“So touchy,” Rose responded.
“Yeah, but she’s mean,” West said. “So you don’t want to anger her.”
“Please,” Rose said. “I was born angering her. I will die angering her.”
“Yeah,” Pansy said. “You might want to revisit the wording there. Or you may die irritating me a little bit sooner than you counted on.”
“As charming as this is,” Logan said, “I just want to drink my coffee in peace.”
“I don’t think we’re allowed to do anything in peace with the Daniels women around.”
He was uncomfortable with that comment, and the parallels that West was drawing, on multiple levels.
“Do you want my wrath, too?” Pansy asked, giving her fiancé the beady eye.
“Never,” he said.
“We’re going to go watch the parade,” Pansy said.
West ordered their drinks—just coffee—which came up immediately. “See you after,” West said.
He could still feel Rose looking at him while the two of them walked out of the coffee shop.
“You told her, didn’t you?” he asked.
“I had to talk to somebody.”
“She looks like she would cheerfully gut me.”
Rose ignored that. “I need to ask you something,” she said, looking down at her mocha, and then back up at him.
“Do you think we should maybe move away from the counter?”
“Sure,” she said, taking a few steps away, and sitting at one of the two-person tables against the wall. “So, does this work?”
“Sure,” he said, feeling skeptical about her intentions.
“I need to know. Is Hank Dalton your father?”
SHE HADN’T BEEN SURE, until she had seen West standing there across from him and had put the pieces of it all together. The way that West’s blue eyes had impacted her so much when he had walked into the police station the other day. The way they stood. The way they smiled.
They weren’t identical. But there was a resemblance.
And if she knew one thing about Hank Dalton it was that he did have children constantly coming out of the woodwork. A daughter had shown up a couple of years ago, and had ended up married to one of the Dodge brothers, a widower who hadn’t seemed interested in any sort of happiness until McKenna had come to town.
Then of course there was West.
And it seemed feasible that there would be more. Because why wouldn’t there be.
“I don’t have a father,” he said, his face suddenly becoming that implacable granite, which she was learning was his retreat.
“Sorry, Logan, but you and I both know you can’t give me that. I do know where babies come from.”
“It’s true. As far as anything matters, it’s true. My mother did everything for me. She taught me to throw a baseball. She taught me to do my own laundry. She taught me to sew so I could fix my own damn socks, and she taught me to drive a stick shift. She’s the one who bought me condoms and told me to treat my girlfriends with care. And my father... My father didn’t give her anything. He hurt her horribly. I would never... I would never betray her memory by speaking his name.”
“Logan...”
“The man who fathered me didn’t want me. He broke up with my mom when she wanted more and she tried calling, but she was always blocked by his wife. And one time she banded together with some other women who had his kids, went to see him. His wife blocked them then too, said he didn’t want the kids. Offered a payout, and she took it because she wanted me to have something. But it was too little too late, Rose. She died so soon after she got that money. After all those years of working and working...”
“So he is your father. Because if he weren’t it would be easy to just say no.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Logan,” she breathed. “West is your half brother. You didn’t say anything. He’s been here... He’s been here all this time and you haven’t said anything. You could have started building a relationship with him.”
“I have a relationship with him. He’s marrying a woman who is practically a sister to me. So, he’ll be like a brother to me anyway.”
“Don’t give me that. You haven’t gotten close to him. Not at all. I mean, you’re cordial to him, but I haven’t noticed... That’s deliberate. It’s deliberate because he is your half brother and you don’t know what to do with it.”
“Rose,” he said, his tone full of warning. “Do not meddle in this. This is not just you trying to match your sister up with someone. This is my life. I swear to God if you get your hands in this...”
“What? What will you do if I get my hands in this?”
“Just don’t,” he said.
“Don’t. That’s your answer to everything. Just don’t, Rose. Don’t do anything. Don’t push you. Just be a manageable farmhand. What? Do you look at my ass and then say the rosary to try and atone? Everything is fine as long as I don’t come near you? And then you can sit back and brood in your feelings about how you feel about West. But did you think about how he might feel? He came here looking for family. Basically, you get to know everything, and decide exactly how all your interactions are going to go. You know what? It’s bullshit, Logan. You’re a coward.”
“Talk about bullshit, honey,” he said. “You think that you get to make demands of me at your leisure just because you had a revelation about who West is to me. Well, it’s not news to me. I get it. And I get that my decision to have nothing—and I mean nothing—to do with Hank Dalton, or any of the rest of the Daltons impacts on him. I get it. You don’t think I thought it through? You’re talking to me like I might not have made my decisions for my own reasons. But I did. You can be damn certain of that.”
“I’m sure you did,” she said. “I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe you would be so... That you
