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