The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch - Maisey Yates Page 0,88
his way into the dining room.
When he was out of earshot Iris looked at Sammy. “I think Logan has a crush on you,” Iris said.
Sammy frowned. “Really?”
“Yes. Because cake is better than soda, but he made that about you. And he came in here to wash dishes. None of the other boys are in here washing dishes.”
Sammy blinked for a moment. “I... Maybe he’s just being nice.”
“He’s not that nice,” Iris said.
Rose shook her head. “He’s really not. I work with him every day.”
Sammy huffed. “Men like Logan don’t have crushes.”
“What do they have?” Rose asked keenly.
“Hookups,” Sammy said sagely.
“No,” Rose said. “He’s way too respectable for that.”
Sammy snorted. “You think he’s a virgin, then?”
Rose’s mouth dropped open, then she snapped it back shut. “No. But...”
“They go out of town, you know,” Sammy said archly. “Him and Ryder. They don’t like to poach from their own pond, so to speak.”
They all just stared at her. She scowled. “Why can’t it be any of you three? Maybe he likes one of you.”
Rose howled. “Us? We’re basically his sisters.”
“I’m part of the family too,” Sammy pointed out.
Pansy thought she might be imagining the note of hurt that wound through Sammy’s voice. But then, maybe not.
“Yes,” Rose said delicately. “But you did come later. He wouldn’t... He wouldn’t feel that way about any of us.”
Sammy looked stricken by the thought of Logan liking her. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. Sammy wasn’t close to her family, not at all. She was an only child, and she had all but moved in with their patchwork clan when she’d been sixteen.
The idea of disrupting any of that with crushes would never be anything but abhorrent to Sammy.
But as for Logan, Pansy had to agree with Iris that it was strange that he had been in here helping out.
“He would be perfect for you,” Rose said, getting that sharp look to her she always had when she latched on to an idea. “He’s very...and you’re so...”
“I banish this topic,” Sammy said, waving a hand. “I would burn sage to clear the air if I could.”
Rose snorted. “That’s dramatic.”
“Aren’t I always?”
Their conversation was interrupted then by the men clattering into the room, as if sent there by Logan. They began pitching in and offering extra hands, and before Pansy knew it, they were all sitting down to dinner.
Pansy was between her sisters, Sammy next to Ryder. Logan, Colt and Jake occupied the other side of the table.
Logan asked for someone to pass him the bottle of root beer. And Pansy found herself looking at him for a long moment, initially to try and unlock that behavior and if it meant anything. But then just...looking at his eyes again. And letting her mind wander back to West.
It was an easy thing to do, all things considered. Considering that she was currently obsessed with him and the effect that he had on her. It was so utterly different to anything she had ever experienced before.
She was so different.
She sat at the family dinner table, surrounded by these people who had shaped her, made her, and for the first time she felt like she might actually be grown-up.
Really.
Moving out hadn’t done it. Getting started on the police force hadn’t done it particularly. But having a secret. A salacious, wonderful secret that made her feel alive in a way she never had before... That did something. It really did.
“Pansy here is going out for police chief,” Logan announced, for Colt and Jake’s benefit, she assumed.
“Good for you,” Jake said. “Your old man would be proud.”
Pansy felt her throat getting tight. Because no matter how grown-up she felt, no matter how renewed with personal purpose she felt, that would always touch her deep. She wanted her dad to have been proud of her. And maybe he would see, from where he was at. Maybe in heaven you got a front row view to what was happening down on earth, but the fact of the matter was nobody knew. Not for sure. So she didn’t know if her dad could be proud of her in the way that she had always hoped. She just had to believe. And hearing Jake say it...
Well, she would never hear her dad say it. This was as close as it got.
She gritted her teeth, fighting against the wave of sadness that enveloped her.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, looking down at her roast chicken. “I hope that I do a good job. I