by Maisey Yates
“Yeah.” She had a feeling he did see all too easily. “He was the police chief.”
“Right.”
He was the police chief. And she knew that of all his children he’d have thought her the least likely to follow in his footsteps.
That she’d be the last one to take on his values, to put on the uniform he’d once worn and dedicate herself to the service of others.
So she’d become the one to do it.
“I just...” She spread some butter over the bread, and put cheese slices on it. And strangely, she felt her throat get tight. She didn’t usually...she didn’t usually get emotional about this. Not anymore. “I like feeling close to him. And I was young when he died. I didn’t feel like we had as much in common as I would’ve liked. This makes me feel like we do. And can.”
It was an abbreviated version of the truth. Close enough to it, anyway. Something that everyone understood.
The rest of it... That was a lot harder.
She put the first grilled cheese in the pan, and let it start to brown. Then she flipped it, waited for the cheese to melt and stuck it on a paper plate. “There you go,” she said. “There’s a beer in the fridge.”
He got up off the ground again, wiped his hands on the rag. Then he took the plate, and followed her instructions to acquire a beer.
She finished grilling her own sandwich, and then got herself a beer.
She wasn’t a big drinker. But her dad had always gotten himself a beer after work. It was one of her enduring memories of him. He would come home, start talking to their mom. His voice and laughter ringing out of the house. And he would pop the top on his beer, and go sit down in the living room. It was a strange, homey thing.
A sound that made her happy.
“I thought you didn’t drink,” he said.
“No, I said I didn’t want a beer at your place last night. I did have one. When I went home. I only drink one a night.”
“Why is that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t drink to be affected by it.”
He looked at her as if she had grown a second head. “That’s the point of it.”
“Not for me. I don’t like feeling out of control.”
She took a sip of her beer. He was looking at her still, his eyes seemingly glued to her lips. She didn’t like it.
It made her feel jittery.
He shrugged, and lifted his own beer to his lips, and she couldn’t help but look at his mouth when he took a drink. Strange, because she would have said that she had no interest in looking at a man’s mouth.
But he really was incredibly handsome, and his mouth was very interesting indeed.
She tried to breathe past the tightness in her chest, but found it difficult. Suddenly, he stuffed the last half of his sandwich into his mouth. Then took a swig of his beer. “Okay. I’m going to get finished up. Just a couple more adjustments and you should be good to go.”
He got down under the sink and finished. Then he flicked the light switch just there and the great beast roared to life.
“Good as new,” he said. He picked the beer up off the counter. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
She blinked, not sure why he had suddenly decided to finish and get out of here now, when he had clearly been a minute away from finishing the whole time, and could have just done so and gone home earlier.
“I... Yeah.”
“See you around,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, which she knew with some certainty, given that she had seen him around much more frequently than she might have anticipated since the first time she had pulled him over.
“Tomorrow I’ll get to work on that roof.”
“Are you going to do all of the repairs?”
He winked. It felt like a punch. Square in the stomach. “I told you, Officer Daniels. I always do my due diligence.”
He nodded once, and then walked out of the house, leaving her standing there. And it wasn’t until he was gone and silence had settled over her that she realized her heart was beating so loudly that it was echoing in her temples. It was a little while longer before she realized that the sensation was not entirely unpleasant.
CHAPTER FIVE
PANSY HAD THE day off, and she decided to join Rose and Iris for a trip to the brand-new bakery, Sugarplum Fairy, which was situated across from Sugar Cup.
“I feel a little bit guilty,” Iris said as they walked into the small shop.
“I don’t,” Rose said, immediately going to the case that held cupcakes, cake pops and macarons.
“They have cake at Sugar Cup,” Iris pointed out.
“Not consistently,” Rose replied. “And anyway, that’s one cake. This is many cakes. Many, many cakes.”
Pansy and Iris exchanged a glance. Their younger sister liked sugar more than any one person should. And no matter how many woeful warnings Iris had dished out about what her body would do when she turned thirty, Rose didn’t care to listen.
Rose got a blended coffee drink and some sort of filled cupcake. Iris chose a morning bun and a hot coffee, while Pansy got a cinnamon roll and the same coffee as Iris. The three of them sat at a small bistro table by the window, looking out onto the street. From this angle they could just see onto Main Street, and the shops weren’t very busy yet. It was a weekday morning, but given that it was just on the edge of summer, and the sky was blue, the weather beginning to turn after the long gray winter, sometimes there were a lot more people out and about than you would expect.
“Heaven,” Rose said, taking a bite of the cupcake. “It’s perfect. My teeth are vibrating.”
“Sounds great,” Iris said. Then she took a bite of her pastry, and her eyes went wide. “That is good.”
Pansy took a bite of her cinnamon roll and chewed, giving thanks that she was eating sugar this morning and not going on one of Chief Doering’s runs. She hadn’t realized how much she needed the day off.
“We missed you at dinner on Sunday,” Iris mentioned.
“I was tired,” Pansy said. “I went home. And then... I sat on the couch and I couldn’t get back up.”
“Why?” Rose asked.
Leave it to her sister—who had never worked anywhere but the family ranch—to ask why in a mystified tone as if all Pansy did all day was wander around the streets of town at her leisure. And yeah, maybe that was true sometimes, but still.
“Work. You know. I want to get the new position as police chief.”
“That’s great,” Iris said. “That’s what you’ve always wanted.”
“I know,” Pansy said, feeling cagey and a little bit irritated at the idea that she might have to talk about this with her sisters.
It meant a lot to her, and she didn’t even like saying it, in case she jinxed it or something.
“Is that stressing you out?” Iris asked.
“I just don’t know how it’s going to go. And yesterday there was a break-in... Well, somebody stole Barbara Niedermayer’s wallet.”
“Out of her purse?”
“Yeah, out of her car,” Pansy said.
“From her house?” Rose asked.
“Yes,” Pansy said.
“Well, that’s unusual.”
“I know,” she said.”
“Oh,” Iris said. “And she’s on the City Council.”
“Yes. And you can bet that she’ll be involved in the panel ultimately making the selection for the job.”
“Well great,” Rose said, rolling her eyes.
“Barbara is sad,” Iris said. “She lives alone since her husband left her and her son is struggling with addiction issues...”
“She’s mean,” Rose said, as if that settled it.
“Someone was in the barn the other night,” Iris said, as if it had just popped into her head.
“What?”
<
br /> “Ryder didn’t tell you?”
Pansy shook her head. “No.” Her brother was not the best communicator.
“He saw a flashlight beam when he was driving in the other night, and he went to check it out. It was one of the old barns we don’t use, out on the edge of the property near the woods.”
“What happened?” Pansy asked.
“Oh, by the time he got to the barn, no one was there. But he’s sure someone had been there. It’s just weird, that’s all.”
“Yeah,” Pansy said. “Weird.”
She wasn’t sure if this was the last thing she needed, or if it was a good thing. But she had some actual police work to do that might raise her profile in the community. Not that she wanted there to be crime, it was just that this was a fairly innocuous crime. Well, unless you were Barbara Niedermayer.
“Tell Ryder to give me a call,” she said. “I should hear his account of it.”
“I don’t think he was inclined to make an official police report,” Rose said. She licked icing off of her fingers, and then attacked her sugary drink.
Pansy somehow prevented herself from rolling her eyes. “Well, it would help me if he did.”
“Nothing happened,” Rose said.
“Someone was trespassing.”
“Yeah,” Rose said. “They didn’t take anything.”
“But I did have a theft,” Pansy said. “And if there’s somebody shady milling around, I should know.”
“It’s probably that West Caldwell,” Iris said. “He’s new. And shady.”
Immediately, those brilliant blue eyes popped into her head, and her stomach went tight. “I don’t think he’s going around stealing wallets,” she said. “Considering he just bought the ranch that I live on. That I rent from. He’s fine.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, moneywise.”
“I don’t know,” Rose said, matter-of-factly. “Plenty of people get into tons of debt and aren’t able to pay it back. Just because he bought a ranch doesn’t mean he doesn’t need to steal a wallet.”
“True,” Iris said.
“Anyway, he could be a kleptomaniac,” Rose pointed out. “Someone who steals just for the thrill.”
“Yeah. I doubt that.” Though, he did tend to park in places that were illegal. For the...joy of fighting with her? She couldn’t figure him out.
“I’ve seen him,” Rose said. “Milling about town. I think I know the real reason you don’t suspect him.”
“What’s that?” Pansy asked.
“Well, a few reasons,” Rose said. “His blue eyes, his broad shoulders, his big hands...”
An image of all those things swam into her mind’s eye and she clamped her teeth down, willing the heat in her cheeks to go away.
“You sound like Sammy,” Pansy said, making a face. “You’re usually much more pragmatic than that.”
“His shoulders are very broad,” Iris agreed.
Rose nodded. “Iris even noticed. The fact is indisputable.”
“I wrote him a ticket,” Pansy said. “In fact, I’ve written him two tickets. I’m perfectly willing to investigate him.”
Rose lifted a brow and smirked.
Iris’s cheeks turned pink.
“You’re both awful,” Pansy groused.
“Just pointing out the obvious,” Rose said.
“Get a date,” Pansy shot back.
“You first,” Rose said.
“I would rather go shopping,” Iris said.
Rose looked chagrined by the prospect. Her sisters were such a funny mix of practical and dreamy, young and much too old.
Their background didn’t allow for much else.
Rose was very much a product of being raised around a bunch of men. She was the first to crack a dirty joke, join in an arm wrestling contest—even if she would lose—and to join the men on a hiking trip if the opportunity came up, but Pansy suspected her sister didn’t have any actual practical experience of men.
Iris was much more self-contained. But then, she was the oldest sister and she’d been the one setting an example for Pansy and Rose. Iris was always on good behavior, and Pansy actually had very little idea of what went on in her sister’s personal life when she wasn’t in the kitchen at Hope Springs or hanging out with Pansy.
“Wasn’t there a bag with a cow skull on it that you wanted?” Iris asked Rose.
“Yes,” Rose said slowly.
“I promise I won’t torture you all day.”
“Why don’t I believe that?”
“I’ll go with you,” Pansy said. “Then we can both torture you all day.”
Rose looked resigned to her fate and as they left the bakery, Pansy felt immeasurably cheered. Because this was exactly what she needed. An afternoon with her sisters. They put everything in perspective. And it reminded her why she loved this town so much. Because her family was part of it. Her mother and father had been part of it. Everything that she was and would be was wrapped up in this town. And she wasn’t going to let West Caldwell distract her. She had a job to do.
And that was the most important thing she could think of.
After shopping with her sisters.
* * *
“SO YOU’RE TELLING me that you didn’t file a missing persons report?”
West knew that at this point he shouldn’t be surprised.
“He’s fifteen,” his mom said. “I can’t control a fifteen-year-old. When you were that age I didn’t always know where you were.”
“Not for weeks at a time, Mom,” he said. “That’s not normal.”
“If he needed something he would come home.”
Why would he? He wouldn’t get what he needed from you.
West bit that part back, found it best not to say anything. But he ended the call quickly after that, and then he called the police department in the county his mom lived in and filed a report himself. Difficult to do since he didn’t have an accurate description of the kid, wasn’t sure of his exact birth date, and had no idea exactly where he was last seen or what he was wearing, because that would require his mother to have told him these things. And it would require her to know them.
It frustrated the hell out of him.
When he was finished he felt pissed off and figured it was as good a time as any to go and fix Pansy’s roof. He gathered his tools and walked toward her house.
The roof hung low on one side and he put his tools on the edge and then gripped the edge, hauling himself up.
He walked up to the ridgeline and looked out over the top of the trees, off toward the horizon. The sun poured down over the mountains. Mountains that went on forever in great, jagged layers. First green, then fading to blue until they nearly disappeared into the sky.
He still felt like he was a stranger in this land. An outsider asking permission to be here every time his boots hit the dirt.
Texas had gotten into his bones.
It was the first place he’d owned his own land. The place where he’d started to feel like he was his own man, and not tied to the drama his mama created around town. To the fact that he was a bastard with no daddy. A poor urchin with one pair of shoes and no winter coat.
He’d become a winner. He’d become rich.
He’d become a husband.
He’d become a convict. And when he’d come out of that prison Texas hadn’t been in his bones anymore.
He wasn’t sure there was anything but anger there. Nothing but an alien feeling of helplessness that he’d never experienced before, even when he was a kid. For the first time in his life he hadn’t known the path. Hadn’t known the answer.
And he’d realized that the only reason he’d ever thought he’d known was youth and arrogance. Not because he’d actually known. But because in spite of how little he’d had nothing had truly knocked him down. Nothing had shown
him his efforts might not pan out after all.
He’d always had just enough glimmers of sunlight to hope.
The discovery that the world could be turned upside down into darkness, that he could be betrayed by the woman who shared his life, his bed, had shaken what he was.
Made him a stranger in the place that had become home.
Had made him aware that his own blood was a stranger to him. Had sent him across the country to Gold Valley, Oregon, to try and find something out about that blood.
So there he was. Fixing a roof. Starting a ranch.
Waiting to feel home.
He shook his head and stopped staring into the distance, and got to the task at hand.
Pretty soon the midday sun was destroying him. It wasn’t that hot, but being up there on the roof, in the direct sunlight was. He stripped his black T-shirt off and wiped his face with it, throwing it down onto the roof next to him as he continued to pound shingles.
And that was when Pansy’s little car started coming up the driveway.
It surprised him.
He hadn’t expected to have her home today. She got out of the car, and he looked down at her, watching as she pulled out a couple of bags and then started to head toward the front door of her cabin.
“Hey,” he called down. She jumped and he noticed her reflexively reaching to her side as she stumbled back. “Were you looking for your gun?” he asked.
“Don’t scare me like that,” she said. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Fixing your roof. How’s that for gratitude.”
She looked up, squinting into the light. “Why are you doing stealth repairs? Can’t you...give notice like a normal person?”
“I decided on a whim to fix your roof today. Because the weather is nice.” He put his hands on his hips and straightened, staring down at her.
She held her hand up at her forehead like a visor. “Still.”
“Still what? You wanted the roof fixed.”
“You are...you are unorthodox and I don’t like it.”
He chuckled. “I don’t know that I’ve ever been called unorthodox before.”
“That surprises me.”
“Not because I’m not,” he said. “Just because I often associate with people who don’t have as expansive of a vocabulary. I’ve been called other things. Along the same theme.”