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.