through the rest of the evening making conversation. And she could feel Wyatt’s eyes on her the entire time. But she refused to look back at him.
* * *
WYATT WAS IN a foul mood by the time he got home. It was late, and he was slightly drunk. He, Grant and Jamie had all had a bit too much to drink to drive home, and they’d had to call on Bennett to come and pick them up. Bennett had muttered about their poor planning, and the fact that he’d had to leave his fiancée and home to come bail his asshole siblings out because they hadn’t chosen a designated driver.
Wyatt had not told him about the fact that the three of them had discussed using Bennett as a designated driver before they had gone out for the evening. The fact of the matter was, they had known that their more responsible brother would be on hand to deal with them.
Hell, the man had the benefit of going home to his fiancée and son every day after work. He could deal with his siblings who were single and alone.
Not that Wyatt had ever felt like marriage and kids were the goal for him.
Still, he was in a bad mood, and he wasn’t supposed to be. A night of drinking had been intended to cure his ills, not add to them. But that encounter with Lindy, her asking about Grant, yeah, that had all added some ills.
Then, the phone rang.
“Dad,” he said, doing his best to keep the whiskey slur out of his voice. “You know it’s midnight, right?”
“I know,” his father responded.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Freda and I were on the road all day. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to call.”
He also had a feeling that his father was standing outside of their camper. That he had waited until Freda had gone to sleep, because Wyatt’s stepmother would undoubtedly not approve at all of the situation.
The woman his father had married was one of the kindest people Wyatt had ever met. She had embraced Quinn Dodge’s kids like they were her own.
When Bennett’s son that he hadn’t known he’d had had shown up out of the blue, she embraced him as a grandson. Not that Quinn hadn’t, it was just that it never failed to amaze Wyatt that this woman who hadn’t raised them treated them like she had.
That she was in many ways much easier than Quinn never would be.
But then, maybe that was part of it. She didn’t know him. Not really.
His father did.
“Right. But, it’s not like you called to say good night.”
“You know I didn’t,” Quinn said, his tone firm but gentle. “I called to check on the project.”
“Right. The ranch. The one that you’re going to sell out from underneath me if I don’t get my stuff together.”
“It’s not like that. Ranching is hard business, Wyatt. I barely kept our heads above water all those years. Hell, if it weren’t for the money you earned riding in the rodeo we would have gone under. You know that.”
Yeah, his rodeo money. Money that landed somewhere between trying to atone for a sin he wasn’t sure he was sorry for and a big middle finger. His dad had wanted him to stand on his own, to get on without support...and the money had been nice proof that he’d gone and done that. “I know. But doesn’t that make the place even more mine?”
“It makes you even more invested, sure. Invested in pouring money into a pit. I’ve done it for a lot of years. I don’t want the same thing for you, unless it looks like it will be more than a pit. The problem with ranching is it gets under your skin. You get addicted to it. You can’t let it go even when you should.”
“Right. I’m sure that’s it,” Wyatt said. “You being concerned that I’ll take another hit of this dusty brand of heroin we call being a cowboy.”
His head was starting to hurt and his mood was just getting meaner. They’d had this talk at least four times, and Wyatt didn’t like it any more now than he had the first time.
“You can be angry at me if you want,” Quinn said, “but that doesn’t change the reality of the situation. If you can get it off to a good start, then I’m more than happy to let it go without interfering. But take it from someone who spent his whole life working that land. It’s not that easy. You think it is, because you managed to skip off and make money as a performing cowboy, Wyatt, but being a real cowboy is not that easy. And it’s not that fun. Grant’s been through enough. Jamie’s been through enough. If we can’t get it together to save the place... We can’t get it together.”
Wyatt gritted his teeth. “There’s no we,” he said. “We’re not in this together. We—you and me—we’re working against each other.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Quinn said, his voice rough. “Whatever you think, I’m on your team. I know it didn’t feel like it when you were a kid, getting his butt whupped for letting the cows out and causing trouble. I know it didn’t feel like it when you were in high school and I grounded your ass for sneaking out. But this is the same.”
Right. A team. A team where Wyatt had been left all on his own.
Be a man.
As if that was advice. As if that was enough.
He supposed neither of them were in the mood to discuss why Wyatt had left home in the first place. Not in the mood to talk about the first time his father had fallen in love after Wyatt’s mother’s death and had brought home a woman he’d intended to marry.
A woman who had ended up in Wyatt’s bed.
They were never in the mood for that.
“You can see it however you want,” Wyatt said. “It doesn’t change what I have to do. It doesn’t change that I’m working against the clock because of you.”
“You’re a bull rider, Wyatt. Working against the clock is what you do. So do it now. Complete the ride. If anyone can do it, I think you can.”
Wyatt hung up the phone then. Because he didn’t think his father really believed that.
And there was no amount of whiskey-laden late-night phone calls that could change his assessment of that.
He should go to sleep. There were no decisions made past midnight under the influence of alcohol that were good. That was an absolute fact. There were no scientific breakthroughs, no cures for any diseases, or anything else that came out of this hour and level of sobriety.
But then, even sober, Wyatt Dodge wasn’t going to accomplish any of that. So none of it mattered anyway.
He picked his phone back up and stared at it for a moment.
He was not going to call her. It was late. And he had manners.
But he opened up a new message box and typed in a text.
If you have time tomorrow, we can go for that ride.
He
