And there was no amount of whiskey-laden late-night phone calls that could change his assessment of that.
He should go to sleep. There were no decisions made past midnight under the influence of alcohol that were good. That was an absolute fact. There were no scientific breakthroughs, no cures for any diseases, or anything else that came out of this hour and level of sobriety.
But then, even sober, Wyatt Dodge wasn’t going to accomplish any of that. So none of it mattered anyway.
He picked his phone back up and stared at it for a moment.
He was not going to call her. It was late. And he had manners.
But he opened up a new message box and typed in a text.
If you have time tomorrow, we can go for that ride.
He sent the message.
Yeah, he had told her that Jamie would take her out, and he had meant it then. But, now, he was going to do it. This was his business. This was his ranch. His partnership with Grassroots.
And hell, if Lindy could take that winery and make it something bigger, something better, after Damien, there was no reason why he couldn’t make Get Out of Dodge something better than his father had made it.
Maybe his dad didn’t think he could. And hell, maybe Wyatt had never given him a reason to think that he could. But that was going to change. That was going to damn well change.
What time?
The response surprised him. As well as the lack of questioning over why Jamie wasn’t going to be the one leading the ride.
Lunchtime.
Okay.
He groaned and threw his phone down on the couch, heading up the stairs toward his room. There. He had made a decision.
It was about the ranch. He refused to believe that it had anything to do with spending time alone with Lindy. That something about that conversation with his father had riled up the devil in him.
As long as the devil was productive, he didn’t much care.
EARLY THE NEXT morning Lindy couldn’t figure out what had possessed her to agree to go on a trail ride with Wyatt Dodge today.
Originally, the plan had been for Jamie to take her. They had discussed that. But somehow, when she had still been awake, tossing and turning, her phone had dinged, and she had looked at it. She had seen his name and she had...
She didn’t know what she had wanted. Didn’t know what she had hoped.
She hadn’t expected an invitation to go riding. But she had found herself agreeing.
And then she had fallen into a fitful sleep, where she had dreamed of weird arguments with Wyatt, where they were bickering over where Grant was going to take her out to dinner.
Then she had woken up, relieved that she wasn’t actually going to dinner with Grant, but not all that relieved that she was going for a ride with Wyatt.
She scrubbed at her face and rolled out from beneath her down-filled duvet and grimaced as the chill in her bedroom settled over her skin.
One of the first things she had done when she had thrown Damien out was get a new mattress and a whole new bedroom set.
First of all, because she had always wanted a lovely, white bedspread with some artful accent pillows, and Damien had insisted they have something that was “for both of them and not just her.” Which had clearly meant, for him. Darker colors, to go with the heavy, dark wood frame that had gone with the bed. As he had gone, so had that.
But, she had also needed a new mattress, because she had very little confidence that he had never taken another woman to their bed, and she would be damned if she was spending one more moment sleeping on a mattress her husband had had sex with someone else on.
There were a great many chances to experience indignity in life, and she had been on the receiving end of that a few times. Damien was just lucky she had offered him the mattress instead of burning it like she had initially wanted to do.
She knew people didn’t believe it. Even her own mother thought she had just married Damien for his money. And that she had happily cut and run when she’d discovered his infidelity in part because she had never wanted him.
But she had. She had loved him. She had believed that he had loved her too. That he hadn’t cared where she had come from. That she had been enough for him.
What an idiot she’d turned out to be.
She wasn’t sure what was worse: letting everyone know just what an idiot she was, or letting them continue to believe that she was a heartless gold digger.
She had a feeling that public opinion on her was split down the middle.
But Wyatt thought that Damien was an idiot.
Which was perhaps why she felt even the tiniest bit charitable toward him. Was perhaps why she wasn’t so completely opposed to going on a trail ride with him today.
She ruminated on that while she got dressed. She found a pair of nice jeans—much more casual than she would normally wear—and a dark-colored button-up top that wouldn’t show any dirt she might pick up during the ride.
She pinned her blond hair back in a low bun and looked at her reflection critically. She was hardly recognizable as the person she used to be. The person she’d been before she had started dating Damien.
She was sleeker now. Much more sophisticated.
She used to be proud of that. The distance she had put between herself and what she’d been. Now, it felt a little bit like a poisoned chalice. After all, she was partly who she was because of Damien. And she... In the end, she despised what he stood for. What he could allow. What had been acceptable to him.
He had asked her one time to forgive him. Had told her that she was making a big mistake throwing their marriage away over a physical relationship.
He had said that sex didn’t matter.
But sex had mattered when she’d been a twenty-year-old virgin, cautiously giving him her body. He had said that it meant the world then. And that even though he had been with a couple of other women they didn’t matter, not in light of what sex between them meant. Because he’d said that with her it had been love. It had been everything.
After being married to the man for ten years she was supposed to believe that sex could also be nothing. As long as it was shared with someone else. Even though he had made vows to her.
She had wanted to scream. She had wanted to cry. To let her inner trailer park out, throw something at him, call him a string of foul names. But she hadn’t been able to. She’d been frozen. Frozen inside the body, inside the image that they had created together.
She hadn’t shed a single tear. Not then, not after.
She had simply told him no. That there was nothing left for them. That there would be no future for the two of them. Not after a betrayal like that.
He had gotten angry after that. He had blamed the dissolution of their marriage on her.
And after that...he had told her there was no other chance to get back with him. That he was leaving her for the other woman. That he was in love with her, and it didn’t mean nothing. That she was the most important relationship in his life.
Not Lindy.
She sighed heavily, turning away from her reflection. She wasn’t going to bother with any makeup beyond a tiny bit of mascara and some clear lipgloss anyway.
Odds were high that she’d end up with allergies, and she didn’t need a whole ton of eye makeup running down her face thanks to the horse and the