An eighteen-year-old who married his high school sweetheart even knowing she wouldn’t live long had been a tragic and wonderful gesture, as far as the world was concerned.
As far as poor Grant was concerned, it had just been life and love. In the end, he had suffered a hell of a lot. But that’s what he was famous for. Being true-blue to a woman who was long gone.
No one had asked if he wanted to get famous, of course. It had been one of the last things Grant wanted. Second only to his wife dying.
Which had thrown Grant right back into the headlines. Wyatt was sure that made hooking up...complicated.
Wyatt Dodge did not like complicated. It was just one of the many reasons that he was not going to follow the road his attraction to Lindy wanted to take him down. Nope. And hell no.
Anyway, getting things off the ground with Get Out of Dodge was too important.
If he succeeded, then no one would ever have to know the reason why.
And that was the ideal situation.
“I appreciate you being here,” Wyatt said. “I hope you know that.”
“I do. But, it’s not like I had anything truly amazing that I was leaving behind. A job at the power company for little more than a decade...sure. The retirement was going to be good...” Grant shook his head. “How long can you possibly live for the future? I mean, socking away money, punching a time card all to invest in years you might never even see? What the hell is the point of that? Can you answer me that, Wyatt?”
Wyatt rubbed his chin. “I’ve been riding bulls for the last...fifteen years? I am not the person to ask about thinking ahead. If I had been thinking ahead I never would have done that.”
His spine sure would’ve thanked him, and unlike so many others, he had never even sustained a serious injury. He was lucky. Lucky as hell. The guys that ended up getting seriously trampled often never walked in a straight line again. Wyatt had gotten out more or less intact. Just a couple of scars. Even still, at thirty-five his body had taken the kind of beating most guys his age couldn’t imagine.
“I’m glad to be here,” he said. “That’s what I meant by the speech. That’s all.”
“I’m glad, too,” Wyatt responded.
Grant turned and walked away, leaving Wyatt standing there, looking around the property. It was all coming together nicely. The landscape in front of the main house, the gravel paths that led between the buildings, raked clean and neat.
Wyatt hadn’t taken anything this seriously for the past twenty years.
The cabins had been restored and redecorated, and he was actively working on finding a cook who could provide something more than basic food.
He had to reach his goal of getting the ranch to full occupancy by the end of the summer, and he had to reach total financial solvency in the following year. Otherwise, he was going to fail at Quinn Dodge’s ultimatum.
And that meant his father was going to sell the ranch.
That was the thing his siblings didn’t know. Wyatt wasn’t the owner of the property.
It was still Quinn’s. And unless Wyatt succeeded in a very short amount of time, it wasn’t going to be in the Dodge family anymore. Instead, Get Out of Dodge would be nothing more than a stack of cash divided between the siblings, and Wyatt couldn’t allow that.
He knew that his father expected him to screw up.
Wyatt was determined that he wouldn’t.
There was no other option.
Of all the reasons not to sleep with Lindy Parker, that was the best one.
He didn’t need her as a distraction, he didn’t need her as a friend and he sure as hell didn’t need her as a lover. He needed her as an ally.
Because if he didn’t have that, he might lose.
And if there was one thing Wyatt Dodge did not do, it was lose.
LINDY’S COMPUTER MADE its special email chiming sound and she bent down to look.
Wyatt Dodge.
Her heart slammed against her sternum like a hammer going down on iron.
She braced herself. She didn’t know for what, except that obviously if he was actually emailing her now after making a big deal out of the fact that he didn’t need to email her, he was being an ass. That much she was certain of.
She clicked. Surprisingly, it was a comprehensive commentary on the brochures that she had sent.
“Leave it to you to be on topic when I expect you to be an asshole.” She muttered to herself as she straightened, then she turned and startled when she saw her brother Dane’s form filling the doorway.
“Talking to yourself?”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” She thought about pulling him in for a hug. Then didn’t. They weren’t really a hugging kind of family. Sometimes she wished they were. But she didn’t know how to change it now. “I didn’t think I was going to see you until September.”
“I was heading up from Red Bluff, going to an event in George, Washington. This is a little out of my way, but I figured that I would stop in for a bit.”
It was difficult to believe sometimes that Dane was her little brother. He towered over her by at least a foot. Broad-shouldered, rugged and with the kind of smile that made women weak in the knees. She was proud of him. And always a little bit nervous about just how he used his good looks and charm.
He was a bull rider.
All adrenaline, here and now and no thought for the future. Constantly living for the action, never worrying about the reaction.
But she loved him.
They’d had it rough growing up. Their dad had been in their lives only intermittently until he’d finally left for good, their mom making it impossible for them to have a relationship with him. Not—she supposed—that he’d tried that hard to change it.
They’d grown up in a single-wide trailer, a small space for three people, and yet Lindy had always felt like there were walls between them. Their mom was a proud woman. So proud she could hardly bend down to give her children a hug.
Distance. That was what she and Dane had both learned, and learned well. To rely on no one but themselves.
“How long are you going to be here?” she asked.
“The rodeo starts in two days. So really, I need to get out of here tomorrow. I don’t want to hassle with the traffic. Lots of people are going to be coming in on the highway.”
“This is one of the big ones, isn’t it?”
“Yep,” he said.
“Do you have any breaks after this?”
“I’ve got a few small events down South, just things to build up points. But there’s some downtime in July, before the big stuff. Sisters, Pendleton and Vegas.”
“I have a feeling that Wyatt is going to ask if you want to do some things over our Fourth of July event that we’re planning. I don’t actually know if he’s going to have you ride bulls.”
“Well, I’m not going to barrel race,” Dane said, as if that was the most ridiculous thing in the entire world.
“I’d pay to see that,” she said.
“It’s for girls,” he said.
“Right,” Lindy shot