Good Time Cowboy

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.