BY LATE AFTERNOON Wyatt was in the most blissful state he had ever imagined he could be in while partly wrapped in a down-filled blanket. But, it wasn’t the blanket that was responsible for the bliss. No, it was the woman who was also wrapped around him, laying there facing him, her face buried in his neck.
Lindy Parker was everything he’d fantasized about and more. And to have her...finally, like this, like he had wanted down to his soul from the moment he had laid eyes on her was...
It was more than intoxicating.
He ran his hands down the elegant line of her back, her skin so soft beneath his touch it was like cream.
He’d had no idea that delayed gratification could produce such a hard-core reward. But, now he was living testament to the fact that it could, that it did.
And he was the second man she’d ever been with. That had blown his mind.
He had sensed that she wasn’t... Experienced was the wrong word. The woman had been married for a decade. She was experienced enough, but she didn’t go out and have sex recreationally, and perhaps hadn’t been exposed to a variety of sex.
He was more than happy to add some variety to her life.
She shifted, beginning to move away from him and he tightened his hold on her, rolling over so that he was on his back and she was perched on top of him, her blond hair falling forward, messy and wrecked.
Like his insides.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“It’s four in the afternoon,” she said. “I cannot stay in bed with you the entire day.”
“Why not?” He treated her to his slowest, laziest smile.
“Because,” she said.
He lifted his hand and brushed his thumb over her cheek, then arched upward, kissing her neck, up to her mouth, long and indulgent. Until she had begun to melt against him, all the tension in her muscles gone.
He’d had her three times to completion. His completion. Her own outnumbered his by quite a bit. And he was damned proud of that fact.
Of course, it was about more than pride. Her pleasure did something to him. He felt it. Echoing through him, almost as bright and real as his own.
“Wyatt,” she said, scolding, but not meaning it.
“I’m a damned persistent bastard,” he said.
“Yes, but this is not what you need to persist in. Persist in some work.”
“Nevertheless...”
“Wyatt!” She grumped when he bit her earlobe.
But, she wasn’t really all that grumpy.
He could tell, because her thighs were spread over him, and he could feel how much she wanted him again.
He was reluctant to leave this moment because right now, he had her and God knew if she was going to come to her senses thereafter. He’d rather make her come now.
He couldn’t blame her if she did come to her senses. Even when it was good, they clashed. They laughed, but they clashed too. There were easier men she could play around with for a temporary fling.
The woman could hold a contest and idiots from all over would compete for the pleasure. Men who would let her have her way. Men who would let her be in charge.
Though, he didn’t really think she wanted that. Didn’t think she wanted someone she could manipulate or control.
If she did...
She wouldn’t be here with him in the first place.
“Come to Get Out of Dodge with me,” he said, not really thinking that through before the words exited his mouth.
“For what?”
“I’d like to show you some of the hiking trails.” Did he? Honestly, it was amazing how much bull he could talk when he wanted to get his way.
She slithered away from his body, taking the duvet with her as she got up off the bed. Away from him. Stealing his warmth and his comfort in both forms.
“I really need to put in an appearance at the office. Sabrina is going to wonder what the hell is going on. Bea is probably going to be wondering where I am...”
“Bea is working at my brother’s veterinary clinic today. Which, I think we both know.”
“How do you know?” She treated him to a very skeptical expression.
“I pay attention,” he said. “Damnedest thing.”
“Well, whatever.” She waved a hand, then grabbed hold of the blanket again, trying to keep it from sliding down. Too late. He saw a bit of lovely butt cheek, and he wasn’t sad about that at all. “I really do need to get some work done.”
He stood up, and he didn’t miss the fact that the sight of him completely naked made her cheeks turn bright pink. “Okay,” he said. “Tomorrow.”
“I work tomorrow. I mean, I have to go to the tasting room in Copper Ridge. I’m not blowing you off.”
Except, he had a feeling that she was. Not completely, but that she was trying to get a little bit of distance.
He should be singing hallelujah for that. He didn’t do closeness. He didn’t like it.
Historically.
Right about now he was wanting a bit more of it. And when the hell he had become that man he didn’t know.
Or maybe it wasn’t about the man he’d become, but the woman that he’d taken to his bed.
“Day after tomorrow,” he said, pressing more, and wondering why in the hell his pride wasn’t yelping like a wounded animal. But, it turned out he just didn’t give a damn.
Funny that.
“Okay,” she relented. “I will come over in two days and I will do that...hiking trail.” The word hiking made her look pained.
“I really must be good in bed,” he said.
“You are. Seriously. Otherwise I would not be...hiking.” She twisted her lips to the side in a grimace.
“You’re gonna need little boots.”
Two glittering blue eyes narrowed, shooting metaphorical lasers at him. “I do not wear little boots.”
“You have little feet,” he pointed out.
She wrinkled her nose. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Flirting with me,” she said, wrapping the blanket more tightly around her and turning away from him. “I have work to do.”
“Yeah, well I have flirting to do.”
“You’re not a flirt, Wyatt Dodge,” she said stiffly, marching over to her closet and disappearing inside.
“I’m not?”
“No,” she called back from the depths of the large space. “You’re a seducer of innocents.”
“Oh honey,” he said, chuckling, “there were no innocents here.”
She sniffed loudly and then reappeared a moment later with a dress draped over her arm. “I was comparably innocent.”
“Well, don’t go using it in the past tense. We got a lot more ground to cover.”
She blushed again. He really liked that.
“Anyway,” she said, moving over to her dresser and digging until she found some underwear. “I have to go.”
“I’m not leaving until the show is over.”
“There is no show.” She glared at him and then went back into the closet.
He laid back on the bed, his arms underneath his head, as he listened to her rustle around, covering up that gorgeous body of hers.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted a woman long enough to have built up fantasies about her.
Maybe never.
Usually, he just had sex.
He had wondered about Lindy. He had wanted Lindy. Needed her. He would have thought that no mortal woman could have ever lived up to all the things he had built up around her. But she had.
She more than had.
She emerged from the closet, looking prim, proper and a bit like an indignant owl. All stiff and straight, her eyes wide and blinking.
“You’re still naked,” she pointed out.
“Am I?” he asked, feigning shock.
Her lips twitched. “It seems so.”
“You’re the one who has somewhere to be,” he said slowly, “not me.” Then he grinned. “And my clothes are still downstairs.”
“Right,” she responded.
“I have to go get them.”
She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something. Offer to get them maybe. But before she could get a word out, he stood up, making sure to move slow as he pleased as he made his way out of the room.
Lindy followed down the stairs behind him, high heels on her feet, and if he was not mistaken, her eyes on his ass.
“Lindy,” he said, affecting a scolding tone. “Are you objectifying me?”
“You’re asking for it,” she shot back, sounding much more poised than she had a few moments earlier. But then, she had her armor back in place.
“I’m walking down the stairs to get my clothes.”
He was gratified when she followed him into the living area and watched as he gathered his clothes and put them on slowly.
He was more than gratified when he pulled his shirt back over his head and caught a hint of disappointment in her expression as he covered the last bit of his skin.
“I will see you in a couple of days,” he said, giving her his best level stare.
“Yes,” she responded, lifting her chin and giving him a haughty return glance. “See you then.”
She turned like she was going to leave, and he took two strides across the room, hooking his arm around her waist and hauling her up against him, kissing her, deep and hard.
“No you don’t, honey,” he said.
“No I don’t what?” she asked, breathless.
“No you don’t go walking away from me like nothing happened. We are not working right now. And that means I get a kiss goodbye.”
“Bye,” she said, sliding her hand over her bun, as if she might find a stray piece of hair to brush away. But no. She wasn’t disheveled anymore. Not like she had been when she’d been in bed with him.
She could put herself back together all she wanted. She wasn’t the same as before. She couldn’t be.
He wasn’t.
She walked away from him like she was, though, and headed outside. He stood there for a moment, feeling stupidly out of place in the manicured room. He chuckled to himself when he remembered what they’d done in it, though.
He walked out of the house, into the sunshine.
The place was Lindy straight up. Brilliantly tamed wilderness. You could make a place like this look domestic, but it wasn’t. The river rushed barely beyond the trees, the mountains stood tall beyond.
You could lay sod, keep it mowed, keep the flowers from overgrowing, but that didn’t change what it was.
Yeah, she was a lot like that.
But in his arms she’d been wild.
He wanted more of that. He mused on that the rest of the way back to Get Out of Dodge.
He was halfway between the truck and the house when his phone rang. It was his dad. He stopped right there in the driveway, the gravel settling beneath his feet.
“What’s up?” Wyatt asked, lifting the phone to his ear.
“Just checking in,” Quinn said.
“Everything is going fine,” Wyatt responded.
“I tried to call a couple of times earlier. You didn’t answer.”
And Wyatt hadn’t checked his phone. Mostly because nothing had been as interesting as the woman he’d been with.
“I was busy,” he said.
“I see. I wanted to make sure that...”
“Everything is going fine,” Wyatt said, not bothering to modify his tone. He was exasperated. And he was tired of being treated like a prodigal son. The prodigal son had spent all his money. Wyatt had sent his home.
Wyatt had done all he could to do what his father wanted and it hadn’t helped one bit.
“I’m hoping that I’ll be able to come up for the barbecue.”
“You know what? Don’t tax yourself.”
“Wyatt, I want to see what you’re doing with the place.”
“Why? So that you can give your stamp of approval and decide whether or not you’re going to let me have what I’ve worked for my entire life? Be straight with me, Dad. Are you punishing me for my transgressions? Is that what this is?”
“You know that it isn’t,” Quinn said, his voice steady.
“No,” Wyatt said. “I don’t. If I did I wouldn’t have asked you, would I? So tell me straight. Are you punishing me because I stole your woman from you nineteen years ago?”
“Dammit, Wyatt, don’t you know by now that I’m not angry at you for that? You said you wanted to leave, so I gave you my permission to go. I thought you needed it. I was never angry at you. I was angry at myself. I let a predator into my house. She seduced my son. You were a teenager. It was always her fault. Always. She took advantage of you.”
“Right. I really hated that I got to screw a beautiful older woman whenever I wanted to.”
“That isn’t the point. You were a kid, she was an adult. End of story. You can put whatever spin on it you want, but she took advantage. Of me. Of you. That’s how I feel. You wanted to know, so now you do.”
Fire streaked through Wyatt, burning in his gut.
“I don’t regret it,” Wyatt ground out. “It was the best damn thing I had going for me back then. It was the only thing that was fun.”
He was lying. He was being an ass. It hadn’t been fun. It had been everything he’d needed, and then it had broken his heart when he’d lost the only love he’d felt for years. Broken his heart when he’d disappointed his father.
He didn’t know why the hell he was doing this. Why he was pushing it. But he was so damned angry. Because whatever his father said he clearly did hold it against him. He clearly had his vision of Wyatt colored by it.
Ironic since he hadn’t treated Wyatt like a child when he’d been one.
He wasn’t a child. He never had been. His mother had died and his childhood had gone with her. His dad had made sure of it. And there was no getting around that. None at all.
Quinn Dodge with his latent overprotective nonsense didn’t have any room in his life. Not now. Not when it was too late.
“If in the end you decide to take this from me when you know damn well it’s mine,” Wyatt ground out, “then don’t you bother to call me again.”
He hung up the phone and turned toward the house, to find Bennett standing there, about a foot away from him, his arms crossed, a frown turning the corners of his mouth down.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Wyatt asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing. Well, not why you’re here, but why you’re standing outside yelling personal stuff into the wind.”
“How much did you hear?”
“Enough to have some follow-up questions.”
“Well, I’m not sure that I’m in the mood to answer any.”
“That’s not going to stop me from asking them,” Bennett said, crossing his arms over his chest. A move that Wyatt knew well, because it was his. When he was feeling stubborn. When he was feeling like digging in.
“Bennett, honestly none of this concerns you. I mean, not as much as it concerns the others, and I haven’t even talked to them about it yet.
“Why doesn’t it concern me?” Bennett asked.
“Because,” Wyatt said, “because you have another career. Because your whole everything isn’t tied up in this ranch. You have a fiancée, you have a son. You have a veterinary practice. Jamie and Grant gave up everything to work this place with me. To invest in this place. And I...”
“You what?” Bennett asked.
Bennett had always been the good son. The one their father was the most proud of. Oh, Quinn Dodge would never say that, but Wyatt felt it. And why not? Bennett was the one who had gone to college. He was the one who had started a business independent of the ranch. Independent of anybody. He had taken that pioneer spirit that Quinn Dodge prized most and found a way to make a living off it. A good living.
He had even snuck in and given Quinn his first grandson, even if they had found out about him fifteen years after his birth.
Yeah, Bennett was the one who could do no wrong.
Bennett wouldn’t understand this.
Which was maybe why Wyatt felt so compelled to fling it at him.
“Dad owns the ranch. Not me. He didn’t sign it over to me.”
“But you...you made it sound like he did. Like the place was yours.”
“Yeah. I’m a liar. Because I didn’t want you to know that Dad had me on probation.”
“Say what now?”
“If I don’t get this off the ground, if I don’t have it solvent within the first six months, if I don’t make it into the black in the first year, Dad is going to sell the ranch. To someone other than us.”
“What? He can’t do that. This is ours. It’s Dodge land. It’s been in our family for...”
“Yeah, since we were stagecoach robbers,” Wyatt said. “Believe me. I know. And that’s why I’m working my ass off to make sure that we don’t lose the place. This is on me. I didn’t want anyone else to worry about it.”
“But it’s our investment too.”
“Sure,” Wyatt said. “But nobody has a bigger investment in it than I do. I didn’t want anyone else to be working under that kind of pressure. We can only do what we can do.”
“That’s BS, Wyatt. You’re a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but you’re not that giving.”
“Great. Why don’t you go ahead and treat me to a litany of my many sins. I like hearing about those, and they seem to be all the rage lately. Grant. Dad. You.”
“I’m not here to list your faults. I’m just saying, I don’t believe you’re doing this to spare us the stress. It’s something else.” Bennett narrowed his eyes. “What else were you and Dad talking about?”
“That,” Wyatt said, “really is none of your damn business.”
“Something happened, didn’t it?” Wyatt started to walk away, the gravel crunching under his boots. “That’s why you left back then.”
He stopped, gritting his teeth. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does. I think it’s the source of all the problems now. At least, that phone call I overheard seems to indicate that.”
“Bennett...”
“Look,” Bennett said. “All my mistakes caught up with me, Wyatt. It didn’t stay the secret I tried to keep to myself, did it?”
“Yeah, because your secret walks, talks and has fifty percent of your DNA.”
“Sure,” Bennett said. “But what I’ve learned from it is that secrets don’t stay secret. And when they do, they don’t do anyone any good anyway.”
“This one doesn’t help anyone to come out.”
“Try me.”
“I slept with Dad’s fiancée.”
Bennett froze. His mouth opened, like he was going to say something. Then it closed again. He finally made a sound, something between a breath and a groan. Then he closed his eyes. “Freda?”
His confused expression was almost comical. Almost.
“No,” Wyatt said. “Louisa.”
Bennett blinked. “Louisa? I don’t even... I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Why would you? It’s messed up. If you had a ready response or a Hallmark card for it, I’d be surprised.”
“You would have been...”
“Seventeen, if you’re following along at home. That was when I left. Not a coincidence. You’re right.”
“But you...that was illegal. For her. Not for you.”
“Sure. It doesn’t matter, Bennett. I don’t feel victimized,” he said. “I was seventeen. I was a guy. I liked breasts. She had them.”
“Now that really is bullshit, Wyatt. You didn’t sleep with Dad’s fiancée just because you liked breasts. You could get those anywhere. You’ve spent the past nineteen years proving that.”
“Whatever. She was hot. She was older. She taught me some things. I liked it. Too bad it threw a big wrench into the family situation.”
Wyatt gritted his teeth. He didn’t like talking about Louisa. Not now. Not while he could still smell Lindy on his skin. It made it all feel sordid. And like maybe he was an asshole who didn’t know how to keep it in his pants.
Except Lindy was different.
Yeah, you felt like Louisa was different.
Of course, he’d been a kid then. And that was half the problem. He had been starving for something. To feel good about himself.
She had played into that. Maybe that did make him a victim, but he sure as hell didn’t like to think of it that way.
“And it still has the power to mess up my life. It only matters now because it’s coming back to bite me in the ass,” he continued. “Because Dad is still mad about it and whatever he says... I know that’s what it’s about.”
“Wyatt, you have to tell Jamie and Grant.”
“Right. I’m going to tell Jamie that I had a moment of temporary insanity and boned the same woman as Dad.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Bennett said, his face contorting into an expression of horror. “Hell, maybe don’t say that at all. But you need to tell them that this place is only ours on a probationary period.”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” Wyatt said. “If we fail we would lose the place anyway.”
“I don’t think anyone’s under the impression that our success or failure is on that razor-thin of a line. Leastwise I didn’t think that. You’re right. I have other stuff. I have more of other stuff than you do. That’s a fact. I’m not as invested. How could I be? I’m not here as much, and mostly it’s just my money going into the place, not my sweat. But dammit, Wyatt, let us help you. Let us work with you.”
“You are.”
“No. Not really. We’re not partners. This is more of the same. You’re my older brother, and I love you. I look the hell up to you, man. But you do this whole mysterious rodeo king thing. You don’t let anyone in. You don’t tell anyone what’s going on with your life. Play like everything’s great and easy. But I know it isn’t. Hell, it obviously isn’t. I had no idea that you... That all that happened between you and Dad. And you... Both of you have pretended that everything was fine and then I overhear you yelling at him on the phone. I’ve never heard you yell at Dad.”
“In fairness, I haven’t done much of it until recently. But, he’s starting to get under my skin.”
“Dad loves us.”
“If Dad loved us half as much as you seem to think I don’t figure he would be putting me on trial. He can justify it all he wants but I think he’s gunning for me to prove that I can’t do this. To prove that he can’t count on me. I will be damned if I fail. Not again, Bennett. Not again.”
“I believe you,” Bennett said, in that way only younger brothers could. That real, deep belief that they seemed to be born with, that you didn’t seem to have to earn or shake. “I believe that you can make this work. And I believe that you’re going to do everything to make sure that we don’t fail.”
“I’m the only one that can do that, Bennett. If you feel like you have to talk to everybody else I can’t stop you. But I don’t have time to sit around having heart-to-hearts. I’ve got stuff to do.”
Except, apparently he had all the time in the world to spend an afternoon in Lindy’s bed. That had felt logical. Had felt right.
Hell, he wasn’t going to feel bad about that. The rest of the stuff was just stuff. When he was with her...
At least he felt good.
There was so much he couldn’t control. But at least with her there was some refuge. And he would take it.
He turned and walked away from Bennett, treating his brother to one last smile before he did.
Yeah, he was right. Wyatt had perfected a facade of not caring.
Sometimes he wasn’t sure there was anything left underneath it.