he had some stuff that he had originally furnished the place with that came from the Lone Star State. I told him I was happy to buy it off him, and here I am. Are you going to write me that ticket?”
“No,” she said. “You were loading.”
His smart mouth twisted into a half smile and as the corner of his mouth tugged upward she felt an answering tug in her stomach. She didn’t like it. “And you were ready to assume the worst of me.”
“It’s important,” she said. “That’s where the delivery trucks park to bring the beer. What if they couldn’t bring the beer?”
“Surely the whole town would come to a complete stop. Just so you know, I’m going to be taking this back up to the house, and then I’m going to go get some fencing. Which I will also be loading. Though, I will be doing it in the actual parking lot of Big R. So perhaps you won’t see the need to write me a ticket. But hell, I don’t know. You seem to like me an awful lot, Officer Daniels.”
“I like law and order,” she said, her voice sounding ridiculous and clipped deep into her own ears. “And I like coffee, which I’m going to go back to drinking now.”
“Good for you, sunshine,” he said. “I guess I’ll see you back at the homestead.”
“I guess you will,” she said, turning away from him and walking back toward the police station, toward her car. Her face was burning. That had not gone well. No, it hadn’t gone well at all. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt stupid. Hot faced and uncertain. But, boy had he managed to make her feel that way. She wanted to punch him in the face. But she wasn’t going to let herself be defeated. Not by him, not by anything. She was too determined to let one smart-ass cowboy get the better of her. That was just a fact.
CHAPTER THREE
BY THE TIME West was unloading fencing, he was in a bad mood. It had been a long ass day, and something about Pansy Daniels was starting to get under his skin. Perhaps it was the fact that she seemed to have a hard-on for him. And not the kind he would’ve preferred a woman to have.
Not that he wanted that particular woman to.
She was a tiny menace.
He couldn’t believe that she was putting a ticket on his truck when he’d come out of the Saloon.
He snorted, hefting fencing out of the back of the truck and laying it in front of the spot where he was going to do the deed.
He would get a little bit of a start this afternoon, but there wasn’t a whole lot to be done with the daylight that was left. Thankfully, it was getting into summer, and that meant that the sun was sinking behind the mountains later and later.
He pushed his sleeves up and went for the posthole digger.
It was then that he heard the sound of a motor, and saw a truck driving up behind him. It was his half brother Caleb’s truck coming up the drive. He sighed heavily.
When his brother parked and got out, he folded his arms over his chest. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to help you with the fence.”
West snorted. “I didn’t say I needed help with the fence.”
“Yeah, only Jamie mentioned that she saw you down at Big R buying fencing, and she told Ellie, who mentioned it to me. I thought maybe you needed some help, but you were too hardheaded to ask for it.”
There he was, back on the gossip chain. And he’d like to be mad about it, but he couldn’t be. Not now. Not when the telephone game was proving for the first time in years that he was connected to a line.
His half brother Caleb liked him for some reason that West couldn’t quite discern. He knew it had something to do with the fact that he had given the other man advice when he had been in a difficult place with the woman who was now his fiancée.
If West had known it would forge this kind of a bond between them he might not have given the advice.
People popping over unannounced wasn’t quite the level of family he was after.
But then, given that Ellie and Caleb were decent people who’d found happiness with each other, West supposed he couldn’t be too put out about the whole thing.
West