Good Time Cowboy
Good Time Cowboy
Maisey Yates
Welcome to Gold Valley, Oregon in the uplifting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates.Forbidden desire just might turn into the love of a lifetime…When Lindy Parker lost her cheating husband, she gained a vineyard. She’ll do anything for Grassroots Winery, including teaming up with the hottest devil she knows, rancher Wyatt Dodge. Wyatt is her ex’s friend and has an ego as big as the bulls he rides. But in spite of that, disciplined Lindy has always wanted him…Lightning struck Wyatt Dodge the first time he saw Lindy Parker. But there were two problems with that: she was married to his friend, and Wyatt doesn’t do strings. But now Lindy is free, and the two of them can finally explore the heat that’s burned between them for so long. But can Lindy make this good time cowboy decide on forever?Also includes a bonus Gold Valley novella, Hard Riding Cowboy!Praise for Maisey Yates:‘Yates’ new Gold Valley series begins with a sassy, romantic and sexy story about two characters whose chemistry is off the charts. ‘ RT Book Reviews on Smooth-Talking Cowboy (Top Pick)‘Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy small-town romance.’ Booklist on Part Time Cowboy‘Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.’USATODAY.com's Happy Ever After blog on Part Time Cowboy
In Gold Valley, Oregon, forbidden desire just might turn into the love of a lifetime…
When Lindy Parker lost her cheating husband, she gained a vineyard. She’ll do anything for Grassroots Winery, including teaming up with the hottest devil she knows, rancher Wyatt Dodge. Wyatt is her ex’s friend and has an ego as big as the bulls he rides. But in spite of that, disciplined Lindy has always wanted him…
Lightning struck Wyatt Dodge the first time he saw Lindy Parker. But there were two problems with that: she was married to his friend, and Wyatt doesn’t do strings. But now Lindy is free, and the two of them can finally explore the heat that’s burned between them for so long. But can Lindy make this good time cowboy decide on forever?
Also By Maisey Yates (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
Welcome to Gold Valley, Oregon,
where the cowboys are tough to tame, until they
meet the women who can lasso their hearts.
Cowboy Christmas Blues (ebook novella)
Smooth-Talking Cowboy
Mail Order Cowboy (ebook novella)
Untamed Cowboy
Hard Riding Cowboy (ebook novella)
Good Time Cowboy
In Copper Ridge, Oregon, lasting love
with a cowboy is only a happily-ever-after away.
Don’t miss any of Maisey Yates’s
Copper Ridge tales, available now!
Shoulda Been a Cowboy (prequel novella)
Part Time Cowboy
Brokedown Cowboy
Bad News Cowboy
A Copper Ridge Christmas (ebook novella)
The Cowboy Way
Hometown Heartbreaker (ebook novella)
One Night Charmer
Tough Luck Hero
Last Chance Rebel
Slow Burn Cowboy
Down Home Cowboy
Wild Ride Cowboy
Christmastime Cowboy
Take Me, Cowboy
Hold Me, Cowboy
Seduce Me, Cowboy
Claim Me, Cowboy
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Good Time Cowboy
Hard Riding Cowboy(Bonus Story)
Maisey Yates
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08581-6
GOOD TIME COWBOY
© 2018 Maisey Yates
Good Time Cowboy © 2018 Maisey Yates Hard Riding Cowboy © 2018 Maisey Yates
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk) (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
Praise for New York Times
bestselling author Maisey Yates
“Yates’ new Gold Valley series begins with a sassy, romantic and sexy story about two characters whose chemistry is off the charts.”
—RT Book Reviews on Smooth-Talking Cowboy (Top Pick)
“Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy [Yates’s] small-town romance.”
—Booklist on Part Time Cowboy
“Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.”
—USATODAY.com’s Happy Ever After blog on Part Time Cowboy
“[A] story with emotional depth, intense heartache and love that is hard fought for and eventually won…. This is a book readers will be telling their friends about.”
—RT Book Reviews on Brokedown Cowboy
“Yates’s thrilling seventh Copper Ridge contemporary proves that friendship can evolve into scintillating romance.… This is a surefire winner not to be missed.”
—Publishers Weekly on Slow Burn Cowboy (starred review)
“This fast-paced, sensual novel will leave readers believing in the healing power of love.”
—Publishers Weekly on Down Home Cowboy
Contents
Cover (#u8913909b-a845-5139-89bf-d36fa48d121b)
Back Cover Text (#udda187c1-5194-5dfd-b531-e30eea6f1077)
Booklist (#u36e0b169-c777-5bee-84bf-0d8b09c9d5c3)
Title Page (#u0e5f0d4e-361a-554b-b99e-9a06545e773f)
Copyright (#u4a337043-4334-5b26-b813-c57954848de5)
Praise (#u55116fb6-9e9c-5da7-ba8a-46b8c1ac44af)
Good Time Cowboy
CHAPTER ONE (#u4bfcc37b-397f-5748-9fab-f956a1028e32)
CHAPTER TWO (#u5c935210-37dd-5a9e-9d8c-40032fd02763)
CHAPTER THREE (#u5a2c1b67-3514-5fc4-98b9-04c908af7e30)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u741bc2b9-3424-5954-b644-b2a8b524d38e)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u6ec7c0d0-7880-5057-a6b6-f2d0e72ae2a7)
CHAPTER SIX (#u78012eef-c031-5d92-9491-98762c74c414)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u0b0fcec5-964b-5e0d-b4b2-cbc8bad41370)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ucf9b9749-3f01-5b85-b2e3-e0be748e5393)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Hard Riding Cowboy
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Good Time Cowboy (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
Maisey Yates
To Jackie, Megan, Nicole and Rusty. Thank you for being my support system, my panic button and my OMG PLEASE SOMEONE READ THIS AND TELL ME IF IT MAKES SENSE crew. You have no idea how much I appreciate you.
CHAPTER ONE (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
LINDY PARKER HATED the rodeo. Just in general. The sights, the smells, the cloud of testosterone that covered everything.
She hadn’t always hated it, but now it all reminded her of her ex-husband. Damien was so firmly part of that world to her. Whenever she’d gone to rodeo events, it had been for the sole purpose of seeing Damien’s work. To see the results of PR campaigns he’d run and to rub elbows with possible sponsors.
The rest of it didn’t much appeal to her. Dirt and bright lights and overly loud announcers.
But if there was one thing she hated more than the rodeo itself, it was the bull riders.
Cocky. Arrogant. Jerks.
Even her younger brother, Dane, suffered from a bad case of it when he’d been out on the circuit for too long.
But there was no bull rider who irked her quite like Wyatt Dodge. Her dear ex’s favorite rider. A man who’d made Damien tons of money and inflated his ego beyond the telling of it, which, in her humble opinion, had contributed to the flagrant affair her husband had engaged in with a woman who had—at the time—worked at Grassroots Winery, and had been young enough that she still probably remembered how to get to Sesame Street.
Not that it was Wyatt Dodge’s fault. No, Damien was responsible for his own body parts and where they wandered. He was the one who had made vows to her, and even if she did feel like perhaps his prolonged exposure to a pack of manwhores hadn’t helped her marriage, she knew exactly where the fault lay for what had transpired.
With Damien.
She’d caught him kissing an employee of their winery. A much younger employee. Sarabeth, who Lindy had considered a casual friend. A woman she’d invited into her home. A woman she’d paid an hourly wage to. And apparently some of those hours had been spent in bed with Lindy’s husband.
And Lindy could hold a grudge. And had. All the way to court, where she had managed to get full ownership of Damien’s family winery, Grassroots Winery.
Jamison Leighton and his wife had been unsurprisingly angry at the way all that had gone. But, they shouldn’t have left the entire thing to a son who didn’t know how to keep it in his pants. Particularly not a son who had signed a very foolish prenuptial agreement, designed only to protect him from her. Which had meant that all bad behavior stipulated in said agreement had been based on the assumption that she would be the one to do all the very bad things.
And so, she had emerged victorious. She’d given more power back to his sisters, who had not had a chance to claim any part of the property from his parents, but who had stood by her side through the ordeal.
She was close to Sabrina and Bea, in spite of the fact that they were blood-related to Damien. They were the sisters of her heart, and they all worked together even now.
She loved the winery, but unfortunately it was that work that brought her to the Get Out of Dodge ranch now—and was bringing her into contact with a man that she liked less than cooked carrots.
Bull rider. Manwhore. Friend of her ex-husband.
Wyatt Dodge.
Lindy gritted her teeth and parked her little red car in the gravel lot. She questioned her decision-making sometimes. The fact that she’d come to Wyatt with the idea of the joint barbecue that would hopefully increase business at both Grassroots and Get Out of Dodge. A barbecue that would showcase the grounds of the dude ranch and the wines from Grassroots, and educate people on the different activities available at both locations.
But it made sense. Business sense, anyway. And she’d felt like it would be shortsighted to let her feelings for Wyatt—both her irritation and the strange tightening she felt in her stomach whenever he was around—hinder an important business decision.
Back in the day, Get Out of Dodge had been a thriving dude ranch, bringing people in for miles. But then, Quinn Dodge had lost his wife, and the tragedy had made it difficult for him to continue running the place at that capacity. Since then, the ownership had passed to Quinn’s son, Wyatt, who had retired from the rodeo circuit. He was working on bringing it back to its former glory, modernizing it and creating a place that would cater to what guests wanted now.
Lindy felt like she was very much doing the same with Grassroots. Now that it was in her control she was doing all the expanding she had wanted to do when she and Damien had been married. He had been just happy to live in a big house and let the winery bump along, making income as it had always done.
Not Lindy. Lindy had come from nothing, and she didn’t take a thing for granted.
All that mattered was the future.
And getting through all of it without killing Wyatt.
“Now,” she muttered to herself. “If I were a pigheaded asshole where would I be?”
Seeing as it was lunchtime, he would probably be in the aptly named mess hall.
Lindy had to admit that the ranch was charming. All the little cabins that had been redone over the past few months, as well as the large communal dining hall, filled with picnic bench-style setups and with more seating outside by the river.
There were arenas with fresh dirt, both covered and uncovered, where people could ride, and learn to do some rodeo basics. They did a roping and barrel racing primer, and they were beginning to do trail rides of varying lengths and skill levels.
That was one of the big joint ventures happening between Grassroots and Get Out of Dodge.
They were offering a ride through the winery that took people through the vineyards and ended in a farm-to-table dinner in one of the revamped barns on her property. If you were staying at the ranch, you got a discount. And it was Jamie Dodge who was leading the ride.
It didn’t do them any good to see each other as competitors—they weren’t. He had people coming to stay on his property, and she had booze. That meant they were natural bedfellows.
When it came to business.
Lindy forced a smile as she traipsed into the mess hall. “Good afternoon,” she said, taking a chance that it would be Wyatt who was sitting inside.
She wasn’t disappointed. But, along with Wyatt were his younger brothers Grant and Bennett.
“Good afternoon,” Wyatt returned, leaning back in his chair and tipping his cowboy hat back on his forehead.
“I’m here to discuss brochures,” she said, feeling her lips tighten up as she spoke the words.
It was weird. Standing in front of them in a pencil skirt, wearing high heels and standing like she had a rod bolted into her spine.
She’d trained herself to be this way. She’d grown up in a trailer park with hand-me-down clothes and a mind-set of fending for herself. She might not have learned how to be fancy growing up, but she’d learned to take care of herself.
When she’d met Damien, she’d put her survival skills to good use. He’d paid attention to her, given her the kind of love she’d imagined a girl like her could never earn. In return, she’d figured out how to blend into his world. She’d wanted to be an asset to him, not a disadvantage. So she’d put this sleek, beautiful armor on.
She was still doing it now. But she ran a winery, so honestly, the learned behavior was on theme.
“You could have just sent me an email,” Wyatt said.
“I did,” she responded, through clenched teeth. “I sent two emails. A week ago. You didn’t respond to them.”
“Sorry, I don’t check my email all that often.”
“Then why did you suggest that as a method of communication?”
“Better than any other.”
“I have brochures,” Lindy said, reaching into her purse and pulling out two of the aforementioned items.
They had decided that they were going to do two-sided brochures that would be placed in the cabins at Get Out of Dodge and in the tasting rooms for Grassroots. But, she needed Wyatt to approve them before she had them printed.
“Lindy, I really don’t care about the font or whatever is on a brochure.”
“Well, I need you to care.”
Grant, who she had always liked, extended his hand. “I’ll have a look,” he said.
She shot Wyatt a triumphant glare and walked across the room, placing one in Grant’s hand. “That’s option one,” she said.
“Let me see,” Bennett said.
She had always liked Bennett too.
Bennett was the youngest of the Dodge brothers, newly engaged, and a veterinarian, well respected in the community of Gold Valley.
Grant worked on the ranch. A widower, he was talked about often in hushed tones the moment he left the room. But then, his romance with his late wife had made literal headlines at the time. A teenager marrying his dying high school sweetheart. It made for a great story. Though, it had been something of a crushing reality. And one that seemed to follow him wherever he went.
She had an inkling of how that felt. Not the grief part. But the being a topic of conversation part.
She was the divorced one. People whispered about her behind their hands, talked about what a shame it was that husband of hers had turned out to be a no-account. Or they talked about how that had been her plan all along. A gold digger. Nothing but trailer trash who had married above herself and hadn’t been able to keep the man happy. Who had taken him for all he had, and had ended up with money she hadn’t earned.
The honorable Leighton family should never have been parted from their family property. Obviously. Regardless of the fact that a judge had disagreed with that assessment.
Yes, she knew what it was like to be whispered about.
Sadly, she could find no such connection, empathy or respect for Wyatt.
But then, in fairness, he didn’t try to earn it.
Finally, Wyatt stood up, slowly. And as he did, her mouth went dry. He was tall. Very, very tall. The tallest of all of the brothers, which was saying something, as they were all over six feet. She was used to large, strapping men. Hell, her brother was one.
But Wyatt Dodge was not her brother. He was infuriating. He was obnoxious. He was friends with Damien.
He was definitely not her brother.
And not ugly. Regrettably.
Not even close.
Wyatt Dodge was one of the most magnetic men she had ever met.
Grant and Bennett were handsome like movie stars. Grant bearded, Bennett clean-shaven. Symmetrical. Brown eyes and square jaws and all of that. Wyatt was rugged. He had a scar running through his chin that she was sure he had gotten doing something stupid, because bull riders never did much of anything smart.
He always had just a little bit of stubble on that firm jaw of his, and it looked like it would be prickly if she touched it. His boots were always dusty, and his jeans usually had holes. Unless he was dressed up, and then he put on some slightly nicer jeans and boots that she suspected were made from snake. She wished she didn’t know that. She wished that she hadn’t retained those details.
She knew that he had more than one black cowboy hat, though you could be forgiven for thinking they were all the same. And that he had one that was tan, which usually went with his nicer clothes.
She also had the first moment they’d met branded into her memory.
She knew way too much about him, having seen him from afar over the years when Damien was doing PR for the circuit and she was still his wife.
And then, she had relearned a lot of it over these past couple of months while the two of them had been forging something of a business relationship.
None of it made her feel at ease around him. She was decidedly easeless in his presence, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
He reached out and took both brochures from his brothers, his large, weathered hands making the brochures look...well, wrong.
Like maybe he needed information carved on a stump of wood with some kind of sharp, rudimentary object.
Damien had been something of a rhinestone cowboy. He dressed the part, but that was so he fit into his surroundings. He didn’t do ranch work.
Wyatt was as real as it got.
And it shouldn’t matter to her at all. Only in the sense that it was probably good for business. And the more business that came out to the ranch, the more traffic it would drive to Grassroots.
Plus, they had a deal. Get Out of Dodge was going to serve Grassroots wine exclusively, and that would draw people in to buy more as well.
He turned the pamphlets over, examining them, and for some reason, Lindy felt that examination in a close personal way. She shifted awkwardly, attempting to ignore the strange, hollow feeling between her thighs.
“It all looks good to me, Melinda,” he said, using her full name, which no one ever did. He only knew it because they had gone out drinking once after a big win for Wyatt had resulted in a good endorsement deal that Damien had helped Wyatt net. And the subject of middle names had come up, which had brought up the subject of her full name.
And now, years on, he sometimes used it to irritate the hell out of her.
“Thank you,” she said, keeping everything smooth and serene on the surface, while internally she was flipping him both middle fingers.
That was what she did now. It was how she played this game. She had perfected her polished exterior to the point that no one knew there was a little grit left beneath.
She did. Because it was the grit that kept her going.
“Why don’t we walk outside a bit?” he asked, his eyes connecting with hers and lighting her insides on fire.
Lord almighty.
“I want to show you some things,” he continued.
She squared her shoulders and followed after Wyatt, giving Grant and Bennett a small wave before heading outside.
“Something we need to do in person?”
“Yes. Otherwise I would have emailed you. I have your address.” His handsome face was a study in sincerity and she wanted to punch it.
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Right. Anyway.”
“I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Fourth of July shindig that we’re having.”
“Right. The shindig.” Grassroots would be providing wine, and they would also be serving Donnelly cheese. Plus, they would be touting the virtues of both Grassroots and Get Out of Dodge. It was an important event, one that they were heavily advertising for in surrounding communities.
“I was thinking we would do some rodeo demonstrations,” he said. “Over there in the main arena.” He gestured broadly across the way at a grand, covered area, with two sets of bleachers on either side. The bleachers were new.
It looked like Wyatt figured that if he wasn’t traveling with the rodeo he might as well bring it back here.
“Really?” she asked.
“Yes. I was wondering if Dane was going to be around?”
“I doubt it. Anyway, it’s not like you’re outfitted to do a bull ride here.” There were bleachers, but they were missing the heavy gates and fencing needed to keep people safe if they were going to bring those animals out.
“Not bulls,” he confirmed. “I figured we would do some roping. Not going to go crazy. You’re right. We don’t have the facility for it. But it would be damned cool if we did.”
“I’m not going to have my brother get himself injured doing a stunt to benefit your ranch, Dodge.”
“Your brother rides often enough. He can get injured anytime.”
“Right.” She pursed her lips. “But competing. Not messing around here.” Dane’s ability to earn a living was everything to him. His way of escaping their upbringing. He didn’t need to put it at risk messing around here. “Anyway. I’m pretty sure that Dane is solidly booked in competition for the next few months.”
“That’s a shame. I like him.”
Heavily implied in that sentence was the fact that he did not like her. But, that wasn’t her problem. It also wasn’t fair. Dane was different. His life was different. He got rewarded for being a good old boy. For being a reckless redneck.
She got no such rewards from life. She had to prove that she was capable. She was strong and smart. That she belonged in the world she’d married into, and divorced out of.
Dane got to be fun and dangerous and get rewarded for it. But then, that was her experience of all these rodeo idiots. Their life was a big party. They didn’t do responsible things like keep to their commitments or honor their vows. No. And her husband had jumped right into that.
But, that was beside the point.
“Sorry. He didn’t quit.”
“I retired,” he pointed out. “I didn’t quit. Midthirties is a rough time to still be flinging your body around like that. Other guys do it, but...not me. I’m done.” A smile tipped the corner of his mouth upward, and she noticed some lines crease his skin right by his eyes.
He had aged since they’d first met all those years ago but that didn’t make him less attractive. Instead, those weathered signs of aging, of years lived, only made him more attractive in a strange way. She had to wonder if it was some kind of weird female survival instinct. That this man who had taken all these risks was here, had made it well into his thirties in spite of those risks, was sending signals to her body that he was a good provider, or something.
But her body was terrible at correctly identifying men’s true natures. Even if it wasn’t, she didn’t want to know Wyatt or his...nature. So, she wasn’t even going to ponder it.
“Well. Whatever. So you’re thinking roping events?” She pushed the conversation back on track.
“Yes. I got all the approvals from insurance. As long as we don’t have any guests participating, or anything like that, we are cleared for it.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“I was also thinking Jamie could lead a ride during the barbecue.”
She nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
“Will it be all right with you if we take the group over to the vineyard?”
“Should be fine.”
Their eyes caught for a moment, and for some reason it felt significant. More so than the moment before. He was not the kind of man she normally liked.
Granted, she’d been with one man. And in the end she hadn’t liked him very much at all. But still.
He nodded, then smiled. Slow and lazy. It licked through her like fire and she did her very best to ignore it. “Good.”
She cleared her throat. “Good.”
“So, just the brochures? Were there any emails that you needed me to read?”
She curled her hands into fists, irritation coursing through her, saving her from the heat. “Can’t you just...check your email?”
“Can’t you just...tell me what you need?” He smiled. Enigmatic. Infuriating.
“There’s nothing, but if I need anything else I’ll be sure to send you an email. And maybe I’ll add a follow-up phone call.”
“Sounds good. Could you arrange for 6:00 a.m.? A wake-up call? That would be pretty fancy. Haven’t had that since I was on the circuit.”
“You stayed at motels that gave you wake-up calls when you were riding on the circuit?”
“No. The women that spent the night usually woke me up early when they were sneaking out, though.”
He was such a jackass.
“Right. Well. I will not be giving you a wake-up call. Of any variety.” Her lips twitched, and heat flooded her cheeks.
“Noted.”
She turned away, her heart hammering hard. She had the inescapable feeling that she had made a deal with the devil in forging an alliance with Wyatt Dodge. But the devil was infinitely preferable to her ex-husband, and the devil currently had what she needed.
And so, a deal with the devil it was.
* * *
WYATT WATCHED LINDY’S figure as she retreated, the wiggle in her hips transmitting her irritation while also sending some signals to his body that he could do without, thanks.
He let out the breath that he felt like he had been holding for the past fifteen minutes, feeling the tension ease out of his body, down along his spine. That woman got under his skin, no denying it.
Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t deny it. He would have just had her by now. But there were complications to that. Big ones. Like the fact that she was the ex-wife of a man he had once considered a good friend.
Like the fact that she hated him.
Oh, and the fact that he had wanted her from the moment he’d met her, when she had still been hitched to the aforementioned friend.
The fact that he hadn’t made a move on her was a relief only in that it indicated he had learned to think with something other than his cock since he was sixteen years old.
Lindy Parker was a particular kind of thorn in his flesh.
He remembered the moment he’d met her with a distressing amount of clarity. He had been in a bar after one of the events, and she had walked in looking prim and uncertain, her hands clasped in front of her, holding on to her handbag, her blond hair swirling around her as she took stock of the rabble and ruffians in the room.
And he had...he had felt the floor of that bar fall out from underneath his feet.
He had wanted her, immediately. Viscerally. It had been an instantaneous and deep desire unlike anything he had ever felt before.
Then, he had seen the diamond ring sparkling on her left hand. It had only loomed larger in his vision as she had walked over to where he was sitting. He’d had all those seconds, those long moments of watching her make her way across the room to decide he didn’t give a damn who had given her that ring or what it meant. He wanted her. And if she was going to let him have her...well, then he wasn’t going to waste a thought on the poor bastard who’d given her the diamond.
He’d thought that right up until she’d walked up and kissed his friend right on the mouth.
She was Damien’s wife. Of course.
Because the first woman to make him feel like he couldn’t breathe in longer than he could remember was obviously going to be married to a friend of his.
Even if she hadn’t been married to Damien...they were not meant to be. She had been unfriendly to him from the beginning. It wasn’t even her divorce from Damien that had triggered the unfriendliness.
He still wanted her. Dammit.
And he didn’t do that stuff. He didn’t want and not have. Sex, as far as he was concerned was a recreational activity. People didn’t need to make such a big deal out of it. But, he also preferred to like the women he banged. And he preferred it if they didn’t want to decapitate him.
Lindy fell into that category.
The divorce...
Yeah, that was complicated, but it had a little bit more to do with her not liking him rather than him being concerned about preserving a relationship with Damien.
As far as he was concerned Damien was a dickhead. Cheating on Lindy had been an asshole thing to do. There was no defending it. Wyatt wouldn’t even try. Some men shouldn’t get married. Wyatt was one of them. But, he hadn’t gotten married. Damien had. And he had owed it to his wife to be faithful to her. The damned man hadn’t even tried as far as Wyatt could tell.
It had all come out later, when Damien had drunkenly slurred over a beer about the end of his marriage that he had cheated on Lindy multiple times over the years. Being on the road with all that temptation around was too much for him, he’d said. When the buckle bunnies couldn’t find a cowboy to get laid with they would always take him.
And it was all Wyatt could do not to ask him if he was screwed in the head. Because what the hell man would want another woman when he had that one in his bed? Wyatt sure as hell wouldn’t.
Of course, he had never tried monogamy, so he supposed he couldn’t actually judge. But he did.
Still, the fact that he didn’t exactly want his friend to know that he had illicit fantasies about the other guy’s wife was one reason he had held back on lecturing him too much. The other being that he just wasn’t the right man for that job.
A shiftless manslut who had never had a committed relationship in his life was the last person on earth who should hand out lectures on marriage.
“She does not like you.”
Wyatt turned around and saw his brother Grant standing there, looking amused with the situation.
He supposed he should be happy to see Grant looking amused at all, since his brother rarely did. But, he wasn’t. Not when it was at his expense.
Wyatt had never claimed not to be a selfish bastard.
“She doesn’t,” Wyatt agreed.
“And you want her.”
“She’s a shrew,” Wyatt said, by way of answer, crossing his arms, watching as that little red car of hers drove away.
“A hot one,” Grant pointed out.
“You sleep with her then. I don’t want to have to dig her fingernails out from under my skin after.”
“It’s my understanding you end up with fingernails embedded in your skin when it goes well,” Grant said, his tone dry.
“Unless she does it because she wants to mortally wound you.”
“From where I’m at right now, I’m not sure I see a drawback either way.”
“Go.” Wyatt made a shooing motion with his hand. “Get some. Refresh your memory.”
Grant lifted a brow, the lines on his forehead deepening. “Not likely.”
Wyatt locked eyes with his brother. “Get out of town. Find a woman who doesn’t know you and your entire life story.”
“You know,” Grant said. “I tried that once. She remembered me. From the news.”
“Damn.”
His brother’s marriage had ended up famous.
An eighteen-year-old who married his high school sweetheart even knowing she wouldn’t live long had been a tragic and wonderful gesture, as far as the world was concerned.
As far as poor Grant was concerned, it had just been life and love. In the end, he had suffered a hell of a lot. But that’s what he was famous for. Being true-blue to a woman who was long gone.
No one had asked if he wanted to get famous, of course. It had been one of the last things Grant wanted. Second only to his wife dying.
Which had thrown Grant right back into the headlines. Wyatt was sure that made hooking up...complicated.
Wyatt Dodge did not like complicated. It was just one of the many reasons that he was not going to follow the road his attraction to Lindy wanted to take him down. Nope. And hell no.
Anyway, getting things off the ground with Get Out of Dodge was too important.
If he succeeded, then no one would ever have to know the reason why.
And that was the ideal situation.
“I appreciate you being here,” Wyatt said. “I hope you know that.”
“I do. But, it’s not like I had anything truly amazing that I was leaving behind. A job at the power company for little more than a decade...sure. The retirement was going to be good...” Grant shook his head. “How long can you possibly live for the future? I mean, socking away money, punching a time card all to invest in years you might never even see? What the hell is the point of that? Can you answer me that, Wyatt?”
Wyatt rubbed his chin. “I’ve been riding bulls for the last...fifteen years? I am not the person to ask about thinking ahead. If I had been thinking ahead I never would have done that.”
His spine sure would’ve thanked him, and unlike so many others, he had never even sustained a serious injury. He was lucky. Lucky as hell. The guys that ended up getting seriously trampled often never walked in a straight line again. Wyatt had gotten out more or less intact. Just a couple of scars. Even still, at thirty-five his body had taken the kind of beating most guys his age couldn’t imagine.
“I’m glad to be here,” he said. “That’s what I meant by the speech. That’s all.”
“I’m glad, too,” Wyatt responded.
Grant turned and walked away, leaving Wyatt standing there, looking around the property. It was all coming together nicely. The landscape in front of the main house, the gravel paths that led between the buildings, raked clean and neat.
Wyatt hadn’t taken anything this seriously for the past twenty years.
The cabins had been restored and redecorated, and he was actively working on finding a cook who could provide something more than basic food.
He had to reach his goal of getting the ranch to full occupancy by the end of the summer, and he had to reach total financial solvency in the following year. Otherwise, he was going to fail at Quinn Dodge’s ultimatum.
And that meant his father was going to sell the ranch.
That was the thing his siblings didn’t know. Wyatt wasn’t the owner of the property.
It was still Quinn’s. And unless Wyatt succeeded in a very short amount of time, it wasn’t going to be in the Dodge family anymore. Instead, Get Out of Dodge would be nothing more than a stack of cash divided between the siblings, and Wyatt couldn’t allow that.
He knew that his father expected him to screw up.
Wyatt was determined that he wouldn’t.
There was no other option.
Of all the reasons not to sleep with Lindy Parker, that was the best one.
He didn’t need her as a distraction, he didn’t need her as a friend and he sure as hell didn’t need her as a lover. He needed her as an ally.
Because if he didn’t have that, he might lose.
And if there was one thing Wyatt Dodge did not do, it was lose.
CHAPTER TWO (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
LINDY’S COMPUTER MADE its special email chiming sound and she bent down to look.
Wyatt Dodge.
Her heart slammed against her sternum like a hammer going down on iron.
She braced herself. She didn’t know for what, except that obviously if he was actually emailing her now after making a big deal out of the fact that he didn’t need to email her, he was being an ass. That much she was certain of.
She clicked. Surprisingly, it was a comprehensive commentary on the brochures that she had sent.
“Leave it to you to be on topic when I expect you to be an asshole.” She muttered to herself as she straightened, then she turned and startled when she saw her brother Dane’s form filling the doorway.
“Talking to yourself?”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” She thought about pulling him in for a hug. Then didn’t. They weren’t really a hugging kind of family. Sometimes she wished they were. But she didn’t know how to change it now. “I didn’t think I was going to see you until September.”
“I was heading up from Red Bluff, going to an event in George, Washington. This is a little out of my way, but I figured that I would stop in for a bit.”
It was difficult to believe sometimes that Dane was her little brother. He towered over her by at least a foot. Broad-shouldered, rugged and with the kind of smile that made women weak in the knees. She was proud of him. And always a little bit nervous about just how he used his good looks and charm.
He was a bull rider.
All adrenaline, here and now and no thought for the future. Constantly living for the action, never worrying about the reaction.
But she loved him.
They’d had it rough growing up. Their dad had been in their lives only intermittently until he’d finally left for good, their mom making it impossible for them to have a relationship with him. Not—she supposed—that he’d tried that hard to change it.
They’d grown up in a single-wide trailer, a small space for three people, and yet Lindy had always felt like there were walls between them. Their mom was a proud woman. So proud she could hardly bend down to give her children a hug.
Distance. That was what she and Dane had both learned, and learned well. To rely on no one but themselves.
“How long are you going to be here?” she asked.
“The rodeo starts in two days. So really, I need to get out of here tomorrow. I don’t want to hassle with the traffic. Lots of people are going to be coming in on the highway.”
“This is one of the big ones, isn’t it?”
“Yep,” he said.
“Do you have any breaks after this?”
“I’ve got a few small events down South, just things to build up points. But there’s some downtime in July, before the big stuff. Sisters, Pendleton and Vegas.”
“I have a feeling that Wyatt is going to ask if you want to do some things over our Fourth of July event that we’re planning. I don’t actually know if he’s going to have you ride bulls.”
“Well, I’m not going to barrel race,” Dane said, as if that was the most ridiculous thing in the entire world.
“I’d pay to see that,” she said.
“It’s for girls,” he said.
“Right,” Lindy shot back, crossing her arms. “And mostly, you’re afraid that you’d get beaten.”
“Hell yeah,” he said. “You need precision for that. A connection with your horse. Do you know what you need to ride bulls? Big balls and the subtlety of a blunt instrument.”
Lindy knew that you needed more than that, particularly to get where Dane had gotten in life. Where Damien had helped him get. She resisted asking about that. Asking about Damien. She knew that he was still around, managing various aspects of different riders’ careers. But not Dane’s.
The minute that Dane had found out about Damien’s infidelity, Dane had gone scorched-earth-no-survivors on his brother-in-law.
In fact, he had done what he could to break off Damien’s relationship with the professional association. He hadn’t been entirely successful, but she knew that he had convinced several riders to start working with outside PR people and refuse to work with Damien.
Whatever she thought about her brother’s day-to-day morality, he had come through for her in the end. The two of them against the world.
“So, basically you’re crashing on my couch overnight?” There would be no crashing on her couch. She lived in a gigantic house all by herself. There were more than enough bedrooms for Dane to have his pick.
In point of fact, she would be surprised if he ended up spending the night at her place. It was more likely that he would end up in the Gold Valley Saloon picking up a new conquest.
“That’s about the size of it,” he said.
“You know you’re always welcome.”
She sighed heavily, and then lifted her hands above her head, locking them together and flexing them backward, stretching herself upward from the center of her chest, drawing her shoulder blades down and trying to release some of the tension in her body.
“I think you’re doing too much,” Dane commented, following her out of her office and into the main dining room of Grassroots Winery.
Over the past couple of years Lindy had overhauled the facility and opened a satellite tasting room in the town of Copper Ridge.
The dining room—where they hosted lunches, weddings, parties and pretty much anything else—was a converted barn that had been on the property for years, now carefully crafted into a rustic and elegant setting.
They had a few guests, sitting and eating cheese platters while drinking wine flights and visiting.
The vast, wooden chandeliers that hung down at the center of the high, arched ceiling were blazing with a golden glow, bathing the room in soft lighting.
It was beautiful. Perfect.
Hers.
The kind of thing she never could have imagined when she was a girl growing up in a Gold Valley trailer park on the dying edge of town.
A place with more empty buildings than businesses.
Her former sister-in-law, turned sister by choice, Sabrina Donnelly was standing behind the counter scribbling on an order form.
She and Sabrina had always had a lot in common. From the moment they’d met, Lindy felt like she’d found the sister of her heart. While her former mother-in-law and father-in-law had given her a less than welcoming reception into the family, Sabrina had been warm and open.
Of course, that had been due in part to the fact that Sabrina had been estranged from her father—over something to do with Liam Donnelly.
Liam Donnelly who now, finally, some fourteen years later, was Sabrina’s husband.
“Hey, Sabrina,” Dane said.
Sabrina looked up, smiling. “Hi yourself.” Then, her eyes fell to Lindy, and Lindy must have been telegraphing something because Sabrina’s expression changed to one of concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“She’s doing too much,” Dane said.
“I am not doing too much.”
She was doing things, yes. Making changes. But they were all good, and she was happy with them.
It was likely that if she looked taxed it was because her mind kept going over and over the fact that Wyatt had finally sent her an email after resolutely ignoring her emails. And that it was clearly connected to the conversation they’d had yesterday.
But there was nothing she could do about any of that. She had the exact amount of things to do that had to be done, and she had to deal with Wyatt Dodge.
All of that was regrettable in some form or another, but it was better than being impoverished. Better than being married to a man who was sleeping with other women behind her back.
All things considered, life was great.
It didn’t mean that her muscles weren’t tired and her neck wasn’t stiff, but still.
“I know that she is,” Sabrina said. “But, this looked like something might be going on in addition to that.”
“Nothing is going on,” she said.
Sabrina and Dane continued to stare at her.
“There isn’t,” she said, defensively. “I mean I’m navigating the Wyatt Dodge situation, but other than that...”
“What Wyatt Dodge situation?” Dane asked.
“The one I mentioned to you earlier,” she explained. “You know. Rodeo events and all the other various crap he’s trying to add to our event. That in and of itself is a whole thing. That’s what I meant by that.”
“Is he giving you a hard time?” Dane asked.
“Does he ever not give someone a hard time?”
Dane smiled. “Not really. That’s kind of his thing.”
“Well, good to know that I’m not special.” Those words seemed to echo inside of her, reverberating and lingering and in general just not going away.
She seemed to be the only one who noticed that, however, which was welcome. She didn’t want anyone studying her too closely. Didn’t want anyone trying to get a read on her thoughts. Or her feelings.
She was violently opposed to most of the thoughts and feelings she had surrounding Wyatt Dodge that didn’t involve pushing his head through a wall. And sadly, those thoughts and feelings existed.
She had always prided herself on her ability to hold two thoughts in her head at one time. She was a dreamer, and she was a pragmatist. She had experienced a life of poverty, and a life of plenty, and she had always imagined those things had given her the capacity to understand that reality was complex.
She was a lot less self-congratulatory about the fact that she found Wyatt simultaneously infuriating and sexually compelling.
And she was downright ashamed of the fact that there seemed to be a part of her that had hoped that Wyatt’s teasing was something reserved just for her.
She knew better than that. Knew better than to want that. Particularly from someone she didn’t even like.
As if your judgment when it comes to men is good enough to consider liking them a decent litmus test?
She gritted her teeth. “Anyway. Nothing out of the ordinary. I mean, at least, nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the last couple of years. Expansion is...” She lifted her hand and rolled her wrist in a physical indication of the march of time. “Expansion. The future.”
“Right,” Dane said, grabbing hold of her hand and shaking it gently before drawing it downward. “But if you work yourself into an early grave you don’t get to enjoy that future.”
“I am not about to be lectured on longevity by a bull rider.”
Dane opened his mouth to say something smart-ass, no doubt, and was stopped by a slamming door coming from the back room of the converted barn.
Lindy didn’t have to ask to know who it was. “Are you all right, Bea?”
“Fine,” came the cheerful reply.
Lindy’s other former sister-in-law, Beatrix Leighton—usually called Bea—came in to the room, breathless and smiling. That smile only got bigger when she saw Dane standing there.
“I didn’t know you were coming to town,” she said, her cheeks turning an extremely obvious shade of pink.
Dane, for his part, seemed oblivious to the pinkness of Bea’s cheeks. Which was just as well. Bea was one of the most caring, good-natured people Lindy had ever met. She’d been thirteen when Damien and Lindy had gotten married, and just like Sabrina, she felt like a sister to Lindy.
When the dust had settled, and the ink had dried on the divorce papers, there was a reason Sabrina and Bea had stayed loyal to her. They were family by choice.
Sadly, Bea didn’t have familial feelings for Dane. Though, Lindy knew Dane only had brotherly feelings for Bea.
Dane was a player. He was all smiles and easy banter on the outside, but beneath that he was like Lindy. A little bit hardened by life. A little bit cynical.
Bea didn’t have a cynical bone in her body.
“Just for the night,” he said.
“We should do something,” Bea said, nodding.
“Should we?” Dane asked.
“I’m tired,” Lindy said.
Bea looked at her with large eyes. “Lindy,” she said, “Dane’s here.”
“Yes,” Lindy responded. “I had noticed. He’s kind of difficult to miss.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment, Lin,” he said.
“It wasn’t.”
“I can see if Liam wants to go out tonight,” Sabrina said.
Sabrina’s husband was an integral part of managing the business of the tasting room in Copper Ridge, and he was also a rancher, working the Donnelly family ranch, the Laughing Irish. Lindy would be surprised if he had any more energy to go out than she did.
“I’m going to be in Gold Valley,” Bea put in. “I’m starting up work at Valley Veterinary with Kaylee Capshaw.”
Valley Veterinary was the clinic that Wyatt’s brother owned along with his best friend turned fiancée. She had generously offered a job to Bea, who was forever bringing small animals in need of tending back to the winery, much to Lindy’s chagrin. This was going to be a much better way for Bea to channel her bleeding heart, as far as Lindy was concerned.
It would give her something to focus on, a life away from the winery. Bea might be part of the same family as Lindy’s ex-husband, they might have the same genes, but Bea was not cut from the same cloth.
Sabrina was different, but she did have some of that Leighton reserve. Bea didn’t seem to have it at all. She was open, energetic and willing to forge paths where most people would see none. Her optimism was almost boundless, and that was one of the things that made Lindy worry on her behalf.
Especially when it came to her very obvious crush on Lindy’s brother.
Just another reason Bea needed to get out and get a life beyond Grassroots.
“He might not want to come out that far,” Sabrina said. “But I will see.”
“I’m game.” Dane smiled.
“Me too,” Lindy added quickly, before she could stop herself. But honestly, she was not going to send Dane and Bea out to a bar together.
Dane would end up hooking up with some random woman, and Bea would just sit there in the corner by herself like one of the wounded raccoons she often rescued from desolate roadsides.
Lindy could not stomach that.
Bea would grow out of her crush naturally. She didn’t need it bludgeoned to death in a small-town bar with an audience of gossips ready to spread it around like wildfire through pine trees.
“Great,” Dane said. “I’ll go toss my stuff in the house. Then we can head over to the bar after work.”
“Work for the rest of us,” she pointed out. “Some of us here never got real jobs.”
“Hey,” Dane said. “If you can get work being a cowboy, I highly recommend it.”
He winked and walked out of the room, and Lindy couldn’t help but notice the way that Bea’s eyes followed his every move. Okay, that gave her something else to worry about at least. She didn’t have to think about her issues with the upcoming barbecue and all the work that there was left to do as long as she focused on being a buffer between her poor, lovelorn sister-in-law and her brother.
One thing was for sure, it was a welcome change from thinking about Wyatt Dodge.
CHAPTER THREE (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
WYATT NEEDED A stiff drink and some meaningless sex. There were a couple of barriers to the sex. There was the fact that his younger sister, Jamie, had accompanied him to Gold Valley Saloon tonight. There was the fact that his brother Grant had come along as well. And then, there was the lingering issue of the fact that he couldn’t get one particular woman off his mind.
There were no barriers to the stiff drink, however, and he was headed right that way.
Jamie and Grant went to claim a table, but Wyatt wasted no time heading straight over to the bar.
“Laz,” he said, signaling the owner of the bar. “I need a drink.”
“Feeling picky about what?”
“I’d say it’s your choice, but you’d pick something aged and expensive. I just need something strong enough to burn the day off.”
“Cheap swill it is,” Laz said smiling, turning and grabbing hold of a bottle of whiskey and pouring Wyatt a measure of it.
He slid it down the scarred countertop and Wyatt caught hold of it, tipping his hat before lifting it to his lips. “Put it on my tab,” he said.
“Will do,” Laz responded.
Wyatt turned and surveyed the room, leaning back against the bar for a moment as he did so. It was pretty empty now, considering it was early in the evening. But as the night wore on it would fill with people who were looking for the exact same thing he was.
All day long on the streets of Gold Valley, you could walk down the sidewalk and run into friends. Neighbors. They would ask you how your day went, and he would say good. And all along you would both continue with smiles pasted onto your face.
But in the saloon, when darkness descended on the cheerful streets, that was when you met your neighbors for honest conversation. That was when they finally wore their cares on their faces while they tried to drink them away.
Here, there was honesty. Here, there was alcohol, and a good game of darts.
Wyatt preferred it to daytime small talk every time.
He was something of a bar aficionado. Having been to a great many towns, large and small, in his travels with the rodeo, he had been exposed to a whole lot of different scenery. A whole lot of different people.
And it was in his experience that the bars were the great equalizer. That was where everyone went. Young, old, rich, poor. To celebrate, to commiserate.
That was where, in essence, everyone and everyplace was the same.
He looked down into the whiskey glass. “Damn,” he commented. “This is good stuff.”
If he was feeling philosophical already, it had to be pretty strong.
He pushed away from the bar and walked over to the table where his siblings were waiting.
“You didn’t get a drink for me?” Grant asked.
“I don’t know how the hell much you had to drink today,” Wyatt returned. “I’m not enabling you.”
“I don’t drink too much,” Grant said, but they both knew that wasn’t true.
Wyatt knew for a fact that his brother had to have a drink every night before he went to bed, or he couldn’t sleep. But that was one of those things they didn’t discuss. At least not at length. They made jokes about it, they could mention it in passing. But they could never get into what it actually meant.
The Dodges were a close family, but it was a stretch to call them emotionally well-adjusted.
“You know I haven’t had too much to drink today,” Jamie said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms.
“Yeah, I also pay you enough that you can go get your own.”
Jamie scowled. Then she sat up, planting both booted feet on the ground, pushing herself into a standing position. “All right. I’m going to get a drink.”
Grant stared at her. She stared back. And then she sighed heavily. “What do you want?”
“Whiskey,” he responded.
“Of course.” She shook her head, her dark ponytail swinging with the motion, and then she headed over toward the bar.
A few of the men sitting at tables around them followed her movements, and Wyatt was sure to give them his deadliest glare. Jamie was twenty-four, certainly old enough to have her own life and date and all of that. But age had nothing to do with the fact that none of the assholes in this bar—hell, none of the cowboys in this town—were good enough for his younger sister.
Jamie, for her part, seemed oblivious. That suited him just fine.
“So,” Grant said, leveling his dark gaze on Wyatt. “What crawled up your ass and died?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re in a crappy mood.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Wyatt said, folding his arms over his chest.
He was conscious of the fact that he was mimicking his sister’s body language from a moment ago.
“I do,” Grant said.
“Right. And I’m supposed to take commentary on my mood from a guy who has been in a crappy mood for the past decade?”
“I wasn’t criticizing. I was just asking.”
“Just got a lot going on,” he said. Because he wasn’t going to say that he was stressing out about whether or not he was going to be able to fulfill their father’s directive.
That he was afraid he was going to let them all down. That Jamie was going to end up out of work and Grant was going to have left his boring but long-running career at the power company for nothing.
It was easy for him to convince himself that his father wouldn’t actually sell the ranch. Because the fact of the matter was, Quinn Dodge was a hard-ass, but he was a hard-ass who loved his kids.
That was the conclusion that Wyatt would come to if it were any of his other siblings in his position.
But it wasn’t Grant. It wasn’t Jamie. It wasn’t Bennett.
It was Wyatt Dodge spearheading this project. And deep down he had a feeling that his father might just let him fail. Not just himself, but his brothers and his sister.
That was something he could never explain to Grant. Nobody else had the relationship with Quinn that Wyatt had. And it was his own damn fault. It was a situation he created. A relationship that he’d earned.
He couldn’t even be pissed about it.
Except he was.
“Oh,” Grant said, looking somewhere past Wyatt.
“What?” Wyatt shifted in his chair.
“She’s here.”
Wyatt didn’t have to ask who. He froze in his chair, his jaw hardening. He felt like...he felt like he was in damned high school, and he resented that. His younger brother telling him not to look. And him resolutely not looking.
To hell with that.
He lifted his glass and swallowed it down in one gulp. “I’ll be back.”
He pushed away from the table and stood, turning and seeing Lindy standing there. And it was like someone had put their fist through his stomach, grabbed hold of his internal organs and twisted hard.
It reminded him of that first time. But then, every time he saw her it reminded him of the first time.
He gritted his teeth and began walking toward her. And he knew the moment she saw him. Her eyes didn’t meet his, no. And she very resolutely did not look in his direction. But she knew that he was there. He could see it. In the way that her shoulders suddenly went stiff, in the way that her whole body got ramrod straight. To the casual observer it might look like she simply had a neutral expression on her face. One that hadn’t changed in the past ten seconds. But he was not a casual observer.
No, her face had changed too. There was a firmness to the corners of her mouth. Intent. The absence of a smile or frown, totally and completely purposeful.
“You didn’t respond to my email,” he said. “I’m wounded.”
She tilted her head slightly, looking up at him. Then, she faked surprise. As if she truly hadn’t realized he was there until right then.
That shouldn’t get him hot. Nothing about her should get him hot. But everything did. Everything damn well did.
“Sorry. Were you expecting a same-day response? I didn’t think that you engaged with such newfangled technology all that often.”
“Nice to see you too.”
“Right.”
He grinned. “Most people would say that it was also nice to see me. That’s manners, Melinda.”
The light behind her eyes indicated that she wanted very much to tear his throat out. But her expression betrayed that not at all. “We didn’t go over how to handle infuriating cowboys in deportment.”
She hated it when he called her Melinda. He knew that. He also loved saying it. Because no one else did. It put him in the mind of other things he might do to her that no one else was currently doing.
Unless he had the read of it wrong. Maybe she had a different lover every night. It was possible, for all he knew.
Just because his balls were all bound up in wanting her, didn’t mean her body was similarly bound up in wanting him.
“Now that’s a shame,” he said. “How are you supposed to go on if you don’t know whether or not you’re supposed to hold your pinkie out when you tell me to go fuck myself.”
“Oh, I know which finger to hold up when I tell you that, Wyatt Dodge. Don’t you worry about that.”
“What brings you out here tonight?”
A moment later, his question was answered when in came her brother, and a friend of his from the rodeo, Dane Parker. Followed by her former sister-in-law Beatrix Leighton.
“They were parking,” Lindy said, by way of explanation. “I mean. They were parking the truck. They weren’t out parking.”
That made him think of all the things he might be able to accomplish if Lindy went parking with him.
Yet again, he felt like he was back in high school.
He really did resent that.
“Dane,” he said, reaching around Lindy to offer his hand to the other man. “Didn’t know you were going to be in town.”
“I live to be a surprise. Lindy mentioned that you might have a job for me coming up in a few weeks.”
“If by job you mean being unpaid entertainment for a mob of people. Yes.”
“For the big launch event for Get Out of Dodge?” Dane asked.
“Yes. But, it benefits Grassroots Winery too,” Wyatt put in. “You know, since we have such a cozy partnership now.”
Lindy’s perfectly placid expression slipped. Just for a moment. “Right. I guess we’d better go find a table.”
“There’s one right next to us,” he said, because the hell if he was going to let her avoid him. The hell if he was going to sit in the same bar as her and let her pretend he wasn’t here. The hell he was going to spend all night trying not to look over at her.
“Thanks,” Bea said, her tone bright. Dane thanked him too, both of them clearly oblivious to the fact that Lindy wanted to scream.
Wyatt led the way back over to his table, and he ignored Grant’s assessing gaze. It didn’t escape Wyatt’s notice that Lindy took the seat at the table that put her farthest away from him.
A moment later Jamie reappeared, smiling broadly when she saw the new additions. “Bea,” she said, sliding her chair over slightly and putting herself next to her. “Good to see you.”
It surprised Wyatt that Bea and Jamie were friends. Though, they were the same age. Just about. But still, Bea was softer, fine-boned and possessing the femininity of a vaguely feral fairy. Jamie was tall, no-nonsense and, as far as Wyatt knew, resolutely allergic to dresses.
Bea started talking with broad hand gestures about some of the animals she had cared for at the clinic today, and suddenly Wyatt understood the connection. Animals. Jamie had practically been born in the saddle. Horses were her passion. And Bea seemed to like anything with four legs.
“I’m going to get a drink,” Lindy said.
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
He ignored the look earned from Grant as he and Lindy walked toward the bar.
“Let me ask you a question,” Lindy said. “Do you try to get on my nerves?”
“To be perfectly honest with you, angel, I don’t have to try. You make it too easy.”
“So you were that boy.”
“What boy?” he asked, as the two of them sidled up to the bar. Lindy pressed her delicate hands down on that scarred wooden countertop, and he pressed his down alongside hers.
For a moment, all he could do was stare at the contrast the two of them made. Her smooth hands, with long, fine-boned fingers, not a single scar to be seen. His own, weathered, with more than a few chunks taken from them.
If he were to take hold of her, his hand would cover hers entirely.
If he were to pull her up against his body, the contrast would be much the same. Soft. Hard. Smooth. Weathered.
“The one that pulled pigtails,” she said, not looking at him when she spoke.
Something stirred inside of him, and he just couldn’t stop himself from saying what he said next. “I still pull pigtails,” he said. “If the lady asks me nicely.”
She looked at him, a cautious expression in her blue eyes. Like she was about to give the answer to a math problem she’d done in her head, and wasn’t entirely certain of. “I doubt that’s ever happened.”
“Sure it has.” He grinned and waited. For her to get mad. For her to blush. Something.
Except, now he was going to end up thinking about that for far too long. Usually, she met him barb for barb. But this particular innuendo didn’t seem to resonate. Maybe that was because she wasn’t standing there mired in sexual tension. Maybe it was because she didn’t think of him that way.
But it might just speak to other things. Inexperience he wouldn’t have thought a woman who’d been married for a decade could possibly have.
That forced him to wonder. To wonder about her marriage, which he shouldn’t do. Especially because she had been married to a man that he considered a casual friend.
“Whatever, Wyatt. I want a drink, not more of your inane commentary.” She turned away from him, clearly frustrated by that interaction. Maybe because she hadn’t managed to verbally maneuver her way to the top of it. “Hi, Laz,” she said as the bartender approached them. “I’d like an IPA.”
“An IPA,” he said. “Wow.”
“Do you have a commentary on my choice of beer?” she asked as Laz turned and retrieved a bottle for her.
“I made my commentary.” He turned his attention to the bartender. “I’ll have whatever you’ve got on tap that isn’t an IPA.”
“I imagine you have opinions on the masculinity of that beer?”
“Not particularly. I didn’t ever figure beer had a gender.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“I just think it’s bad beer. And if I wanted to lick a pine tree I would.”
“I would almost pay good money to watch you do a wine tasting.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I imagine that your palate is as unsophisticated as the rest of you.”
He chuckled. “And I imagine you think that’s an insult. But, in order for me to feel insulted by that I would have to care.”
“Thank you,” she said to Laz, ignoring him completely.
“You can put her terrible drink on my tab too,” Wyatt said, turning away from the bar.
“Don’t put my drink on your tab,” Lindy said. “Don’t put my drink on his tab,” she said to Laz.
“Put the drink on my tab,” Wyatt reiterated.
“I’ll pay for the drink if you don’t knock it off,” Laz said.
“I can pay for the drink,” Lindy said, through gritted teeth. “Put his drink on my tab.”
“This isn’t a contest,” he said.
“I’m not a charity case,” Lindy said. “We are in a business partnership.”
“I wasn’t treating you like a charity case. I was just going to pay for your drink.”
She lifted her chin, her expression defiant. “And I don’t need you to.”
“I’m not really sure why you’re intent on making all of this a battle. We’re working together, remember?”
“I know,” she said, but she sounded slightly more subdued than she had a moment ago.
“I swear, I enjoy getting on your nerves, but I’m not actively trying to start a fight with you.”
She looked skeptical. “Is there a difference?”
“Yes. I like to tease you. I don’t actually want to make it so the two of us can’t have a conversation.”
“I don’t like to be teased,” she said, looking at him from beneath blond lashes.
She looked younger right then. He didn’t know why. It made him want to be nicer. To try to be a little bit more sincere.
“That’s going to be a problem,” he said. “Because I am what I am.”
“I didn’t sign on to be teased,” she said. “I just want to make this work.”
The two of them stepped away from the bar, but didn’t head back to the tables. “So let me ask you this,” he said, a thought occurring to him for the first time. “Did you approach me to make this partnership to get back at Damien?”
Her expression turned mulish. “Why would you think that?”
“Because. He’s my friend. You’re his ex-wife.”
“Do you really consider him a friend?”
Wyatt shrugged. “I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t talked to him in a couple of months. I’m not part of the rodeo circuit anymore, so we’re not really running in the same circles. Some people you hang out with mostly because of the proximity. Not because you choose to. And I’d be lying if I said his behavior during the end of your marriage didn’t impact my opinion of him.”
She blinked. “Really?”
“Yes. What he did was a jerk move.”
She frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought you would care much either way.”
“Turns out I do.” He let out slow breath. “Fact of the matter is, I’ve never done commitment. But hey, maybe that’s because I know myself well enough to know I’m not cut out for it. I figure if a man makes vows he ought to keep them.”
“So, you think he’s a jerk?” she asked, her fingers shifting over the bottle of beer, making him think of what it would be like to have those fingers on him.
“Oh, honey, I know he’s a jerk,” Wyatt said.
“Well, that’s mildly placating, I have to say.”
“I’m a lot of things, Lindy,” he said, not using her full name, seeking as much of a truce as they could continue to have. “But I’m a man of my word. That means I don’t give it very often. But a man only has his word, as far as I’m concerned, when all is said and done. If I can’t promise something, I don’t. That means I have no respect for a man who can’t do the same.”
She narrowed her eyes, her blue gaze roaming over his face as if she was seeing him for the first time. “I value that in a business partner. It has to be said.”
“Good. I can’t promise that I’m not going to irritate you after this, you understand that, right?”
“Now you’re forcing me to respect that. Since you’re refusing to say something just to placate me, and you’re standing by that honesty thing.” She sighed, as if she was intensely aggrieved. “But, I guess I have to accept that, don’t I?”
“You don’t have to. But it would make things easier.”
“Fine. Anyway, thank you for your comments on the brochures.”
“I still don’t really care about the brochures.”
“If you want then I can go ahead without asking you for your opinion on things like design.”
“I’d kind of like that,” he said, then he frowned. “But I don’t want you to feel like it’s all on you either.”
The crease between her brows relaxed, and he realized this might be the first time he had ever seen her without it. “Really?”
“You’re doing a hell of a lot, Lindy. It doesn’t seem right to put it all on you.”
“You’re the one basically reopening his business right now. The winery has been slowly expanding, but I’ve never had to do a full relaunch. I think right now your plate is probably a little bit fuller than mine.”
“Okay. We can’t be too nice to each other either. I don’t like it.”
She smiled. A small smile, just the corners of her mouth turning slightly upward, but he would take it. “I’m sure we’ll relapse eventually.”
“Fair enough. Any other business stuff you want to cover?”
She tapped the side of that beer bottle, his eyes drawn again to the way she held on to the slender neck. His blood burned in his veins.
“I imagine that much like I had you take a few bottles of wine so that you had some idea of the product you were going to be pushing on your willing victims, I’m going to need to have some idea of the trail rides happening at the winery. Do you think that Jamie could... Do you think she would mind taking me out?”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind at all,” Wyatt said. In fact, he had a feeling Jamie would love nothing more.
“Okay. Maybe we could set something up in the next week, then?”
“Okay.”
“I’m not a very experienced rider.”
Those words were like the burn of a match being struck against his skin, a flame put to his already heated blood.
“Is that so?”
“No. I haven’t... I haven’t been on a horse in years.”
He clenched his teeth. “I don’t think it’s a very challenging ride.”
“Good,” she said, looking relieved.
“We should head back over,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the tables where Bea and Jamie were still talking, and Grant was looking sullen.
“Right,” she said.
Reflexively, he reached out and pressed his fingers to her forearm, as if to guide her back toward the table.
And that was a big mistake.
The press of his fingertips against that soft, bare skin of her arm was like an explosion.
He jerked his hand back, as if he’d been burned. Because he felt sure that he had been.
Her gaze flew to his, something sharp in them now. Worse, he could see the heat that was still burning his fingertips reflected there.
She wasn’t unaffected by him. Not at all.
“Before we go back over there,” she said quickly. “Grant isn’t interested in dating again, is he?”
CHAPTER FOUR (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
SHE WAS AS stupid as she was transparent. She didn’t care if Grant wanted to date again. She wasn’t interested in Grant like that at all. But she had to do something to...something. To diffuse that very obvious moment that had just happened between herself and Wyatt.
She didn’t like this. Not at all.
She didn’t like feeling like she didn’t have the upper hand on a social situation. Didn’t like feeling as if everything around her was so far beyond her she could never reach it.
That was her entire experience in the early days of dating Damien and being his wife. Feeling like she had just walked into the room in the middle of a conversation and had to spend every moment thereafter playing catch-up.
She hated that feeling. More than anything.
Well, that wasn’t true. Actually, she hated finding out that her husband had been having an affair for years and years even more. Although, it was a different side of the same coin. Being out of the loop. Being ignorant. Being small.
Somehow less than everyone that surrounded her.
Wyatt didn’t make her feel like she was less, but he made her feel something. And she didn’t like it.
She’d gotten her balance in a small sense when she had demanded that Laz put Wyatt’s drink on her tab.
But then, he had touched her.
He had touched her, and she hadn’t been able to disguise her response to it. She could see it in his eyes. That he thought he knew exactly what she felt. And even if it was true, even if he did, she was not going to let him have that.
She enjoyed this. That hesitation in his eyes. The tightening in his jaw. The fact that she had him on his back foot. Yeah, she liked that a lot better than feeling like she was on hers.
He tilted his head back. “Grant, huh?”
“He seems like a nice guy. Good-looking too.”
“Right.” His teeth were clenched so tight she’d be surprised if he didn’t chip one. Maybe that shouldn’t satisfy her. But it did.
“Just wondering if you have the inside track on that.” She tried to look both cool and interested at the same time.
He lifted a brow. “I expect you could ask him yourself.”
“Oh, I expect I could.” She kept her tone light but steady. She had a feeling it was that lightness that had him caught so off guard.
“Then why ask me?” He was trying to sound casual too. Unlike her, he was failing.
“Everyone could use a good wingman, Wyatt. If you wanted to be mine, I would hardly say no.” She smiled, and he didn’t.
“I’ll pass.”
She lifted her shoulder. “Suit yourself. But, I would have returned the favor.”
“Wingmen are for amateurs, honey,” he said. “I’ve never needed one yet.”
He walked away from her, heading back over to their shared corner of the saloon. She was captivated watching him. Even angry at him. Even with him angry at her.
Those broad shoulders, narrow waist. His ass in those jeans.
She didn’t know who she was when she looked at him. The things she noticed. What it made her want.
She stood for a moment and took a breath trying to get a hold of herself. It was only then that she realized her hands were shaking. Dammit.
She crossed the room, making her way back over to the table. “Why don’t you sit next to Grant?” Wyatt asked, giving her an evil smirk from his position in his chair.
And that made her suspect that he didn’t believe her at all. Asshole.
“Sure,” she said, easily, casually. She took a seat next to Grant. “We haven’t had a chance to talk much,” she said, turning to the other man.
Grant was looking at her, somewhat blandly, and she felt a small twinge of guilt. She wasn’t interested in him. She didn’t want him to think she was. Not when she wasn’t going to actually follow up.
That was a new low. Using a widowed man as a pawn in her control game.
But, his extreme and apparent lack of interest made her feel less guilty immediately.
Somehow, they stumbled through the rest of the evening making conversation. And she could feel Wyatt’s eyes on her the entire time. But she refused to look back at him.
* * *
WYATT WAS IN a foul mood by the time he got home. It was late, and he was slightly drunk. He, Grant and Jamie had all had a bit too much to drink to drive home, and they’d had to call on Bennett to come and pick them up. Bennett had muttered about their poor planning, and the fact that he’d had to leave his fiancée and home to come bail his asshole siblings out because they hadn’t chosen a designated driver.
Wyatt had not told him about the fact that the three of them had discussed using Bennett as a designated driver before they had gone out for the evening. The fact of the matter was, they had known that their more responsible brother would be on hand to deal with them.
Hell, the man had the benefit of going home to his fiancée and son every day after work. He could deal with his siblings who were single and alone.
Not that Wyatt had ever felt like marriage and kids were the goal for him.
Still, he was in a bad mood, and he wasn’t supposed to be. A night of drinking had been intended to cure his ills, not add to them. But that encounter with Lindy, her asking about Grant, yeah, that had all added some ills.
Then, the phone rang.
“Dad,” he said, doing his best to keep the whiskey slur out of his voice. “You know it’s midnight, right?”
“I know,” his father responded.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Freda and I were on the road all day. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to call.”
He also had a feeling that his father was standing outside of their camper. That he had waited until Freda had gone to sleep, because Wyatt’s stepmother would undoubtedly not approve at all of the situation.
The woman his father had married was one of the kindest people Wyatt had ever met. She had embraced Quinn Dodge’s kids like they were her own.
When Bennett’s son that he hadn’t known he’d had had shown up out of the blue, she embraced him as a grandson. Not that Quinn hadn’t, it was just that it never failed to amaze Wyatt that this woman who hadn’t raised them treated them like she had.
That she was in many ways much easier than Quinn never would be.
But then, maybe that was part of it. She didn’t know him. Not really.
His father did.
“Right. But, it’s not like you called to say good night.”
“You know I didn’t,” Quinn said, his tone firm but gentle. “I called to check on the project.”
“Right. The ranch. The one that you’re going to sell out from underneath me if I don’t get my stuff together.”
“It’s not like that. Ranching is hard business, Wyatt. I barely kept our heads above water all those years. Hell, if it weren’t for the money you earned riding in the rodeo we would have gone under. You know that.”
Yeah, his rodeo money. Money that landed somewhere between trying to atone for a sin he wasn’t sure he was sorry for and a big middle finger. His dad had wanted him to stand on his own, to get on without support...and the money had been nice proof that he’d gone and done that. “I know. But doesn’t that make the place even more mine?”
“It makes you even more invested, sure. Invested in pouring money into a pit. I’ve done it for a lot of years. I don’t want the same thing for you, unless it looks like it will be more than a pit. The problem with ranching is it gets under your skin. You get addicted to it. You can’t let it go even when you should.”
“Right. I’m sure that’s it,” Wyatt said. “You being concerned that I’ll take another hit of this dusty brand of heroin we call being a cowboy.”
His head was starting to hurt and his mood was just getting meaner. They’d had this talk at least four times, and Wyatt didn’t like it any more now than he had the first time.
“You can be angry at me if you want,” Quinn said, “but that doesn’t change the reality of the situation. If you can get it off to a good start, then I’m more than happy to let it go without interfering. But take it from someone who spent his whole life working that land. It’s not that easy. You think it is, because you managed to skip off and make money as a performing cowboy, Wyatt, but being a real cowboy is not that easy. And it’s not that fun. Grant’s been through enough. Jamie’s been through enough. If we can’t get it together to save the place... We can’t get it together.”
Wyatt gritted his teeth. “There’s no we,” he said. “We’re not in this together. We—you and me—we’re working against each other.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Quinn said, his voice rough. “Whatever you think, I’m on your team. I know it didn’t feel like it when you were a kid, getting his butt whupped for letting the cows out and causing trouble. I know it didn’t feel like it when you were in high school and I grounded your ass for sneaking out. But this is the same.”
Right. A team. A team where Wyatt had been left all on his own.
Be a man.
As if that was advice. As if that was enough.
He supposed neither of them were in the mood to discuss why Wyatt had left home in the first place. Not in the mood to talk about the first time his father had fallen in love after Wyatt’s mother’s death and had brought home a woman he’d intended to marry.
A woman who had ended up in Wyatt’s bed.
They were never in the mood for that.
“You can see it however you want,” Wyatt said. “It doesn’t change what I have to do. It doesn’t change that I’m working against the clock because of you.”
“You’re a bull rider, Wyatt. Working against the clock is what you do. So do it now. Complete the ride. If anyone can do it, I think you can.”
Wyatt hung up the phone then. Because he didn’t think his father really believed that.
And there was no amount of whiskey-laden late-night phone calls that could change his assessment of that.
He should go to sleep. There were no decisions made past midnight under the influence of alcohol that were good. That was an absolute fact. There were no scientific breakthroughs, no cures for any diseases, or anything else that came out of this hour and level of sobriety.
But then, even sober, Wyatt Dodge wasn’t going to accomplish any of that. So none of it mattered anyway.
He picked his phone back up and stared at it for a moment.
He was not going to call her. It was late. And he had manners.
But he opened up a new message box and typed in a text.
If you have time tomorrow, we can go for that ride.
He sent the message.
Yeah, he had told her that Jamie would take her out, and he had meant it then. But, now, he was going to do it. This was his business. This was his ranch. His partnership with Grassroots.
And hell, if Lindy could take that winery and make it something bigger, something better, after Damien, there was no reason why he couldn’t make Get Out of Dodge something better than his father had made it.
Maybe his dad didn’t think he could. And hell, maybe Wyatt had never given him a reason to think that he could. But that was going to change. That was going to damn well change.
What time?
The response surprised him. As well as the lack of questioning over why Jamie wasn’t going to be the one leading the ride.
Lunchtime.
Okay.
He groaned and threw his phone down on the couch, heading up the stairs toward his room. There. He had made a decision.
It was about the ranch. He refused to believe that it had anything to do with spending time alone with Lindy. That something about that conversation with his father had riled up the devil in him.
As long as the devil was productive, he didn’t much care.
CHAPTER FIVE (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
EARLY THE NEXT morning Lindy couldn’t figure out what had possessed her to agree to go on a trail ride with Wyatt Dodge today.
Originally, the plan had been for Jamie to take her. They had discussed that. But somehow, when she had still been awake, tossing and turning, her phone had dinged, and she had looked at it. She had seen his name and she had...
She didn’t know what she had wanted. Didn’t know what she had hoped.
She hadn’t expected an invitation to go riding. But she had found herself agreeing.
And then she had fallen into a fitful sleep, where she had dreamed of weird arguments with Wyatt, where they were bickering over where Grant was going to take her out to dinner.
Then she had woken up, relieved that she wasn’t actually going to dinner with Grant, but not all that relieved that she was going for a ride with Wyatt.
She scrubbed at her face and rolled out from beneath her down-filled duvet and grimaced as the chill in her bedroom settled over her skin.
One of the first things she had done when she had thrown Damien out was get a new mattress and a whole new bedroom set.
First of all, because she had always wanted a lovely, white bedspread with some artful accent pillows, and Damien had insisted they have something that was “for both of them and not just her.” Which had clearly meant, for him. Darker colors, to go with the heavy, dark wood frame that had gone with the bed. As he had gone, so had that.
But, she had also needed a new mattress, because she had very little confidence that he had never taken another woman to their bed, and she would be damned if she was spending one more moment sleeping on a mattress her husband had had sex with someone else on.
There were a great many chances to experience indignity in life, and she had been on the receiving end of that a few times. Damien was just lucky she had offered him the mattress instead of burning it like she had initially wanted to do.
She knew people didn’t believe it. Even her own mother thought she had just married Damien for his money. And that she had happily cut and run when she’d discovered his infidelity in part because she had never wanted him.
But she had. She had loved him. She had believed that he had loved her too. That he hadn’t cared where she had come from. That she had been enough for him.
What an idiot she’d turned out to be.
She wasn’t sure what was worse: letting everyone know just what an idiot she was, or letting them continue to believe that she was a heartless gold digger.
She had a feeling that public opinion on her was split down the middle.
But Wyatt thought that Damien was an idiot.
Which was perhaps why she felt even the tiniest bit charitable toward him. Was perhaps why she wasn’t so completely opposed to going on a trail ride with him today.
She ruminated on that while she got dressed. She found a pair of nice jeans—much more casual than she would normally wear—and a dark-colored button-up top that wouldn’t show any dirt she might pick up during the ride.
She pinned her blond hair back in a low bun and looked at her reflection critically. She was hardly recognizable as the person she used to be. The person she’d been before she had started dating Damien.
She was sleeker now. Much more sophisticated.
She used to be proud of that. The distance she had put between herself and what she’d been. Now, it felt a little bit like a poisoned chalice. After all, she was partly who she was because of Damien. And she... In the end, she despised what he stood for. What he could allow. What had been acceptable to him.
He had asked her one time to forgive him. Had told her that she was making a big mistake throwing their marriage away over a physical relationship.
He had said that sex didn’t matter.
But sex had mattered when she’d been a twenty-year-old virgin, cautiously giving him her body. He had said that it meant the world then. And that even though he had been with a couple of other women they didn’t matter, not in light of what sex between them meant. Because he’d said that with her it had been love. It had been everything.
After being married to the man for ten years she was supposed to believe that sex could also be nothing. As long as it was shared with someone else. Even though he had made vows to her.
She had wanted to scream. She had wanted to cry. To let her inner trailer park out, throw something at him, call him a string of foul names. But she hadn’t been able to. She’d been frozen. Frozen inside the body, inside the image that they had created together.
She hadn’t shed a single tear. Not then, not after.
She had simply told him no. That there was nothing left for them. That there would be no future for the two of them. Not after a betrayal like that.
He had gotten angry after that. He had blamed the dissolution of their marriage on her.
And after that...he had told her there was no other chance to get back with him. That he was leaving her for the other woman. That he was in love with her, and it didn’t mean nothing. That she was the most important relationship in his life.
Not Lindy.
She sighed heavily, turning away from her reflection. She wasn’t going to bother with any makeup beyond a tiny bit of mascara and some clear lipgloss anyway.
Odds were high that she’d end up with allergies, and she didn’t need a whole ton of eye makeup running down her face thanks to the horse and the pollen that would no doubt be swirling around them in the vineyard.
It was warm out, but still, she debated whether or not she should put out a pair of boots or a pair of tennis shoes. Ultimately, she decided on the tennis shoes, even though they did not make her outfit look as sharp as the boots would have.
She made her way downstairs, walking through the large, empty house, taking in the details. They spoke to the fact that it was now her house, and not a shared dwelling.
Her foot hit the landing and she made for the front door.
“Good morning,” came a scratchy, male voice coming from the direction of the dining area.
She jumped, pressing her hand to her chest. Then she remembered that she wasn’t alone.
“Dane,” she snapped, making her way from the entry and into the dining room, where her brother sat, his hat on the table in front of him, a cup of coffee on his left. The table was long, and always far too formal-looking. But with Dane at it, it bordered on ludicrous. “I forgot you were here.”
“Sorry.”
“Then don’t look so amused.”
“Sorry,” he said again.
“When are you heading out?”
“In about an hour. It’s a bit of a drive.”
She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
“Where are you headed? In jeans,” he said, lifting his brows.
He had known her when they were kids. When holey jeans and sneakers were her uniform. If even Dane was surprised to see her dressed down now, she truly had changed.
“I have to go in to my office.” Her office, which was just across the property in the back of the Grassroots dining room. “And then I’m going for a sample trail ride.”
“A sample trail ride, huh?”
“Yes. I need to know exactly what we are offering our guests, after all.”
“Very responsible.”
“I like to think I am.”
“Are you happy?”
She blinked, regarding her younger brother closely. “What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like it means. Are you happy?”
“No,” she said. “I mean... What’s happiness, Dane?”
“If I remember back to what they taught us in kindergarten, it’s a feeling.”
“You know what I mean. I’m tired right now. This has been a stressful couple of years. I’m not going to lie to you about that. But I’m accomplishing things. I’m taking this... I’m making it mine.” Suddenly, she realized how important that was. To be more than Damien’s creation. For this winery to be more than his creation.
For her life to be more than his creation.
“Sure,” Dane said, reaching out and pressing his hand over the top of his cowboy hat. Then, he lifted it and put it on his head. “Just don’t forget to have fun sometimes.”
“You have enough fun for the both of us, I think.” She tried not to sound bitter about that, she really did. She was pretty sure she failed.
“No one said you couldn’t have fun, Lin,” he said, standing up and moving over to where she was rooted by the doorway.
“I ...” She sighed, feeling defensive and hating that she did. “It’s not the same. For me. You’ve made success out of being kind of a rebel. That’s not going to work for...”
“For someone who wasn’t a bull rider.”
“For a woman,” she finished. “Anyway. I already have enough working against me. I can’t go out and be crazy. I just... I want to make this place so successful that people forget what I used to be. I want to go so far beyond what Damien ever would have done that no one will think of it as something I took from him. Because they’ll know that he could never have achieved all of this.”
“That’s a tall order.”
“I’ve never been afraid of a challenge.”
“Now, that is true,” Dane said. “If you were a rider, the bulls would be afraid of you.”
“Thank you,” she said, not caring if he meant it as a compliment or not. She took it as one.
“You’re scary.”
She sighed heavily. “Thank you. Again.” She edged toward the door and Dane took that as a solid cue.
“See you later,” he said.
“See you.” She hesitated for a second, and then she stepped forward and gave him a hug. “Be careful, okay?” Dane went tense for a moment, then rested an uneasy hand on the center of her back, his interpretation of a hug, she supposed.
“Lindy, I can’t be careful. It’s literally my job to go out and do something stupid now.”
“I know. I love you, Dane. I want you to be safe.”
“I’ll be as safe as I can be.”
He tipped his hat, and she shoved his chest. That was about as sincere as they got.
She walked out of the house, and made her way down the beautifully manicured cobblestone path that led to the main grounds of the winery. A place like this... It would have been beyond her wildest dreams to even visit when she was growing up. Now, she lived here.
The fact that she lived here alone was something she preferred not to focus on.
She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of pine, the cold, fresh smell of the river beyond the grove of trees that enclosed Grassroots Winery.
The sun filtered through the tops of the evergreens, making the needles look like tinsel. Like Christmas in June.
This place belonged to her, not just legally, but in some real, inextricable way. The way that it wound around her soul, the grapevines entwined with who she was... The exhaustion she had felt a moment before when she had been talking to Dane seemed to vanish. By the time she got down to the dining area, it was gone.
Sabrina’s car was already in the parking lot when Lindy arrived, and she pushed the door open to find her friend sitting at one of the tables working on inventory.
“Taking orders down to Copper Ridge?” Lindy asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sabrina said, looking up and smiling. Then, she got a look at Lindy’s outfit and frowned. “You’re wearing jeans?”
“Weirdly,” Lindy said, “it’s only 8:00 a.m. and you’re the second person to comment on that.”
Sabrina’s eyes widened further. “I’m the second...”
“Dane is staying at my house,” she said. “Whatever you’re thinking...stop it.”
“Okay. I was wondering if I had missed more not going out last night than I thought.”
“You didn’t miss anything,” she said.
“We were going to come,” Sabrina said. “We got...distracted.” The word was laden with meaning that was impossible to miss.
Lindy rolled her eyes. “Spare me.”
“If you’re jealous, you could always find someone to deal with your physical frustration...”
“I’m not physically frustrated enough to deal with the emotional frustration that comes with having a man in your life.”
That much was true. Anyway, she was so exhausted she couldn’t fathom trying to make room in her life for a lover.
She gritted her teeth, trying to keep visions of Wyatt out of her brain.
Wyatt Dodge, and the fact that she found him attractive, had nothing to do with that.
“Indulge me,” Sabrina said. “Why are you wearing jeans?”
“I’m going out for a trail ride,” she said crisply.
“A trail ride?”
“I know that you are aware of the route and everything that’s going to be used for the ride that Get Out of Dodge is going to conduct on winery property. But I haven’t actually seen it.”
“So, Jamie is going to take you out?” Sabrina laughed. “I would pay to see you on a horse.”
“I do know how to ride. And, Jamie isn’t taking me.”
Sabrina lifted a brow. “Who is taking you?”
“Wyatt,” Lindy said, trying to sound casual.
“So, you’re wearing jeans. For Wyatt.”
“No. I’m wearing jeans to ride a horse, because a pencil skirt would necessitate me riding sidesaddle. Which isn’t happening. I don’t even think they make sidesaddles anymore.”
“I’m sure they do,” Sabrina said, “but that’s beside the point.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“He gets under your skin,” Sabrina pointed out.
“Yes,” Lindy said, “he does. Because he’s that kind of guy. That cocky, arrogant asshole that thinks he can get away with anything. That thinks a smile and his easy charm is going to cover up any mistake he might make.”
“He’s not Damien,” Sabrina pointed out.
That forced Lindy to compare. Damien’s slick charm versus Wyatt’s rough, down-home variety. Damien would never give a woman a hard time, never tease the way Wyatt did. He’d only lie. Pretending to love, honor and cherish while he snuck around.
She couldn’t imagine Wyatt sneaking.
Wyatt was a full-blown hurricane. And hurricanes didn’t sneak.
She didn’t like that they weren’t as similar as she wanted to pretend they were. Because as long as Wyatt was just Damien in different clothes, it was easy to convince herself she wanted nothing to do with him.
Well, easy was a stretch.
“Too similar,” she said anyway.
“Is there any man you wouldn’t think was too similar right now?”
“No,” Lindy said. “I’m not in the market. Like I said, I have too much to do.”
“Right. I mean, I get you. I was you.”
“That’s different. You didn’t date because you fell in love with Liam Donnelly fourteen years ago, and it never changed. Even when he left. I’m not still in love with Damien. I’m not hung up on him. I’m trying to make my way on my own for a while. When I have a handle on that...then maybe I’ll worry about bringing someone else into my life.”
“A physical relationship doesn’t have to intrude on that,” Sabrina said, looking innocent.
“If I want to place an ad online I’ll remember that.”
“Why place an ad?” Sabrina asked, her tone saccharine. “You’re going on a trail ride with Wyatt later.”
“Did you not hear me the first time? I’m immune to men like him. Anyway, I have to work with him. That puts him squarely off-limits.”
Sabrina shrugged. “Suit yourself. But whenever you two are in the same room it feels like there is literal electricity in the air. If I were you... I would be tempted to see where that might end.”
“I know where it ends,” she said. “Divorce court.”
“It was like that between you and Damien?”
It wasn’t a leading question, but a genuine one. And Lindy wished that she could say it had been. That the strange undercurrent that existed between herself and Wyatt was just old hat to her. Nothing she hadn’t navigated before.
But it was like something else entirely. So different that most of the time she tried to pretend it was irritation, that it wasn’t attraction at all.
But then...
Then she was reminded of that first moment she’d seen him. Five years ago. With her husband’s ring on her finger.
They’d been traveling together that year for Damien’s work with the rodeo, and that had meant more nights in honky-tonks than she cared for. But she’d gone anyway.
She’d gone to meet Damien after an event one night. And he’d been there, sitting on a bar stool across the room. He’d looked at her. Which was nothing. Nothing new, nothing extraordinary. People looked at each other every day.
This had been like a lightning strike. Electric. Immobilizing.
Lethal.
She’d had to force herself to keep moving forward, and the whole time he’d stared.
His brown eyes locked on to hers, his expression filled with a kind of intensity she had never seen before.
It had been like her entire body had been hollowed out, making room for this feeling that he had created and placed inside of her. There had been nothing but that. For a full thirty seconds. Nothing else existed outside of it. Not her life. Not her marriage.
Then Damien had stood up, smiled, grabbed hold of her and introduced her as his wife.
It had been like watching a train she had been meant to catch move away from the station, far ahead of her, going somewhere she would never be able to follow.
After that, she felt like she’d been slapped in the face by reality. And whatever feeling she had felt moments before had been replaced completely by anger. Resentment.
At him. As unfair as it was.
“Yes,” she said, her throat dry. “It’s just a little bit of a spark. I’m a woman. He’s a man. It’s nothing...” Again, she flashed back to that first moment in that bar, when the earth had shifted beneath her feet. “Nothing I haven’t felt before. Nothing I won’t feel again. If you don’t catch one train, another will always be by,” she said, in defiance of that earlier metaphor that had passed through her mind.
“If you say so.”
“I do. And I have work to do.”
“Okay,” Sabrina said, writing on the order form in front of her with a flourish. “I have to get down to town. Enjoy your ride.”
Lindy clenched her teeth. “Oh, I will. I will.”
CHAPTER SIX (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
WELL, HELL. HE had anticipated how much he’d want her if she showed up in a little pencil skirt, the kind he wanted to shove up her hips so he could step between her thighs. He had expected her hair to be in a prim little bun. Had expected that he would want to take it down and run his fingers through it. He always did.
What he hadn’t expected was for her to be wearing jeans. Jeans that molded to her long, slender legs and showcased her figure in a new, tantalizing way, that the styling of her skirts didn’t.
Neither was better than the other. Not really. But it was a new look at her body, and his own body reacted favorably to that.
The damned pervert.
She still looked prim in her way. She was wearing a button-up shirt, and all those tiny little buttons made his fingers itch to undo them. But she had on a pair of tennis shoes, and that made him smile.
He got out of his truck, his boots hitting the gravel in the drive, the rocks crunching beneath his feet. And she was standing there, her arms crossed, her blue eyes sharp and assessing.
She was trying to get a read on him. Trying to figure out what he might do, so she could figure out what she should do.
If there was one thing he’d figured out about her—besides the fact that her ass had the most delicious curve to it—it was that she liked to be in control.
Too damned bad for her. Because so did he.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” she said, affecting an impatient tone.
He damn near shook his head.
He had expected better from her. She had gone and shown her hand. She was already eager to get this over with. And he didn’t have anywhere else in the world to be. Which meant he was gonna take his sweet-ass time.
He closed the door to the pickup truck slowly, then made his way around the back to the small horse trailer that was hitched up there. “It’ll take a couple of hours to do the whole trail,” he commented.
“I know,” she said. “When Sabrina and Jamie worked out the route, they discussed that.”
He nodded. Also slowly. “Right.”
Only a man who’d made a study of Lindy Parker would have any idea how agitated she was. But, he was a man who’d made a study of her.
The way her blue eyes flashed when she was angry. The way she pursed her lips together and pressed her mouth into a flat line to keep from displaying any emotion she hadn’t damn well chosen to display.
The particular set of her shoulders, the way she squared her hips. Like she was ready to face an opponent in battle.
He saw all those things contained in her still form and placid expression.
Because he was a fool.
A fool who was really enjoying drawing all this out.
He undid the latch on the horse trailer, then slid it open. He climbed up inside and encouraged the two horses they were taking out on the ride—Emmy Lou and Trixie—out into the lot.
All the while very aware of the fact that Lindy was standing there, stiff-necked and anxious. Her very noncasual mood at stunning odds with the outfit she’d chosen to wear today.
No. She was not more relaxed than usual at all. But then, he wondered if that was him, more than it was anything else.
Unless it was Grant.
Annoyance kicked him in the gut.
He didn’t believe that she wanted to date Grant. But, clearly she wanted him to think that she did.
Mostly, he was confident in the fact that she didnot. Mostly, he was confident in the fact that the kind of heat and fire he’d felt when their skin had made contact last night could not be one-sided.
He wasn’t sure if that was a victory or defeat, but he was certain of it nonetheless.
“Grant says hi,” he mentioned offhandedly, getting the tack out of the horse trailer and beginning the process of readying the animals.
“Does he?” she asked, keeping her tone as smooth and placid as the expression on her face.
She was a beautiful, accomplished little liar, that woman.
“Yes,” he said. “I told him that you...expressed some interest last night.”
“Did you?” There was a small break in her composure. A slight twitch to her brow, a little hitch in her breath.
If she wanted to lie, then two could play that game.
“Yes. He was very interested.”
“Well. That’s...good. Very good. Because, I also am very interested.”
He stood there for a moment, the lead rope to the horse in his hands, his eyes fixed on hers. And he watched as the color mounted in her cheeks. Pink. Tempting. He wanted to kiss those blush-stained cheeks. Hell, he wanted to kiss her everywhere.
He had a feeling that that was written on his face as clearly as the blush was written across hers. “You are shameless, Lindy Parker,” he said, bending down and tightening the girth on the horse’s saddle. Gratified when he could feel her eyes moving over his body as he worked.
“I am not,” she snapped.
He straightened and turned to look at her. “My brother is a grieving man. And you would use him to get at me?”
Lindy’s mouth dropped open, then closed, like a fish. “I am not trying to...get you.”
“I mean to irritate me.”
She sniffed. “Well. If you didn’t think that I wanted to go out with him why did you tell him I did?”
“I didn’t,” he said. And then he winked, because he knew it would enrage her. “But, this was a fun little play we just acted out.”
She treated him to a very teenage facial expression and he couldn’t help but smile, imagining how she might have been when she was younger. Less polished. Less careful. “You’re such an ass.”
She reached into the small purse she was carrying and pulled out a pair of sunglasses, jamming them over her eyes.
As if that would protect her.
He could read her every emotion on that pale skin. He wondered if she knew that. He wondered if anyone had ever told her that anger made her flush a certain shade of rose, that desire made her flush creep down her neck, intensifying the color.
He knew.
He knew, because he had been watching her for the past five years.
There was no way on earth that didn’t sound creepy as hell, but it was the truth.
“Sure. I never said I wasn’t.” He kept staring her down, even while he got the second saddle on the other horse, while he bent down to tighten the girth. “And you started it. You were the one who asked me about Grant.”
“I have a feeling you think there’s something going on here,” she said, her shoulders going even stiffer. “But there isn’t. I wanted to make that clear.”
“All you had to do was say it,” Wyatt said, except, that was a lie too. Because he knew, whatever she said, that she felt this thing that existed between them.
“Okay. There’s nothing happening here,” she said, waving a well-manicured hand, her eyes still shielded by the large, dark glasses.
“All right,” he said. “Saddle up, cowgirl,” he said, gesturing to Trixie, the more placid of the mares.
“All right,” she said, snippy. She placed her foot in the stirrup and hauled herself up on the back of the horse. She wasn’t an experienced horsewoman, not as far as he could see, but she’d definitely been on the back of one before.
With ease, he put himself in the saddle, and maneuvered himself so that he was in the lead position. “How long has it been since you’ve ridden?”
“Oh,” she said, sounding slightly thrown at the change of topic. “I don’t know. Not since I was in high school probably? So...a long time.”
“It’s like riding a bike,” he said. “I assume. I’ve never gone a significant amount of time without being on the back of a horse. Also, I imagine you’re a hell of a lot more saddle sore than you are when you pick up bike riding after a good number of years.”
She huffed out a laugh. “Good to know. I look forward to the screaming muscles. And as I limp around the house, I’ll remember that you’re the reason I can barely walk.”
He thought about letting the moment pass by. But then, he thought no. He was going to take it. “Honey, you are not the first woman to say that to me.”
He couldn’t see her face, but if stiffness was something you could feel in the air, he was certain he felt it now.
“You’re disgusting,” she said.
“That is not the general consensus.”
“See, this really does make me want to go on a date with Grant,” she commented, keeping her tone light. “Because I doubt he would ever say things like that to a lady.”
“Grant has barely spoken to a woman in eight years. I’m not sure he knows what he would say to a lady at this point in time.”
That little bit of unexpected honesty made his chest turn a little bit.
“So he hasn’t... He hasn’t gone out with anyone since his wife died?”
“No.”
“I can understand that,” she said, slowly. “I imagine any experience with marriage makes you think twice about jumping in again.”
“You don’t want to get married again?”
“Right now? No. And I can’t imagine ever willingly submitting myself to that ever again.”
“I don’t think his reasoning is quite the same as yours,” Wyatt pointed out.
“No. I expect it isn’t. But it’s just... More than even the not trusting someone else, it sounds like a lot of work. I was married. I was married for a long time. It’s like, I’ve done it. I’ve seen what that life is like. I’ve seen what it can give me. I’m not really interested in checking it out again.”
“Been there, done that?”
“Yes,” she confirmed.
Damien had a lot to answer for, and that was the damned truth. No, Wyatt wasn’t any more interested in marriage than Lindy was, but she was the kind of woman who should be. The kind of woman who deserved better. Who should have gotten a hell of a lot better than she had. If she didn’t want marriage, it should be because there was something better and brighter out there for her. Not because she was exhausted emotionally. Not because her heart had been battered, ground into the dust underneath the heel of some jackass’s boot.
“I’ve always thought marriage seemed pretty overrated myself,” he commented.
She surprised him by continuing the topic. “Why is that?”
“One woman for the rest of my life,” he said, the lie slipping out easily. “I don’t think I could handle that.”
As if it all came down to him being afraid he couldn’t control his dick. As if it didn’t have anything to do with the hard, sharp truths he learned about himself when he was seventeen years old. The hard, sharp truths about what it cost to care for someone. Loss and betrayal and defiance, all mixed up together.
“Well, I admire you for knowing that about yourself.” She didn’t sound admiring in the least.
“So, we figured we would take the guests down by the river,” Wyatt said, changing the subject.
All of this was getting a bit too close to places he kept well guarded for a reason. It was one thing to try to get under her skin a bit. It was another to cut his own skin away from the bone and scrape it raw.
Anyway, the sun was shining and he was out on a horse, in the middle of a Tuesday. Another thing that drove home the fact that he had made good decisions in his life, in addition to a hell of a lot of bad ones. But, for now, he was going to go ahead and enjoy the ones he’d made that weren’t terrible.
Working outdoors, being able to spend the day out in the wilderness, with a beautiful woman... Well, it wasn’t all bad.
He maneuvered his horse down the narrow trail that cut through the thick, green grass and behind a copse of pine trees that shielded the river from the rest of the winery grounds. He knew—because Jamie had given him a map to look at last night—that the trail would take them to where the grapevines grew.
On the other side of the river was a thicker, denser grove of trees, and back in the distance, shaded beneath the firs, he thought he could see a little cabin.
“Is that your property too?”
“What?”
Clearly, Lindy had been thinking about other things too. “There. Across the river.”
“Oh,” she said. “Yes. Right now, Bea lives in the little cabin.”
“Really?” The spread was bigger than he’d initially thought. Which made Lindy’s ownership of the place even more of a triumph than he’d realized. “So, your in-laws lost all of this land. To you.”
“For the want of a better prenuptial agreement, yes.”
“Do you ever feel guilty about that?”
He turned and looked behind him, examined the stricken expression on her face. “I’m not suggesting you should,” he added.
“No,” she said. “I don’t feel guilty. Because Damien had ownership of the winery at that point, not Jamison and his wife. I think, if they’d had it still... Well, first of all, it wouldn’t have gone to me. Second of all, I might feel bad. But the fact of the matter is I was doing a good portion of the work when Damien and I were married. I was the one trying to lead new initiatives, initiatives that I’ve put in place now. He was mostly preoccupied with his work for the rodeo. And that’s fine. But this was my passion project, not his. And I don’t know...maybe it’s not...strictly fair. Maybe assets should be divided directly in half. But he wasn’t left with nothing.”
“Do you wish he had been?”
“What kind of question is that?” Her tone was sharp.
“An honest one. He cheated on you, Lindy. How long were the two of you married?”
“Ten years,” she said softly.
“Ten years,” Wyatt reiterated. “Ten years you gave to that man. He cheated on you. He ruined it. And somehow, managed to walk away with enough of a dent in his pocketbook that he looks like a victim. I think that’s messed up. I want to know what you think. Honestly.”
For a moment, she said nothing. The only sound was the plodding of the horses’ hooves on dirt, and the rushing river alongside them.
“I think... Yeah, I think he should have lost everything,” she said finally. “My honest answer. I’m angry that he was able to walk away with anything. Not because I wanted it all. Just because I wouldn’t be that sorry if his life had been reduced to rubble. Or...maybe that’s more how I would have felt two years ago. I don’t really care now.”
“Really?”
“Mostly,” she said. She sighed heavily. “I’m not heartbroken anymore. I mean, how much time can you waste feeling heartbroken over a husband who slept with other women?” She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “I guess you could waste a lot of time on it, but I don’t want to. He’s not worth it. The man I loved doesn’t exist. I think that’s the hardest thing to come to terms with. The person I thought I was married to... If he was ever that man he’s not anymore. I can’t waste my time grieving over someone who’s basically dead. Wondering what I did to make that happen? That’s another story. And anger... Anger over wasted time, over wasted tears. That’s something else entirely.”
“Makes sense.”
He might not know about the dissolution of a marriage, but he’d experienced heartbreak. And he sure as hell knew about regret.
“Maybe it does,” she said. “Maybe it doesn’t. But it’s true enough.”
They rode on in silence for a while, as the trail wound around the riverbank, and then separated from the water, heading a different direction, where the trees thinned out and the sky opened up, the sun shining down on row after row of twining grapevines.
“This is a helluva place,” he said. “You should be proud of it.”
He meant that. He might be an asshole of the highest order, he might find it tough to be sincere at the best of times, but she had done a great job here. She was a damn fine businesswoman. And she was right about what she had said about Damien. She had done more with this place. She had done better. In his opinion, she deserved everything she got.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, her voice suddenly soft. “I remember the first time I saw it. The first time Damien brought me out here. And I just... I didn’t think that I was the kind of person who would ever be allowed to have something so lovely.”
Something twisted inside his chest. “Why not?”
He was surprised she’d shared that with him, and the look on her face told him that she was too. Almost like she didn’t understand the words that had come out of her mouth.
“I don’t know.” She looked away from him. “I guess...you know. Some people have beautiful things. Some people have beautiful lives. Some people don’t. And when you’ve lived an entire life of dirty and ugly it’s hard to imagine you could ever have anything else. That you could ever deserve anything else. I used to think of him like that too.”
Wyatt swallowed hard. He related to that a little more closely than he cared to admit. Even to himself. That feeling of being someone who could have a life that looked a certain way. Or being someone who could never aspire to such a thing. Someone who didn’t deserve it.
“It must feel more real now,” he said, unable to keep the gravel out of his voice entirely.
“I don’t know.” She paused for a moment. “It didn’t last, did it?”
“This place is going to last,” he said, knowing that she meant her marriage, but moving on to the winery anyway. “What you’re doing here? It’s going to last. You can’t control what other people do. They’re going to cheat.” He gritted his teeth, hating that when it came to his own experience with this kind of thing he couldn’t stand on the right side of the line. “But this is different. It’s not a person. It’s land. It’s not going to betray you. It’s not going to hurt you.”
“Now that’s spoken like a cowboy,” she said. “I imagine the other faithful things in your world are your horse and your pickup truck.”
“Damn straight.” He took a breath, doing his best to dispel the pressure that had begun to build in his chest. “Speaking of horses, how are you doing on that one?”
“Good,” she said. “You’re right. It is like riding a bike. In that, I remember how it’s done.”
“Well, and Trixie here is a pretty easy ride.”
“Funny. I think I read that on a bathroom wall about a girl named Trixie once.”
“If it was in the Gold Valley Saloon I might’ve written it there.”
She laughed, the sound unexpected and bright, splitting through the relative silence around them. “I don’t believe for a second that you would do that.”
“You don’t?” He shook his head. “Clearly I haven’t done a very good job of convincing you that I’m a jackass.”
“Oh no,” she said. “You’ve done a fantastic job with that. It’s just... I don’t think you’re that kind of jackass.”
“Truth be told,” he said. “My name is carved on the wall in the saloon.”
“Tacky,” she commented.
Before Laz had taken ownership of the Gold Valley Saloon, it had been the thing for people to carve their names outside the bathroom door if they had scored inside. And back in his twenties, when he had been more of a drunken asshole than he was in his thirties, he had put his name up there thinking it was damned good fun.
But then, she was right. It was different than writing down a woman’s name and promising she’d give someone a good time, he supposed. As long as the only person you were exposing was yourself, it didn’t seem half as bad.
Of all the things he’d done, that wasn’t even close to being one of the ones he was most ashamed of.
“Yeah, well,” he said finally. “I’m a little tacky.”
“I believe that.”
They rode on through the rows of vines, the sun casting long shadows across the path as they went. It was a spectacular ride. If they paused for some wine tasting, it would be the kind of experience people would go home and tell their friends about.
The kind of experience that would make Grassroots Winery and Get Out of Dodge prime tourist destinations.
And right now, he didn’t care about that. He could hardly think about it.
He was supposed to be out here thinking of exclusively that. But then...but then there was Lindy.
He tightened his hold on Emmy Lou’s reins and stopped her midgait. “We figured that right up here would be a great place to stop for a picnic.”
He’d force himself back on track if he had to.
There was more grass at the end of the grape vines, a few picnic tables set out there, with the glorious view of the mountains around them. Back behind them was the row of pine trees, the river now completely obscured. There were no buildings in view. And it gave the sense of being wholly and completely closed in. He paused his horse.
“It’s serene out here,” Lindy said. “I get so caught up in doing all of the office work that I forget to come out here.”
“Well, you’ll have to come out on the tours sometimes.”
“I don’t know if I’ll have time.”
“It’s a double-edged sword,” he said, to her or to himself he didn’t know. “You make the thing you love your work, and often that means you start neglecting the parts of it that you loved most.”
“I guess that’s true.”
He dismounted, looking back at Lindy. “Why don’t we stop here for a minute?”
Lindy’s eyes were still covered by her sunglasses, but he could see the hesitation move through her entire body. The subtle twitch in her shoulders, the way her hands choked up on the reins, as if preparing to double down about staying on the horse. About not stopping with him.
He could almost read her internal war with herself. To make a big deal out of it and let him know that she was battling anything at all, or to give in and subject herself to a greater amount of time in his presence.
He’d casually dated women he couldn’t read as well as the woman in front of him. And for some reason...he could see through her, clear as day.
Which seemed more curse than blessing in general.
“Okay,” she said, getting off the horse quickly, as though the moment of hesitation before hadn’t happened at all.
“So, you actually make the wine here?” he asked, turning away from her and surveying the grapevines.
“Yes,” she said. “All of the equipment is housed in one of the other barns on the property. Before my in-laws bought the place years ago, it was a big, working ranch. So, a lot of the original buildings are intact. We’ve just repurposed them.”
“I see,” he said. He turned to face her then. She wasn’t looking at him. At least, he was fairly certain she wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were still obscured by the sunglasses. Purposefully so, in his expert Lindy opinion.
“What changes have you implemented?” he asked.
She jerked, as if in shock, and then she did look over at him. “Since the divorce?”
“No. All of it. How much of it is yours, Lindy. I want to hear about it.” He did. God knew why, but he did. He was fascinated by her. This prickly, inaccessible woman. Maybe that was why. Because she didn’t bat her eyes and try to get his attention. No. She was hell-bent on running from the attraction between them. Not tempted to lean into it at all. Maybe he was that simple. Enticed by someone who didn’t want him back.
Because it was a novelty.
Because he was a man, and men were pricks.
Or at the very least, led around by them.
“Damien didn’t really want it,” she said. “In fact, when his parents decided to retire, and they turned the place over to him he immediately started trying to figure out how he could pawn the work off on someone else. That’s fine. I mean, he did have a career that was separate from the business. I think to a degree he felt like his father was forcing his hand. Either way, he never wanted anything to do with it. But I... I did.” The corners of her lips turned down into a frown, and he could see a slight pleat forming between her brows, right above the edge of the sunglasses frame. “I never really had dreams. I mean, nothing that was above myself. Until I met Damien, and suddenly so many other possibilities were opened up to me. Money doesn’t buy happiness, Wyatt, but it sure as hell changes your opportunities. Suddenly...there were a lot of different ways for me to figure out how I might find happiness. Damien was done with school, so, that was never really on the table. Anyway, I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about what I would study in school. It was one of those things that was never an option for me.”
She paused for a moment, tilting her head to the side. “It’s a funny thing. You move in certain circles, and it never occurs to anyone that you might not have gone to college. Which was crazy to me, heading into that social circle. No one in my family has gone to school. I would never...assume that someone had. Now, it seems like more often than not I never meet people who assume someone might not have. Class creates interesting divides, even in small towns. I never really realized how complicated it was until I had lived on both the green side of the fence and the dirt side.”
“I didn’t go to school,” he said, lifting a shoulder. “Nothing beyond the school of getting thrown off an angry animal onto my ass. Grant got married. Bennett... He had a goal, and he figured out how to make it happen. I used to envy him a little bit.”
“You did?”
He had never said those words out loud before, and he had no earthly idea why he was saying them to her now. “Yeah. Both of them, actually. They both found something they wanted and went for it. I... I kind of fell into rodeo.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “I have too deep of an appreciation for how difficult the work is. For how competitive it is. You forget, my brother does it too.”
“No. I didn’t forget. But I’ll be honest and say that I fell into success there. At first...at first I wanted to get away.”
She looked interested in that, but she didn’t press. And that was good. He didn’t really want to talk about the circumstances that surrounded his leaving home for the first time. Not with her. Not with anyone.
“I understand that,” she said softly. “Damien was like a nice escape from my real life. When he first showed interest in me... I couldn’t believe it.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you meet him?”
“At the winery,” she said, looking around them. “I applied for a job here. I thought it would be a step up from what I was doing. I was working swing shift at a fast-food restaurant in Lola. I was getting tired of the hours and everything else. He did my interview for the winery and then when it was finished... Well, he didn’t offer me a job, because he said his father would have to approve that. But he asked me on a date, which he said his father would not have to approve.”
“That seems like a mess of human resources issues waiting to happen.”
“Probably,” she said. “But, it’s a family-run business. And anyway... I couldn’t believe that someone that handsome and accomplished would want to go on a date with someone like me. I didn’t think it would last. I didn’t think it would turn into anything. We were different. Different experiences. Different interests. Different friends. But, I worshipped the ground he walked on. All of the things that he showed me that I’d never had the chance to experience before. And I think... Well, I think he liked that. I can’t really blame him. What guy isn’t going to like that?” She frowned. “I mean, I would probably like that, honestly.”
He laughed. “True enough.”
“Everything with him is complicated. And always will be. Because there is that scorched earth and destruction desire, like I mentioned earlier. But then...being with him made me want more. Because I could see a potential future where I could have more. And when he made it clear he didn’t want to do any work on the winery... I put myself forward.”
“How did that go?”
“Not well,” she said, smiling tightly.
He could imagine. He didn’t know Damien’s family, but he’d heard stories from the other man over the years. Imagining Lindy, fine-boned and soft, standing in front of her stodgy, snobby in-laws and making a case for the fact that she should be the one to run the winery...
If he didn’t have a healthy heap of respect for her already, he would have gotten some in that moment. As it was, it doubled.
“I figured out how to make a business plan,” she continued. “And I presented Jamison with one. He still wasn’t happy, but he couldn’t argue. When Jamison officially passed ownership on to Damien, Damien resisted a lot of my new efforts. But, I still moved forward with some of it. I had the barns remodeled to make dining areas. To make a venue for weddings, for dances. I started pursuing partnerships with people like Alison Donnelly. To have her bring her baked goods to the winery. And, since the divorce I’ve started doing farm-to-table dinners biweekly over the summer, and I’ve opened the tasting room in Copper Ridge. I hope to open one in Gold Valley in the next couple of years. Then, there’s this partnership with you.”
She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling with the motion, and she walked on ahead, leaving the horses behind as she drifted through the grass, the breeze ruffling her blond hair as she looked out toward the velvet patchwork of the mountains. “That’s the thing about people like Damien. He had all of this handed to him. Possibility is something he takes for granted. Achievement is something he takes for granted. I live every day amazed that I have all these resources. And I don’t want to waste them. It feels limitless to me. It feels new and exciting. No, I didn’t get to go to school and learn about business in a classroom. I rolled my sleeves up and I started doing it. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve done things inefficiently. I’ve overpaid for services. I’ve had contractors walk out on me and not fulfill their obligations. But for every bit of ground I’ve lost I’ve gained more. And I haven’t given up. I didn’t give up when my marriage dissolved. I won’t give up now.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s damned impressive.”
“Do you know...” She paused for a moment, shaking her head. “You’re the first person to ask me all of that. To ask how much of this is mine. I think so many people assume that I took this from him. From them.”
“Anyone with half a brain can see that isn’t true. Just based on the fact that his sisters rallied around you. That says a hell of a lot right there. If people can’t respect you, then they should respect Sabrina and Bea’s loyalty to you, don’t you think?”
“I would like it if they would just respect me. But, I take your point.”
“I’m not sure anyone respects me,” Wyatt said. “But then, I’m not sure I care.”
“That’s the difference,” Lindy pointed out. “You’ve never even tried to get people to respect you, have you?”
“Seems overrated to me. I prefer to come up from behind and win before anyone realizes I’m a contender.”
At least, that was what he hoped to do with Get Out of Dodge. The alternative was... The alternative was failing. Failing himself. Failing Grant and Jamie. Bennett.
“I’ve spent too many nights standing in groups of people who think that I’m beneath them. Who think I’m not as smart. Who think I don’t deserve to be standing in the spot I’m in. I want...better. I wish I didn’t care. But I can’t help it. I do.”
“It’s not a bad thing to care,” he said, taking a step toward her, close enough now that the slight breeze carried her floral perfume toward him, the impact of those flowers like a battering ram. “I wish I remembered how.” She appraised him closely, and he smiled. “Well, sometimes I wish I remembered how. A lot of times I’m happy I don’t.”
She was quiet for a breath. “You care,” she said, finally.
And for the first time, he was glad that she still had her sunglasses on. Because right about now he didn’t want to know what she saw.
It had never occurred to him until that moment that if he could read her, every movement, every minute expression, that she might be able to do the same thing with him.
“About the ranch. Remember, I’m nothing more than a bad cliché of a country song. My horse, my truck, my land.”
“Right. Don’t forget your beer.”
“And my woman?”
She stiffened. “Is there a woman?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said, taking another step toward her, unable to help himself. “Right now, she’s not so impressed with me.”
“Well, it’s not hard to understand why.”
He appraised her for the space of three breaths. Watched as her breasts rose and fell with each one. Color stained her cheeks. She was blushing. And still, even with the sunglasses, he knew she was looking at him like she wanted him to turn to stone.
Well, hell, he was hard as stone. Had been from the moment he’d first seen her.
She’d always been there. In the back of his mind. Ever since that first moment.
Yes, he’d been with other women in the past five years. Of course he had. But the more he spent time with Lindy, the more she overtook his senses.
When she had been married to Damien it had been the gentlemanly thing to go off and sleep with other women, to do something to keep himself from fantasizing about his friend’s wife.
But, in the time since the divorce... That rationale had become a lot more difficult to maintain, seeing as she was no longer his friend’s wife. Or anyone’s wife.
Since her divorce... Yes, there had been other women.
In the past year...not so much.
And acting like it was a game. Light and funny banter... That was getting harder too. Along with the rest of his damned body.
He liked a game, he liked to flirt, but he was getting tired of this one not going anywhere. He was getting tired of her acting like it didn’t mean anything.
It did. She wanted him. He could see it. And he didn’t know what the hell her investment was in acting like she didn’t. They were grown-ass adults. She didn’t want to get married, neither did he. But damn he wanted to burn off some of this electricity that sparked between them every time he saw her.
Yeah, they were working together, but in his mind, that was only making it worse. Ignoring it, continuing to go on like it wasn’t happening... That wasn’t working. Not for him.
It wasn’t going away. It wasn’t getting better. It was only getting stronger. And he didn’t know what to do with that.
He didn’t know what to do with this beautiful, gorgeous brick wall standing in front of him. One that made him crazy, one that made his skin itch and his blood feel like it was on fire.
He didn’t know how to want and not have.
Sex wasn’t that big of a deal, it never had been in his life. Apart from the one time it had been. But that had been about feelings. It had been about betrayal. And he’d done his damnedest to make sure that feelings never came into it. He’d also made sure that he never poached on another man’s territory, not again.
He liked sex without strings. And he and Lindy had no strings between them.
What they had was heat. What they had was need. A kind he’d never felt before.
Her pretending it was nothing...
He was done with it.
Completely done.
“Lindy,” he said, addressing the smooth angle of her jaw, the edge of her sculpted cheekbone. “Look at me.”
She did, but those sunglasses were still in place, and he couldn’t see enough of her.
He reached out and pulled her sunglasses away from her face, revealing wide, blue eyes that she immediately did her best to narrow into a hardier, more guarded expression.
“Give me my sunglasses back,” she said.
“I just want to look at you.”
“And I just want my retinas to not get scorched.”
“I think a few minutes without sunglasses will be fine.”
He looped the earpiece of the sunglasses over his shirt. He reached out and took hold of her chin, angling her face upward. “What would it take for you to be a little more impressed with me? Because let me tell you, I’ve got quite a few skills to recommend me. I might have lucked into success in the rodeo, but some of that is due to the fact that when I set out to do a task, you can be damn sure I’ll complete it, honey. If I get on for a ride, I’m not getting off till... Well, till everyone gets off.”
“You haven’t realized by now that your clever sexual innuendo doesn’t impress me?” she asked, but even as she spoke the angry words color bled into her cheeks.
“What would impress you then?” he asked again.
“Honesty. Stop trying to be clever. Stop being a jerk. Tell me what you want.”
Desire kicked him in the gut, the anger in her eyes sparking something else entirely. Whatever he had thought he’d felt for her before... It was more now. It was more dangerous, more destructive than anything else that had ever come before it.
“I don’t think you want that,” he said.
“You don’t scare me, Wyatt Dodge,” she said. “I’m a strong enough woman to stand on my own two feet even when you’re trying to sweep me off them. I was married for ten years. I know where this kind of thing ends up. That girl I told you about earlier? The one who got asked on a date in a job interview and saw that as a gift? She doesn’t exist anymore. She’s as dead as the man I thought my ex-husband was. I don’t think a nice date is a gift, not anymore. My due, maybe. But not a gift. So go ahead. Try me. Give me one ounce of sincerity, and let’s see where we get.”
She was doing what she did best. Staying in her comfort zone. Throwing down a challenge. Setting the tone. Because she thought he would falter. Because she thought...whatever she thought. That he was messing with her? That he didn’t mean it when he said he wanted her? As if the electricity between them could be faked.
“Maybe I should scare you,” he said, his voice rough. “Because this? This thing between us... I don’t know what the hell it is. If I kissed you right now, if you kissed me back... I think we would light this whole vineyard on fire. All those pine trees would go up like a lit match and dry tinder. We’d start a whole forest fire, baby. I don’t want to give you a gift. I want to burn out this thing between us until there’s nothing left but ashes. Ashes aren’t a gift. They’re evidence of destruction. That’s what I think might happen if we touch. That we may well ruin everything around us, but it might be worth it.”
Her eyes widened, and she let out a slow, shuddering breath. Her chin moved imperceptibly between his thumb and forefinger, and he tightened his hold on her, forcing her to keep on looking at him.
“Did I scare you? Good. You wanted sincerity, you’re getting it. I want you. You. Not sex. You. That’s different. And it bears mentioning, because let me tell you, usually I’m not so picky. I’m not going to pretend that I’m anything other than what I am. But you should know, I don’t care about much, but the one thing I’ve cared about in a long time is that I want the next woman I take to bed to be you.”
He released his hold on her and took a step back. “That doesn’t need to impress you,” he said. “But it’s the truth. You can do whatever you want with it. But if I can’t be the thing that keeps you up tonight, I sure as hell hope that will.”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
THOSE WORDS ECHOED in Lindy’s head all the way around to the end of the trail, where she dismounted from the horse and mumbled some excuse about having somewhere to be before beating a hasty retreat to the tasting room, where she barricaded herself in her office so that she didn’t have to face Wyatt again. Or anyone, for that matter.
Because every filthy thought that had flitted through her mind the moment he had spoken those words had to be clearly written across her skin.
They had to be.
She felt them, radiating from her like a beacon. It was all so clear. All of it. She couldn’t pretend that what was between herself and Wyatt was anything other than raw, sexual attraction.
Sure, she had tried. Because she felt like the woman she had become wasn’t susceptible to that kind of thing.
Not her.
She had schooled herself into becoming a sophisticate. Had made her life about her professional achievements. Had gotten rid of all that wide-eyed, hopeful newness that she’d had before her marriage.
And really, even then, she hadn’t been...
She liked sex fine enough. But it hadn’t been a driving force in her relationship with Damien. She had felt soft things for him. Fuzzy things.
Like the slow unfolding of possibilities, the easy rise of the sun over the top of the mountain. A gradual dawning of possibilities that she hadn’t felt had been open to her. A kind of relationship she had never seen before. Something caring, with two people who actually liked each other.
Nothing like that bitter, acrimonious, tumultuous relationship her parents had had.
She hadn’t wanted anything like that. Like passion.
Passion was overrated.
And she had decided very early on that it was fake anyway. An excuse for people to behave like immature children when they were well past that point. An excuse for people to behave selfishly, to go around doing nothing to control their urges or their tempers.
Passion.
An excuse to stay in an unhealthy relationship.
She frowned. Of course, her relationship had been steady, and it had still gone to hell in a particularly fiery handbasket.
She stared at the back wall of her office.
All of this was moot. She wasn’t going to do anything with Wyatt. She wasn’t. Not at all.
They were working together. She wasn’t going to risk any professional achievement that might be obtained by...distracting herself right now. Particularly with a man she was trying to get business things done with. If you were doing business things with a guy you really shouldn’t do naked things with him.
At least, that was her newfound resolution.
She thought of Liam and Sabrina, who had started out doing business things together for the winery and for Liam’s ranch, the Laughing Irish. They had certainly started doing naked things together. But that was different. Sabrina and Liam had a history with each other.
Lindy’s only history was with disappointment.
She wasn’t going to make the advances she was trying to make with Grassroots any more difficult than they needed to be.
Wasn’t going to make them any harder.
And being with Wyatt Dodge... Like that... Would definitely be...harder.
Just thinking those words made her cheeks flush with heat.
He was turning her into the ridiculous, hormonal teenager she had never been.
Another reason to find him irritating.
Yet again, she bemoaned the fact that he wasn’t hideous. And then, further still, bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t be attracted to his brother, Grant, who was a perfectly decent human being, not working directly with her, and vaguely resembled Wyatt. So, you would think, that she would be more interested in him.
Except, in part, she wondered if that was why she wasn’t. Because he was a nice guy, and there would be a chance for a relationship with him. And she didn’t want a relationship.
Other things... She was starting to want other things.
But not a relationship.
Chemistry. Maybe that was the other element of it. Something else that she hadn’t paid much heed to in her days of not acknowledging passion as a major issue.
Whatever the conclusion, it ultimately didn’t matter because her actions weren’t going to change. She knew what she wanted. She knew what was important to her. The fact that Wyatt made her feel a little bit...warm, was no reason for her to lose her head.
She was thirty-four years old. She knew who she was. She had already gone through the dissolution of a long-term relationship and had come out the other side stronger and more balanced.
She was more than able to stand up to a little ill-advised sexual attraction.
That didn’t bother her. It obsessed her a little, but didn’t bother her. The fact she’d talked to Wyatt so easily about so many things she usually kept shoved down deep...that bothered her a little.
It was weird. Sometimes she felt uneasy with him. Like he was a live electrical wire and getting too close could electrocute her. And other times he felt... Well never like an old friend. But like there was something in him she recognized.
Something like her.
And it made her want to tell him about how she’d changed herself, and about her marriage. Made her believe he might be the only person who could understand.
There was an urgent knock on her office door. “Yes?”
The door opened, and Bea appeared, looking wide-eyed. “Lindy,” she said. “My brother is here.”
“What?”
“Damien is here,” Bea said, closing the door behind her. “I don’t know why. I mean, he said something about how he missed me. But, I don’t really believe that. I don’t think he cares about me at all. He wants to see you. That’s what he said. Well, he said he needed to talk to you. I guess that’s different.”
Lindy’s mouth went dry, the moisture leaching from her body entirely. She felt like a husk. Fragile and withered, frail and easily cracked if the wind blew wrong.
Damien. Here.
She had seen him since the divorce, obviously. In court, mostly.
It had been an assault each time. To have to look at a man she’d shared a life with, a home with, a bed with, and have him stare at her like he hated her.
To feel like she hated him.
Like this space in her heart had been carved out, the love torn away, filled with all this hideous bile she hadn’t given her body permission to take on board.
Turning her emotions into strangers.
But that was two years ago. She didn’t care now. She didn’t care.
Except, Bea was right about one thing. He wasn’t there to see his sister. And if he needed to see Lindy, it wasn’t going to be anything good.
Lindy stood up, pressing her fingers down on the surface of the desk and bracing herself. “I’ll see him out there. I’m not going to invite him in here.”
“Lindy...”
“What?”
Bea was looking at her like she might regard a small, wounded animal. Which was not good at all.
“Sarabeth is with him.”
Oh great. Sarabeth. Of the mystical, magical vagina that had been just so enticing, not to mention ten years younger, that Damien had not been able to prevent himself from falling right into it.
Sarabeth, who had worked at the winery. Who Lindy had considered a friend.
She really, really didn’t want to deal with all of that. She wasn’t jealous. Far from it. But it was something she didn’t like thinking about. And this... It forced her to think about it.
She had been told, by more than one well-meaning person that she simply needed to put it all behind her. But it had been two years. She had been married to Damien for ten. Maybe when the amount of years between the marriage and where she stood matched the length of the marriage...it would be easier. But until then... Even knowing she didn’t want him back, even feeling nothing that was even remotely like jealousy...it stung.
Like an old stab wound being opened right back up.
It didn’t make her long for the person who had knifed her, but it did make her aware that it had happened. All over again.
“That’s fine,” Lindy said, squaring her shoulders. She wished that she weren’t wearing jeans. She wished that she didn’t look like she had been out for a trail ride. Wished that she didn’t have all of her Wyatt thoughts stamped all over her face.
But then again...maybe it was good.
Maybe, Damien showing up and her not looking at all like she typically did was a good thing.
She might just tell him she had been out on a trail ride with Wyatt Dodge, and see what he thought about that.
That almost made her laugh. As if he would care. Seriously, she had reverted to being a teenager.
“Lindy...” Bea was talking to her again, using that same cooing tone that she used when coaxing animals out from under a porch. But, Lindy had had enough. She wasn’t a wounded creature to be bandaged by Bea. She was a grown woman. In charge of her own thoughts, her own desires and her own life. And she would be damned if her ex-husband was going to walk into her place of business, walk onto her property, as if he had a right to be there and get into her head.
She strode out the door to her office and into the dining area. And stopped in her tracks.
Because there was Damien, tall, broad-shouldered and pleasant-looking as ever, his blond hair pushed back from his forehead, standing next to a small, dark-haired woman who was thin, petite and sporting a very obvious baby bump.
Pain exploded behind her breastbone.
Why did that hurt? Why the hell did that hurt?
I’m just really busy with my career right now...
You’re really enjoying your work at the winery...
It’s not the right time...
Dammit. Dammit. It didn’t matter. It did not matter. She didn’t want to have had a child with him. And anyway, it was later. His life was in a different place. It was completely normal that he would be having children with his child bride.
Of course, now it made perfect sense that Bea had been talking to her like she was a wretched raccoon.
She was trying to warn her.
And she knew that when all was said and done Lindy was going to feel like a wretched raccoon.
Like an aging crone standing next to a glowing, youthful, pregnant woman while her own eggs were threatening to turn to dust.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked, forcing her thoughts to come to a screeching halt, forcing the pain in her chest to halt its progress. She wasn’t going to show it. She wasn’t going to let her face change. Not even one bit.
“I need to get a few things from the house,” Damien said, his tone measured. “As you can see, Sarabeth and I are expecting. And that means that I’m going to need to access my parents’ storage. I believe some of it is still on the property.”
“I’m not sure if any of your things are still here,” Lindy said, trying to keep her tone neutral.
“Dad said that they were. He said that there were quite a few of my childhood things still in one of the old barns. I’m going to need it, because I have a son to pass it along to.”
Heat rolled over her in a wave, followed by a ripple of cold, leaving her forehead clammy. But, as long as she didn’t show it in her face, he wouldn’t know.
Hell, Damien had never been able to tell when she was upset with him when they had been married. When she had made an actual effort to telegraph her feelings. Why would he be able to read her now?
“Well, I’m sure Bea can help you find it. I’m not sure why you felt the need to come and tell me.”
Except, she did know why. It wasn’t Damien, with his cool, gray eyes, who gave it away. No, he was too practiced for that. A PR man down to his core. He never let that ease slip. But Sarabeth, looking like a gloating frog next to him... This was all some kind of big show.
You got the winery, but I got your life.
The life that Lindy had wanted with Damien. The one that he had spent years denying her in the name of his career.
He had gone and given it to someone else. That was the point of all this.
Screw him.
“Actually, I’m more than happy to take you over to the barn. Would you like me to drive you or would you like to follow me?”
“Following you is fine,” Damien said, his tone cool.
A few minutes later, Lindy found herself behind the wheel of her little red car. Her divorce gift to herself. A fun, zippy little vehicle the likes of which Damien had deemed impractical. He could eat her damned dust all the way over to the barn for all she cared while he trailed behind in his sturdy, luxury SUV.
They compare the best of everything to Cadillacs for a reason, Lindy.
That lecturing tone, filling her head. That way that he had of communicating to her that she didn’t know as much as he did, and never could. Not when she was simply a poor trailer park girl from the wrong side of the tracks with no real education.
Everything you know is because of me, or some connection I have. Everything you have is because of me.
She gritted her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut tight as she stopped the car in front of the barn she had a feeling he meant. She needed just a minute to compose herself. Just one.
She took a breath.
And then she got out of the car.
“Follow me,” she said brightly. She ostentatiously held her keys out and unlocked the door.
I have the keys, bitch. Not you.
And she could tell that wasn’t lost on him.
It was lost on Sarabeth, who was twisting her wedding ring and looking at it smugly, as if Lindy gave a damn about having that diamond shackle on her hand.
She had become more, done more, in the two years since her divorce than she had done in the ten with Damien.
So there. Maybe she didn’t need ten years between herself and her divorce to move on.
Actually, standing there, looking at what an ass he was, at what a ridiculous couple he made with Sarabeth, at the life she was so proud of having that Lindy knew for a fact could so easily crumble around her in the next few years, and likely would...
Yeah. It was far easier to feel moved on than it had been a moment ago.
She’d been shocked when she’d seen Sarabeth. Shocked that Damien was here. Thrown off, because she hadn’t expected to have to deal with either of them—today, or ever, really—and that had made it all feel bleak for a moment. But that was done now. Past.
“What have you been out doing, Lindy?” Damien asked, his tone crisp. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you in jeans.”
“I was on a trail ride,” she said.
Oh good. He’d asked. She’d been hoping he would. That was the thing about Damien. He was predictable.
“You?”
The lock clicked and she pushed the doors open wide. “Yes,” she said. “I’m in a little bit of a business arrangement with Wyatt Dodge.”
Damien began to walk into the barn, but paused midstride. “Wyatt Dodge?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a friend of mine.” He said this as though it made her previous statement an impossibility.
“Do you still speak to him?” She affected a genuinely perplexed look. “That’s so funny. We haven’t talked about you at all.”
That little lie tasted sweeter than any candy she’d ever had.
She breezed past him, making her way into the barn. “Feel free to have a look around. I have no idea what any of this is. I’ve been too busy to go through any of it, I might have had it hauled away. I’m surprised that your parents haven’t made time to come out and get it.”
“I’m making time now,” Damien said.
Their eyes caught and held for a moment. And Lindy was overcome with the strangest sense of... Well, strangeness. She had seen this man naked. The only man she had ever seen naked in person. And there he was, standing in front of her in a crisp button-up shirt and charcoal-colored slacks and she felt...nothing.
Not a twinge of old desire. No nostalgia.
Nothing like what she’d felt those times she’d had to deal with him at hearings.
She had just been out with Wyatt, and he had made her feel...hot and reckless. Angry. Damien made her feel...nothing.
She felt annoyed, at his attempt to goad her. She felt the remnants of that initial pain, that initial shock she felt when she had seen that Sarabeth was pregnant. But she felt so detached. From him. From whatever she had felt back then.
She looked at Sarabeth, and she felt even less. Now that the shock was easing...
Lindy wouldn’t say she felt sorry for the other woman. After all, she had most definitely made her own bed, after making it in Lindy’s. But she certainly wouldn’t trade lives with her. Even if Lindy hadn’t ended up with the winery in the divorce, Lindy would have made something of herself. She would have a better life. One that wasn’t tied to a man like Damien.
She had done her fair share of trying to figure out what her stake of the blame was in the divorce. And yeah, a lot of it came down to the undeniable fact that they didn’t have enough passion. That Lindy did love the winery more than she loved her husband.
But she had done what she could. And she hadn’t been distant. He was the one who had traveled. And in the end, he was the one who had broken their vows.
It was...clarifying.
She stood there, and watched while Damien and Sarabeth collected things. The frame to an old crib, some toys and some miscellaneous bags. An old trunk that she imagined had been a toybox.
She had never seen these things. How funny.
She had never asked him to see anything from his childhood. But then, she had never offered to show him anything from hers. Of course, she doubted that her mother had saved anything from her childhood. Or that anything she’d had had been worth saving.
She waited until they had everything loaded up in their SUV, and then she watched as he drove away, exchanging few words with him in the process.
She let out a heavy breath, and got behind the wheel of her car, driving back to the tasting room. When she pulled into the lot, she saw that Damien was gone. So, he hadn’t stopped to visit with Bea at all.
She shook her head. He was such an ass. It was one thing to come and play games with her, but to play them with Bea, to conceal the fact that he was trying to get one up on her was beyond the pale.
Lindy walked into the tasting room, where Bea was standing. “I’m sorry,” Lindy said, walking up to her former sister-in-law and putting her arm around her shoulders. “You deserve better than he is.”
Bea smiled, small and sad. “I know. I got you instead. I chose you instead.” She sighed. “For what it’s worth, you deserved better than him too.”
“I appreciate that. All of it. The fact that you’re here with me.” Lindy smiled. “I’d rather have you any day.”
“Same.”
“I’m going to finish up some work.” Lindy walked back into her office and closed the door behind her, and it felt like whatever had been holding her spine straight, whatever had been supporting her had been pulled away abruptly.
She sagged down into her chair, her knees completely giving out.
She couldn’t believe she had just...done that. Couldn’t believe it had just happened.
But her past had come over and rummaged around in her things.
And that as strange as it had been, as stressful and kind of awful as it was... The things Wyatt had made her feel on the trail ride still burned hotter inside of her.
She had faced down her ex-husband and his pregnant wife. But she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that tonight, when she closed her eyes to sleep, the only thing echoing across her dreams would be Wyatt Dodge, and all the things he’d whispered in her ear.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
WYATT FELT LIKE he had been trying to work out the tension that had seized up his muscles for the past three days. Since that trail ride with Lindy, his shoulders had been knotted up hard as a rock.
Frankly, it wasn’t the only part of him that was rock hard, thank you very much.
But he hadn’t decided what the hell he was going to do about it yet.
It had been one thing to try to prove his point with her on the trail ride, something he thought he had done quite effectively. It was another to figure out what happened next.
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Maisey Yates
Welcome to Gold Valley, Oregon in the uplifting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates.Forbidden desire just might turn into the love of a lifetime…When Lindy Parker lost her cheating husband, she gained a vineyard. She’ll do anything for Grassroots Winery, including teaming up with the hottest devil she knows, rancher Wyatt Dodge. Wyatt is her ex’s friend and has an ego as big as the bulls he rides. But in spite of that, disciplined Lindy has always wanted him…Lightning struck Wyatt Dodge the first time he saw Lindy Parker. But there were two problems with that: she was married to his friend, and Wyatt doesn’t do strings. But now Lindy is free, and the two of them can finally explore the heat that’s burned between them for so long. But can Lindy make this good time cowboy decide on forever?Also includes a bonus Gold Valley novella, Hard Riding Cowboy!Praise for Maisey Yates:‘Yates’ new Gold Valley series begins with a sassy, romantic and sexy story about two characters whose chemistry is off the charts. ‘ RT Book Reviews on Smooth-Talking Cowboy (Top Pick)‘Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy small-town romance.’ Booklist on Part Time Cowboy‘Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.’USATODAY.com's Happy Ever After blog on Part Time Cowboy
In Gold Valley, Oregon, forbidden desire just might turn into the love of a lifetime…
When Lindy Parker lost her cheating husband, she gained a vineyard. She’ll do anything for Grassroots Winery, including teaming up with the hottest devil she knows, rancher Wyatt Dodge. Wyatt is her ex’s friend and has an ego as big as the bulls he rides. But in spite of that, disciplined Lindy has always wanted him…
Lightning struck Wyatt Dodge the first time he saw Lindy Parker. But there were two problems with that: she was married to his friend, and Wyatt doesn’t do strings. But now Lindy is free, and the two of them can finally explore the heat that’s burned between them for so long. But can Lindy make this good time cowboy decide on forever?
Also By Maisey Yates (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
Welcome to Gold Valley, Oregon,
where the cowboys are tough to tame, until they
meet the women who can lasso their hearts.
Cowboy Christmas Blues (ebook novella)
Smooth-Talking Cowboy
Mail Order Cowboy (ebook novella)
Untamed Cowboy
Hard Riding Cowboy (ebook novella)
Good Time Cowboy
In Copper Ridge, Oregon, lasting love
with a cowboy is only a happily-ever-after away.
Don’t miss any of Maisey Yates’s
Copper Ridge tales, available now!
Shoulda Been a Cowboy (prequel novella)
Part Time Cowboy
Brokedown Cowboy
Bad News Cowboy
A Copper Ridge Christmas (ebook novella)
The Cowboy Way
Hometown Heartbreaker (ebook novella)
One Night Charmer
Tough Luck Hero
Last Chance Rebel
Slow Burn Cowboy
Down Home Cowboy
Wild Ride Cowboy
Christmastime Cowboy
Take Me, Cowboy
Hold Me, Cowboy
Seduce Me, Cowboy
Claim Me, Cowboy
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Good Time Cowboy
Hard Riding Cowboy(Bonus Story)
Maisey Yates
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08581-6
GOOD TIME COWBOY
© 2018 Maisey Yates
Good Time Cowboy © 2018 Maisey Yates Hard Riding Cowboy © 2018 Maisey Yates
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk) (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
Praise for New York Times
bestselling author Maisey Yates
“Yates’ new Gold Valley series begins with a sassy, romantic and sexy story about two characters whose chemistry is off the charts.”
—RT Book Reviews on Smooth-Talking Cowboy (Top Pick)
“Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy [Yates’s] small-town romance.”
—Booklist on Part Time Cowboy
“Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.”
—USATODAY.com’s Happy Ever After blog on Part Time Cowboy
“[A] story with emotional depth, intense heartache and love that is hard fought for and eventually won…. This is a book readers will be telling their friends about.”
—RT Book Reviews on Brokedown Cowboy
“Yates’s thrilling seventh Copper Ridge contemporary proves that friendship can evolve into scintillating romance.… This is a surefire winner not to be missed.”
—Publishers Weekly on Slow Burn Cowboy (starred review)
“This fast-paced, sensual novel will leave readers believing in the healing power of love.”
—Publishers Weekly on Down Home Cowboy
Contents
Cover (#u8913909b-a845-5139-89bf-d36fa48d121b)
Back Cover Text (#udda187c1-5194-5dfd-b531-e30eea6f1077)
Booklist (#u36e0b169-c777-5bee-84bf-0d8b09c9d5c3)
Title Page (#u0e5f0d4e-361a-554b-b99e-9a06545e773f)
Copyright (#u4a337043-4334-5b26-b813-c57954848de5)
Praise (#u55116fb6-9e9c-5da7-ba8a-46b8c1ac44af)
Good Time Cowboy
CHAPTER ONE (#u4bfcc37b-397f-5748-9fab-f956a1028e32)
CHAPTER TWO (#u5c935210-37dd-5a9e-9d8c-40032fd02763)
CHAPTER THREE (#u5a2c1b67-3514-5fc4-98b9-04c908af7e30)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u741bc2b9-3424-5954-b644-b2a8b524d38e)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u6ec7c0d0-7880-5057-a6b6-f2d0e72ae2a7)
CHAPTER SIX (#u78012eef-c031-5d92-9491-98762c74c414)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u0b0fcec5-964b-5e0d-b4b2-cbc8bad41370)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ucf9b9749-3f01-5b85-b2e3-e0be748e5393)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Hard Riding Cowboy
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Good Time Cowboy (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
Maisey Yates
To Jackie, Megan, Nicole and Rusty. Thank you for being my support system, my panic button and my OMG PLEASE SOMEONE READ THIS AND TELL ME IF IT MAKES SENSE crew. You have no idea how much I appreciate you.
CHAPTER ONE (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
LINDY PARKER HATED the rodeo. Just in general. The sights, the smells, the cloud of testosterone that covered everything.
She hadn’t always hated it, but now it all reminded her of her ex-husband. Damien was so firmly part of that world to her. Whenever she’d gone to rodeo events, it had been for the sole purpose of seeing Damien’s work. To see the results of PR campaigns he’d run and to rub elbows with possible sponsors.
The rest of it didn’t much appeal to her. Dirt and bright lights and overly loud announcers.
But if there was one thing she hated more than the rodeo itself, it was the bull riders.
Cocky. Arrogant. Jerks.
Even her younger brother, Dane, suffered from a bad case of it when he’d been out on the circuit for too long.
But there was no bull rider who irked her quite like Wyatt Dodge. Her dear ex’s favorite rider. A man who’d made Damien tons of money and inflated his ego beyond the telling of it, which, in her humble opinion, had contributed to the flagrant affair her husband had engaged in with a woman who had—at the time—worked at Grassroots Winery, and had been young enough that she still probably remembered how to get to Sesame Street.
Not that it was Wyatt Dodge’s fault. No, Damien was responsible for his own body parts and where they wandered. He was the one who had made vows to her, and even if she did feel like perhaps his prolonged exposure to a pack of manwhores hadn’t helped her marriage, she knew exactly where the fault lay for what had transpired.
With Damien.
She’d caught him kissing an employee of their winery. A much younger employee. Sarabeth, who Lindy had considered a casual friend. A woman she’d invited into her home. A woman she’d paid an hourly wage to. And apparently some of those hours had been spent in bed with Lindy’s husband.
And Lindy could hold a grudge. And had. All the way to court, where she had managed to get full ownership of Damien’s family winery, Grassroots Winery.
Jamison Leighton and his wife had been unsurprisingly angry at the way all that had gone. But, they shouldn’t have left the entire thing to a son who didn’t know how to keep it in his pants. Particularly not a son who had signed a very foolish prenuptial agreement, designed only to protect him from her. Which had meant that all bad behavior stipulated in said agreement had been based on the assumption that she would be the one to do all the very bad things.
And so, she had emerged victorious. She’d given more power back to his sisters, who had not had a chance to claim any part of the property from his parents, but who had stood by her side through the ordeal.
She was close to Sabrina and Bea, in spite of the fact that they were blood-related to Damien. They were the sisters of her heart, and they all worked together even now.
She loved the winery, but unfortunately it was that work that brought her to the Get Out of Dodge ranch now—and was bringing her into contact with a man that she liked less than cooked carrots.
Bull rider. Manwhore. Friend of her ex-husband.
Wyatt Dodge.
Lindy gritted her teeth and parked her little red car in the gravel lot. She questioned her decision-making sometimes. The fact that she’d come to Wyatt with the idea of the joint barbecue that would hopefully increase business at both Grassroots and Get Out of Dodge. A barbecue that would showcase the grounds of the dude ranch and the wines from Grassroots, and educate people on the different activities available at both locations.
But it made sense. Business sense, anyway. And she’d felt like it would be shortsighted to let her feelings for Wyatt—both her irritation and the strange tightening she felt in her stomach whenever he was around—hinder an important business decision.
Back in the day, Get Out of Dodge had been a thriving dude ranch, bringing people in for miles. But then, Quinn Dodge had lost his wife, and the tragedy had made it difficult for him to continue running the place at that capacity. Since then, the ownership had passed to Quinn’s son, Wyatt, who had retired from the rodeo circuit. He was working on bringing it back to its former glory, modernizing it and creating a place that would cater to what guests wanted now.
Lindy felt like she was very much doing the same with Grassroots. Now that it was in her control she was doing all the expanding she had wanted to do when she and Damien had been married. He had been just happy to live in a big house and let the winery bump along, making income as it had always done.
Not Lindy. Lindy had come from nothing, and she didn’t take a thing for granted.
All that mattered was the future.
And getting through all of it without killing Wyatt.
“Now,” she muttered to herself. “If I were a pigheaded asshole where would I be?”
Seeing as it was lunchtime, he would probably be in the aptly named mess hall.
Lindy had to admit that the ranch was charming. All the little cabins that had been redone over the past few months, as well as the large communal dining hall, filled with picnic bench-style setups and with more seating outside by the river.
There were arenas with fresh dirt, both covered and uncovered, where people could ride, and learn to do some rodeo basics. They did a roping and barrel racing primer, and they were beginning to do trail rides of varying lengths and skill levels.
That was one of the big joint ventures happening between Grassroots and Get Out of Dodge.
They were offering a ride through the winery that took people through the vineyards and ended in a farm-to-table dinner in one of the revamped barns on her property. If you were staying at the ranch, you got a discount. And it was Jamie Dodge who was leading the ride.
It didn’t do them any good to see each other as competitors—they weren’t. He had people coming to stay on his property, and she had booze. That meant they were natural bedfellows.
When it came to business.
Lindy forced a smile as she traipsed into the mess hall. “Good afternoon,” she said, taking a chance that it would be Wyatt who was sitting inside.
She wasn’t disappointed. But, along with Wyatt were his younger brothers Grant and Bennett.
“Good afternoon,” Wyatt returned, leaning back in his chair and tipping his cowboy hat back on his forehead.
“I’m here to discuss brochures,” she said, feeling her lips tighten up as she spoke the words.
It was weird. Standing in front of them in a pencil skirt, wearing high heels and standing like she had a rod bolted into her spine.
She’d trained herself to be this way. She’d grown up in a trailer park with hand-me-down clothes and a mind-set of fending for herself. She might not have learned how to be fancy growing up, but she’d learned to take care of herself.
When she’d met Damien, she’d put her survival skills to good use. He’d paid attention to her, given her the kind of love she’d imagined a girl like her could never earn. In return, she’d figured out how to blend into his world. She’d wanted to be an asset to him, not a disadvantage. So she’d put this sleek, beautiful armor on.
She was still doing it now. But she ran a winery, so honestly, the learned behavior was on theme.
“You could have just sent me an email,” Wyatt said.
“I did,” she responded, through clenched teeth. “I sent two emails. A week ago. You didn’t respond to them.”
“Sorry, I don’t check my email all that often.”
“Then why did you suggest that as a method of communication?”
“Better than any other.”
“I have brochures,” Lindy said, reaching into her purse and pulling out two of the aforementioned items.
They had decided that they were going to do two-sided brochures that would be placed in the cabins at Get Out of Dodge and in the tasting rooms for Grassroots. But, she needed Wyatt to approve them before she had them printed.
“Lindy, I really don’t care about the font or whatever is on a brochure.”
“Well, I need you to care.”
Grant, who she had always liked, extended his hand. “I’ll have a look,” he said.
She shot Wyatt a triumphant glare and walked across the room, placing one in Grant’s hand. “That’s option one,” she said.
“Let me see,” Bennett said.
She had always liked Bennett too.
Bennett was the youngest of the Dodge brothers, newly engaged, and a veterinarian, well respected in the community of Gold Valley.
Grant worked on the ranch. A widower, he was talked about often in hushed tones the moment he left the room. But then, his romance with his late wife had made literal headlines at the time. A teenager marrying his dying high school sweetheart. It made for a great story. Though, it had been something of a crushing reality. And one that seemed to follow him wherever he went.
She had an inkling of how that felt. Not the grief part. But the being a topic of conversation part.
She was the divorced one. People whispered about her behind their hands, talked about what a shame it was that husband of hers had turned out to be a no-account. Or they talked about how that had been her plan all along. A gold digger. Nothing but trailer trash who had married above herself and hadn’t been able to keep the man happy. Who had taken him for all he had, and had ended up with money she hadn’t earned.
The honorable Leighton family should never have been parted from their family property. Obviously. Regardless of the fact that a judge had disagreed with that assessment.
Yes, she knew what it was like to be whispered about.
Sadly, she could find no such connection, empathy or respect for Wyatt.
But then, in fairness, he didn’t try to earn it.
Finally, Wyatt stood up, slowly. And as he did, her mouth went dry. He was tall. Very, very tall. The tallest of all of the brothers, which was saying something, as they were all over six feet. She was used to large, strapping men. Hell, her brother was one.
But Wyatt Dodge was not her brother. He was infuriating. He was obnoxious. He was friends with Damien.
He was definitely not her brother.
And not ugly. Regrettably.
Not even close.
Wyatt Dodge was one of the most magnetic men she had ever met.
Grant and Bennett were handsome like movie stars. Grant bearded, Bennett clean-shaven. Symmetrical. Brown eyes and square jaws and all of that. Wyatt was rugged. He had a scar running through his chin that she was sure he had gotten doing something stupid, because bull riders never did much of anything smart.
He always had just a little bit of stubble on that firm jaw of his, and it looked like it would be prickly if she touched it. His boots were always dusty, and his jeans usually had holes. Unless he was dressed up, and then he put on some slightly nicer jeans and boots that she suspected were made from snake. She wished she didn’t know that. She wished that she hadn’t retained those details.
She knew that he had more than one black cowboy hat, though you could be forgiven for thinking they were all the same. And that he had one that was tan, which usually went with his nicer clothes.
She also had the first moment they’d met branded into her memory.
She knew way too much about him, having seen him from afar over the years when Damien was doing PR for the circuit and she was still his wife.
And then, she had relearned a lot of it over these past couple of months while the two of them had been forging something of a business relationship.
None of it made her feel at ease around him. She was decidedly easeless in his presence, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
He reached out and took both brochures from his brothers, his large, weathered hands making the brochures look...well, wrong.
Like maybe he needed information carved on a stump of wood with some kind of sharp, rudimentary object.
Damien had been something of a rhinestone cowboy. He dressed the part, but that was so he fit into his surroundings. He didn’t do ranch work.
Wyatt was as real as it got.
And it shouldn’t matter to her at all. Only in the sense that it was probably good for business. And the more business that came out to the ranch, the more traffic it would drive to Grassroots.
Plus, they had a deal. Get Out of Dodge was going to serve Grassroots wine exclusively, and that would draw people in to buy more as well.
He turned the pamphlets over, examining them, and for some reason, Lindy felt that examination in a close personal way. She shifted awkwardly, attempting to ignore the strange, hollow feeling between her thighs.
“It all looks good to me, Melinda,” he said, using her full name, which no one ever did. He only knew it because they had gone out drinking once after a big win for Wyatt had resulted in a good endorsement deal that Damien had helped Wyatt net. And the subject of middle names had come up, which had brought up the subject of her full name.
And now, years on, he sometimes used it to irritate the hell out of her.
“Thank you,” she said, keeping everything smooth and serene on the surface, while internally she was flipping him both middle fingers.
That was what she did now. It was how she played this game. She had perfected her polished exterior to the point that no one knew there was a little grit left beneath.
She did. Because it was the grit that kept her going.
“Why don’t we walk outside a bit?” he asked, his eyes connecting with hers and lighting her insides on fire.
Lord almighty.
“I want to show you some things,” he continued.
She squared her shoulders and followed after Wyatt, giving Grant and Bennett a small wave before heading outside.
“Something we need to do in person?”
“Yes. Otherwise I would have emailed you. I have your address.” His handsome face was a study in sincerity and she wanted to punch it.
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Right. Anyway.”
“I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Fourth of July shindig that we’re having.”
“Right. The shindig.” Grassroots would be providing wine, and they would also be serving Donnelly cheese. Plus, they would be touting the virtues of both Grassroots and Get Out of Dodge. It was an important event, one that they were heavily advertising for in surrounding communities.
“I was thinking we would do some rodeo demonstrations,” he said. “Over there in the main arena.” He gestured broadly across the way at a grand, covered area, with two sets of bleachers on either side. The bleachers were new.
It looked like Wyatt figured that if he wasn’t traveling with the rodeo he might as well bring it back here.
“Really?” she asked.
“Yes. I was wondering if Dane was going to be around?”
“I doubt it. Anyway, it’s not like you’re outfitted to do a bull ride here.” There were bleachers, but they were missing the heavy gates and fencing needed to keep people safe if they were going to bring those animals out.
“Not bulls,” he confirmed. “I figured we would do some roping. Not going to go crazy. You’re right. We don’t have the facility for it. But it would be damned cool if we did.”
“I’m not going to have my brother get himself injured doing a stunt to benefit your ranch, Dodge.”
“Your brother rides often enough. He can get injured anytime.”
“Right.” She pursed her lips. “But competing. Not messing around here.” Dane’s ability to earn a living was everything to him. His way of escaping their upbringing. He didn’t need to put it at risk messing around here. “Anyway. I’m pretty sure that Dane is solidly booked in competition for the next few months.”
“That’s a shame. I like him.”
Heavily implied in that sentence was the fact that he did not like her. But, that wasn’t her problem. It also wasn’t fair. Dane was different. His life was different. He got rewarded for being a good old boy. For being a reckless redneck.
She got no such rewards from life. She had to prove that she was capable. She was strong and smart. That she belonged in the world she’d married into, and divorced out of.
Dane got to be fun and dangerous and get rewarded for it. But then, that was her experience of all these rodeo idiots. Their life was a big party. They didn’t do responsible things like keep to their commitments or honor their vows. No. And her husband had jumped right into that.
But, that was beside the point.
“Sorry. He didn’t quit.”
“I retired,” he pointed out. “I didn’t quit. Midthirties is a rough time to still be flinging your body around like that. Other guys do it, but...not me. I’m done.” A smile tipped the corner of his mouth upward, and she noticed some lines crease his skin right by his eyes.
He had aged since they’d first met all those years ago but that didn’t make him less attractive. Instead, those weathered signs of aging, of years lived, only made him more attractive in a strange way. She had to wonder if it was some kind of weird female survival instinct. That this man who had taken all these risks was here, had made it well into his thirties in spite of those risks, was sending signals to her body that he was a good provider, or something.
But her body was terrible at correctly identifying men’s true natures. Even if it wasn’t, she didn’t want to know Wyatt or his...nature. So, she wasn’t even going to ponder it.
“Well. Whatever. So you’re thinking roping events?” She pushed the conversation back on track.
“Yes. I got all the approvals from insurance. As long as we don’t have any guests participating, or anything like that, we are cleared for it.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“I was also thinking Jamie could lead a ride during the barbecue.”
She nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
“Will it be all right with you if we take the group over to the vineyard?”
“Should be fine.”
Their eyes caught for a moment, and for some reason it felt significant. More so than the moment before. He was not the kind of man she normally liked.
Granted, she’d been with one man. And in the end she hadn’t liked him very much at all. But still.
He nodded, then smiled. Slow and lazy. It licked through her like fire and she did her very best to ignore it. “Good.”
She cleared her throat. “Good.”
“So, just the brochures? Were there any emails that you needed me to read?”
She curled her hands into fists, irritation coursing through her, saving her from the heat. “Can’t you just...check your email?”
“Can’t you just...tell me what you need?” He smiled. Enigmatic. Infuriating.
“There’s nothing, but if I need anything else I’ll be sure to send you an email. And maybe I’ll add a follow-up phone call.”
“Sounds good. Could you arrange for 6:00 a.m.? A wake-up call? That would be pretty fancy. Haven’t had that since I was on the circuit.”
“You stayed at motels that gave you wake-up calls when you were riding on the circuit?”
“No. The women that spent the night usually woke me up early when they were sneaking out, though.”
He was such a jackass.
“Right. Well. I will not be giving you a wake-up call. Of any variety.” Her lips twitched, and heat flooded her cheeks.
“Noted.”
She turned away, her heart hammering hard. She had the inescapable feeling that she had made a deal with the devil in forging an alliance with Wyatt Dodge. But the devil was infinitely preferable to her ex-husband, and the devil currently had what she needed.
And so, a deal with the devil it was.
* * *
WYATT WATCHED LINDY’S figure as she retreated, the wiggle in her hips transmitting her irritation while also sending some signals to his body that he could do without, thanks.
He let out the breath that he felt like he had been holding for the past fifteen minutes, feeling the tension ease out of his body, down along his spine. That woman got under his skin, no denying it.
Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t deny it. He would have just had her by now. But there were complications to that. Big ones. Like the fact that she was the ex-wife of a man he had once considered a good friend.
Like the fact that she hated him.
Oh, and the fact that he had wanted her from the moment he’d met her, when she had still been hitched to the aforementioned friend.
The fact that he hadn’t made a move on her was a relief only in that it indicated he had learned to think with something other than his cock since he was sixteen years old.
Lindy Parker was a particular kind of thorn in his flesh.
He remembered the moment he’d met her with a distressing amount of clarity. He had been in a bar after one of the events, and she had walked in looking prim and uncertain, her hands clasped in front of her, holding on to her handbag, her blond hair swirling around her as she took stock of the rabble and ruffians in the room.
And he had...he had felt the floor of that bar fall out from underneath his feet.
He had wanted her, immediately. Viscerally. It had been an instantaneous and deep desire unlike anything he had ever felt before.
Then, he had seen the diamond ring sparkling on her left hand. It had only loomed larger in his vision as she had walked over to where he was sitting. He’d had all those seconds, those long moments of watching her make her way across the room to decide he didn’t give a damn who had given her that ring or what it meant. He wanted her. And if she was going to let him have her...well, then he wasn’t going to waste a thought on the poor bastard who’d given her the diamond.
He’d thought that right up until she’d walked up and kissed his friend right on the mouth.
She was Damien’s wife. Of course.
Because the first woman to make him feel like he couldn’t breathe in longer than he could remember was obviously going to be married to a friend of his.
Even if she hadn’t been married to Damien...they were not meant to be. She had been unfriendly to him from the beginning. It wasn’t even her divorce from Damien that had triggered the unfriendliness.
He still wanted her. Dammit.
And he didn’t do that stuff. He didn’t want and not have. Sex, as far as he was concerned was a recreational activity. People didn’t need to make such a big deal out of it. But, he also preferred to like the women he banged. And he preferred it if they didn’t want to decapitate him.
Lindy fell into that category.
The divorce...
Yeah, that was complicated, but it had a little bit more to do with her not liking him rather than him being concerned about preserving a relationship with Damien.
As far as he was concerned Damien was a dickhead. Cheating on Lindy had been an asshole thing to do. There was no defending it. Wyatt wouldn’t even try. Some men shouldn’t get married. Wyatt was one of them. But, he hadn’t gotten married. Damien had. And he had owed it to his wife to be faithful to her. The damned man hadn’t even tried as far as Wyatt could tell.
It had all come out later, when Damien had drunkenly slurred over a beer about the end of his marriage that he had cheated on Lindy multiple times over the years. Being on the road with all that temptation around was too much for him, he’d said. When the buckle bunnies couldn’t find a cowboy to get laid with they would always take him.
And it was all Wyatt could do not to ask him if he was screwed in the head. Because what the hell man would want another woman when he had that one in his bed? Wyatt sure as hell wouldn’t.
Of course, he had never tried monogamy, so he supposed he couldn’t actually judge. But he did.
Still, the fact that he didn’t exactly want his friend to know that he had illicit fantasies about the other guy’s wife was one reason he had held back on lecturing him too much. The other being that he just wasn’t the right man for that job.
A shiftless manslut who had never had a committed relationship in his life was the last person on earth who should hand out lectures on marriage.
“She does not like you.”
Wyatt turned around and saw his brother Grant standing there, looking amused with the situation.
He supposed he should be happy to see Grant looking amused at all, since his brother rarely did. But, he wasn’t. Not when it was at his expense.
Wyatt had never claimed not to be a selfish bastard.
“She doesn’t,” Wyatt agreed.
“And you want her.”
“She’s a shrew,” Wyatt said, by way of answer, crossing his arms, watching as that little red car of hers drove away.
“A hot one,” Grant pointed out.
“You sleep with her then. I don’t want to have to dig her fingernails out from under my skin after.”
“It’s my understanding you end up with fingernails embedded in your skin when it goes well,” Grant said, his tone dry.
“Unless she does it because she wants to mortally wound you.”
“From where I’m at right now, I’m not sure I see a drawback either way.”
“Go.” Wyatt made a shooing motion with his hand. “Get some. Refresh your memory.”
Grant lifted a brow, the lines on his forehead deepening. “Not likely.”
Wyatt locked eyes with his brother. “Get out of town. Find a woman who doesn’t know you and your entire life story.”
“You know,” Grant said. “I tried that once. She remembered me. From the news.”
“Damn.”
His brother’s marriage had ended up famous.
An eighteen-year-old who married his high school sweetheart even knowing she wouldn’t live long had been a tragic and wonderful gesture, as far as the world was concerned.
As far as poor Grant was concerned, it had just been life and love. In the end, he had suffered a hell of a lot. But that’s what he was famous for. Being true-blue to a woman who was long gone.
No one had asked if he wanted to get famous, of course. It had been one of the last things Grant wanted. Second only to his wife dying.
Which had thrown Grant right back into the headlines. Wyatt was sure that made hooking up...complicated.
Wyatt Dodge did not like complicated. It was just one of the many reasons that he was not going to follow the road his attraction to Lindy wanted to take him down. Nope. And hell no.
Anyway, getting things off the ground with Get Out of Dodge was too important.
If he succeeded, then no one would ever have to know the reason why.
And that was the ideal situation.
“I appreciate you being here,” Wyatt said. “I hope you know that.”
“I do. But, it’s not like I had anything truly amazing that I was leaving behind. A job at the power company for little more than a decade...sure. The retirement was going to be good...” Grant shook his head. “How long can you possibly live for the future? I mean, socking away money, punching a time card all to invest in years you might never even see? What the hell is the point of that? Can you answer me that, Wyatt?”
Wyatt rubbed his chin. “I’ve been riding bulls for the last...fifteen years? I am not the person to ask about thinking ahead. If I had been thinking ahead I never would have done that.”
His spine sure would’ve thanked him, and unlike so many others, he had never even sustained a serious injury. He was lucky. Lucky as hell. The guys that ended up getting seriously trampled often never walked in a straight line again. Wyatt had gotten out more or less intact. Just a couple of scars. Even still, at thirty-five his body had taken the kind of beating most guys his age couldn’t imagine.
“I’m glad to be here,” he said. “That’s what I meant by the speech. That’s all.”
“I’m glad, too,” Wyatt responded.
Grant turned and walked away, leaving Wyatt standing there, looking around the property. It was all coming together nicely. The landscape in front of the main house, the gravel paths that led between the buildings, raked clean and neat.
Wyatt hadn’t taken anything this seriously for the past twenty years.
The cabins had been restored and redecorated, and he was actively working on finding a cook who could provide something more than basic food.
He had to reach his goal of getting the ranch to full occupancy by the end of the summer, and he had to reach total financial solvency in the following year. Otherwise, he was going to fail at Quinn Dodge’s ultimatum.
And that meant his father was going to sell the ranch.
That was the thing his siblings didn’t know. Wyatt wasn’t the owner of the property.
It was still Quinn’s. And unless Wyatt succeeded in a very short amount of time, it wasn’t going to be in the Dodge family anymore. Instead, Get Out of Dodge would be nothing more than a stack of cash divided between the siblings, and Wyatt couldn’t allow that.
He knew that his father expected him to screw up.
Wyatt was determined that he wouldn’t.
There was no other option.
Of all the reasons not to sleep with Lindy Parker, that was the best one.
He didn’t need her as a distraction, he didn’t need her as a friend and he sure as hell didn’t need her as a lover. He needed her as an ally.
Because if he didn’t have that, he might lose.
And if there was one thing Wyatt Dodge did not do, it was lose.
CHAPTER TWO (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
LINDY’S COMPUTER MADE its special email chiming sound and she bent down to look.
Wyatt Dodge.
Her heart slammed against her sternum like a hammer going down on iron.
She braced herself. She didn’t know for what, except that obviously if he was actually emailing her now after making a big deal out of the fact that he didn’t need to email her, he was being an ass. That much she was certain of.
She clicked. Surprisingly, it was a comprehensive commentary on the brochures that she had sent.
“Leave it to you to be on topic when I expect you to be an asshole.” She muttered to herself as she straightened, then she turned and startled when she saw her brother Dane’s form filling the doorway.
“Talking to yourself?”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” She thought about pulling him in for a hug. Then didn’t. They weren’t really a hugging kind of family. Sometimes she wished they were. But she didn’t know how to change it now. “I didn’t think I was going to see you until September.”
“I was heading up from Red Bluff, going to an event in George, Washington. This is a little out of my way, but I figured that I would stop in for a bit.”
It was difficult to believe sometimes that Dane was her little brother. He towered over her by at least a foot. Broad-shouldered, rugged and with the kind of smile that made women weak in the knees. She was proud of him. And always a little bit nervous about just how he used his good looks and charm.
He was a bull rider.
All adrenaline, here and now and no thought for the future. Constantly living for the action, never worrying about the reaction.
But she loved him.
They’d had it rough growing up. Their dad had been in their lives only intermittently until he’d finally left for good, their mom making it impossible for them to have a relationship with him. Not—she supposed—that he’d tried that hard to change it.
They’d grown up in a single-wide trailer, a small space for three people, and yet Lindy had always felt like there were walls between them. Their mom was a proud woman. So proud she could hardly bend down to give her children a hug.
Distance. That was what she and Dane had both learned, and learned well. To rely on no one but themselves.
“How long are you going to be here?” she asked.
“The rodeo starts in two days. So really, I need to get out of here tomorrow. I don’t want to hassle with the traffic. Lots of people are going to be coming in on the highway.”
“This is one of the big ones, isn’t it?”
“Yep,” he said.
“Do you have any breaks after this?”
“I’ve got a few small events down South, just things to build up points. But there’s some downtime in July, before the big stuff. Sisters, Pendleton and Vegas.”
“I have a feeling that Wyatt is going to ask if you want to do some things over our Fourth of July event that we’re planning. I don’t actually know if he’s going to have you ride bulls.”
“Well, I’m not going to barrel race,” Dane said, as if that was the most ridiculous thing in the entire world.
“I’d pay to see that,” she said.
“It’s for girls,” he said.
“Right,” Lindy shot back, crossing her arms. “And mostly, you’re afraid that you’d get beaten.”
“Hell yeah,” he said. “You need precision for that. A connection with your horse. Do you know what you need to ride bulls? Big balls and the subtlety of a blunt instrument.”
Lindy knew that you needed more than that, particularly to get where Dane had gotten in life. Where Damien had helped him get. She resisted asking about that. Asking about Damien. She knew that he was still around, managing various aspects of different riders’ careers. But not Dane’s.
The minute that Dane had found out about Damien’s infidelity, Dane had gone scorched-earth-no-survivors on his brother-in-law.
In fact, he had done what he could to break off Damien’s relationship with the professional association. He hadn’t been entirely successful, but she knew that he had convinced several riders to start working with outside PR people and refuse to work with Damien.
Whatever she thought about her brother’s day-to-day morality, he had come through for her in the end. The two of them against the world.
“So, basically you’re crashing on my couch overnight?” There would be no crashing on her couch. She lived in a gigantic house all by herself. There were more than enough bedrooms for Dane to have his pick.
In point of fact, she would be surprised if he ended up spending the night at her place. It was more likely that he would end up in the Gold Valley Saloon picking up a new conquest.
“That’s about the size of it,” he said.
“You know you’re always welcome.”
She sighed heavily, and then lifted her hands above her head, locking them together and flexing them backward, stretching herself upward from the center of her chest, drawing her shoulder blades down and trying to release some of the tension in her body.
“I think you’re doing too much,” Dane commented, following her out of her office and into the main dining room of Grassroots Winery.
Over the past couple of years Lindy had overhauled the facility and opened a satellite tasting room in the town of Copper Ridge.
The dining room—where they hosted lunches, weddings, parties and pretty much anything else—was a converted barn that had been on the property for years, now carefully crafted into a rustic and elegant setting.
They had a few guests, sitting and eating cheese platters while drinking wine flights and visiting.
The vast, wooden chandeliers that hung down at the center of the high, arched ceiling were blazing with a golden glow, bathing the room in soft lighting.
It was beautiful. Perfect.
Hers.
The kind of thing she never could have imagined when she was a girl growing up in a Gold Valley trailer park on the dying edge of town.
A place with more empty buildings than businesses.
Her former sister-in-law, turned sister by choice, Sabrina Donnelly was standing behind the counter scribbling on an order form.
She and Sabrina had always had a lot in common. From the moment they’d met, Lindy felt like she’d found the sister of her heart. While her former mother-in-law and father-in-law had given her a less than welcoming reception into the family, Sabrina had been warm and open.
Of course, that had been due in part to the fact that Sabrina had been estranged from her father—over something to do with Liam Donnelly.
Liam Donnelly who now, finally, some fourteen years later, was Sabrina’s husband.
“Hey, Sabrina,” Dane said.
Sabrina looked up, smiling. “Hi yourself.” Then, her eyes fell to Lindy, and Lindy must have been telegraphing something because Sabrina’s expression changed to one of concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“She’s doing too much,” Dane said.
“I am not doing too much.”
She was doing things, yes. Making changes. But they were all good, and she was happy with them.
It was likely that if she looked taxed it was because her mind kept going over and over the fact that Wyatt had finally sent her an email after resolutely ignoring her emails. And that it was clearly connected to the conversation they’d had yesterday.
But there was nothing she could do about any of that. She had the exact amount of things to do that had to be done, and she had to deal with Wyatt Dodge.
All of that was regrettable in some form or another, but it was better than being impoverished. Better than being married to a man who was sleeping with other women behind her back.
All things considered, life was great.
It didn’t mean that her muscles weren’t tired and her neck wasn’t stiff, but still.
“I know that she is,” Sabrina said. “But, this looked like something might be going on in addition to that.”
“Nothing is going on,” she said.
Sabrina and Dane continued to stare at her.
“There isn’t,” she said, defensively. “I mean I’m navigating the Wyatt Dodge situation, but other than that...”
“What Wyatt Dodge situation?” Dane asked.
“The one I mentioned to you earlier,” she explained. “You know. Rodeo events and all the other various crap he’s trying to add to our event. That in and of itself is a whole thing. That’s what I meant by that.”
“Is he giving you a hard time?” Dane asked.
“Does he ever not give someone a hard time?”
Dane smiled. “Not really. That’s kind of his thing.”
“Well, good to know that I’m not special.” Those words seemed to echo inside of her, reverberating and lingering and in general just not going away.
She seemed to be the only one who noticed that, however, which was welcome. She didn’t want anyone studying her too closely. Didn’t want anyone trying to get a read on her thoughts. Or her feelings.
She was violently opposed to most of the thoughts and feelings she had surrounding Wyatt Dodge that didn’t involve pushing his head through a wall. And sadly, those thoughts and feelings existed.
She had always prided herself on her ability to hold two thoughts in her head at one time. She was a dreamer, and she was a pragmatist. She had experienced a life of poverty, and a life of plenty, and she had always imagined those things had given her the capacity to understand that reality was complex.
She was a lot less self-congratulatory about the fact that she found Wyatt simultaneously infuriating and sexually compelling.
And she was downright ashamed of the fact that there seemed to be a part of her that had hoped that Wyatt’s teasing was something reserved just for her.
She knew better than that. Knew better than to want that. Particularly from someone she didn’t even like.
As if your judgment when it comes to men is good enough to consider liking them a decent litmus test?
She gritted her teeth. “Anyway. Nothing out of the ordinary. I mean, at least, nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the last couple of years. Expansion is...” She lifted her hand and rolled her wrist in a physical indication of the march of time. “Expansion. The future.”
“Right,” Dane said, grabbing hold of her hand and shaking it gently before drawing it downward. “But if you work yourself into an early grave you don’t get to enjoy that future.”
“I am not about to be lectured on longevity by a bull rider.”
Dane opened his mouth to say something smart-ass, no doubt, and was stopped by a slamming door coming from the back room of the converted barn.
Lindy didn’t have to ask to know who it was. “Are you all right, Bea?”
“Fine,” came the cheerful reply.
Lindy’s other former sister-in-law, Beatrix Leighton—usually called Bea—came in to the room, breathless and smiling. That smile only got bigger when she saw Dane standing there.
“I didn’t know you were coming to town,” she said, her cheeks turning an extremely obvious shade of pink.
Dane, for his part, seemed oblivious to the pinkness of Bea’s cheeks. Which was just as well. Bea was one of the most caring, good-natured people Lindy had ever met. She’d been thirteen when Damien and Lindy had gotten married, and just like Sabrina, she felt like a sister to Lindy.
When the dust had settled, and the ink had dried on the divorce papers, there was a reason Sabrina and Bea had stayed loyal to her. They were family by choice.
Sadly, Bea didn’t have familial feelings for Dane. Though, Lindy knew Dane only had brotherly feelings for Bea.
Dane was a player. He was all smiles and easy banter on the outside, but beneath that he was like Lindy. A little bit hardened by life. A little bit cynical.
Bea didn’t have a cynical bone in her body.
“Just for the night,” he said.
“We should do something,” Bea said, nodding.
“Should we?” Dane asked.
“I’m tired,” Lindy said.
Bea looked at her with large eyes. “Lindy,” she said, “Dane’s here.”
“Yes,” Lindy responded. “I had noticed. He’s kind of difficult to miss.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment, Lin,” he said.
“It wasn’t.”
“I can see if Liam wants to go out tonight,” Sabrina said.
Sabrina’s husband was an integral part of managing the business of the tasting room in Copper Ridge, and he was also a rancher, working the Donnelly family ranch, the Laughing Irish. Lindy would be surprised if he had any more energy to go out than she did.
“I’m going to be in Gold Valley,” Bea put in. “I’m starting up work at Valley Veterinary with Kaylee Capshaw.”
Valley Veterinary was the clinic that Wyatt’s brother owned along with his best friend turned fiancée. She had generously offered a job to Bea, who was forever bringing small animals in need of tending back to the winery, much to Lindy’s chagrin. This was going to be a much better way for Bea to channel her bleeding heart, as far as Lindy was concerned.
It would give her something to focus on, a life away from the winery. Bea might be part of the same family as Lindy’s ex-husband, they might have the same genes, but Bea was not cut from the same cloth.
Sabrina was different, but she did have some of that Leighton reserve. Bea didn’t seem to have it at all. She was open, energetic and willing to forge paths where most people would see none. Her optimism was almost boundless, and that was one of the things that made Lindy worry on her behalf.
Especially when it came to her very obvious crush on Lindy’s brother.
Just another reason Bea needed to get out and get a life beyond Grassroots.
“He might not want to come out that far,” Sabrina said. “But I will see.”
“I’m game.” Dane smiled.
“Me too,” Lindy added quickly, before she could stop herself. But honestly, she was not going to send Dane and Bea out to a bar together.
Dane would end up hooking up with some random woman, and Bea would just sit there in the corner by herself like one of the wounded raccoons she often rescued from desolate roadsides.
Lindy could not stomach that.
Bea would grow out of her crush naturally. She didn’t need it bludgeoned to death in a small-town bar with an audience of gossips ready to spread it around like wildfire through pine trees.
“Great,” Dane said. “I’ll go toss my stuff in the house. Then we can head over to the bar after work.”
“Work for the rest of us,” she pointed out. “Some of us here never got real jobs.”
“Hey,” Dane said. “If you can get work being a cowboy, I highly recommend it.”
He winked and walked out of the room, and Lindy couldn’t help but notice the way that Bea’s eyes followed his every move. Okay, that gave her something else to worry about at least. She didn’t have to think about her issues with the upcoming barbecue and all the work that there was left to do as long as she focused on being a buffer between her poor, lovelorn sister-in-law and her brother.
One thing was for sure, it was a welcome change from thinking about Wyatt Dodge.
CHAPTER THREE (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
WYATT NEEDED A stiff drink and some meaningless sex. There were a couple of barriers to the sex. There was the fact that his younger sister, Jamie, had accompanied him to Gold Valley Saloon tonight. There was the fact that his brother Grant had come along as well. And then, there was the lingering issue of the fact that he couldn’t get one particular woman off his mind.
There were no barriers to the stiff drink, however, and he was headed right that way.
Jamie and Grant went to claim a table, but Wyatt wasted no time heading straight over to the bar.
“Laz,” he said, signaling the owner of the bar. “I need a drink.”
“Feeling picky about what?”
“I’d say it’s your choice, but you’d pick something aged and expensive. I just need something strong enough to burn the day off.”
“Cheap swill it is,” Laz said smiling, turning and grabbing hold of a bottle of whiskey and pouring Wyatt a measure of it.
He slid it down the scarred countertop and Wyatt caught hold of it, tipping his hat before lifting it to his lips. “Put it on my tab,” he said.
“Will do,” Laz responded.
Wyatt turned and surveyed the room, leaning back against the bar for a moment as he did so. It was pretty empty now, considering it was early in the evening. But as the night wore on it would fill with people who were looking for the exact same thing he was.
All day long on the streets of Gold Valley, you could walk down the sidewalk and run into friends. Neighbors. They would ask you how your day went, and he would say good. And all along you would both continue with smiles pasted onto your face.
But in the saloon, when darkness descended on the cheerful streets, that was when you met your neighbors for honest conversation. That was when they finally wore their cares on their faces while they tried to drink them away.
Here, there was honesty. Here, there was alcohol, and a good game of darts.
Wyatt preferred it to daytime small talk every time.
He was something of a bar aficionado. Having been to a great many towns, large and small, in his travels with the rodeo, he had been exposed to a whole lot of different scenery. A whole lot of different people.
And it was in his experience that the bars were the great equalizer. That was where everyone went. Young, old, rich, poor. To celebrate, to commiserate.
That was where, in essence, everyone and everyplace was the same.
He looked down into the whiskey glass. “Damn,” he commented. “This is good stuff.”
If he was feeling philosophical already, it had to be pretty strong.
He pushed away from the bar and walked over to the table where his siblings were waiting.
“You didn’t get a drink for me?” Grant asked.
“I don’t know how the hell much you had to drink today,” Wyatt returned. “I’m not enabling you.”
“I don’t drink too much,” Grant said, but they both knew that wasn’t true.
Wyatt knew for a fact that his brother had to have a drink every night before he went to bed, or he couldn’t sleep. But that was one of those things they didn’t discuss. At least not at length. They made jokes about it, they could mention it in passing. But they could never get into what it actually meant.
The Dodges were a close family, but it was a stretch to call them emotionally well-adjusted.
“You know I haven’t had too much to drink today,” Jamie said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms.
“Yeah, I also pay you enough that you can go get your own.”
Jamie scowled. Then she sat up, planting both booted feet on the ground, pushing herself into a standing position. “All right. I’m going to get a drink.”
Grant stared at her. She stared back. And then she sighed heavily. “What do you want?”
“Whiskey,” he responded.
“Of course.” She shook her head, her dark ponytail swinging with the motion, and then she headed over toward the bar.
A few of the men sitting at tables around them followed her movements, and Wyatt was sure to give them his deadliest glare. Jamie was twenty-four, certainly old enough to have her own life and date and all of that. But age had nothing to do with the fact that none of the assholes in this bar—hell, none of the cowboys in this town—were good enough for his younger sister.
Jamie, for her part, seemed oblivious. That suited him just fine.
“So,” Grant said, leveling his dark gaze on Wyatt. “What crawled up your ass and died?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re in a crappy mood.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Wyatt said, folding his arms over his chest.
He was conscious of the fact that he was mimicking his sister’s body language from a moment ago.
“I do,” Grant said.
“Right. And I’m supposed to take commentary on my mood from a guy who has been in a crappy mood for the past decade?”
“I wasn’t criticizing. I was just asking.”
“Just got a lot going on,” he said. Because he wasn’t going to say that he was stressing out about whether or not he was going to be able to fulfill their father’s directive.
That he was afraid he was going to let them all down. That Jamie was going to end up out of work and Grant was going to have left his boring but long-running career at the power company for nothing.
It was easy for him to convince himself that his father wouldn’t actually sell the ranch. Because the fact of the matter was, Quinn Dodge was a hard-ass, but he was a hard-ass who loved his kids.
That was the conclusion that Wyatt would come to if it were any of his other siblings in his position.
But it wasn’t Grant. It wasn’t Jamie. It wasn’t Bennett.
It was Wyatt Dodge spearheading this project. And deep down he had a feeling that his father might just let him fail. Not just himself, but his brothers and his sister.
That was something he could never explain to Grant. Nobody else had the relationship with Quinn that Wyatt had. And it was his own damn fault. It was a situation he created. A relationship that he’d earned.
He couldn’t even be pissed about it.
Except he was.
“Oh,” Grant said, looking somewhere past Wyatt.
“What?” Wyatt shifted in his chair.
“She’s here.”
Wyatt didn’t have to ask who. He froze in his chair, his jaw hardening. He felt like...he felt like he was in damned high school, and he resented that. His younger brother telling him not to look. And him resolutely not looking.
To hell with that.
He lifted his glass and swallowed it down in one gulp. “I’ll be back.”
He pushed away from the table and stood, turning and seeing Lindy standing there. And it was like someone had put their fist through his stomach, grabbed hold of his internal organs and twisted hard.
It reminded him of that first time. But then, every time he saw her it reminded him of the first time.
He gritted his teeth and began walking toward her. And he knew the moment she saw him. Her eyes didn’t meet his, no. And she very resolutely did not look in his direction. But she knew that he was there. He could see it. In the way that her shoulders suddenly went stiff, in the way that her whole body got ramrod straight. To the casual observer it might look like she simply had a neutral expression on her face. One that hadn’t changed in the past ten seconds. But he was not a casual observer.
No, her face had changed too. There was a firmness to the corners of her mouth. Intent. The absence of a smile or frown, totally and completely purposeful.
“You didn’t respond to my email,” he said. “I’m wounded.”
She tilted her head slightly, looking up at him. Then, she faked surprise. As if she truly hadn’t realized he was there until right then.
That shouldn’t get him hot. Nothing about her should get him hot. But everything did. Everything damn well did.
“Sorry. Were you expecting a same-day response? I didn’t think that you engaged with such newfangled technology all that often.”
“Nice to see you too.”
“Right.”
He grinned. “Most people would say that it was also nice to see me. That’s manners, Melinda.”
The light behind her eyes indicated that she wanted very much to tear his throat out. But her expression betrayed that not at all. “We didn’t go over how to handle infuriating cowboys in deportment.”
She hated it when he called her Melinda. He knew that. He also loved saying it. Because no one else did. It put him in the mind of other things he might do to her that no one else was currently doing.
Unless he had the read of it wrong. Maybe she had a different lover every night. It was possible, for all he knew.
Just because his balls were all bound up in wanting her, didn’t mean her body was similarly bound up in wanting him.
“Now that’s a shame,” he said. “How are you supposed to go on if you don’t know whether or not you’re supposed to hold your pinkie out when you tell me to go fuck myself.”
“Oh, I know which finger to hold up when I tell you that, Wyatt Dodge. Don’t you worry about that.”
“What brings you out here tonight?”
A moment later, his question was answered when in came her brother, and a friend of his from the rodeo, Dane Parker. Followed by her former sister-in-law Beatrix Leighton.
“They were parking,” Lindy said, by way of explanation. “I mean. They were parking the truck. They weren’t out parking.”
That made him think of all the things he might be able to accomplish if Lindy went parking with him.
Yet again, he felt like he was back in high school.
He really did resent that.
“Dane,” he said, reaching around Lindy to offer his hand to the other man. “Didn’t know you were going to be in town.”
“I live to be a surprise. Lindy mentioned that you might have a job for me coming up in a few weeks.”
“If by job you mean being unpaid entertainment for a mob of people. Yes.”
“For the big launch event for Get Out of Dodge?” Dane asked.
“Yes. But, it benefits Grassroots Winery too,” Wyatt put in. “You know, since we have such a cozy partnership now.”
Lindy’s perfectly placid expression slipped. Just for a moment. “Right. I guess we’d better go find a table.”
“There’s one right next to us,” he said, because the hell if he was going to let her avoid him. The hell if he was going to sit in the same bar as her and let her pretend he wasn’t here. The hell he was going to spend all night trying not to look over at her.
“Thanks,” Bea said, her tone bright. Dane thanked him too, both of them clearly oblivious to the fact that Lindy wanted to scream.
Wyatt led the way back over to his table, and he ignored Grant’s assessing gaze. It didn’t escape Wyatt’s notice that Lindy took the seat at the table that put her farthest away from him.
A moment later Jamie reappeared, smiling broadly when she saw the new additions. “Bea,” she said, sliding her chair over slightly and putting herself next to her. “Good to see you.”
It surprised Wyatt that Bea and Jamie were friends. Though, they were the same age. Just about. But still, Bea was softer, fine-boned and possessing the femininity of a vaguely feral fairy. Jamie was tall, no-nonsense and, as far as Wyatt knew, resolutely allergic to dresses.
Bea started talking with broad hand gestures about some of the animals she had cared for at the clinic today, and suddenly Wyatt understood the connection. Animals. Jamie had practically been born in the saddle. Horses were her passion. And Bea seemed to like anything with four legs.
“I’m going to get a drink,” Lindy said.
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
He ignored the look earned from Grant as he and Lindy walked toward the bar.
“Let me ask you a question,” Lindy said. “Do you try to get on my nerves?”
“To be perfectly honest with you, angel, I don’t have to try. You make it too easy.”
“So you were that boy.”
“What boy?” he asked, as the two of them sidled up to the bar. Lindy pressed her delicate hands down on that scarred wooden countertop, and he pressed his down alongside hers.
For a moment, all he could do was stare at the contrast the two of them made. Her smooth hands, with long, fine-boned fingers, not a single scar to be seen. His own, weathered, with more than a few chunks taken from them.
If he were to take hold of her, his hand would cover hers entirely.
If he were to pull her up against his body, the contrast would be much the same. Soft. Hard. Smooth. Weathered.
“The one that pulled pigtails,” she said, not looking at him when she spoke.
Something stirred inside of him, and he just couldn’t stop himself from saying what he said next. “I still pull pigtails,” he said. “If the lady asks me nicely.”
She looked at him, a cautious expression in her blue eyes. Like she was about to give the answer to a math problem she’d done in her head, and wasn’t entirely certain of. “I doubt that’s ever happened.”
“Sure it has.” He grinned and waited. For her to get mad. For her to blush. Something.
Except, now he was going to end up thinking about that for far too long. Usually, she met him barb for barb. But this particular innuendo didn’t seem to resonate. Maybe that was because she wasn’t standing there mired in sexual tension. Maybe it was because she didn’t think of him that way.
But it might just speak to other things. Inexperience he wouldn’t have thought a woman who’d been married for a decade could possibly have.
That forced him to wonder. To wonder about her marriage, which he shouldn’t do. Especially because she had been married to a man that he considered a casual friend.
“Whatever, Wyatt. I want a drink, not more of your inane commentary.” She turned away from him, clearly frustrated by that interaction. Maybe because she hadn’t managed to verbally maneuver her way to the top of it. “Hi, Laz,” she said as the bartender approached them. “I’d like an IPA.”
“An IPA,” he said. “Wow.”
“Do you have a commentary on my choice of beer?” she asked as Laz turned and retrieved a bottle for her.
“I made my commentary.” He turned his attention to the bartender. “I’ll have whatever you’ve got on tap that isn’t an IPA.”
“I imagine you have opinions on the masculinity of that beer?”
“Not particularly. I didn’t ever figure beer had a gender.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“I just think it’s bad beer. And if I wanted to lick a pine tree I would.”
“I would almost pay good money to watch you do a wine tasting.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I imagine that your palate is as unsophisticated as the rest of you.”
He chuckled. “And I imagine you think that’s an insult. But, in order for me to feel insulted by that I would have to care.”
“Thank you,” she said to Laz, ignoring him completely.
“You can put her terrible drink on my tab too,” Wyatt said, turning away from the bar.
“Don’t put my drink on your tab,” Lindy said. “Don’t put my drink on his tab,” she said to Laz.
“Put the drink on my tab,” Wyatt reiterated.
“I’ll pay for the drink if you don’t knock it off,” Laz said.
“I can pay for the drink,” Lindy said, through gritted teeth. “Put his drink on my tab.”
“This isn’t a contest,” he said.
“I’m not a charity case,” Lindy said. “We are in a business partnership.”
“I wasn’t treating you like a charity case. I was just going to pay for your drink.”
She lifted her chin, her expression defiant. “And I don’t need you to.”
“I’m not really sure why you’re intent on making all of this a battle. We’re working together, remember?”
“I know,” she said, but she sounded slightly more subdued than she had a moment ago.
“I swear, I enjoy getting on your nerves, but I’m not actively trying to start a fight with you.”
She looked skeptical. “Is there a difference?”
“Yes. I like to tease you. I don’t actually want to make it so the two of us can’t have a conversation.”
“I don’t like to be teased,” she said, looking at him from beneath blond lashes.
She looked younger right then. He didn’t know why. It made him want to be nicer. To try to be a little bit more sincere.
“That’s going to be a problem,” he said. “Because I am what I am.”
“I didn’t sign on to be teased,” she said. “I just want to make this work.”
The two of them stepped away from the bar, but didn’t head back to the tables. “So let me ask you this,” he said, a thought occurring to him for the first time. “Did you approach me to make this partnership to get back at Damien?”
Her expression turned mulish. “Why would you think that?”
“Because. He’s my friend. You’re his ex-wife.”
“Do you really consider him a friend?”
Wyatt shrugged. “I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t talked to him in a couple of months. I’m not part of the rodeo circuit anymore, so we’re not really running in the same circles. Some people you hang out with mostly because of the proximity. Not because you choose to. And I’d be lying if I said his behavior during the end of your marriage didn’t impact my opinion of him.”
She blinked. “Really?”
“Yes. What he did was a jerk move.”
She frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought you would care much either way.”
“Turns out I do.” He let out slow breath. “Fact of the matter is, I’ve never done commitment. But hey, maybe that’s because I know myself well enough to know I’m not cut out for it. I figure if a man makes vows he ought to keep them.”
“So, you think he’s a jerk?” she asked, her fingers shifting over the bottle of beer, making him think of what it would be like to have those fingers on him.
“Oh, honey, I know he’s a jerk,” Wyatt said.
“Well, that’s mildly placating, I have to say.”
“I’m a lot of things, Lindy,” he said, not using her full name, seeking as much of a truce as they could continue to have. “But I’m a man of my word. That means I don’t give it very often. But a man only has his word, as far as I’m concerned, when all is said and done. If I can’t promise something, I don’t. That means I have no respect for a man who can’t do the same.”
She narrowed her eyes, her blue gaze roaming over his face as if she was seeing him for the first time. “I value that in a business partner. It has to be said.”
“Good. I can’t promise that I’m not going to irritate you after this, you understand that, right?”
“Now you’re forcing me to respect that. Since you’re refusing to say something just to placate me, and you’re standing by that honesty thing.” She sighed, as if she was intensely aggrieved. “But, I guess I have to accept that, don’t I?”
“You don’t have to. But it would make things easier.”
“Fine. Anyway, thank you for your comments on the brochures.”
“I still don’t really care about the brochures.”
“If you want then I can go ahead without asking you for your opinion on things like design.”
“I’d kind of like that,” he said, then he frowned. “But I don’t want you to feel like it’s all on you either.”
The crease between her brows relaxed, and he realized this might be the first time he had ever seen her without it. “Really?”
“You’re doing a hell of a lot, Lindy. It doesn’t seem right to put it all on you.”
“You’re the one basically reopening his business right now. The winery has been slowly expanding, but I’ve never had to do a full relaunch. I think right now your plate is probably a little bit fuller than mine.”
“Okay. We can’t be too nice to each other either. I don’t like it.”
She smiled. A small smile, just the corners of her mouth turning slightly upward, but he would take it. “I’m sure we’ll relapse eventually.”
“Fair enough. Any other business stuff you want to cover?”
She tapped the side of that beer bottle, his eyes drawn again to the way she held on to the slender neck. His blood burned in his veins.
“I imagine that much like I had you take a few bottles of wine so that you had some idea of the product you were going to be pushing on your willing victims, I’m going to need to have some idea of the trail rides happening at the winery. Do you think that Jamie could... Do you think she would mind taking me out?”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind at all,” Wyatt said. In fact, he had a feeling Jamie would love nothing more.
“Okay. Maybe we could set something up in the next week, then?”
“Okay.”
“I’m not a very experienced rider.”
Those words were like the burn of a match being struck against his skin, a flame put to his already heated blood.
“Is that so?”
“No. I haven’t... I haven’t been on a horse in years.”
He clenched his teeth. “I don’t think it’s a very challenging ride.”
“Good,” she said, looking relieved.
“We should head back over,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the tables where Bea and Jamie were still talking, and Grant was looking sullen.
“Right,” she said.
Reflexively, he reached out and pressed his fingers to her forearm, as if to guide her back toward the table.
And that was a big mistake.
The press of his fingertips against that soft, bare skin of her arm was like an explosion.
He jerked his hand back, as if he’d been burned. Because he felt sure that he had been.
Her gaze flew to his, something sharp in them now. Worse, he could see the heat that was still burning his fingertips reflected there.
She wasn’t unaffected by him. Not at all.
“Before we go back over there,” she said quickly. “Grant isn’t interested in dating again, is he?”
CHAPTER FOUR (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
SHE WAS AS stupid as she was transparent. She didn’t care if Grant wanted to date again. She wasn’t interested in Grant like that at all. But she had to do something to...something. To diffuse that very obvious moment that had just happened between herself and Wyatt.
She didn’t like this. Not at all.
She didn’t like feeling like she didn’t have the upper hand on a social situation. Didn’t like feeling as if everything around her was so far beyond her she could never reach it.
That was her entire experience in the early days of dating Damien and being his wife. Feeling like she had just walked into the room in the middle of a conversation and had to spend every moment thereafter playing catch-up.
She hated that feeling. More than anything.
Well, that wasn’t true. Actually, she hated finding out that her husband had been having an affair for years and years even more. Although, it was a different side of the same coin. Being out of the loop. Being ignorant. Being small.
Somehow less than everyone that surrounded her.
Wyatt didn’t make her feel like she was less, but he made her feel something. And she didn’t like it.
She’d gotten her balance in a small sense when she had demanded that Laz put Wyatt’s drink on her tab.
But then, he had touched her.
He had touched her, and she hadn’t been able to disguise her response to it. She could see it in his eyes. That he thought he knew exactly what she felt. And even if it was true, even if he did, she was not going to let him have that.
She enjoyed this. That hesitation in his eyes. The tightening in his jaw. The fact that she had him on his back foot. Yeah, she liked that a lot better than feeling like she was on hers.
He tilted his head back. “Grant, huh?”
“He seems like a nice guy. Good-looking too.”
“Right.” His teeth were clenched so tight she’d be surprised if he didn’t chip one. Maybe that shouldn’t satisfy her. But it did.
“Just wondering if you have the inside track on that.” She tried to look both cool and interested at the same time.
He lifted a brow. “I expect you could ask him yourself.”
“Oh, I expect I could.” She kept her tone light but steady. She had a feeling it was that lightness that had him caught so off guard.
“Then why ask me?” He was trying to sound casual too. Unlike her, he was failing.
“Everyone could use a good wingman, Wyatt. If you wanted to be mine, I would hardly say no.” She smiled, and he didn’t.
“I’ll pass.”
She lifted her shoulder. “Suit yourself. But, I would have returned the favor.”
“Wingmen are for amateurs, honey,” he said. “I’ve never needed one yet.”
He walked away from her, heading back over to their shared corner of the saloon. She was captivated watching him. Even angry at him. Even with him angry at her.
Those broad shoulders, narrow waist. His ass in those jeans.
She didn’t know who she was when she looked at him. The things she noticed. What it made her want.
She stood for a moment and took a breath trying to get a hold of herself. It was only then that she realized her hands were shaking. Dammit.
She crossed the room, making her way back over to the table. “Why don’t you sit next to Grant?” Wyatt asked, giving her an evil smirk from his position in his chair.
And that made her suspect that he didn’t believe her at all. Asshole.
“Sure,” she said, easily, casually. She took a seat next to Grant. “We haven’t had a chance to talk much,” she said, turning to the other man.
Grant was looking at her, somewhat blandly, and she felt a small twinge of guilt. She wasn’t interested in him. She didn’t want him to think she was. Not when she wasn’t going to actually follow up.
That was a new low. Using a widowed man as a pawn in her control game.
But, his extreme and apparent lack of interest made her feel less guilty immediately.
Somehow, they stumbled through the rest of the evening making conversation. And she could feel Wyatt’s eyes on her the entire time. But she refused to look back at him.
* * *
WYATT WAS IN a foul mood by the time he got home. It was late, and he was slightly drunk. He, Grant and Jamie had all had a bit too much to drink to drive home, and they’d had to call on Bennett to come and pick them up. Bennett had muttered about their poor planning, and the fact that he’d had to leave his fiancée and home to come bail his asshole siblings out because they hadn’t chosen a designated driver.
Wyatt had not told him about the fact that the three of them had discussed using Bennett as a designated driver before they had gone out for the evening. The fact of the matter was, they had known that their more responsible brother would be on hand to deal with them.
Hell, the man had the benefit of going home to his fiancée and son every day after work. He could deal with his siblings who were single and alone.
Not that Wyatt had ever felt like marriage and kids were the goal for him.
Still, he was in a bad mood, and he wasn’t supposed to be. A night of drinking had been intended to cure his ills, not add to them. But that encounter with Lindy, her asking about Grant, yeah, that had all added some ills.
Then, the phone rang.
“Dad,” he said, doing his best to keep the whiskey slur out of his voice. “You know it’s midnight, right?”
“I know,” his father responded.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Freda and I were on the road all day. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to call.”
He also had a feeling that his father was standing outside of their camper. That he had waited until Freda had gone to sleep, because Wyatt’s stepmother would undoubtedly not approve at all of the situation.
The woman his father had married was one of the kindest people Wyatt had ever met. She had embraced Quinn Dodge’s kids like they were her own.
When Bennett’s son that he hadn’t known he’d had had shown up out of the blue, she embraced him as a grandson. Not that Quinn hadn’t, it was just that it never failed to amaze Wyatt that this woman who hadn’t raised them treated them like she had.
That she was in many ways much easier than Quinn never would be.
But then, maybe that was part of it. She didn’t know him. Not really.
His father did.
“Right. But, it’s not like you called to say good night.”
“You know I didn’t,” Quinn said, his tone firm but gentle. “I called to check on the project.”
“Right. The ranch. The one that you’re going to sell out from underneath me if I don’t get my stuff together.”
“It’s not like that. Ranching is hard business, Wyatt. I barely kept our heads above water all those years. Hell, if it weren’t for the money you earned riding in the rodeo we would have gone under. You know that.”
Yeah, his rodeo money. Money that landed somewhere between trying to atone for a sin he wasn’t sure he was sorry for and a big middle finger. His dad had wanted him to stand on his own, to get on without support...and the money had been nice proof that he’d gone and done that. “I know. But doesn’t that make the place even more mine?”
“It makes you even more invested, sure. Invested in pouring money into a pit. I’ve done it for a lot of years. I don’t want the same thing for you, unless it looks like it will be more than a pit. The problem with ranching is it gets under your skin. You get addicted to it. You can’t let it go even when you should.”
“Right. I’m sure that’s it,” Wyatt said. “You being concerned that I’ll take another hit of this dusty brand of heroin we call being a cowboy.”
His head was starting to hurt and his mood was just getting meaner. They’d had this talk at least four times, and Wyatt didn’t like it any more now than he had the first time.
“You can be angry at me if you want,” Quinn said, “but that doesn’t change the reality of the situation. If you can get it off to a good start, then I’m more than happy to let it go without interfering. But take it from someone who spent his whole life working that land. It’s not that easy. You think it is, because you managed to skip off and make money as a performing cowboy, Wyatt, but being a real cowboy is not that easy. And it’s not that fun. Grant’s been through enough. Jamie’s been through enough. If we can’t get it together to save the place... We can’t get it together.”
Wyatt gritted his teeth. “There’s no we,” he said. “We’re not in this together. We—you and me—we’re working against each other.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Quinn said, his voice rough. “Whatever you think, I’m on your team. I know it didn’t feel like it when you were a kid, getting his butt whupped for letting the cows out and causing trouble. I know it didn’t feel like it when you were in high school and I grounded your ass for sneaking out. But this is the same.”
Right. A team. A team where Wyatt had been left all on his own.
Be a man.
As if that was advice. As if that was enough.
He supposed neither of them were in the mood to discuss why Wyatt had left home in the first place. Not in the mood to talk about the first time his father had fallen in love after Wyatt’s mother’s death and had brought home a woman he’d intended to marry.
A woman who had ended up in Wyatt’s bed.
They were never in the mood for that.
“You can see it however you want,” Wyatt said. “It doesn’t change what I have to do. It doesn’t change that I’m working against the clock because of you.”
“You’re a bull rider, Wyatt. Working against the clock is what you do. So do it now. Complete the ride. If anyone can do it, I think you can.”
Wyatt hung up the phone then. Because he didn’t think his father really believed that.
And there was no amount of whiskey-laden late-night phone calls that could change his assessment of that.
He should go to sleep. There were no decisions made past midnight under the influence of alcohol that were good. That was an absolute fact. There were no scientific breakthroughs, no cures for any diseases, or anything else that came out of this hour and level of sobriety.
But then, even sober, Wyatt Dodge wasn’t going to accomplish any of that. So none of it mattered anyway.
He picked his phone back up and stared at it for a moment.
He was not going to call her. It was late. And he had manners.
But he opened up a new message box and typed in a text.
If you have time tomorrow, we can go for that ride.
He sent the message.
Yeah, he had told her that Jamie would take her out, and he had meant it then. But, now, he was going to do it. This was his business. This was his ranch. His partnership with Grassroots.
And hell, if Lindy could take that winery and make it something bigger, something better, after Damien, there was no reason why he couldn’t make Get Out of Dodge something better than his father had made it.
Maybe his dad didn’t think he could. And hell, maybe Wyatt had never given him a reason to think that he could. But that was going to change. That was going to damn well change.
What time?
The response surprised him. As well as the lack of questioning over why Jamie wasn’t going to be the one leading the ride.
Lunchtime.
Okay.
He groaned and threw his phone down on the couch, heading up the stairs toward his room. There. He had made a decision.
It was about the ranch. He refused to believe that it had anything to do with spending time alone with Lindy. That something about that conversation with his father had riled up the devil in him.
As long as the devil was productive, he didn’t much care.
CHAPTER FIVE (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
EARLY THE NEXT morning Lindy couldn’t figure out what had possessed her to agree to go on a trail ride with Wyatt Dodge today.
Originally, the plan had been for Jamie to take her. They had discussed that. But somehow, when she had still been awake, tossing and turning, her phone had dinged, and she had looked at it. She had seen his name and she had...
She didn’t know what she had wanted. Didn’t know what she had hoped.
She hadn’t expected an invitation to go riding. But she had found herself agreeing.
And then she had fallen into a fitful sleep, where she had dreamed of weird arguments with Wyatt, where they were bickering over where Grant was going to take her out to dinner.
Then she had woken up, relieved that she wasn’t actually going to dinner with Grant, but not all that relieved that she was going for a ride with Wyatt.
She scrubbed at her face and rolled out from beneath her down-filled duvet and grimaced as the chill in her bedroom settled over her skin.
One of the first things she had done when she had thrown Damien out was get a new mattress and a whole new bedroom set.
First of all, because she had always wanted a lovely, white bedspread with some artful accent pillows, and Damien had insisted they have something that was “for both of them and not just her.” Which had clearly meant, for him. Darker colors, to go with the heavy, dark wood frame that had gone with the bed. As he had gone, so had that.
But, she had also needed a new mattress, because she had very little confidence that he had never taken another woman to their bed, and she would be damned if she was spending one more moment sleeping on a mattress her husband had had sex with someone else on.
There were a great many chances to experience indignity in life, and she had been on the receiving end of that a few times. Damien was just lucky she had offered him the mattress instead of burning it like she had initially wanted to do.
She knew people didn’t believe it. Even her own mother thought she had just married Damien for his money. And that she had happily cut and run when she’d discovered his infidelity in part because she had never wanted him.
But she had. She had loved him. She had believed that he had loved her too. That he hadn’t cared where she had come from. That she had been enough for him.
What an idiot she’d turned out to be.
She wasn’t sure what was worse: letting everyone know just what an idiot she was, or letting them continue to believe that she was a heartless gold digger.
She had a feeling that public opinion on her was split down the middle.
But Wyatt thought that Damien was an idiot.
Which was perhaps why she felt even the tiniest bit charitable toward him. Was perhaps why she wasn’t so completely opposed to going on a trail ride with him today.
She ruminated on that while she got dressed. She found a pair of nice jeans—much more casual than she would normally wear—and a dark-colored button-up top that wouldn’t show any dirt she might pick up during the ride.
She pinned her blond hair back in a low bun and looked at her reflection critically. She was hardly recognizable as the person she used to be. The person she’d been before she had started dating Damien.
She was sleeker now. Much more sophisticated.
She used to be proud of that. The distance she had put between herself and what she’d been. Now, it felt a little bit like a poisoned chalice. After all, she was partly who she was because of Damien. And she... In the end, she despised what he stood for. What he could allow. What had been acceptable to him.
He had asked her one time to forgive him. Had told her that she was making a big mistake throwing their marriage away over a physical relationship.
He had said that sex didn’t matter.
But sex had mattered when she’d been a twenty-year-old virgin, cautiously giving him her body. He had said that it meant the world then. And that even though he had been with a couple of other women they didn’t matter, not in light of what sex between them meant. Because he’d said that with her it had been love. It had been everything.
After being married to the man for ten years she was supposed to believe that sex could also be nothing. As long as it was shared with someone else. Even though he had made vows to her.
She had wanted to scream. She had wanted to cry. To let her inner trailer park out, throw something at him, call him a string of foul names. But she hadn’t been able to. She’d been frozen. Frozen inside the body, inside the image that they had created together.
She hadn’t shed a single tear. Not then, not after.
She had simply told him no. That there was nothing left for them. That there would be no future for the two of them. Not after a betrayal like that.
He had gotten angry after that. He had blamed the dissolution of their marriage on her.
And after that...he had told her there was no other chance to get back with him. That he was leaving her for the other woman. That he was in love with her, and it didn’t mean nothing. That she was the most important relationship in his life.
Not Lindy.
She sighed heavily, turning away from her reflection. She wasn’t going to bother with any makeup beyond a tiny bit of mascara and some clear lipgloss anyway.
Odds were high that she’d end up with allergies, and she didn’t need a whole ton of eye makeup running down her face thanks to the horse and the pollen that would no doubt be swirling around them in the vineyard.
It was warm out, but still, she debated whether or not she should put out a pair of boots or a pair of tennis shoes. Ultimately, she decided on the tennis shoes, even though they did not make her outfit look as sharp as the boots would have.
She made her way downstairs, walking through the large, empty house, taking in the details. They spoke to the fact that it was now her house, and not a shared dwelling.
Her foot hit the landing and she made for the front door.
“Good morning,” came a scratchy, male voice coming from the direction of the dining area.
She jumped, pressing her hand to her chest. Then she remembered that she wasn’t alone.
“Dane,” she snapped, making her way from the entry and into the dining room, where her brother sat, his hat on the table in front of him, a cup of coffee on his left. The table was long, and always far too formal-looking. But with Dane at it, it bordered on ludicrous. “I forgot you were here.”
“Sorry.”
“Then don’t look so amused.”
“Sorry,” he said again.
“When are you heading out?”
“In about an hour. It’s a bit of a drive.”
She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
“Where are you headed? In jeans,” he said, lifting his brows.
He had known her when they were kids. When holey jeans and sneakers were her uniform. If even Dane was surprised to see her dressed down now, she truly had changed.
“I have to go in to my office.” Her office, which was just across the property in the back of the Grassroots dining room. “And then I’m going for a sample trail ride.”
“A sample trail ride, huh?”
“Yes. I need to know exactly what we are offering our guests, after all.”
“Very responsible.”
“I like to think I am.”
“Are you happy?”
She blinked, regarding her younger brother closely. “What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like it means. Are you happy?”
“No,” she said. “I mean... What’s happiness, Dane?”
“If I remember back to what they taught us in kindergarten, it’s a feeling.”
“You know what I mean. I’m tired right now. This has been a stressful couple of years. I’m not going to lie to you about that. But I’m accomplishing things. I’m taking this... I’m making it mine.” Suddenly, she realized how important that was. To be more than Damien’s creation. For this winery to be more than his creation.
For her life to be more than his creation.
“Sure,” Dane said, reaching out and pressing his hand over the top of his cowboy hat. Then, he lifted it and put it on his head. “Just don’t forget to have fun sometimes.”
“You have enough fun for the both of us, I think.” She tried not to sound bitter about that, she really did. She was pretty sure she failed.
“No one said you couldn’t have fun, Lin,” he said, standing up and moving over to where she was rooted by the doorway.
“I ...” She sighed, feeling defensive and hating that she did. “It’s not the same. For me. You’ve made success out of being kind of a rebel. That’s not going to work for...”
“For someone who wasn’t a bull rider.”
“For a woman,” she finished. “Anyway. I already have enough working against me. I can’t go out and be crazy. I just... I want to make this place so successful that people forget what I used to be. I want to go so far beyond what Damien ever would have done that no one will think of it as something I took from him. Because they’ll know that he could never have achieved all of this.”
“That’s a tall order.”
“I’ve never been afraid of a challenge.”
“Now, that is true,” Dane said. “If you were a rider, the bulls would be afraid of you.”
“Thank you,” she said, not caring if he meant it as a compliment or not. She took it as one.
“You’re scary.”
She sighed heavily. “Thank you. Again.” She edged toward the door and Dane took that as a solid cue.
“See you later,” he said.
“See you.” She hesitated for a second, and then she stepped forward and gave him a hug. “Be careful, okay?” Dane went tense for a moment, then rested an uneasy hand on the center of her back, his interpretation of a hug, she supposed.
“Lindy, I can’t be careful. It’s literally my job to go out and do something stupid now.”
“I know. I love you, Dane. I want you to be safe.”
“I’ll be as safe as I can be.”
He tipped his hat, and she shoved his chest. That was about as sincere as they got.
She walked out of the house, and made her way down the beautifully manicured cobblestone path that led to the main grounds of the winery. A place like this... It would have been beyond her wildest dreams to even visit when she was growing up. Now, she lived here.
The fact that she lived here alone was something she preferred not to focus on.
She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of pine, the cold, fresh smell of the river beyond the grove of trees that enclosed Grassroots Winery.
The sun filtered through the tops of the evergreens, making the needles look like tinsel. Like Christmas in June.
This place belonged to her, not just legally, but in some real, inextricable way. The way that it wound around her soul, the grapevines entwined with who she was... The exhaustion she had felt a moment before when she had been talking to Dane seemed to vanish. By the time she got down to the dining area, it was gone.
Sabrina’s car was already in the parking lot when Lindy arrived, and she pushed the door open to find her friend sitting at one of the tables working on inventory.
“Taking orders down to Copper Ridge?” Lindy asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sabrina said, looking up and smiling. Then, she got a look at Lindy’s outfit and frowned. “You’re wearing jeans?”
“Weirdly,” Lindy said, “it’s only 8:00 a.m. and you’re the second person to comment on that.”
Sabrina’s eyes widened further. “I’m the second...”
“Dane is staying at my house,” she said. “Whatever you’re thinking...stop it.”
“Okay. I was wondering if I had missed more not going out last night than I thought.”
“You didn’t miss anything,” she said.
“We were going to come,” Sabrina said. “We got...distracted.” The word was laden with meaning that was impossible to miss.
Lindy rolled her eyes. “Spare me.”
“If you’re jealous, you could always find someone to deal with your physical frustration...”
“I’m not physically frustrated enough to deal with the emotional frustration that comes with having a man in your life.”
That much was true. Anyway, she was so exhausted she couldn’t fathom trying to make room in her life for a lover.
She gritted her teeth, trying to keep visions of Wyatt out of her brain.
Wyatt Dodge, and the fact that she found him attractive, had nothing to do with that.
“Indulge me,” Sabrina said. “Why are you wearing jeans?”
“I’m going out for a trail ride,” she said crisply.
“A trail ride?”
“I know that you are aware of the route and everything that’s going to be used for the ride that Get Out of Dodge is going to conduct on winery property. But I haven’t actually seen it.”
“So, Jamie is going to take you out?” Sabrina laughed. “I would pay to see you on a horse.”
“I do know how to ride. And, Jamie isn’t taking me.”
Sabrina lifted a brow. “Who is taking you?”
“Wyatt,” Lindy said, trying to sound casual.
“So, you’re wearing jeans. For Wyatt.”
“No. I’m wearing jeans to ride a horse, because a pencil skirt would necessitate me riding sidesaddle. Which isn’t happening. I don’t even think they make sidesaddles anymore.”
“I’m sure they do,” Sabrina said, “but that’s beside the point.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“He gets under your skin,” Sabrina pointed out.
“Yes,” Lindy said, “he does. Because he’s that kind of guy. That cocky, arrogant asshole that thinks he can get away with anything. That thinks a smile and his easy charm is going to cover up any mistake he might make.”
“He’s not Damien,” Sabrina pointed out.
That forced Lindy to compare. Damien’s slick charm versus Wyatt’s rough, down-home variety. Damien would never give a woman a hard time, never tease the way Wyatt did. He’d only lie. Pretending to love, honor and cherish while he snuck around.
She couldn’t imagine Wyatt sneaking.
Wyatt was a full-blown hurricane. And hurricanes didn’t sneak.
She didn’t like that they weren’t as similar as she wanted to pretend they were. Because as long as Wyatt was just Damien in different clothes, it was easy to convince herself she wanted nothing to do with him.
Well, easy was a stretch.
“Too similar,” she said anyway.
“Is there any man you wouldn’t think was too similar right now?”
“No,” Lindy said. “I’m not in the market. Like I said, I have too much to do.”
“Right. I mean, I get you. I was you.”
“That’s different. You didn’t date because you fell in love with Liam Donnelly fourteen years ago, and it never changed. Even when he left. I’m not still in love with Damien. I’m not hung up on him. I’m trying to make my way on my own for a while. When I have a handle on that...then maybe I’ll worry about bringing someone else into my life.”
“A physical relationship doesn’t have to intrude on that,” Sabrina said, looking innocent.
“If I want to place an ad online I’ll remember that.”
“Why place an ad?” Sabrina asked, her tone saccharine. “You’re going on a trail ride with Wyatt later.”
“Did you not hear me the first time? I’m immune to men like him. Anyway, I have to work with him. That puts him squarely off-limits.”
Sabrina shrugged. “Suit yourself. But whenever you two are in the same room it feels like there is literal electricity in the air. If I were you... I would be tempted to see where that might end.”
“I know where it ends,” she said. “Divorce court.”
“It was like that between you and Damien?”
It wasn’t a leading question, but a genuine one. And Lindy wished that she could say it had been. That the strange undercurrent that existed between herself and Wyatt was just old hat to her. Nothing she hadn’t navigated before.
But it was like something else entirely. So different that most of the time she tried to pretend it was irritation, that it wasn’t attraction at all.
But then...
Then she was reminded of that first moment she’d seen him. Five years ago. With her husband’s ring on her finger.
They’d been traveling together that year for Damien’s work with the rodeo, and that had meant more nights in honky-tonks than she cared for. But she’d gone anyway.
She’d gone to meet Damien after an event one night. And he’d been there, sitting on a bar stool across the room. He’d looked at her. Which was nothing. Nothing new, nothing extraordinary. People looked at each other every day.
This had been like a lightning strike. Electric. Immobilizing.
Lethal.
She’d had to force herself to keep moving forward, and the whole time he’d stared.
His brown eyes locked on to hers, his expression filled with a kind of intensity she had never seen before.
It had been like her entire body had been hollowed out, making room for this feeling that he had created and placed inside of her. There had been nothing but that. For a full thirty seconds. Nothing else existed outside of it. Not her life. Not her marriage.
Then Damien had stood up, smiled, grabbed hold of her and introduced her as his wife.
It had been like watching a train she had been meant to catch move away from the station, far ahead of her, going somewhere she would never be able to follow.
After that, she felt like she’d been slapped in the face by reality. And whatever feeling she had felt moments before had been replaced completely by anger. Resentment.
At him. As unfair as it was.
“Yes,” she said, her throat dry. “It’s just a little bit of a spark. I’m a woman. He’s a man. It’s nothing...” Again, she flashed back to that first moment in that bar, when the earth had shifted beneath her feet. “Nothing I haven’t felt before. Nothing I won’t feel again. If you don’t catch one train, another will always be by,” she said, in defiance of that earlier metaphor that had passed through her mind.
“If you say so.”
“I do. And I have work to do.”
“Okay,” Sabrina said, writing on the order form in front of her with a flourish. “I have to get down to town. Enjoy your ride.”
Lindy clenched her teeth. “Oh, I will. I will.”
CHAPTER SIX (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
WELL, HELL. HE had anticipated how much he’d want her if she showed up in a little pencil skirt, the kind he wanted to shove up her hips so he could step between her thighs. He had expected her hair to be in a prim little bun. Had expected that he would want to take it down and run his fingers through it. He always did.
What he hadn’t expected was for her to be wearing jeans. Jeans that molded to her long, slender legs and showcased her figure in a new, tantalizing way, that the styling of her skirts didn’t.
Neither was better than the other. Not really. But it was a new look at her body, and his own body reacted favorably to that.
The damned pervert.
She still looked prim in her way. She was wearing a button-up shirt, and all those tiny little buttons made his fingers itch to undo them. But she had on a pair of tennis shoes, and that made him smile.
He got out of his truck, his boots hitting the gravel in the drive, the rocks crunching beneath his feet. And she was standing there, her arms crossed, her blue eyes sharp and assessing.
She was trying to get a read on him. Trying to figure out what he might do, so she could figure out what she should do.
If there was one thing he’d figured out about her—besides the fact that her ass had the most delicious curve to it—it was that she liked to be in control.
Too damned bad for her. Because so did he.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” she said, affecting an impatient tone.
He damn near shook his head.
He had expected better from her. She had gone and shown her hand. She was already eager to get this over with. And he didn’t have anywhere else in the world to be. Which meant he was gonna take his sweet-ass time.
He closed the door to the pickup truck slowly, then made his way around the back to the small horse trailer that was hitched up there. “It’ll take a couple of hours to do the whole trail,” he commented.
“I know,” she said. “When Sabrina and Jamie worked out the route, they discussed that.”
He nodded. Also slowly. “Right.”
Only a man who’d made a study of Lindy Parker would have any idea how agitated she was. But, he was a man who’d made a study of her.
The way her blue eyes flashed when she was angry. The way she pursed her lips together and pressed her mouth into a flat line to keep from displaying any emotion she hadn’t damn well chosen to display.
The particular set of her shoulders, the way she squared her hips. Like she was ready to face an opponent in battle.
He saw all those things contained in her still form and placid expression.
Because he was a fool.
A fool who was really enjoying drawing all this out.
He undid the latch on the horse trailer, then slid it open. He climbed up inside and encouraged the two horses they were taking out on the ride—Emmy Lou and Trixie—out into the lot.
All the while very aware of the fact that Lindy was standing there, stiff-necked and anxious. Her very noncasual mood at stunning odds with the outfit she’d chosen to wear today.
No. She was not more relaxed than usual at all. But then, he wondered if that was him, more than it was anything else.
Unless it was Grant.
Annoyance kicked him in the gut.
He didn’t believe that she wanted to date Grant. But, clearly she wanted him to think that she did.
Mostly, he was confident in the fact that she didnot. Mostly, he was confident in the fact that the kind of heat and fire he’d felt when their skin had made contact last night could not be one-sided.
He wasn’t sure if that was a victory or defeat, but he was certain of it nonetheless.
“Grant says hi,” he mentioned offhandedly, getting the tack out of the horse trailer and beginning the process of readying the animals.
“Does he?” she asked, keeping her tone as smooth and placid as the expression on her face.
She was a beautiful, accomplished little liar, that woman.
“Yes,” he said. “I told him that you...expressed some interest last night.”
“Did you?” There was a small break in her composure. A slight twitch to her brow, a little hitch in her breath.
If she wanted to lie, then two could play that game.
“Yes. He was very interested.”
“Well. That’s...good. Very good. Because, I also am very interested.”
He stood there for a moment, the lead rope to the horse in his hands, his eyes fixed on hers. And he watched as the color mounted in her cheeks. Pink. Tempting. He wanted to kiss those blush-stained cheeks. Hell, he wanted to kiss her everywhere.
He had a feeling that that was written on his face as clearly as the blush was written across hers. “You are shameless, Lindy Parker,” he said, bending down and tightening the girth on the horse’s saddle. Gratified when he could feel her eyes moving over his body as he worked.
“I am not,” she snapped.
He straightened and turned to look at her. “My brother is a grieving man. And you would use him to get at me?”
Lindy’s mouth dropped open, then closed, like a fish. “I am not trying to...get you.”
“I mean to irritate me.”
She sniffed. “Well. If you didn’t think that I wanted to go out with him why did you tell him I did?”
“I didn’t,” he said. And then he winked, because he knew it would enrage her. “But, this was a fun little play we just acted out.”
She treated him to a very teenage facial expression and he couldn’t help but smile, imagining how she might have been when she was younger. Less polished. Less careful. “You’re such an ass.”
She reached into the small purse she was carrying and pulled out a pair of sunglasses, jamming them over her eyes.
As if that would protect her.
He could read her every emotion on that pale skin. He wondered if she knew that. He wondered if anyone had ever told her that anger made her flush a certain shade of rose, that desire made her flush creep down her neck, intensifying the color.
He knew.
He knew, because he had been watching her for the past five years.
There was no way on earth that didn’t sound creepy as hell, but it was the truth.
“Sure. I never said I wasn’t.” He kept staring her down, even while he got the second saddle on the other horse, while he bent down to tighten the girth. “And you started it. You were the one who asked me about Grant.”
“I have a feeling you think there’s something going on here,” she said, her shoulders going even stiffer. “But there isn’t. I wanted to make that clear.”
“All you had to do was say it,” Wyatt said, except, that was a lie too. Because he knew, whatever she said, that she felt this thing that existed between them.
“Okay. There’s nothing happening here,” she said, waving a well-manicured hand, her eyes still shielded by the large, dark glasses.
“All right,” he said. “Saddle up, cowgirl,” he said, gesturing to Trixie, the more placid of the mares.
“All right,” she said, snippy. She placed her foot in the stirrup and hauled herself up on the back of the horse. She wasn’t an experienced horsewoman, not as far as he could see, but she’d definitely been on the back of one before.
With ease, he put himself in the saddle, and maneuvered himself so that he was in the lead position. “How long has it been since you’ve ridden?”
“Oh,” she said, sounding slightly thrown at the change of topic. “I don’t know. Not since I was in high school probably? So...a long time.”
“It’s like riding a bike,” he said. “I assume. I’ve never gone a significant amount of time without being on the back of a horse. Also, I imagine you’re a hell of a lot more saddle sore than you are when you pick up bike riding after a good number of years.”
She huffed out a laugh. “Good to know. I look forward to the screaming muscles. And as I limp around the house, I’ll remember that you’re the reason I can barely walk.”
He thought about letting the moment pass by. But then, he thought no. He was going to take it. “Honey, you are not the first woman to say that to me.”
He couldn’t see her face, but if stiffness was something you could feel in the air, he was certain he felt it now.
“You’re disgusting,” she said.
“That is not the general consensus.”
“See, this really does make me want to go on a date with Grant,” she commented, keeping her tone light. “Because I doubt he would ever say things like that to a lady.”
“Grant has barely spoken to a woman in eight years. I’m not sure he knows what he would say to a lady at this point in time.”
That little bit of unexpected honesty made his chest turn a little bit.
“So he hasn’t... He hasn’t gone out with anyone since his wife died?”
“No.”
“I can understand that,” she said, slowly. “I imagine any experience with marriage makes you think twice about jumping in again.”
“You don’t want to get married again?”
“Right now? No. And I can’t imagine ever willingly submitting myself to that ever again.”
“I don’t think his reasoning is quite the same as yours,” Wyatt pointed out.
“No. I expect it isn’t. But it’s just... More than even the not trusting someone else, it sounds like a lot of work. I was married. I was married for a long time. It’s like, I’ve done it. I’ve seen what that life is like. I’ve seen what it can give me. I’m not really interested in checking it out again.”
“Been there, done that?”
“Yes,” she confirmed.
Damien had a lot to answer for, and that was the damned truth. No, Wyatt wasn’t any more interested in marriage than Lindy was, but she was the kind of woman who should be. The kind of woman who deserved better. Who should have gotten a hell of a lot better than she had. If she didn’t want marriage, it should be because there was something better and brighter out there for her. Not because she was exhausted emotionally. Not because her heart had been battered, ground into the dust underneath the heel of some jackass’s boot.
“I’ve always thought marriage seemed pretty overrated myself,” he commented.
She surprised him by continuing the topic. “Why is that?”
“One woman for the rest of my life,” he said, the lie slipping out easily. “I don’t think I could handle that.”
As if it all came down to him being afraid he couldn’t control his dick. As if it didn’t have anything to do with the hard, sharp truths he learned about himself when he was seventeen years old. The hard, sharp truths about what it cost to care for someone. Loss and betrayal and defiance, all mixed up together.
“Well, I admire you for knowing that about yourself.” She didn’t sound admiring in the least.
“So, we figured we would take the guests down by the river,” Wyatt said, changing the subject.
All of this was getting a bit too close to places he kept well guarded for a reason. It was one thing to try to get under her skin a bit. It was another to cut his own skin away from the bone and scrape it raw.
Anyway, the sun was shining and he was out on a horse, in the middle of a Tuesday. Another thing that drove home the fact that he had made good decisions in his life, in addition to a hell of a lot of bad ones. But, for now, he was going to go ahead and enjoy the ones he’d made that weren’t terrible.
Working outdoors, being able to spend the day out in the wilderness, with a beautiful woman... Well, it wasn’t all bad.
He maneuvered his horse down the narrow trail that cut through the thick, green grass and behind a copse of pine trees that shielded the river from the rest of the winery grounds. He knew—because Jamie had given him a map to look at last night—that the trail would take them to where the grapevines grew.
On the other side of the river was a thicker, denser grove of trees, and back in the distance, shaded beneath the firs, he thought he could see a little cabin.
“Is that your property too?”
“What?”
Clearly, Lindy had been thinking about other things too. “There. Across the river.”
“Oh,” she said. “Yes. Right now, Bea lives in the little cabin.”
“Really?” The spread was bigger than he’d initially thought. Which made Lindy’s ownership of the place even more of a triumph than he’d realized. “So, your in-laws lost all of this land. To you.”
“For the want of a better prenuptial agreement, yes.”
“Do you ever feel guilty about that?”
He turned and looked behind him, examined the stricken expression on her face. “I’m not suggesting you should,” he added.
“No,” she said. “I don’t feel guilty. Because Damien had ownership of the winery at that point, not Jamison and his wife. I think, if they’d had it still... Well, first of all, it wouldn’t have gone to me. Second of all, I might feel bad. But the fact of the matter is I was doing a good portion of the work when Damien and I were married. I was the one trying to lead new initiatives, initiatives that I’ve put in place now. He was mostly preoccupied with his work for the rodeo. And that’s fine. But this was my passion project, not his. And I don’t know...maybe it’s not...strictly fair. Maybe assets should be divided directly in half. But he wasn’t left with nothing.”
“Do you wish he had been?”
“What kind of question is that?” Her tone was sharp.
“An honest one. He cheated on you, Lindy. How long were the two of you married?”
“Ten years,” she said softly.
“Ten years,” Wyatt reiterated. “Ten years you gave to that man. He cheated on you. He ruined it. And somehow, managed to walk away with enough of a dent in his pocketbook that he looks like a victim. I think that’s messed up. I want to know what you think. Honestly.”
For a moment, she said nothing. The only sound was the plodding of the horses’ hooves on dirt, and the rushing river alongside them.
“I think... Yeah, I think he should have lost everything,” she said finally. “My honest answer. I’m angry that he was able to walk away with anything. Not because I wanted it all. Just because I wouldn’t be that sorry if his life had been reduced to rubble. Or...maybe that’s more how I would have felt two years ago. I don’t really care now.”
“Really?”
“Mostly,” she said. She sighed heavily. “I’m not heartbroken anymore. I mean, how much time can you waste feeling heartbroken over a husband who slept with other women?” She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “I guess you could waste a lot of time on it, but I don’t want to. He’s not worth it. The man I loved doesn’t exist. I think that’s the hardest thing to come to terms with. The person I thought I was married to... If he was ever that man he’s not anymore. I can’t waste my time grieving over someone who’s basically dead. Wondering what I did to make that happen? That’s another story. And anger... Anger over wasted time, over wasted tears. That’s something else entirely.”
“Makes sense.”
He might not know about the dissolution of a marriage, but he’d experienced heartbreak. And he sure as hell knew about regret.
“Maybe it does,” she said. “Maybe it doesn’t. But it’s true enough.”
They rode on in silence for a while, as the trail wound around the riverbank, and then separated from the water, heading a different direction, where the trees thinned out and the sky opened up, the sun shining down on row after row of twining grapevines.
“This is a helluva place,” he said. “You should be proud of it.”
He meant that. He might be an asshole of the highest order, he might find it tough to be sincere at the best of times, but she had done a great job here. She was a damn fine businesswoman. And she was right about what she had said about Damien. She had done more with this place. She had done better. In his opinion, she deserved everything she got.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, her voice suddenly soft. “I remember the first time I saw it. The first time Damien brought me out here. And I just... I didn’t think that I was the kind of person who would ever be allowed to have something so lovely.”
Something twisted inside his chest. “Why not?”
He was surprised she’d shared that with him, and the look on her face told him that she was too. Almost like she didn’t understand the words that had come out of her mouth.
“I don’t know.” She looked away from him. “I guess...you know. Some people have beautiful things. Some people have beautiful lives. Some people don’t. And when you’ve lived an entire life of dirty and ugly it’s hard to imagine you could ever have anything else. That you could ever deserve anything else. I used to think of him like that too.”
Wyatt swallowed hard. He related to that a little more closely than he cared to admit. Even to himself. That feeling of being someone who could have a life that looked a certain way. Or being someone who could never aspire to such a thing. Someone who didn’t deserve it.
“It must feel more real now,” he said, unable to keep the gravel out of his voice entirely.
“I don’t know.” She paused for a moment. “It didn’t last, did it?”
“This place is going to last,” he said, knowing that she meant her marriage, but moving on to the winery anyway. “What you’re doing here? It’s going to last. You can’t control what other people do. They’re going to cheat.” He gritted his teeth, hating that when it came to his own experience with this kind of thing he couldn’t stand on the right side of the line. “But this is different. It’s not a person. It’s land. It’s not going to betray you. It’s not going to hurt you.”
“Now that’s spoken like a cowboy,” she said. “I imagine the other faithful things in your world are your horse and your pickup truck.”
“Damn straight.” He took a breath, doing his best to dispel the pressure that had begun to build in his chest. “Speaking of horses, how are you doing on that one?”
“Good,” she said. “You’re right. It is like riding a bike. In that, I remember how it’s done.”
“Well, and Trixie here is a pretty easy ride.”
“Funny. I think I read that on a bathroom wall about a girl named Trixie once.”
“If it was in the Gold Valley Saloon I might’ve written it there.”
She laughed, the sound unexpected and bright, splitting through the relative silence around them. “I don’t believe for a second that you would do that.”
“You don’t?” He shook his head. “Clearly I haven’t done a very good job of convincing you that I’m a jackass.”
“Oh no,” she said. “You’ve done a fantastic job with that. It’s just... I don’t think you’re that kind of jackass.”
“Truth be told,” he said. “My name is carved on the wall in the saloon.”
“Tacky,” she commented.
Before Laz had taken ownership of the Gold Valley Saloon, it had been the thing for people to carve their names outside the bathroom door if they had scored inside. And back in his twenties, when he had been more of a drunken asshole than he was in his thirties, he had put his name up there thinking it was damned good fun.
But then, she was right. It was different than writing down a woman’s name and promising she’d give someone a good time, he supposed. As long as the only person you were exposing was yourself, it didn’t seem half as bad.
Of all the things he’d done, that wasn’t even close to being one of the ones he was most ashamed of.
“Yeah, well,” he said finally. “I’m a little tacky.”
“I believe that.”
They rode on through the rows of vines, the sun casting long shadows across the path as they went. It was a spectacular ride. If they paused for some wine tasting, it would be the kind of experience people would go home and tell their friends about.
The kind of experience that would make Grassroots Winery and Get Out of Dodge prime tourist destinations.
And right now, he didn’t care about that. He could hardly think about it.
He was supposed to be out here thinking of exclusively that. But then...but then there was Lindy.
He tightened his hold on Emmy Lou’s reins and stopped her midgait. “We figured that right up here would be a great place to stop for a picnic.”
He’d force himself back on track if he had to.
There was more grass at the end of the grape vines, a few picnic tables set out there, with the glorious view of the mountains around them. Back behind them was the row of pine trees, the river now completely obscured. There were no buildings in view. And it gave the sense of being wholly and completely closed in. He paused his horse.
“It’s serene out here,” Lindy said. “I get so caught up in doing all of the office work that I forget to come out here.”
“Well, you’ll have to come out on the tours sometimes.”
“I don’t know if I’ll have time.”
“It’s a double-edged sword,” he said, to her or to himself he didn’t know. “You make the thing you love your work, and often that means you start neglecting the parts of it that you loved most.”
“I guess that’s true.”
He dismounted, looking back at Lindy. “Why don’t we stop here for a minute?”
Lindy’s eyes were still covered by her sunglasses, but he could see the hesitation move through her entire body. The subtle twitch in her shoulders, the way her hands choked up on the reins, as if preparing to double down about staying on the horse. About not stopping with him.
He could almost read her internal war with herself. To make a big deal out of it and let him know that she was battling anything at all, or to give in and subject herself to a greater amount of time in his presence.
He’d casually dated women he couldn’t read as well as the woman in front of him. And for some reason...he could see through her, clear as day.
Which seemed more curse than blessing in general.
“Okay,” she said, getting off the horse quickly, as though the moment of hesitation before hadn’t happened at all.
“So, you actually make the wine here?” he asked, turning away from her and surveying the grapevines.
“Yes,” she said. “All of the equipment is housed in one of the other barns on the property. Before my in-laws bought the place years ago, it was a big, working ranch. So, a lot of the original buildings are intact. We’ve just repurposed them.”
“I see,” he said. He turned to face her then. She wasn’t looking at him. At least, he was fairly certain she wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were still obscured by the sunglasses. Purposefully so, in his expert Lindy opinion.
“What changes have you implemented?” he asked.
She jerked, as if in shock, and then she did look over at him. “Since the divorce?”
“No. All of it. How much of it is yours, Lindy. I want to hear about it.” He did. God knew why, but he did. He was fascinated by her. This prickly, inaccessible woman. Maybe that was why. Because she didn’t bat her eyes and try to get his attention. No. She was hell-bent on running from the attraction between them. Not tempted to lean into it at all. Maybe he was that simple. Enticed by someone who didn’t want him back.
Because it was a novelty.
Because he was a man, and men were pricks.
Or at the very least, led around by them.
“Damien didn’t really want it,” she said. “In fact, when his parents decided to retire, and they turned the place over to him he immediately started trying to figure out how he could pawn the work off on someone else. That’s fine. I mean, he did have a career that was separate from the business. I think to a degree he felt like his father was forcing his hand. Either way, he never wanted anything to do with it. But I... I did.” The corners of her lips turned down into a frown, and he could see a slight pleat forming between her brows, right above the edge of the sunglasses frame. “I never really had dreams. I mean, nothing that was above myself. Until I met Damien, and suddenly so many other possibilities were opened up to me. Money doesn’t buy happiness, Wyatt, but it sure as hell changes your opportunities. Suddenly...there were a lot of different ways for me to figure out how I might find happiness. Damien was done with school, so, that was never really on the table. Anyway, I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about what I would study in school. It was one of those things that was never an option for me.”
She paused for a moment, tilting her head to the side. “It’s a funny thing. You move in certain circles, and it never occurs to anyone that you might not have gone to college. Which was crazy to me, heading into that social circle. No one in my family has gone to school. I would never...assume that someone had. Now, it seems like more often than not I never meet people who assume someone might not have. Class creates interesting divides, even in small towns. I never really realized how complicated it was until I had lived on both the green side of the fence and the dirt side.”
“I didn’t go to school,” he said, lifting a shoulder. “Nothing beyond the school of getting thrown off an angry animal onto my ass. Grant got married. Bennett... He had a goal, and he figured out how to make it happen. I used to envy him a little bit.”
“You did?”
He had never said those words out loud before, and he had no earthly idea why he was saying them to her now. “Yeah. Both of them, actually. They both found something they wanted and went for it. I... I kind of fell into rodeo.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “I have too deep of an appreciation for how difficult the work is. For how competitive it is. You forget, my brother does it too.”
“No. I didn’t forget. But I’ll be honest and say that I fell into success there. At first...at first I wanted to get away.”
She looked interested in that, but she didn’t press. And that was good. He didn’t really want to talk about the circumstances that surrounded his leaving home for the first time. Not with her. Not with anyone.
“I understand that,” she said softly. “Damien was like a nice escape from my real life. When he first showed interest in me... I couldn’t believe it.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you meet him?”
“At the winery,” she said, looking around them. “I applied for a job here. I thought it would be a step up from what I was doing. I was working swing shift at a fast-food restaurant in Lola. I was getting tired of the hours and everything else. He did my interview for the winery and then when it was finished... Well, he didn’t offer me a job, because he said his father would have to approve that. But he asked me on a date, which he said his father would not have to approve.”
“That seems like a mess of human resources issues waiting to happen.”
“Probably,” she said. “But, it’s a family-run business. And anyway... I couldn’t believe that someone that handsome and accomplished would want to go on a date with someone like me. I didn’t think it would last. I didn’t think it would turn into anything. We were different. Different experiences. Different interests. Different friends. But, I worshipped the ground he walked on. All of the things that he showed me that I’d never had the chance to experience before. And I think... Well, I think he liked that. I can’t really blame him. What guy isn’t going to like that?” She frowned. “I mean, I would probably like that, honestly.”
He laughed. “True enough.”
“Everything with him is complicated. And always will be. Because there is that scorched earth and destruction desire, like I mentioned earlier. But then...being with him made me want more. Because I could see a potential future where I could have more. And when he made it clear he didn’t want to do any work on the winery... I put myself forward.”
“How did that go?”
“Not well,” she said, smiling tightly.
He could imagine. He didn’t know Damien’s family, but he’d heard stories from the other man over the years. Imagining Lindy, fine-boned and soft, standing in front of her stodgy, snobby in-laws and making a case for the fact that she should be the one to run the winery...
If he didn’t have a healthy heap of respect for her already, he would have gotten some in that moment. As it was, it doubled.
“I figured out how to make a business plan,” she continued. “And I presented Jamison with one. He still wasn’t happy, but he couldn’t argue. When Jamison officially passed ownership on to Damien, Damien resisted a lot of my new efforts. But, I still moved forward with some of it. I had the barns remodeled to make dining areas. To make a venue for weddings, for dances. I started pursuing partnerships with people like Alison Donnelly. To have her bring her baked goods to the winery. And, since the divorce I’ve started doing farm-to-table dinners biweekly over the summer, and I’ve opened the tasting room in Copper Ridge. I hope to open one in Gold Valley in the next couple of years. Then, there’s this partnership with you.”
She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling with the motion, and she walked on ahead, leaving the horses behind as she drifted through the grass, the breeze ruffling her blond hair as she looked out toward the velvet patchwork of the mountains. “That’s the thing about people like Damien. He had all of this handed to him. Possibility is something he takes for granted. Achievement is something he takes for granted. I live every day amazed that I have all these resources. And I don’t want to waste them. It feels limitless to me. It feels new and exciting. No, I didn’t get to go to school and learn about business in a classroom. I rolled my sleeves up and I started doing it. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve done things inefficiently. I’ve overpaid for services. I’ve had contractors walk out on me and not fulfill their obligations. But for every bit of ground I’ve lost I’ve gained more. And I haven’t given up. I didn’t give up when my marriage dissolved. I won’t give up now.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s damned impressive.”
“Do you know...” She paused for a moment, shaking her head. “You’re the first person to ask me all of that. To ask how much of this is mine. I think so many people assume that I took this from him. From them.”
“Anyone with half a brain can see that isn’t true. Just based on the fact that his sisters rallied around you. That says a hell of a lot right there. If people can’t respect you, then they should respect Sabrina and Bea’s loyalty to you, don’t you think?”
“I would like it if they would just respect me. But, I take your point.”
“I’m not sure anyone respects me,” Wyatt said. “But then, I’m not sure I care.”
“That’s the difference,” Lindy pointed out. “You’ve never even tried to get people to respect you, have you?”
“Seems overrated to me. I prefer to come up from behind and win before anyone realizes I’m a contender.”
At least, that was what he hoped to do with Get Out of Dodge. The alternative was... The alternative was failing. Failing himself. Failing Grant and Jamie. Bennett.
“I’ve spent too many nights standing in groups of people who think that I’m beneath them. Who think I’m not as smart. Who think I don’t deserve to be standing in the spot I’m in. I want...better. I wish I didn’t care. But I can’t help it. I do.”
“It’s not a bad thing to care,” he said, taking a step toward her, close enough now that the slight breeze carried her floral perfume toward him, the impact of those flowers like a battering ram. “I wish I remembered how.” She appraised him closely, and he smiled. “Well, sometimes I wish I remembered how. A lot of times I’m happy I don’t.”
She was quiet for a breath. “You care,” she said, finally.
And for the first time, he was glad that she still had her sunglasses on. Because right about now he didn’t want to know what she saw.
It had never occurred to him until that moment that if he could read her, every movement, every minute expression, that she might be able to do the same thing with him.
“About the ranch. Remember, I’m nothing more than a bad cliché of a country song. My horse, my truck, my land.”
“Right. Don’t forget your beer.”
“And my woman?”
She stiffened. “Is there a woman?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said, taking another step toward her, unable to help himself. “Right now, she’s not so impressed with me.”
“Well, it’s not hard to understand why.”
He appraised her for the space of three breaths. Watched as her breasts rose and fell with each one. Color stained her cheeks. She was blushing. And still, even with the sunglasses, he knew she was looking at him like she wanted him to turn to stone.
Well, hell, he was hard as stone. Had been from the moment he’d first seen her.
She’d always been there. In the back of his mind. Ever since that first moment.
Yes, he’d been with other women in the past five years. Of course he had. But the more he spent time with Lindy, the more she overtook his senses.
When she had been married to Damien it had been the gentlemanly thing to go off and sleep with other women, to do something to keep himself from fantasizing about his friend’s wife.
But, in the time since the divorce... That rationale had become a lot more difficult to maintain, seeing as she was no longer his friend’s wife. Or anyone’s wife.
Since her divorce... Yes, there had been other women.
In the past year...not so much.
And acting like it was a game. Light and funny banter... That was getting harder too. Along with the rest of his damned body.
He liked a game, he liked to flirt, but he was getting tired of this one not going anywhere. He was getting tired of her acting like it didn’t mean anything.
It did. She wanted him. He could see it. And he didn’t know what the hell her investment was in acting like she didn’t. They were grown-ass adults. She didn’t want to get married, neither did he. But damn he wanted to burn off some of this electricity that sparked between them every time he saw her.
Yeah, they were working together, but in his mind, that was only making it worse. Ignoring it, continuing to go on like it wasn’t happening... That wasn’t working. Not for him.
It wasn’t going away. It wasn’t getting better. It was only getting stronger. And he didn’t know what to do with that.
He didn’t know what to do with this beautiful, gorgeous brick wall standing in front of him. One that made him crazy, one that made his skin itch and his blood feel like it was on fire.
He didn’t know how to want and not have.
Sex wasn’t that big of a deal, it never had been in his life. Apart from the one time it had been. But that had been about feelings. It had been about betrayal. And he’d done his damnedest to make sure that feelings never came into it. He’d also made sure that he never poached on another man’s territory, not again.
He liked sex without strings. And he and Lindy had no strings between them.
What they had was heat. What they had was need. A kind he’d never felt before.
Her pretending it was nothing...
He was done with it.
Completely done.
“Lindy,” he said, addressing the smooth angle of her jaw, the edge of her sculpted cheekbone. “Look at me.”
She did, but those sunglasses were still in place, and he couldn’t see enough of her.
He reached out and pulled her sunglasses away from her face, revealing wide, blue eyes that she immediately did her best to narrow into a hardier, more guarded expression.
“Give me my sunglasses back,” she said.
“I just want to look at you.”
“And I just want my retinas to not get scorched.”
“I think a few minutes without sunglasses will be fine.”
He looped the earpiece of the sunglasses over his shirt. He reached out and took hold of her chin, angling her face upward. “What would it take for you to be a little more impressed with me? Because let me tell you, I’ve got quite a few skills to recommend me. I might have lucked into success in the rodeo, but some of that is due to the fact that when I set out to do a task, you can be damn sure I’ll complete it, honey. If I get on for a ride, I’m not getting off till... Well, till everyone gets off.”
“You haven’t realized by now that your clever sexual innuendo doesn’t impress me?” she asked, but even as she spoke the angry words color bled into her cheeks.
“What would impress you then?” he asked again.
“Honesty. Stop trying to be clever. Stop being a jerk. Tell me what you want.”
Desire kicked him in the gut, the anger in her eyes sparking something else entirely. Whatever he had thought he’d felt for her before... It was more now. It was more dangerous, more destructive than anything else that had ever come before it.
“I don’t think you want that,” he said.
“You don’t scare me, Wyatt Dodge,” she said. “I’m a strong enough woman to stand on my own two feet even when you’re trying to sweep me off them. I was married for ten years. I know where this kind of thing ends up. That girl I told you about earlier? The one who got asked on a date in a job interview and saw that as a gift? She doesn’t exist anymore. She’s as dead as the man I thought my ex-husband was. I don’t think a nice date is a gift, not anymore. My due, maybe. But not a gift. So go ahead. Try me. Give me one ounce of sincerity, and let’s see where we get.”
She was doing what she did best. Staying in her comfort zone. Throwing down a challenge. Setting the tone. Because she thought he would falter. Because she thought...whatever she thought. That he was messing with her? That he didn’t mean it when he said he wanted her? As if the electricity between them could be faked.
“Maybe I should scare you,” he said, his voice rough. “Because this? This thing between us... I don’t know what the hell it is. If I kissed you right now, if you kissed me back... I think we would light this whole vineyard on fire. All those pine trees would go up like a lit match and dry tinder. We’d start a whole forest fire, baby. I don’t want to give you a gift. I want to burn out this thing between us until there’s nothing left but ashes. Ashes aren’t a gift. They’re evidence of destruction. That’s what I think might happen if we touch. That we may well ruin everything around us, but it might be worth it.”
Her eyes widened, and she let out a slow, shuddering breath. Her chin moved imperceptibly between his thumb and forefinger, and he tightened his hold on her, forcing her to keep on looking at him.
“Did I scare you? Good. You wanted sincerity, you’re getting it. I want you. You. Not sex. You. That’s different. And it bears mentioning, because let me tell you, usually I’m not so picky. I’m not going to pretend that I’m anything other than what I am. But you should know, I don’t care about much, but the one thing I’ve cared about in a long time is that I want the next woman I take to bed to be you.”
He released his hold on her and took a step back. “That doesn’t need to impress you,” he said. “But it’s the truth. You can do whatever you want with it. But if I can’t be the thing that keeps you up tonight, I sure as hell hope that will.”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
THOSE WORDS ECHOED in Lindy’s head all the way around to the end of the trail, where she dismounted from the horse and mumbled some excuse about having somewhere to be before beating a hasty retreat to the tasting room, where she barricaded herself in her office so that she didn’t have to face Wyatt again. Or anyone, for that matter.
Because every filthy thought that had flitted through her mind the moment he had spoken those words had to be clearly written across her skin.
They had to be.
She felt them, radiating from her like a beacon. It was all so clear. All of it. She couldn’t pretend that what was between herself and Wyatt was anything other than raw, sexual attraction.
Sure, she had tried. Because she felt like the woman she had become wasn’t susceptible to that kind of thing.
Not her.
She had schooled herself into becoming a sophisticate. Had made her life about her professional achievements. Had gotten rid of all that wide-eyed, hopeful newness that she’d had before her marriage.
And really, even then, she hadn’t been...
She liked sex fine enough. But it hadn’t been a driving force in her relationship with Damien. She had felt soft things for him. Fuzzy things.
Like the slow unfolding of possibilities, the easy rise of the sun over the top of the mountain. A gradual dawning of possibilities that she hadn’t felt had been open to her. A kind of relationship she had never seen before. Something caring, with two people who actually liked each other.
Nothing like that bitter, acrimonious, tumultuous relationship her parents had had.
She hadn’t wanted anything like that. Like passion.
Passion was overrated.
And she had decided very early on that it was fake anyway. An excuse for people to behave like immature children when they were well past that point. An excuse for people to behave selfishly, to go around doing nothing to control their urges or their tempers.
Passion.
An excuse to stay in an unhealthy relationship.
She frowned. Of course, her relationship had been steady, and it had still gone to hell in a particularly fiery handbasket.
She stared at the back wall of her office.
All of this was moot. She wasn’t going to do anything with Wyatt. She wasn’t. Not at all.
They were working together. She wasn’t going to risk any professional achievement that might be obtained by...distracting herself right now. Particularly with a man she was trying to get business things done with. If you were doing business things with a guy you really shouldn’t do naked things with him.
At least, that was her newfound resolution.
She thought of Liam and Sabrina, who had started out doing business things together for the winery and for Liam’s ranch, the Laughing Irish. They had certainly started doing naked things together. But that was different. Sabrina and Liam had a history with each other.
Lindy’s only history was with disappointment.
She wasn’t going to make the advances she was trying to make with Grassroots any more difficult than they needed to be.
Wasn’t going to make them any harder.
And being with Wyatt Dodge... Like that... Would definitely be...harder.
Just thinking those words made her cheeks flush with heat.
He was turning her into the ridiculous, hormonal teenager she had never been.
Another reason to find him irritating.
Yet again, she bemoaned the fact that he wasn’t hideous. And then, further still, bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t be attracted to his brother, Grant, who was a perfectly decent human being, not working directly with her, and vaguely resembled Wyatt. So, you would think, that she would be more interested in him.
Except, in part, she wondered if that was why she wasn’t. Because he was a nice guy, and there would be a chance for a relationship with him. And she didn’t want a relationship.
Other things... She was starting to want other things.
But not a relationship.
Chemistry. Maybe that was the other element of it. Something else that she hadn’t paid much heed to in her days of not acknowledging passion as a major issue.
Whatever the conclusion, it ultimately didn’t matter because her actions weren’t going to change. She knew what she wanted. She knew what was important to her. The fact that Wyatt made her feel a little bit...warm, was no reason for her to lose her head.
She was thirty-four years old. She knew who she was. She had already gone through the dissolution of a long-term relationship and had come out the other side stronger and more balanced.
She was more than able to stand up to a little ill-advised sexual attraction.
That didn’t bother her. It obsessed her a little, but didn’t bother her. The fact she’d talked to Wyatt so easily about so many things she usually kept shoved down deep...that bothered her a little.
It was weird. Sometimes she felt uneasy with him. Like he was a live electrical wire and getting too close could electrocute her. And other times he felt... Well never like an old friend. But like there was something in him she recognized.
Something like her.
And it made her want to tell him about how she’d changed herself, and about her marriage. Made her believe he might be the only person who could understand.
There was an urgent knock on her office door. “Yes?”
The door opened, and Bea appeared, looking wide-eyed. “Lindy,” she said. “My brother is here.”
“What?”
“Damien is here,” Bea said, closing the door behind her. “I don’t know why. I mean, he said something about how he missed me. But, I don’t really believe that. I don’t think he cares about me at all. He wants to see you. That’s what he said. Well, he said he needed to talk to you. I guess that’s different.”
Lindy’s mouth went dry, the moisture leaching from her body entirely. She felt like a husk. Fragile and withered, frail and easily cracked if the wind blew wrong.
Damien. Here.
She had seen him since the divorce, obviously. In court, mostly.
It had been an assault each time. To have to look at a man she’d shared a life with, a home with, a bed with, and have him stare at her like he hated her.
To feel like she hated him.
Like this space in her heart had been carved out, the love torn away, filled with all this hideous bile she hadn’t given her body permission to take on board.
Turning her emotions into strangers.
But that was two years ago. She didn’t care now. She didn’t care.
Except, Bea was right about one thing. He wasn’t there to see his sister. And if he needed to see Lindy, it wasn’t going to be anything good.
Lindy stood up, pressing her fingers down on the surface of the desk and bracing herself. “I’ll see him out there. I’m not going to invite him in here.”
“Lindy...”
“What?”
Bea was looking at her like she might regard a small, wounded animal. Which was not good at all.
“Sarabeth is with him.”
Oh great. Sarabeth. Of the mystical, magical vagina that had been just so enticing, not to mention ten years younger, that Damien had not been able to prevent himself from falling right into it.
Sarabeth, who had worked at the winery. Who Lindy had considered a friend.
She really, really didn’t want to deal with all of that. She wasn’t jealous. Far from it. But it was something she didn’t like thinking about. And this... It forced her to think about it.
She had been told, by more than one well-meaning person that she simply needed to put it all behind her. But it had been two years. She had been married to Damien for ten. Maybe when the amount of years between the marriage and where she stood matched the length of the marriage...it would be easier. But until then... Even knowing she didn’t want him back, even feeling nothing that was even remotely like jealousy...it stung.
Like an old stab wound being opened right back up.
It didn’t make her long for the person who had knifed her, but it did make her aware that it had happened. All over again.
“That’s fine,” Lindy said, squaring her shoulders. She wished that she weren’t wearing jeans. She wished that she didn’t look like she had been out for a trail ride. Wished that she didn’t have all of her Wyatt thoughts stamped all over her face.
But then again...maybe it was good.
Maybe, Damien showing up and her not looking at all like she typically did was a good thing.
She might just tell him she had been out on a trail ride with Wyatt Dodge, and see what he thought about that.
That almost made her laugh. As if he would care. Seriously, she had reverted to being a teenager.
“Lindy...” Bea was talking to her again, using that same cooing tone that she used when coaxing animals out from under a porch. But, Lindy had had enough. She wasn’t a wounded creature to be bandaged by Bea. She was a grown woman. In charge of her own thoughts, her own desires and her own life. And she would be damned if her ex-husband was going to walk into her place of business, walk onto her property, as if he had a right to be there and get into her head.
She strode out the door to her office and into the dining area. And stopped in her tracks.
Because there was Damien, tall, broad-shouldered and pleasant-looking as ever, his blond hair pushed back from his forehead, standing next to a small, dark-haired woman who was thin, petite and sporting a very obvious baby bump.
Pain exploded behind her breastbone.
Why did that hurt? Why the hell did that hurt?
I’m just really busy with my career right now...
You’re really enjoying your work at the winery...
It’s not the right time...
Dammit. Dammit. It didn’t matter. It did not matter. She didn’t want to have had a child with him. And anyway, it was later. His life was in a different place. It was completely normal that he would be having children with his child bride.
Of course, now it made perfect sense that Bea had been talking to her like she was a wretched raccoon.
She was trying to warn her.
And she knew that when all was said and done Lindy was going to feel like a wretched raccoon.
Like an aging crone standing next to a glowing, youthful, pregnant woman while her own eggs were threatening to turn to dust.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked, forcing her thoughts to come to a screeching halt, forcing the pain in her chest to halt its progress. She wasn’t going to show it. She wasn’t going to let her face change. Not even one bit.
“I need to get a few things from the house,” Damien said, his tone measured. “As you can see, Sarabeth and I are expecting. And that means that I’m going to need to access my parents’ storage. I believe some of it is still on the property.”
“I’m not sure if any of your things are still here,” Lindy said, trying to keep her tone neutral.
“Dad said that they were. He said that there were quite a few of my childhood things still in one of the old barns. I’m going to need it, because I have a son to pass it along to.”
Heat rolled over her in a wave, followed by a ripple of cold, leaving her forehead clammy. But, as long as she didn’t show it in her face, he wouldn’t know.
Hell, Damien had never been able to tell when she was upset with him when they had been married. When she had made an actual effort to telegraph her feelings. Why would he be able to read her now?
“Well, I’m sure Bea can help you find it. I’m not sure why you felt the need to come and tell me.”
Except, she did know why. It wasn’t Damien, with his cool, gray eyes, who gave it away. No, he was too practiced for that. A PR man down to his core. He never let that ease slip. But Sarabeth, looking like a gloating frog next to him... This was all some kind of big show.
You got the winery, but I got your life.
The life that Lindy had wanted with Damien. The one that he had spent years denying her in the name of his career.
He had gone and given it to someone else. That was the point of all this.
Screw him.
“Actually, I’m more than happy to take you over to the barn. Would you like me to drive you or would you like to follow me?”
“Following you is fine,” Damien said, his tone cool.
A few minutes later, Lindy found herself behind the wheel of her little red car. Her divorce gift to herself. A fun, zippy little vehicle the likes of which Damien had deemed impractical. He could eat her damned dust all the way over to the barn for all she cared while he trailed behind in his sturdy, luxury SUV.
They compare the best of everything to Cadillacs for a reason, Lindy.
That lecturing tone, filling her head. That way that he had of communicating to her that she didn’t know as much as he did, and never could. Not when she was simply a poor trailer park girl from the wrong side of the tracks with no real education.
Everything you know is because of me, or some connection I have. Everything you have is because of me.
She gritted her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut tight as she stopped the car in front of the barn she had a feeling he meant. She needed just a minute to compose herself. Just one.
She took a breath.
And then she got out of the car.
“Follow me,” she said brightly. She ostentatiously held her keys out and unlocked the door.
I have the keys, bitch. Not you.
And she could tell that wasn’t lost on him.
It was lost on Sarabeth, who was twisting her wedding ring and looking at it smugly, as if Lindy gave a damn about having that diamond shackle on her hand.
She had become more, done more, in the two years since her divorce than she had done in the ten with Damien.
So there. Maybe she didn’t need ten years between herself and her divorce to move on.
Actually, standing there, looking at what an ass he was, at what a ridiculous couple he made with Sarabeth, at the life she was so proud of having that Lindy knew for a fact could so easily crumble around her in the next few years, and likely would...
Yeah. It was far easier to feel moved on than it had been a moment ago.
She’d been shocked when she’d seen Sarabeth. Shocked that Damien was here. Thrown off, because she hadn’t expected to have to deal with either of them—today, or ever, really—and that had made it all feel bleak for a moment. But that was done now. Past.
“What have you been out doing, Lindy?” Damien asked, his tone crisp. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you in jeans.”
“I was on a trail ride,” she said.
Oh good. He’d asked. She’d been hoping he would. That was the thing about Damien. He was predictable.
“You?”
The lock clicked and she pushed the doors open wide. “Yes,” she said. “I’m in a little bit of a business arrangement with Wyatt Dodge.”
Damien began to walk into the barn, but paused midstride. “Wyatt Dodge?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a friend of mine.” He said this as though it made her previous statement an impossibility.
“Do you still speak to him?” She affected a genuinely perplexed look. “That’s so funny. We haven’t talked about you at all.”
That little lie tasted sweeter than any candy she’d ever had.
She breezed past him, making her way into the barn. “Feel free to have a look around. I have no idea what any of this is. I’ve been too busy to go through any of it, I might have had it hauled away. I’m surprised that your parents haven’t made time to come out and get it.”
“I’m making time now,” Damien said.
Their eyes caught and held for a moment. And Lindy was overcome with the strangest sense of... Well, strangeness. She had seen this man naked. The only man she had ever seen naked in person. And there he was, standing in front of her in a crisp button-up shirt and charcoal-colored slacks and she felt...nothing.
Not a twinge of old desire. No nostalgia.
Nothing like what she’d felt those times she’d had to deal with him at hearings.
She had just been out with Wyatt, and he had made her feel...hot and reckless. Angry. Damien made her feel...nothing.
She felt annoyed, at his attempt to goad her. She felt the remnants of that initial pain, that initial shock she felt when she had seen that Sarabeth was pregnant. But she felt so detached. From him. From whatever she had felt back then.
She looked at Sarabeth, and she felt even less. Now that the shock was easing...
Lindy wouldn’t say she felt sorry for the other woman. After all, she had most definitely made her own bed, after making it in Lindy’s. But she certainly wouldn’t trade lives with her. Even if Lindy hadn’t ended up with the winery in the divorce, Lindy would have made something of herself. She would have a better life. One that wasn’t tied to a man like Damien.
She had done her fair share of trying to figure out what her stake of the blame was in the divorce. And yeah, a lot of it came down to the undeniable fact that they didn’t have enough passion. That Lindy did love the winery more than she loved her husband.
But she had done what she could. And she hadn’t been distant. He was the one who had traveled. And in the end, he was the one who had broken their vows.
It was...clarifying.
She stood there, and watched while Damien and Sarabeth collected things. The frame to an old crib, some toys and some miscellaneous bags. An old trunk that she imagined had been a toybox.
She had never seen these things. How funny.
She had never asked him to see anything from his childhood. But then, she had never offered to show him anything from hers. Of course, she doubted that her mother had saved anything from her childhood. Or that anything she’d had had been worth saving.
She waited until they had everything loaded up in their SUV, and then she watched as he drove away, exchanging few words with him in the process.
She let out a heavy breath, and got behind the wheel of her car, driving back to the tasting room. When she pulled into the lot, she saw that Damien was gone. So, he hadn’t stopped to visit with Bea at all.
She shook her head. He was such an ass. It was one thing to come and play games with her, but to play them with Bea, to conceal the fact that he was trying to get one up on her was beyond the pale.
Lindy walked into the tasting room, where Bea was standing. “I’m sorry,” Lindy said, walking up to her former sister-in-law and putting her arm around her shoulders. “You deserve better than he is.”
Bea smiled, small and sad. “I know. I got you instead. I chose you instead.” She sighed. “For what it’s worth, you deserved better than him too.”
“I appreciate that. All of it. The fact that you’re here with me.” Lindy smiled. “I’d rather have you any day.”
“Same.”
“I’m going to finish up some work.” Lindy walked back into her office and closed the door behind her, and it felt like whatever had been holding her spine straight, whatever had been supporting her had been pulled away abruptly.
She sagged down into her chair, her knees completely giving out.
She couldn’t believe she had just...done that. Couldn’t believe it had just happened.
But her past had come over and rummaged around in her things.
And that as strange as it had been, as stressful and kind of awful as it was... The things Wyatt had made her feel on the trail ride still burned hotter inside of her.
She had faced down her ex-husband and his pregnant wife. But she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that tonight, when she closed her eyes to sleep, the only thing echoing across her dreams would be Wyatt Dodge, and all the things he’d whispered in her ear.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)
WYATT FELT LIKE he had been trying to work out the tension that had seized up his muscles for the past three days. Since that trail ride with Lindy, his shoulders had been knotted up hard as a rock.
Frankly, it wasn’t the only part of him that was rock hard, thank you very much.
But he hadn’t decided what the hell he was going to do about it yet.
It had been one thing to try to prove his point with her on the trail ride, something he thought he had done quite effectively. It was another to figure out what happened next.
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Maisey Yates
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Welcome to Gold Valley, Oregon in the uplifting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates.Forbidden desire just might turn into the love of a lifetime…When Lindy Parker lost her cheating husband, she gained a vineyard. She’ll do anything for Grassroots Winery, including teaming up with the hottest devil she knows, rancher Wyatt Dodge. Wyatt is her ex’s friend and has an ego as big as the bulls he rides. But in spite of that, disciplined Lindy has always wanted him…Lightning struck Wyatt Dodge the first time he saw Lindy Parker. But there were two problems with that: she was married to his friend, and Wyatt doesn’t do strings. But now Lindy is free, and the two of them can finally explore the heat that’s burned between them for so long. But can Lindy make this good time cowboy decide on forever?Also includes a bonus Gold Valley novella, Hard Riding Cowboy!Praise for Maisey Yates:‘Yates’ new Gold Valley series begins with a sassy, romantic and sexy story about two characters whose chemistry is off the charts. ‘ RT Book Reviews on Smooth-Talking Cowboy (Top Pick)‘Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy [Yates’s] small-town romance.’ Booklist on Part Time Cowboy‘Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.’USATODAY.com′s Happy Ever After blog on Part Time Cowboy