them, radiating from her like a beacon. It was all so clear. All of it. She couldn’t pretend that what was between herself and Wyatt was anything other than raw, sexual attraction.
Sure, she had tried. Because she felt like the woman she had become wasn’t susceptible to that kind of thing.
Not her.
She had schooled herself into becoming a sophisticate. Had made her life about her professional achievements. Had gotten rid of all that wide-eyed, hopeful newness that she’d had before her marriage.
And really, even then, she hadn’t been...
She liked sex fine enough. But it hadn’t been a driving force in her relationship with Damien. She had felt soft things for him. Fuzzy things.
Like the slow unfolding of possibilities, the easy rise of the sun over the top of the mountain. A gradual dawning of possibilities that she hadn’t felt had been open to her. A kind of relationship she had never seen before. Something caring, with two people who actually liked each other.
Nothing like that bitter, acrimonious, tumultuous relationship her parents had had.
She hadn’t wanted anything like that. Like passion.
Passion was overrated.
And she had decided very early on that it was fake anyway. An excuse for people to behave like immature children when they were well past that point. An excuse for people to behave selfishly, to go around doing nothing to control their urges or their tempers.
Passion.
An excuse to stay in an unhealthy relationship.
She frowned. Of course, her relationship had been steady, and it had still gone to hell in a particularly fiery handbasket.
She stared at the back wall of her office.
All of this was moot. She wasn’t going to do anything with Wyatt. She wasn’t. Not at all.
They were working together. She wasn’t going to risk any professional achievement that might be obtained by...distracting herself right now. Particularly with a man she was trying to get business things done with. If you were doing business things with a guy you really shouldn’t do naked things with him.
At least, that was her newfound resolution.
She thought of Liam and Sabrina, who had started out doing business things together for the winery and for Liam’s ranch, the Laughing Irish. They had certainly started doing naked things together. But that was different. Sabrina and Liam had a history with each other.
Lindy’s only history was with disappointment.
She wasn’t going to make the advances she was trying to make with Grassroots any more difficult than they needed to be.
Wasn’t going to make them any harder.
And being with Wyatt Dodge... Like that... Would definitely be...harder.
Just thinking those words made her cheeks flush with heat.
He was turning her into the ridiculous, hormonal teenager she had never been.
Another reason to find him irritating.
Yet again, she bemoaned the fact that he wasn’t hideous. And then, further still, bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t be attracted to his brother, Grant, who was a perfectly decent human being, not working directly with her, and vaguely resembled Wyatt. So, you would think, that she would be more interested in him.
Except, in part, she wondered if that was why she wasn’t. Because he was a nice guy, and there would be a chance for a relationship with him. And she didn’t want a relationship.
Other things... She was starting to want other things.
But not a relationship.
Chemistry. Maybe that was the other element of it. Something else that she hadn’t paid much heed to in her days of not acknowledging passion as a major issue.
Whatever the conclusion, it ultimately didn’t matter because her actions weren’t going to change. She knew what she wanted. She knew what was important to her. The fact that Wyatt made her feel a little bit...warm, was no reason for her to lose her head.
She was thirty-four years old. She knew who she was. She had already gone through the dissolution of a long-term relationship and had come out the other side stronger and more balanced.
She was more than able to stand up to a little ill-advised sexual attraction.
That didn’t bother her. It obsessed her a little, but didn’t bother her. The fact she’d talked to Wyatt so easily about so many things she usually kept shoved down deep...that bothered her a little.
It was weird. Sometimes she felt uneasy with him. Like he was a live electrical wire and getting too close could electrocute her. And other times he felt... Well never like an old friend. But like there was something in him she recognized.
Something like her.
And it made her want to tell him about how she’d changed herself, and about her marriage. Made her believe he might be the only person who could understand.
There was an urgent knock on her office door. “Yes?”
The door opened, and Bea appeared, looking wide-eyed. “Lindy,” she said. “My brother is here.”
“What?”
“Damien is here,” Bea said, closing the door behind her. “I don’t know why. I mean, he said something about how he missed me. But, I don’t really believe that. I don’t think he cares about me at all. He wants to see you. That’s what he said. Well, he said he needed to talk to you. I guess that’s different.”
Lindy’s mouth went dry, the moisture leaching from her body entirely. She felt like a husk. Fragile and withered, frail and easily cracked if the wind blew wrong.
Damien. Here.
She had seen him since the divorce, obviously. In court, mostly.
It had been an assault each time. To have to look at a man she’d shared a life with, a home with, a bed with, and have him stare at her like he hated her.
To feel like she hated him.
Like this space in her heart had been carved out, the love torn away, filled with all this hideous bile she hadn’t given her body permission to take on board.
Turning her emotions into strangers.
But that was two years ago. She didn’t care now. She didn’t care.
Except, Bea was right about one thing. He wasn’t there to see his sister. And if he needed to see Lindy, it wasn’t going to be anything good.
Lindy stood up, pressing her fingers down on the surface of the desk and bracing herself. “I’ll see him out there. I’m not going to invite him in here.”
“Lindy...”
“What?”
Bea was looking at her like she might regard a small, wounded animal. Which was not good at all.
“Sarabeth is with him.”
Oh great. Sarabeth. Of the mystical, magical vagina that had been just so enticing, not to mention ten years younger, that Damien had not been able to prevent himself from falling right into it.
Sarabeth, who had worked at the winery. Who Lindy had considered a friend.
She really, really didn’t want to deal with all of that. She wasn’t jealous. Far from it. But it was something she didn’t like thinking about. And this... It forced her to think about it.
She had been told, by more than one well-meaning person that she simply needed to put it all behind her. But it had been two years. She had been married to Damien for ten. Maybe when the amount of years between the marriage and where she stood matched the length of the marriage...it