turning and grabbing hold of a bottle of whiskey and pouring Wyatt a measure of it.
He slid it down the scarred countertop and Wyatt caught hold of it, tipping his hat before lifting it to his lips. “Put it on my tab,” he said.
“Will do,” Laz responded.
Wyatt turned and surveyed the room, leaning back against the bar for a moment as he did so. It was pretty empty now, considering it was early in the evening. But as the night wore on it would fill with people who were looking for the exact same thing he was.
All day long on the streets of Gold Valley, you could walk down the sidewalk and run into friends. Neighbors. They would ask you how your day went, and he would say good. And all along you would both continue with smiles pasted onto your face.
But in the saloon, when darkness descended on the cheerful streets, that was when you met your neighbors for honest conversation. That was when they finally wore their cares on their faces while they tried to drink them away.
Here, there was honesty. Here, there was alcohol, and a good game of darts.
Wyatt preferred it to daytime small talk every time.
He was something of a bar aficionado. Having been to a great many towns, large and small, in his travels with the rodeo, he had been exposed to a whole lot of different scenery. A whole lot of different people.
And it was in his experience that the bars were the great equalizer. That was where everyone went. Young, old, rich, poor. To celebrate, to commiserate.
That was where, in essence, everyone and everyplace was the same.
He looked down into the whiskey glass. “Damn,” he commented. “This is good stuff.”
If he was feeling philosophical already, it had to be pretty strong.
He pushed away from the bar and walked over to the table where his siblings were waiting.
“You didn’t get a drink for me?” Grant asked.
“I don’t know how the hell much you had to drink today,” Wyatt returned. “I’m not enabling you.”
“I don’t drink too much,” Grant said, but they both knew that wasn’t true.
Wyatt knew for a fact that his brother had to have a drink every night before he went to bed, or he couldn’t sleep. But that was one of those things they didn’t discuss. At least not at length. They made jokes about it, they could mention it in passing. But they could never get into what it actually meant.
The Dodges were a close family, but it was a stretch to call them emotionally well-adjusted.
“You know I haven’t had too much to drink today,” Jamie said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms.
“Yeah, I also pay you enough that you can go get your own.”
Jamie scowled. Then she sat up, planting both booted feet on the ground, pushing herself into a standing position. “All right. I’m going to get a drink.”
Grant stared at her. She stared back. And then she sighed heavily. “What do you want?”
“Whiskey,” he responded.
“Of course.” She shook her head, her dark ponytail swinging with the motion, and then she headed over toward the bar.
A few of the men sitting at tables around them followed her movements, and Wyatt was sure to give them his deadliest glare. Jamie was twenty-four, certainly old enough to have her own life and date and all of that. But age had nothing to do with the fact that none of the assholes in this bar—hell, none of the cowboys in this town—were good enough for his younger sister.
Jamie, for her part, seemed oblivious. That suited him just fine.
“So,” Grant said, leveling his dark gaze on Wyatt. “What crawled up your ass and died?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re in a crappy mood.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Wyatt said, folding his arms over his chest.
He was conscious of the fact that he was mimicking his sister’s body language from a moment ago.
“I do,” Grant said.
“Right. And I’m supposed to take commentary on my mood from a guy who has been in a crappy mood for the past decade?”
“I wasn’t criticizing. I was just asking.”
“Just got a lot going on,” he said. Because he wasn’t going to say that he was stressing out about whether or not he was going to be able to fulfill their father’s directive.
That he was afraid he was going to let them all down. That Jamie was going to end up out of work and Grant was going to have left his boring but long-running career at the power company for nothing.
It was easy for him to convince himself that his father wouldn’t actually sell the ranch. Because the fact of the matter was, Quinn Dodge was a hard-ass, but he was a hard-ass who loved his kids.
That was the conclusion that Wyatt would come to if it were any of his other siblings in his position.
But it wasn’t Grant. It wasn’t Jamie. It wasn’t Bennett.
It was Wyatt Dodge spearheading this project. And deep down he had a feeling that his father might just let him fail. Not just himself, but his brothers and his sister.
That was something he could never explain to Grant. Nobody else had the relationship with Quinn that Wyatt had. And it was his own damn fault. It was a situation he created. A relationship that he’d earned.
He couldn’t even be pissed about it.
Except he was.
“Oh,” Grant said, looking somewhere past Wyatt.
“What?” Wyatt shifted in his chair.
“She’s here.”
Wyatt didn’t have to ask who. He froze in his chair, his jaw hardening. He felt like...he felt like he was in damned high school, and he resented that. His younger brother telling him not to look. And him resolutely not looking.
To hell with that.
He lifted his glass and swallowed it down in one gulp. “I’ll be back.”
He pushed away from the table and stood, turning and seeing Lindy standing there. And it was like someone had put their fist through his stomach, grabbed hold of his internal organs and twisted hard.
It reminded him of that first time. But then, every time he saw her it reminded him of the first time.
He gritted his teeth and began walking toward her. And he knew the moment she saw him. Her eyes didn’t meet his, no. And she very resolutely did not look in his direction. But she knew that he was there. He could
