Good Time Cowboy. Maisey Yates
she said, looking at him from beneath blond lashes.
She looked younger right then. He didn’t know why. It made him want to be nicer. To try to be a little bit more sincere.
“That’s going to be a problem,” he said. “Because I am what I am.”
“I didn’t sign on to be teased,” she said. “I just want to make this work.”
The two of them stepped away from the bar, but didn’t head back to the tables. “So let me ask you this,” he said, a thought occurring to him for the first time. “Did you approach me to make this partnership to get back at Damien?”
Her expression turned mulish. “Why would you think that?”
“Because. He’s my friend. You’re his ex-wife.”
“Do you really consider him a friend?”
Wyatt shrugged. “I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t talked to him in a couple of months. I’m not part of the rodeo circuit anymore, so we’re not really running in the same circles. Some people you hang out with mostly because of the proximity. Not because you choose to. And I’d be lying if I said his behavior during the end of your marriage didn’t impact my opinion of him.”
She blinked. “Really?”
“Yes. What he did was a jerk move.”
She frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought you would care much either way.”
“Turns out I do.” He let out slow breath. “Fact of the matter is, I’ve never done commitment. But hey, maybe that’s because I know myself well enough to know I’m not cut out for it. I figure if a man makes vows he ought to keep them.”
“So, you think he’s a jerk?” she asked, her fingers shifting over the bottle of beer, making him think of what it would be like to have those fingers on him.
“Oh, honey, I know he’s a jerk,” Wyatt said.
“Well, that’s mildly placating, I have to say.”
“I’m a lot of things, Lindy,” he said, not using her full name, seeking as much of a truce as they could continue to have. “But I’m a man of my word. That means I don’t give it very often. But a man only has his word, as far as I’m concerned, when all is said and done. If I can’t promise something, I don’t. That means I have no respect for a man who can’t do the same.”
She narrowed her eyes, her blue gaze roaming over his face as if she was seeing him for the first time. “I value that in a business partner. It has to be said.”
“Good. I can’t promise that I’m not going to irritate you after this, you understand that, right?”
“Now you’re forcing me to respect that. Since you’re refusing to say something just to placate me, and you’re standing by that honesty thing.” She sighed, as if she was intensely aggrieved. “But, I guess I have to accept that, don’t I?”
“You don’t have to. But it would make things easier.”
“Fine. Anyway, thank you for your comments on the brochures.”
“I still don’t really care about the brochures.”
“If you want then I can go ahead without asking you for your opinion on things like design.”
“I’d kind of like that,” he said, then he frowned. “But I don’t want you to feel like it’s all on you either.”
The crease between her brows relaxed, and he realized this might be the first time he had ever seen her without it. “Really?”
“You’re doing a hell of a lot, Lindy. It doesn’t seem right to put it all on you.”
“You’re the one basically reopening his business right now. The winery has been slowly expanding, but I’ve never had to do a full relaunch. I think right now your plate is probably a little bit fuller than mine.”
“Okay. We can’t be too nice to each other either. I don’t like it.”
She smiled. A small smile, just the corners of her mouth turning slightly upward, but he would take it. “I’m sure we’ll relapse eventually.”
“Fair enough. Any other business stuff you want to cover?”
She tapped the side of that beer bottle, his eyes drawn again to the way she held on to the slender neck. His blood burned in his veins.
“I imagine that much like I had you take a few bottles of wine so that you had some idea of the product you were going to be pushing on your willing victims, I’m going to need to have some idea of the trail rides happening at the winery. Do you think that Jamie could... Do you think she would mind taking me out?”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind at all,” Wyatt said. In fact, he had a feeling Jamie would love nothing more.
“Okay. Maybe we could set something up in the next week, then?”
“Okay.”
“I’m not a very experienced rider.”
Those words were like the burn of a match being struck against his skin, a flame put to his already heated blood.
“Is that so?”
“No. I haven’t... I haven’t been on a horse in years.”
He clenched his teeth. “I don’t think it’s a very challenging ride.”
“Good,” she said, looking relieved.
“We should head back over,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the tables where Bea and Jamie were still talking, and Grant was looking sullen.
“Right,” she said.
Reflexively, he reached out and pressed his fingers to her forearm, as if to guide her back toward the table.
And that was a big mistake.
The press of his fingertips against that soft, bare skin of her arm was like an explosion.
He jerked his hand back, as if he’d been burned. Because he felt sure that he had been.
Her gaze flew to his, something sharp in them now. Worse, he could see the heat that was still burning his fingertips reflected there.
She wasn’t unaffected by him. Not at all.
“Before we go back over there,” she said quickly. “Grant isn’t interested in dating again, is he?”
SHE WAS AS stupid as she was transparent. She didn’t care if Grant wanted to date again. She wasn’t interested in Grant like that at all. But she had to do something to...something. To diffuse that very obvious moment that had just happened between herself and Wyatt.
She didn’t like this. Not at all.
She didn’t like feeling like she didn’t have the upper hand on a social situation. Didn’t like feeling as if everything around her was so far beyond her she could never reach it.
That was her entire experience in the early days of dating Damien and being his wife. Feeling like she had just walked into the room in the middle of a conversation and had to spend every moment thereafter playing catch-up.
She hated that feeling. More than anything.
Well, that wasn’t true. Actually, she hated finding out that her husband had been having an affair for years and years even more. Although, it was a different side of the same coin. Being out of the loop. Being ignorant. Being small.
Somehow less than everyone that surrounded her.
Wyatt didn’t make her feel