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.
And she knew that when all was said and done Lindy was going to feel like a wretched raccoon.
Like an aging crone standing next to a glowing, youthful, pregnant woman while her own eggs were threatening to turn to dust.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked, forcing her thoughts to come to a screeching halt, forcing the pain in her chest to halt its progress. She wasn’t going to show it. She wasn’t going to let her face change. Not even one bit.
“I need to get a few things from the house,” Damien said, his tone measured. “As you can see, Sarabeth and I are expecting. And that means that I’m going to need to access my parents’ storage. I believe some of it is still on the property.”
“I’m not sure if any of your things are still here,” Lindy said, trying to keep her tone neutral.
“Dad said that they were. He said that there were quite a few of my childhood things still in one of the old barns. I’m going to need it, because I have a son to pass it along to.”
Heat rolled over her in a wave, followed by a ripple of cold, leaving her forehead clammy. But, as long as she didn’t show it in her face, he wouldn’t know.
Hell, Damien had never been able to tell when she was upset with him when they had been married. When she had made an actual effort to telegraph her feelings. Why would he be able to read her now?
“Well, I’m sure Bea can help you find it. I’m not sure why you felt the need to come and tell me.”
Except, she did know why. It wasn’t Damien, with his cool, gray eyes, who gave it away. No, he was too practiced for that. A PR man down to his core. He never let that ease slip. But Sarabeth, looking like a gloating frog next to him... This was all some kind of big show.
You got the winery, but I got your life.
The life that Lindy had wanted with Damien. The one that he had spent years denying her in the name of his career.
He had gone and given it to someone else. That was the point of all this.
Screw him.
“Actually, I’m more than happy to take you over to the barn. Would you like me to drive you or would you like to follow me?”
“Following you is fine,” Damien said, his tone cool.
A few minutes later, Lindy found herself behind the wheel of her little red car. Her divorce gift to herself. A fun, zippy little vehicle the likes of which Damien had deemed impractical. He could eat her damned dust all the way over to the barn for all she cared while he trailed behind in his sturdy, luxury SUV.
They compare the best of everything to Cadillacs for a reason, Lindy.
That lecturing tone, filling her head. That way that he had of communicating to her that she didn’t know as much as he did, and never could. Not when she was simply a poor trailer park girl from the wrong side of the tracks with no real education.
Everything you know is because of me, or some connection I have. Everything you have is because of me.
She gritted her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut tight as she stopped the car in front of the barn she had a feeling he meant. She needed just a minute to compose herself. Just one.
She took a breath.
And then she got out of the car.
“Follow me,” she said brightly. She ostentatiously held her keys out and unlocked the door.
I have the keys, bitch. Not you.
And she could tell that wasn’t lost on him.
It was lost on Sarabeth, who was twisting her wedding ring and looking at it smugly, as if Lindy gave a damn about having that diamond shackle on her hand.
She had become more, done more, in the two years since her divorce than she had done in the ten with Damien.
So there. Maybe she didn’t need ten years between herself and her divorce to move on.
Actually, standing there, looking at what an ass he was, at what a ridiculous couple he made with Sarabeth, at the life she was so proud of having that Lindy knew for a fact could so easily crumble around her in the next few years, and likely would...
Yeah. It was far easier to feel moved on than it had been a moment ago.
She’d been shocked when she’d seen Sarabeth. Shocked that Damien was here. Thrown off, because she hadn’t expected to have to deal with either of them—today, or ever, really—and that had made it all feel bleak for a moment. But that was done now. Past.
“What have you been out doing, Lindy?” Damien asked, his tone crisp. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you in jeans.”
“I was on a trail ride,” she said.
Oh good. He’d asked. She’d been hoping he would. That was the thing about Damien. He was predictable.
“You?”
The lock clicked and she pushed the doors open wide. “Yes,” she said. “I’m in a little bit of a business arrangement with Wyatt Dodge.”
Damien began to walk into the barn, but paused midstride. “Wyatt Dodge?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a friend of mine.”