histories.
She could say that it was because she had nothing else to do and it was more convenient to stay with him than to walk away.
And she could say it was because she was curious to see how everything went for Emmett. But then, she could always go back in and check with Carl if she wanted to know how things went for Emmett.
No, if she was deeply honest with herself the issue was that she wanted to be with West.
She had felt a strange, gnawing sense of incompletion ever since she had...since they had...slept together. Except, the euphemism didn’t really work in this case. Because they hadn’t slept at all, they had just done something rough and hard in a barn that had taken less than an hour and had transformed the very fabric of who she was.
No big deal.
And she had rationalized staying away from him in that regard, but here she was.
She just wanted to be near him.
That she was vulnerable and predictable in that way annoyed her.
She wanted to be stronger than that.
Because life had forced her to be stronger than that.
She knew better than to idealize anything.
She wasn’t the kind of person who had ever lived in a fantasy world. She had learned about the realities of life too early.
Her dream—her biggest dream—was to be police chief of her small town. And that was realistic. It was a job she was qualified for, a job she even had a dynastic pedigree for. In her world that was a dream.
There was no room for fantasies about strong, hard, scarred cowboys who were all kinds of wrong and all kinds of bad, and where they might fit into her life.
There was no room for him.
And even if there were, he wasn’t the kind of man who would want there to be room for him.
He had stated that openly enough.
And now she was walking with him and brooding. Which was even worse than being with him in the first place.
The old Museum was a two-story brick building with white trim, a broad porch and an American flag waving cheerily from the top.
The building itself was still lovingly cared for, the front lawn cut and manicured. But the inside was dark, and had been for a long while.
“I think this thing is for the door down here,” West said, gesturing toward the side of the building.
She walked with him toward the back, where there was a door that was much less grand than the one at the front. He took the key and stuck it into the lock, and it turned.
And for some reason Pansy felt that catch in her chest. But she ignored that. And she followed him into the dark building. They went down a set of stairs that went straight into a basement area that was surprisingly neat and tidy. Items were organized carefully into groups, and everything was spotlessly clean.
“I wonder if Barbara takes care of this,” Pansy said, touching an utterly dust free rolltop desk that was pushed against one of the walls.
West huffed a laugh. “She seems like a whole thing.”
That was definitely one way to put it. “She is. And it’s easy for me to forget that she does care about this town, even if she is rigid and uncompromising. I tend to think of her as someone who’s always trying to protect her own position. Her own power. And that’s somewhat true. She wants to feel important. And because of that she doesn’t really mind making other people feel...you know. But I think she’s just sad and lonely. And she does do an awful lot for this town. Granted, I care a little bit more about the future of Emmett than I do about whether or not this desk stays free of dust.”
West chuckled. “Yeah, I’m with you there.”
West pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned the flashlight on. Pansy laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“It’s just funny. Because you look like the kind of guy who would actually have a big, stalwart flashlight on them. Not a cell phone.”
In his battered blue jeans, tight black T-shirt and cowboy hat, he looked like a man who had just come in from the fields, who perhaps didn’t give any consideration to technology or the modern world at all.
“I like convenience,” he said. He lifted the cell phone a little bit higher. “My phone before I went to prison didn’t have an official flashlight on it. That was a cool modern convenience waiting for