Good Time Cowboy

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

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

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.