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.