LITMIR.BIZ

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connection with your horse. Do you know what you need to ride bulls? Big balls and the subtlety of a blunt instrument.”

      Lindy knew that you needed more than that, particularly to get where Dane had gotten in life. Where Damien had helped him get. She resisted asking about that. Asking about Damien. She knew that he was still around, managing various aspects of different riders’ careers. But not Dane’s.

      The minute that Dane had found out about Damien’s infidelity, Dane had gone scorched-earth-no-survivors on his brother-in-law.

      In fact, he had done what he could to break off Damien’s relationship with the professional association. He hadn’t been entirely successful, but she knew that he had convinced several riders to start working with outside PR people and refuse to work with Damien.

      Whatever she thought about her brother’s day-to-day morality, he had come through for her in the end. The two of them against the world.

      “So, basically you’re crashing on my couch overnight?” There would be no crashing on her couch. She lived in a gigantic house all by herself. There were more than enough bedrooms for Dane to have his pick.

      In point of fact, she would be surprised if he ended up spending the night at her place. It was more likely that he would end up in the Gold Valley Saloon picking up a new conquest.

      “That’s about the size of it,” he said.

      “You know you’re always welcome.”

      She sighed heavily, and then lifted her hands above her head, locking them together and flexing them backward, stretching herself upward from the center of her chest, drawing her shoulder blades down and trying to release some of the tension in her body.

      “I think you’re doing too much,” Dane commented, following her out of her office and into the main dining room of Grassroots Winery.

      Over the past couple of years Lindy had overhauled the facility and opened a satellite tasting room in the town of Copper Ridge.

      The dining room—where they hosted lunches, weddings, parties and pretty much anything else—was a converted barn that had been on the property for years, now carefully crafted into a rustic and elegant setting.

      They had a few guests, sitting and eating cheese platters while drinking wine flights and visiting.

      The vast, wooden chandeliers that hung down at the center of the high, arched ceiling were blazing with a golden glow, bathing the room in soft lighting.

      It was beautiful. Perfect.

       Hers.

      The kind of thing she never could have imagined when she was a girl growing up in a Gold Valley trailer park on the dying edge of town.

      A place with more empty buildings than businesses.

      Her former sister-in-law, turned sister by choice, Sabrina Donnelly was standing behind the counter scribbling on an order form.

      She and Sabrina had always had a lot in common. From the moment they’d met, Lindy felt like she’d found the sister of her heart. While her former mother-in-law and father-in-law had given her a less than welcoming reception into the family, Sabrina had been warm and open.

      Of course, that had been due in part to the fact that Sabrina had been estranged from her father—over something to do with Liam Donnelly.

      Liam Donnelly who now, finally, some fourteen years later, was Sabrina’s husband.

      “Hey, Sabrina,” Dane said.

      Sabrina looked up, smiling. “Hi yourself.” Then, her eyes fell to Lindy, and Lindy must have been telegraphing something because Sabrina’s expression changed to one of concern. “Are you okay?”

      “I’m fine.”

      “She’s doing too much,” Dane said.

      “I am not doing too much.”

      She was doing things, yes. Making changes. But they were all good, and she was happy with them.

      It was likely that if she looked taxed it was because her mind kept going over and over the fact that Wyatt had finally sent her an email after resolutely ignoring her emails. And that it was clearly connected to the conversation they’d had yesterday.

      But there was nothing she could do about any of that. She had the exact amount of things to do that had to be done, and she had to deal with Wyatt Dodge.

      All of that was regrettable in some form or another, but it was better than being impoverished. Better than being married to a man who was sleeping with other women behind her back.

      All things considered, life was great.

      It didn’t mean that her muscles weren’t tired and her neck wasn’t stiff, but still.

      “I know that she is,” Sabrina said. “But, this looked like something might be going on in addition to that.”

      “Nothing is going on,” she said.

      Sabrina and Dane continued to stare at her.

      “There isn’t,” she said, defensively. “I mean I’m navigating the Wyatt Dodge situation, but other than that...”

      “What Wyatt Dodge situation?” Dane asked.

      “The one I mentioned to you earlier,” she explained. “You know. Rodeo events and all the other various crap he’s trying to add to our event. That in and of itself is a whole thing. That’s what I meant by that.”

      “Is he giving you a hard time?” Dane asked.

      “Does he ever not give someone a hard time?”

      Dane smiled. “Not really. That’s kind of his thing.”

      “Well, good to know that I’m not special.” Those words seemed to echo inside of her, reverberating and lingering and in general just not going away.

      She seemed to be the only one who noticed that, however, which was welcome. She didn’t want anyone studying her too closely. Didn’t want anyone trying to get a read on her thoughts. Or her feelings.

      She was violently opposed to most of the thoughts and feelings she had surrounding Wyatt Dodge that didn’t involve pushing his head through a wall. And sadly, those thoughts and feelings existed.

      She had always prided herself on her ability to hold two thoughts in her head at one time. She was a dreamer, and she was a pragmatist. She had experienced a life of poverty, and a life of plenty, and she had always imagined those things had given her the capacity to understand that reality was complex.

      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

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