tell her it was a failure at being casual.
But surely, she could be casual while wanting to think that she mattered a little bit?
“I never met anyone I really wanted,” she said, the words making her throat tight. She questioned herself when she said them. Questioned if she should have spoken them out loud. But she had. So it was too late to get all wound up about it.
“How?” he asked.
She floundered for a second, because she didn’t really know the answer to that. Not when being with him had felt so right. So easy. When her attraction to him hadn’t been something she could control. She couldn’t claim any kind of superior willpower. Not when it had never been tested. She couldn’t claim she’d never been around a good-looking man. Her house was a stampede of sexy cowboys at any given time.
Obviously, she was never going to look at her brothers