Hard Riding Cowboy
Maisey Yates
To Jackie, Megan, Nicole and Rusty. Thank you for being my support system, my panic button and my OMG PLEASE SOMEONE READ THIS AND TELL ME IF IT MAKES SENSE crew. You have no idea how much I appreciate you.
LINDY PARKER HATED the rodeo. Just in general. The sights, the smells, the cloud of testosterone that covered everything.
She hadn’t always hated it, but now it all reminded her of her ex-husband. Damien was so firmly part of that world to her. Whenever she’d gone to rodeo events, it had been for the sole purpose of seeing Damien’s work. To see the results of PR campaigns he’d run and to rub elbows with possible sponsors.
The rest of it didn’t much appeal to her. Dirt and bright lights and overly loud announcers.
But if there was one thing she hated more than the rodeo itself, it was the bull riders.
Cocky. Arrogant. Jerks.
Even her younger brother, Dane, suffered from a bad case of it when he’d been out on the circuit for too long.
But there was no bull rider who irked her quite like Wyatt Dodge. Her dear ex’s favorite rider. A man who’d made Damien tons of money and inflated his ego beyond the telling of it, which, in her humble opinion, had contributed to the flagrant affair her husband had engaged in with a woman who had—at the time—worked at Grassroots Winery, and had been young enough that she still probably remembered how to get to Sesame Street.
Not that it was Wyatt Dodge’s fault. No, Damien was responsible for his own body parts and where they wandered. He was the one who had made vows to her, and even if she did feel like perhaps his prolonged exposure to a pack of manwhores hadn’t helped her marriage, she knew exactly where the fault lay for what had transpired.
With Damien.
She’d caught him kissing an employee of their winery. A much younger employee. Sarabeth, who Lindy had considered a casual friend. A woman she’d invited into her home. A woman she’d paid an hourly wage to. And apparently some of those hours had been spent in bed with Lindy’s husband.
And Lindy could hold a grudge. And had. All the way to court, where she had managed to get full ownership of Damien’s family winery, Grassroots Winery.
Jamison Leighton and his wife had been unsurprisingly angry at the way all that had gone. But, they shouldn’t have left the entire thing to a son who didn’t know how to keep it in his pants. Particularly not a son who had signed a very foolish prenuptial agreement, designed only to protect him from her. Which had meant that all bad behavior stipulated in said agreement had been based on the assumption that she would be the one to do all the very bad things.
And so, she had emerged victorious. She’d given more power back to his sisters, who had not had a chance to claim any part of the property from his parents, but who had stood by her side through the ordeal.
She was close to Sabrina and Bea, in spite of the fact that they were blood-related to Damien. They were the sisters of her heart, and they all worked together even now.
She loved the winery, but unfortunately