Good Time Cowboy

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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.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#udf1a6109-358b-58a2-91a7-45f19f3f8bb8)

WYATT FELT LIKE he had been trying to work out the tension that had seized up his muscles for the past three days. Since that trail ride with Lindy, his shoulders had been knotted up hard as a rock.

Frankly, it wasn’t the only part of him that was rock hard, thank you very much.

But he hadn’t decided what the hell he was going to do about it yet.

It had been one thing to try to prove his point with her on the trail ride, something he thought he had done quite effectively. It was another to figure out what happened next.