The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch Read online

Nothing that she had witnessed had yet to disabuse her of that notion.

  “I made lasagna,” Sammy said. She grabbed hold of a mass of blond hair, wound it around her wrist and then effortlessly looped a scrunchie over it into a big messy bun.

  Pansy was suddenly incredibly conscious of her own tight ponytail that had not a single strand out of place.

  She didn’t know why the contrast between herself and Sammy suddenly hit her so hard. Only that it did.

  “Great,” she said, ignoring that weird feeling. “I’m starving.”

  “Me too. But I’ve been sampling garlic bread liberally.”

  “You slapped my hand when I took some,” Ryder said, coming out of the sprawling ranch house behind her.

  “I’m the chef,” Sammy said, pointedly. “I can do what I want.”

  Ryder shook his head, but didn’t make further comment.

  Like her, her older brother was a rule follower. Though she wasn’t sure if he was one by nature or if he was one by circumstance. It was hard to say.

  Not even she really knew when it came to her own self. Because she had a hard time remembering life before her parents’ death in clear detail. It had made her terrified at first. Paranoid. She had been afraid every time Ryder had gotten in his car to drive to town to go to the store, much less go farther afield. And then sometimes she’d remember herself, her behavior, and sadness would overtake her entirely. All the ways she’d disappointed her dad, and how she’d never been able to make up for it.

  What she found solace in was her dad’s legacy. She had found purpose in it. She had focused in on it. And she had come to the conclusion that if she was in authority, she might feel a little more control over her life.

  Ironic, since her dad had clearly still been vulnerable enough to die in a plane crash. But somehow it all made sense. In a strange way.

  And even if it didn’t make sense when it was all spooled out in front of her like that, she didn’t much care.

  In the end it might not make her safe. But it would make her good. Would do his memory proud. And that... Well her real fear was that she might not manage that.

  She would rather be carrying a gun either way.

  “Just as long as you left some for me,” Pansy said. “I’m starving.”

  She walked across the gravel drive, and the four ranch dogs seemed to sense her presence, running in from the direction of the barn barking with glee. The little pack was much like her family. Ragtag and thick as thieves. Comprised of a malamute, an Australian shepherd, a border collie mix and an unidentifiable rescue mutt Rose had found on the side of a highway.

  “Yes, yes,” she said, bending down and petting the dogs. “I’m here.”

  It wasn’t long before Logan followed up behind the dogs, his cowboy hat pushed up off of his forehead, dirt on his chiseled face, his blue eyes shining all the brighter for it. “Afternoon, Pansy,” he said.

  “Hi yourself,” she said.

  Logan wasn’t blood related to them, but he was like a brother to her all the same. His mother had been killed in the plane crash with her parents. He’d been staying with them for the duration of the trip, and he’d never left.

  “Arrest any bad guys today?” he asked.

  “It’s Gold Valley,” she said.

  “And?”

  “No.”

  It wasn’t like they didn’t have crime, but actual arrests weren’t a daily occurrence. There was a handful of regular troublemakers who got into scrapes now and then but didn’t pose much of a threat to anybody in the community.

  Of course drugs were a problem, no place was immune to that. Then there was domestic violence, which crossed all economic lines.

  There were crimes that as far as Pansy could see came from a certain kind of desperation. Then there were crimes that were just hideous. Insidious. Urban, rural, rich, poor. No place or person was totally safe.

  She was lucky, living where she did, that she didn’t see a host of terrible things—the population was sparse, and there was a lack of anonymity in small towns that made it difficult to hide. But they had their issues.

  “Thank you for your service,” Logan said dryly.

  “I’m not in the military.”

  He gave her a mock salute and headed toward the house. Pansy rolled her eyes. “Is Rose here?”

  “Yes,” Sammy said. “She shouldn’t be far behind. I think she was out doing chores with Logan today.”

  Logan, Ryder, Iris and Rose still all lived at Hope Springs. Sammy’s camper van had been parked on the property for the most part since she was sixteen years old. She would leave for a while to sell jewelry at different markets and fairs in the summer, but never for long.

  Sammy wasn’t involved in ranch work, but the rest of the family who lived here was. It didn’t make sense for Pansy to live there, and anyway, she prized the independence. She followed Sammy and Ryder into the house, and the dogs trailed in behind them. She could hear her sister Iris shouting from the kitchen.

  “They live here,” Ryder said. “Nothing you can do.”

  Iris came out of the kitchen shaking her spatula. “It’s our home. They don’t need to have the run of it.”

  Both Ryder and Logan looked at each other and shrugged.

  Iris sighed heavily, looking to Sammy as if she would take a hard-line stance on animals running roughshod through the house.

  “Don’t look at me,” Sammy said. “Remember, I tried to make a case last year for us having a house cow.”

  As the oldest sister, Iris had taken on a stern matriarchal role, where Sammy had always been a feminine free spirit.

  It didn’t matter that Iris was stern. Pansy loved her anyway. Or maybe, even loved her for it. She knew that her older siblings had really taken the hit for the kids.

  The house itself was worn. Wood floors with the finish worn off in high traffic areas, and claw marks from the dogs. Rugs that were shoved to one side, couches that bore the impressions of the people who sat on them in their very particular spots. There was a huge TV in the living room, a giant table in the dining room, with eclectic chairs all around. There were high ceilings and exposed wooden beams, large windows that looked out on the fields and mountains that surrounded the house.

  And from the entry there was a prime view of a big sign that hung up over the end of the driveway that matched the one out on the highway: Hope Springs Ranch.

  A cattle ranch they’d worked to run as a family, and keep family run, for generations. With her siblings having to take over much earlier than anyone had imagined they would.

  For a long time, Pansy had hated the name Hope Springs. Because it had felt so ironically named when all of them had been left without much evidence that hope did a damn bit of good in the world.

  But sometimes now she felt like she could see it. In the way the sun spilled over the ridge of the mountains, gilding the edges of the pine trees. In the way the cows looked dotting the fields, healthy and contained by strong fences. Evidence that the ranch itself had sustained them.

  They’d experienced the kind of loss that could have destroyed them. But from it they’d made a life richer than most people could ever hope for.

  “Did anything interesting happen while you were at work?” Sammy asked as she went into the kitchen, grabbed a stack of chipped plates and started to place them on the table.

  “Well,” Pansy began. “I gave my landlord a speeding ticket.”

  That earned her a moment of silence in the chaotic house. “You didn’t,” Logan said.

  “I did,” Pansy confirmed.

  “Before you found out he was your landlord?” Logan asked. “I mean, he’s the new guy, right. I remember that you were a little worried because old Dave Hodgkins was selling Redemption Ranch.”

  “Yeah. I mean... I didn’t know that when I pulled him over. But I found
out pretty quick. And then I wrote him a ticket.”

  “Why?” Sammy asked.

  “You probably could’ve negotiated for some money off your rent,” Logan pointed out.

  The very idea of fudging the system that way made Pansy’s pulse quicken. “No,” she said. “I’d never do that.”

  Pansy was absolutely adamant about following the rules. Doing the right thing. Honoring her father’s legacy.

  Pansy Daniels knew exactly who she was, and what she was about.

  It would take more than a handsome lawbreaking landlord to shake that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I’M RETIRING, PANSY.”

  “Retiring?” Pansy looked at her boss, the police chief of Gold Valley, in absolute shock. He was in his early fifties, and his dark hair was still more brown than gray. She couldn’t imagine him stepping down from the job. Sure. That kind of thing happened all the time in high stress municipalities. But not Gold Valley.

  Roger Doering had been police chief ever since Pansy’s father had died seventeen years ago, and in many ways he had become something of a father figure to Pansy himself. No, he would never replace her father’s gruff certainty, but he was someone who had always been there for her.

  He’d been the one who’d had to deliver the terrible news.

  He had been supportive when she had applied to go to the police academy. He had been supportive all through the extensive hiring process. It was sometimes very difficult to get hired on in small towns. It was common in a place like Oregon for a police officer’s ultimate goal to be to end up in their hometown, but often they had to start in Portland first while they waited for vacancies.

  Pansy had been lucky. And she didn’t take for granted the fact that her connections had probably come into play there.

  “Retiring,” she repeated again.

  “Yes. And I wanted you to be the first one to know... Besides my wife, of course.”

  She frowned. “Are you all right?”

  Chief Doering loved this town and it seemed to her that he loved his job, so she couldn’t imagine that he would just leave. If he would, then her instincts needed some work. And she really didn’t think they did.

  She was as good a judge of character as anyone. Better.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “But I had a bad physical. And the doctor doesn’t really like the look of my heart. I need less stress, basically.”

  Less stress than being police chief of Gold Valley? She didn’t say that out loud, but she couldn’t imagine there was police work anywhere else that had less stress. Maybe Mayberry. But then, Barney Fife was a stress and a half all on his own, so maybe not Mayberry.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, realizing then that her internal reaction to it was probably coated in a heavy dose of denial.

  That Chief Doering was having health problems was... It was shocking. He didn’t look like the kind of person who would. He was lean and fit, and his wife made tons of baked goods for the department all the time, but he never put on an ounce of fat.

  She just didn’t understand that. How a person could do what was supposed to be the right thing and still have problems. Weren’t you supposed to be able to have some kind of control over your physical health? He made them all run like dogs at least once a month in some kind of team building exercise. They were all a lot more fit than they wanted to be because of Chief Doering.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But to be honest, my retirement is sufficient and the idea of slowing down isn’t bad.”

  Again, she said nothing about the fact that slowing down from a job at GV PD sounded a whole lot like taking up knitting.

  “I’m telling you because there’s going to be a vacancy in my position. And I want you to apply.”

  “Me?” It was her dream. There was no denying that. Being police chief just like her father, sitting in the same office, having her picture on the wall, that was her dream.

  All she had ever wanted since her father died was to find a way to feel like she was serving his memory well. And this... Well, this would be it.

  She was twenty-seven. Not impossibly young for the position, maybe. Not here. Except... Impossibly young for the position maybe here. It was difficult to get people to take her seriously as it was.

  She had worked for the police department since she was twenty-one. Six years of experience, on top of living here her entire life. She knew the town and the people in it better than most of their neighbors did.

  Knew a lot of their secrets, and had taken up the mantle of fostering and protecting them when need be, and gently exposing them when that had to happen.

  It was a particular thing, pulling people over and writing tickets in a town this size. Making arrests for disorderly conduct when the guy you were putting in handcuffs tonight turned out to be the son of the woman you needed to get an auto loan from the next day.

  And then there were the people who insisted on making it weird when she pulled them over.

  Ma’am, have you had anything to drink tonight?

  Pansy! Little Pansy Daniels.

  Just Officer Daniels, ma’am. Can I see your license and registration?

  You know who I am.

  Still. I need your license and registration all the same.

  I used to teach you Sunday school. Before your parents died.

  Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car.

  Yeah. There were people who would insist on seeing her as a child forever and ever. People who would think that her eight years’ working for the police department, and her twenty-seven years of living in the town, combined with her pedigree didn’t mean a whole lot. They wouldn’t see her as old enough if she was twenty-seven, thirty-seven or forty-seven.

  But the fact remained that twenty-seven was young no matter how you sliced it.

  “That’s going to be tricky, don’t you think?”

  Gold Valley worked with a panel of community members to select the police chief. The city manager was in charge of conducting the proceedings, and of the ultimate decision. But there would be multiple interviews with panels of people who would weigh in on the different candidates. Then she would have to undergo a physical and psychological evaluation with all the information going forward to the panels.

  She was local. That worked in her favor.

  She was local. That would work against her.

  “It may be,” he said. “Of course, I’m going to write a letter of recommendation. I know Johnson will feel a bit put out. But, Martinez told me that he would be willing to throw his full support behind you.”

  That was the other thing. Pansy was the only woman in their very small department. There had never been a female police chief in Gold Valley, not ever, and while she didn’t think her gender would be a barrier—not when there were so many others for people to consider first—it was something.

  “Well. Tell Alejandro that I am grateful for his support. I’ll deal with Jay myself.”

  “He wants the job,” Chief Doering continued. “But, I don’t think he has the temperament for it that you do.”

  Officer Jay Johnson was at least fifteen years older than she was, more experienced and someone who hadn’t grown up in Gold Valley, but had lived there for a very long time. He had a lot of surface qualifications that would make him better for the job. If he got it, he would also be in it for a long time and ensure that Pansy didn’t actually make it to the position long enough before her retirement for her taste.

  Granted, she could move.

  But the idea of leaving Gold Valley, Hope Springs and her siblings behind wasn’t something she could even consider. Anyway, Gold Valley was an integral thread that was woven through her vision for her life. A part of her dream she couldn’t lift out. “What do you think I need to do?”

  “Keep doing a good job,” he said. “I mea
n, it wouldn’t hurt if you managed to do some impressive police work between now and the time the selection process starts.”

  “Meaning what? Write more tickets? Because I have to tell you, that’s not going to endear me to the populace.”

  “I don’t know, Pansy. Trust yourself. Keep being who you are.”

  She took a breath, her hands behind her back, her eyes on the photos behind him. All the different police chiefs. Her father, who had come before him.

  “I will. Can I go, sir?”

  “You can go.”

  She turned and walked out of the office and through the small department, past the two cluttered desks that the officers shared, and the front desk, where the receptionist sat.

  Their very bored receptionist.

  She gave Donnie a wave on her way out and paused when she got outside. She decided not to get in her police car, and instead to walk across the narrow road that ran between the police station and Sugar Cup, her favorite coffee shop in town.

  The police station was a block away from Main Street, directly across from a large historic home that had been converted into a vacation rental, and several cottages that had also been converted into lodging. A narrow road with no lines cut between the cottages and the coffeehouse, and Pansy walked along the edge, on a rocky, narrow sidewalk before crossing the street and heading up the much more civilized sidewalk right in front of the coffeehouse.

  She pushed on the black door and let it close firmly behind her. She smiled at the extremely unfriendly girl working at the register—it wasn’t personal, she was unfriendly to everyone—and placed an order for a Big Hunk mocha before going to stand at the other end of the counter where the drinks were served up.

  It didn’t take long before she had her beverage in hand and was walking back out onto the street. Which was when she saw the same beat-up blue truck that she had pulled over yesterday parked in a loading zone.

  She shook her head. West Caldwell was going to drive her insane.

  She thought about what Chief Doering had said earlier. About her police work. And how she was going to have to work hard in order to earn the position that she wanted. West Caldwell wasn’t a local. No. He wasn’t. He was new in town. Which would imbue him with a certain amount of skepticism when it came to the local populace. He was exactly the kind of person she should be writing tickets to.