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?”