or cousins that way. Or Logan, for that matter.
But they were friends with a host of rodeo cowboys, and Pansy had seen a lot of masculine, hot cowboys up close.
So it wasn’t like there hadn’t been good-looking men.
“I wear a bulletproof vest,” she said.
She had meant it as a joke, but it landed somewhat serious, and she couldn’t even dispute the double meaning.
He opened his mouth to say something, but then Emmett returned with her coffee.
“Here you go,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. “I better go. Have a good day. Both of you.”
Then she realized it was probably Emmett’s first day of the school. “Oh,” she said. “How was your day, Emmett?”
The kid looked stunned, and he just stared at her with his eyes wide. Then he blinked a couple of times. Hard.
“Good,” he said.
“I’m glad.”
She took one last look at West before turning away and heading back out the door.
But she felt like she had left a part of herself behind, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do about that. Wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
But it didn’t matter. Because she had a job to do.
And one thing she could not allow was for West Caldwell to become a distraction from that job.
What she really didn’t want to do was to prove her past self right, and prove that she couldn’t actually handle sleeping with somebody and conducting business around town.
Are you actually going to sleep with him again?
She didn’t know. She didn’t know if she could handle something this big, that filled her up so completely, dominating her thoughts right now. No. She could not have sex with him, have an emotional breakdown and spend half the day completely preoccupied thinking about him. And that made her sad.
But it was the way it was. And anyway, they’d both had a good time. He’d...broken his dry spell. She’d had her first time. It was good enough.
She took a sip of her coffee and looked down the main street of town.
Her town.
It was good enough.
It had to be.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HE HAD ONLY seen glimpses of Pansy over the last couple of days, and he really hadn’t expected to see her at the community center that weekend when he showed up with Emmett. But there she was. Plain clothes and pretty wearing a gray T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans that showed off her slight curves.
Her hair was up in that ponytail that she favored.
His hands itched to take it down.
His hands itched to do a hell of a lot of things. But of course he couldn’t do any of them, since she seemed to want to avoid it all. Him and everything that had happened between them. The heat and fire that had burned between them.
Hell.
He practically pushed Emmett out of the truck and he got out on his side. And when his eyes were finally able to find a resting place other than Pansy, the reason that she was there became clear.
Barbara Niedermayer was standing there with her arms crossed and a sour expression on her face.
It was clear to West that Pansy had come to run interference.
Not that one sour faced woman was going to be a problem for West. But, being civil might be. So he had a feeling it was a decent thing that the police were there to enforce civil rest. Or whatever.
“Good morning,” Pansy said. “We have some tools for you right over here.” She gestured broadly toward a rake, shovel and a wheelbarrow. West knew Pansy well enough to know that nothing about this tone was sincere. And he had a feeling that she was doing her best to forcefully steer the way the interaction was going to go.
He’d never met so much intent packed into such a tiny frame before.
Damned if he didn’t like it. Damned if he didn’t like her. She had started out as a burr underneath his skin and she had transformed into...well. Something. If he were a different man he might have attributed some softer feelings to it.
After that, Barbara took hold of Emmett and began to give him instruction. And that was when Pansy turned and addressed West directly for the first time. “Glad you came. Grab a shovel.”
“I only saw one shovel.”
“There’s always an extra shovel, West.” Her words were overbright and so was her smile. He didn’t trust it. “We are demonstrating our commitment to the community.”
“Really?”
She seemed to produce an extra shovel out of nowhere. “Really,” she said, thrusting it in