Two exes reunite as danger rocks the family ranch.

A Coltons of Roaring Springs romance

Years after ending her relationship with her husband, Wyatt Colton, Bailey Norton shows up on his doorstep with an unexpected request: to father her child. Unresolved passion sets off sparks between them, but Bailey must resist Wyatt’s undiminished allure—and show her true grit when the Colton ranch is mysteriously sabotaged. Can this Colton cowboy lasso the culprit and a forever family?

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com.

Also by Marie Ferrarella

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Mission: Cavanaugh Baby

Cavanaugh on Duty

A Widow’s Guilty Secret

Cavanaugh’s Surrender

Cavanaugh Rules

Cavanaugh’s Bodyguard

Cavanaugh Fortune

How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

Cavanaugh or Death

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Colton Cowboy Standoff

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09353-8

COLTON COWBOY STANDOFF

© 2018 Harlequin Books S.A.

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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To

Every couple

Who had their hearts set on a baby

And found that the path was not always that easy.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

“Hello, Wyatt. How are you?”

The woman’s low, melodic voice hypnotically wove its way into his bloodstream.

Wyatt Colton stood in the doorway of the Crooked C ranch house, completely speechless and trying to remember if he’d somehow gotten drunk last night without having any memory of it.

But he knew he hadn’t.

He’d cleaned up his act several years back, substituting work to numb himself instead and to blanket the hurt he’d felt when she’d left him. Last night, like so many other nights, he’d been dead tired and had just fallen into bed, still dressed with his boots on.

The same way he’d woken up this morning.

But a hallucination was the only way he could explain why he was suddenly seeing Bailey, tall, golden-brown-haired and beautiful, standing on his porch, talking to him as if it was just any other day.

As if nothing had ever happened.

As if she hadn’t ripped his heart out of his chest, breaking it into a million pieces when she’d suddenly walked out on him and on their marriage without giving him even a single warning regarding her intentions.

He felt as if he’d been torpedoed when the divorce papers had arrived in the mail.

“Stunned,” Wyatt finally said, answering his ex-wife’s question when he was finally able to find his tongue and get it to work.

His tongue might be working but his brain was another story.

The first year after Bailey had left, he’d kept fantasizing about situations like this one. Scenarios in which he would open his front door—the door of the ranch house they had begun to build together—and find Bailey standing there. Sometimes repentant and contrite, other times smiling through tears, but always telling him that she’d been wrong to leave him. The scenarios would always end with Bailey throwing her arms around his neck and him forgiving her as he lost himself in the sweet taste of her lips.

As time went on, the fantasies occurred less and less frequently until he was finally able to make it through a whole month without aching for her.

Well, almost.

However, the pain did ease up and he felt he was almost human again...

And now here she was, standing in front of him, in the flesh, and Wyatt found himself suddenly catapulted back to the shaken shell of the man he’d been right after Bailey had left him.

Staring at her now, he couldn’t help thinking she looked almost shy standing there. As if she didn’t know what seeing her like this was doing to him.

“May I come in?” Bailey asked in a quiet voice, shifting and feeling somewhat awkward standing there on the front porch.

Her fingertips were cold, colder than even the Colorado January air warranted. Wyatt looked almost like a stranger, not at all like the man she had loved and lived with six years ago. His shaggy, dark brown hair, bits of gray just coming in at the temples, framed dark blue eyes and a left cheek with a slight hint of a dimple.

Had she made a mistake, coming back? Was he going to turn her away after all?

For a moment it seemed as if Wyatt wasn’t going to answer her question. And then, when he opened his mouth, she could feel her heart squeeze in fear, afraid that he would say no and then close the door on her.

So when Wyatt finally said, “Sure,” and stepped back to allow her access into the house, Bailey felt the corners of her eyes growing moist.

Willing her tears not to fall, she walked into the wide, warm, inviting living room.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” she told him after a beat. She slowly looked around and took in the room in its entirety.

Initially they had worked on this room together but hadn’t gotten nearly finished when she’d suddenly taken off.

It all came flooding back to him, every detail, every feeling, as if it had been just yesterday.

“It needed furniture,” he told Bailey with a careless shrug.

Bailey looked around again, taking more in. They had only finished building half the ranch house before she’d made her mind up to leave.

“Well, you did a nice job, Wyatt,” she murmured and then added, “Really,” in case he thought she was just mouthing empty words.

Wyatt frowned. His guard was up, but even so he could feel her getting to him.

She always could.

His resolve kicked in. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be set up for another bout of mind-numbing disappointment, he thought fiercely. He’d barely survived the last time and had just gotten to the point where he was breathing regularly.

He couldn’t go through all that again.

He wouldn’t be able to survive it.

His dark blue eyes narrowed as he looked at the woman he had believed would be by his side forever. The joke was on him, he thought bitterly.

In the beginning it seemed as if Fate had purposely thrown them together when he’d left home and embarked on making a name for himself outside the oppressive Colton sphere of interest.

All of his life he’d been overshadowed by his family and his last name. When his father, Russ, wouldn’t allow him to do what he’d wanted to do—insisting instead that his oldest son get a business degree so he could take over the family business—Wyatt had abruptly dropped out of college, left his family and taken to the road.

His father had all but gone into a rage when he’d learned that his firstborn was following the rodeo circuit.

It was on that same circuit that Wyatt had met Bailey-Ann Norton.

A rodeo brat whose father took her with him as he went from town to town, following the circuit, Bailey had never known another life. Eventually she’d become a barrel racer.

Their attraction was immediate and strong, but she hadn’t thought there was any serious commitment on his part. That hadn’t happened until Wyatt had learned his beloved grandmother had died, leaving him a sizable amount of land right outside of Roaring Springs, Colorado.

It seemed like an omen, the next step in his desire to make something of himself apart from his father’s almighty influence. Tired of the aches and pains he’d accumulated as a bull rider, Wyatt decided to change his plans—again. He’d asked Bailey to marry him and help him create a home and a ranch.

He remembered that Bailey had never looked more beautiful than when she had smiled up at him and cried, “Yes!”

They’d returned to Roaring Springs and started building their home and the ranch he envisioned.

He’d thought things were going well. Obviously he’d thought wrong. A few years into their marriage, Bailey had suddenly left him.

Wyatt felt as if he’d been gut-shot.

It had taken him all this time to get over her, to get on with his life and finally become whole again.

And now she was back!

Why was she here?

It made no sense to him.

He wanted to know. “Did you come back here just to give the place a once-over?” he snapped, a cold edge in his voice.

Bailey’s courage almost failed her then. But she had come this far—she couldn’t just back out now. She had to tell him why she’d sought him out after all this time.

“No,” she answered Wyatt quietly, “that’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why are you here, Bailey?” he demanded.

Bailey took a deep breath, hoping her voice wouldn’t crack. She raised her head slightly, doing her best to look and sound as if she was in command of herself, in command of the moment. She knew that her ex-husband didn’t like displays of weakness. He valued bravery, even in an enemy, which she knew was the way he probably thought of her. At least to start with.

Her dark eyes met his.

You’ve got this, Bailey, she told herself. Her voice sounded as if it was echoing in her head as she answered his question.

“I’m here because I want to have a baby and I want you to be the father.”

Chapter 2

His eyes might not be playing tricks on him but his ears had to be, Wyatt thought. He couldn’t have heard what he thought he’d just heard.

“Say what now?” he asked, unabashedly staring at Bailey.

Wyatt vaguely remembered that when they’d first gotten married they had discussed having children, but they had decided it would be best to wait a few years. At the time he’d felt their energy had to be focused on making a go of the ranch. But, he remembered thinking, they would have plenty of time for kids later.

The subject had never come up again. In the beginning they’d been too busy with the house and the ranch, and then, when there might have been a better time to start a family, Bailey had taken off.

“A baby,” she repeated, her eyes on his. “I want to have a baby, and whatever our differences might be, I still think that you’re the best man I ever knew and I want you to be the father.”

Wyatt was attempting to process the words he had just heard. Moving like a man who couldn’t quite feel his legs, he walked farther into the sprawling living room and sank onto the comfortably worn leather sofa. Once sitting, he indicated that Bailey should sit on the sofa, as well.

When she did, only then did he speak.

“Just like that?” Wyatt asked her, astonished. “I don’t hear from you for six years and then you walk back into my life, telling me you want me to be the father of your baby?” Even as he said the words out loud he couldn’t quite believe this was happening. Bailey had always been so levelheaded, so sensible, and this was a totally irrational request. “Why?” He wanted to know. “Isn’t there anyone else around?” he demanded.

“I don’t want just ‘anyone,’” Bailey told him softly. “I want you.”

It couldn’t be as simple as that. There had to be something more to it, he thought. Something she wasn’t telling him. He frowned. “Assuming I believe you—”

“You should,” Bailey interjected. Why would he think she was lying? She’d never lied to him before, she thought defensively.

“Assuming I believe you,” Wyatt deliberately repeated. “Why a baby now, all of a sudden?”

Bailey took a breath before answering. She supposed he had a right to know.

None of this, including coming out here, had been easy for her. She wasn’t the type who asked for favors. On the contrary, she had always gone out and gotten whatever she wanted or needed all by herself.

But this time was different. This time she couldn’t be the lone wolf. She needed help.

“Because I’m running out of time,” Bailey confessed.

That was twice he’d been caught off guard in the space of less than ten minutes.

“You’re dying?” Wyatt asked in a hushed, stunned voice as he stared at her in disbelief. Bailey had always been so bright, so lively. He couldn’t begin to imagine her being felled by some sort of terminal disease.

“No,” Bailey quickly answered, wanting to correct any misimpression he might have gotten. “I’m not dying. But my chances of getting pregnant are.”

She looked pretty healthy to him, Wyatt thought, confused. He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

Why couldn’t he just say yes to her request? Why did he need this all spelled out for him?

“This isn’t easy for me to talk about,” Bailey told him, wanting to beg off from making any elaborate explanations.

“Take your time,” he told her. “You came out all this way to talk to a man you turned your back on, so this has to be important to you,” he surmised, waiting for her to speak up.

Bailey didn’t know if he was being incredibly sensitive or if he was just being sarcastic. Either way, she knew she was going to have to ride this out and answer his question. Wyatt was her only hope and that meant she had to make him understand so that he would agree to father this baby.

Taking a deep breath, she plunged into the explanation she was afraid he would find as embarrassing as she did. Or at the very least, confusing.

But there was no way around it.

“My cycles have always been inconsistent...” she began, her throat feeling particularly dry.

“Cycles?” Wyatt questioned, not really sure what she was talking about.

Okay, she’d state it another way, Bailey thought, still trying to be delicate about her explanation. “My time of the month.”

The light suddenly dawned on Wyatt. “Oh.” He avoided her eyes as he said, “Go on.”

She started to get more technical. It felt somehow less embarrassing that way. “I found out that was caused by polycystic ovarian syndrome.”

“Okay,” he said only because he wanted her to get on with it so that they could get to the end of all this. He was a horse breeder and didn’t understand terms that weren’t directly involved with the care and breeding of his herd.

She could tell by the way Wyatt had just said “okay” that he didn’t understand what she was telling him. Bailey tried again. “Because of that condition—it’s called PCOS—my getting pregnant becomes harder and harder the older I get.”

“You’re just in your midthirties,” Wyatt pointed out.

She took that to mean that she’d finally gotten through to him and he was starting to understand her dilemma.

“Exactly,” she cried, nodding her head. “That means it’s now or never if I want to have a baby.”

Bailey searched his face to see if Wyatt was still following her or if he’d lost interest. But he looked as if he was waiting for her to go on. So, taking heart, Bailey continued, doing her best to play on his sympathies.

“I have wanted a child of my own ever since I was a kid. A child I could love. A child I could give the kind of emotional support and material things to that I never had when I was growing up.” She paused for a moment, turning on the sofa to look into his eyes. To appeal to him. “But I need you to make that happen.”

Wyatt was having trouble wrapping his head around what she was telling him. He kept coming back to the fact that she was the one who had walked out on him, not the other way around. She was the one who had sent the divorce papers. She’d obviously wanted nothing more to do with him then, and now here she was, asking him to make a baby with her.

It just didn’t add up.

“What changed your mind?” He measured out the words slowly.

He’d lost her. “I don’t understand,” she told him.

“Well, you didn’t seem to want to stay with me six years ago,” Wyatt reminded her, “so what’s changed?”

“Nothing.” That wasn’t strictly true, she thought, so she rephrased her statement. “At least, not my opinion of you,” she amended. Because she could see that she’d managed to further confuse him, Bailey tried again. “I didn’t marry you because you were a Colton or because you’d suddenly inherited your own ranch. I married you because you were a good, decent man.”

He waited for that to make sense to him. When it didn’t, he asked, “If that’s true, if that’s how you felt, why did you leave?”

Bailey shook her head. There was no point in going into all that now. She wasn’t here to fix a broken marriage with a man she couldn’t forget. She was here to try to salvage something for her future.

“That’s complicated.”

“And yet you thought it was worthwhile to come back,” he said, mystified.

And then she realized why he was confused, why he was holding back.

“I came back just to get pregnant,” she explained. “I’m not planning on staying once that happens,” she assured him, thinking he was worried he was going to be saddled with her, at least until the pregnancy was over. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll be out of your hair the moment I know that you were successful getting me pregnant.”

“Even breeding horses involves more romance than this,” Wyatt told her.

“I’m not looking for anything from you except your ‘donation,’” Bailey said, trying to get her point across to him while attempting to resist his sexy gaze. “You won’t be on the hook for child support or any sort of money at all. Really,” she emphasized.

Wyatt looked as if he had his doubts about what she’d just said. “If that’s the case, just how do you plan on taking care of this baby if and when I say yes and you do get pregnant?”

“I can take care of us,” Bailey answered.

“I asked you how,” Wyatt repeated, still waiting for a concrete answer that made sense to him.

She hadn’t planned on opening up her life to him once again, but now it seemed that she had to...but she refused to let him break her heart again.

“Do you remember when I told you I wanted to become a veterinarian?” she asked.

It had been one of the reasons why she’d finally left him. Because becoming a veterinarian had always been a dream of hers and he had asked her to put it on hold for him until after they got the ranch up and running.

Just as he’d asked her to hold off on having babies. Everything she’d wanted, everything that had meant anything to her, he’d asked her to put on hold—until she felt as if all of her was on hold in deference to him.

“Judging from the look on your face, you don’t remember,” Bailey concluded. “Well, I did it.” She saw him raise a quizzical eyebrow. He still wasn’t following her, she thought. “I became one,” she told him. “I became a veterinarian and started up a small practice of my own. That means that I’ll be able to pay for this baby when he or she arrives.”

Bailey took a breath then continued. “So, as I said, all I need from you is your ‘donation.’” She held her breath as she nervously searched his face. “What do you say?”

Wyatt remained silent for a while, as if honestly considering her question and thinking it over. But when he spoke, it wasn’t to give her an answer, positive or otherwise.

“I don’t know, Bailey,” he told her. “This is a big decision.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” she pointed out, trying not to sound as frustrated as she felt. She hadn’t come all this way to hear him turn her down. “Men have one-night stands all the time. You could think of it that way. Or you could think of it as making love to an old girlfriend for old times’ sake.”

“But you weren’t my girlfriend,” Wyatt pointed out, his eyes narrowing. “You were my wife.”

Bailey shrugged, shoving down the emotions threatening to overwhelm her. “Same thing.”

Wyatt shook his head. “Not really. There’s a big difference.”

She squared her shoulders, bracing herself for the answer she didn’t want from the man she’d never forgotten. “So it’s no?” she asked, too disappointed to try to hide her reaction.

“No, it’s not no...” he began.

“Then it’s yes?” she asked excitedly.

“It’s not that, either,” he told her before she could get carried away, although he hated seeing that light in her eyes go out. It reminded him of the way things used to be when they were first married and anything seemed possible. “I already said that I’ll have to give this some thought,” he explained. “Getting together to create a baby is a big step.”

“I know. That’s why I’m asking you,” she stressed. “I told you, you’re the best man I know.”

One of them had to be logical, he thought. It didn’t look like it was going to be her, so he’d been elected.

“Flattering as that is, I wouldn’t be such a ‘best man’ if I just jumped right into this without considering all the ramifications,” he told her.

“There aren’t any,” Bailey insisted. How did she get that across to him? She felt desperate. He had to say yes.

“I’m afraid I’d have to disagree with you,” Wyatt told her. “This would be a little person we’d be bringing into the world.”

“A little person you wouldn’t be required to do anything for,” she reminded him again.

Maybe if he approached this a different way. “You came to me, right?”

Bailey blew out a breath. “Obviously.”

“Why?”

She closed her eyes, struggling to keep her emotions in check. “I already told you. I came to you because you are the only person I want to be the father of my child.”

He nodded. “I’m assuming that has something to do with my character.”

“Obviously,” she agreed, wondering where he was going with this.

“Well, this is part of my character. I’m not jumping right into this. I have to think about it,” Wyatt told her.

Bailey knew that look. She could see that there was no talking him out of this. His mind was made up. Sighing, she surrendered. “All right,” she said. “How long are you going to think about it?”

“Until I make up my mind,” Wyatt answered evasively.

She’d meant it when she’d said she wanted him for her baby’s father. That meant that she had to go along with him in this.

“Looks like I’m going to be here for a while, then.” She hadn’t planned on this. “I guess I should have made my reservation at the Lodge for a longer period of time,” Bailey added, mentioning one of the Colton family’s enterprises. “I just booked it for a couple of days.”

This was going to be difficult, Wyatt thought. But he’d meant it when he’d said he needed time to mull this over.

There was only one option left open to him.

“No need,” he told her. “You’re welcome to stay here.”

“Here?” Bailey repeated, stunned. She looked around then back at Wyatt. “With you?”

He nodded. “If you’re here, it’ll help me make up my mind that much quicker,” he told her. “And with you here, we can use the time to catch up.” His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at Bailey. “Unless you have something to hide.”

She stared at him, completely taken aback. “Why would you say something like that?”

She had to ask? “Because I don’t hear a word from you for six years.” And in the beginning, he’d sought comfort in the bottom of a bottle, convinced that he’d never get over her running out on him like that. Recovery had been slower than he’d ever thought possible. But he’d done it—and he didn’t want to risk a relapse. “Not so much as a phone call or a postcard, and then you show up out of the blue, asking me to father your baby. You have to admit that would make anyone leery.”

“Maybe if that person didn’t know me,” Bailey pointed out. “You know me.”

“Do I?” he quipped. “I thought I did. But the woman I knew wouldn’t have just taken off without a word of explanation the way you did. Which means I didn’t really know you at all,” he emphasized.

Bailey sighed again. Maybe she should extend an olive branch and explain a bit more. To the man she’d once loved.

“I left because I was losing my identity,” she told him.

He scowled. “What does that even mean?”

“It means that you put everything ahead of me. I wanted to become a veterinarian. You told me to hold off on that until after we get the ranch up and running. So I said all right and I held off. I wanted kids. You said okay, but you wanted us to wait until after we finished building the house. So again I said okay. But it wasn’t okay. Not really. I was giving up bits and pieces of me until I didn’t even recognize myself.”

Wyatt frowned. “So you left.”

There was no way she could argue the point. “I had to.”

“And those vows you took? The ones about loving me until death do us part? Those didn’t mean enough to you to make you stay?” he bit out.

Her answer, if it was truthful, surprised him.

“Those meant everything to me,” she insisted.

“But you left anyway.”

“I left because of them,” she insisted. “Don’t you see?”

Baffled, Wyatt shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

“If I’d stayed, I would have wound up resenting you because you were stifling me,” she told him. “Not intentionally, I know that now, but the result was the same. I was losing my sense of who I was, other than just the woman by your side, the one who was helping you build this big ranch house while taking myself apart. Eventually, I knew I was going to wind up hating you for what was happening to me.”

“So you left.”

“I had to. I had to sacrifice our marriage in order to save the feelings we had for each other,” Bailey insisted.

That made absolutely no sense to him. “I don’t understand.”

She smiled. “I don’t expect you to,” she told Wyatt wistfully. “But just know that I always loved you. And I always will.”

Chapter 3

Bailey had managed to catch him off guard again. Wyatt had lost count of how many times that made since he’d opened his door this morning.

But just know that I always loved you. And I always will.

Her words echoed in his head. Wyatt frowned. Was his ex-wife just playing him, professing that she felt something for him as a means to an end?

“Don’t say things you don’t mean,” he retorted, growing angry. “It’s not going to propel me to make up my mind any faster.”

Bailey tried not to take offense at being dismissed this way. She had hurt him and that cut him a lot of slack in her opinion. But he should have known better.

“I didn’t say it for that reason and I don’t say things I don’t mean,” Bailey reminded him tersely.

She rose to her feet and began walking toward the door.

Wyatt was right behind her. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going for a drive to clear my head—and to cancel my reservation at the Lodge,” she answered. As quickly as it had threatened to flare up, her temper had receded again. Her voice softened as she told him, “I’ll be back later. You still keep your doors unlocked?”

“Yes.” Roaring Springs was a relatively small community and trust was a way of life here. For the most part, neighbors all looked out for one another.

Bailey nodded. She thought so. “Good. Then I’ll let myself in when I get back.” About to open the door and leave, she stopped as something else suddenly occurred to her. Turning back, she looked at Wyatt as she asked, “You’re not with anyone, are you? I mean, I won’t be walking in on your girlfriend or mistress or significant other when I come back to the ranch, will I?” Her eyes washed over his face, searching for an answer.

“A little late to be asking that, isn’t it?” Wyatt retorted, somewhat amused by her question. In the last six years there’d been no one who’d even remotely stirred his interest—especially the way Bailey had. As far as he was concerned, that part of his life was over.

The slightest hint of color rose to her cheeks. Wyatt was right. It hadn’t occurred to her until just this moment that he might have moved on. She hadn’t, so she’d just assumed he hadn’t, either. Was he making fun of her? Or was this his subtle way of hinting that he actually was involved with someone else.

She avoided his eyes as she told him, “I didn’t exactly rehearse any of this beforehand.”

“That’s obvious,” he commented. And then he took pity on her. Embarrassing Bailey didn’t make him feel any better about what had gone down between them. “And no, there’s no girlfriend or mistress or significant other to worry about.”

“No one?” Bailey asked, wanting to be absolutely sure he was being honest.

He caught the note of suspicion in her voice. “Why? Would you feel better if there was?” Wyatt asked, interpreting her question to mean she was worried once she got what she had come for, he might try to make her stay.

But he had no such intentions. He was neither a masochist nor a slow learner. Being unceremoniously dumped once was more than enough for him. He had no desire to suffer through that again. His heart didn’t need to be cut out of his chest a second time.

“No,” Bailey quickly denied. “I just wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t accidentally mess up your relationship.”

His eyes met hers. “Once was enough,” he told her in a cold voice.

Bailey had no idea how to respond to that. At the time, she hadn’t thought she mattered all that much to him. She quite honestly didn’t even think he’d notice she was gone immediately because he was so fixated on building up the ranch to the exclusion of everything else. Other than representing another pair of hands he could call on, she could have been anyone.

For a moment she debated apologizing, telling him she was sorry. But she really wasn’t sorry. Because if she hadn’t left, she would have never become a veterinarian, never become her own person.

For now, she decided it was best just to leave the subject alone.

“I’ll be back later,” she repeated as she started to leave again. Pausing, she added, “And thank you for hearing me out.”

“I haven’t said yes yet,” he reminded her, following her to the front door.

“I know. One step at a time.”

Opening the door, she walked out just as a tall, lean, muscular cowboy was coming up the walk. Their eyes met for a split second, and then Bailey lowered hers and hurried off to where she had parked her car.

Foxworth Colton’s mouth dropped open as the woman registered belatedly in his brain. Like a cartoon character, Wyatt’s cousin/adopted brother turned around and watched the woman he had almost walked into quickly get into her car and drive away.

Still stunned, Fox turned back to look quizzically at Wyatt.

Harrison Colton, Fox’s father, had died following a deadly accident where he’d unintentionally driven his car off the road. Fox’s mother, Dana, who’d been in the passenger seat, had lingered long enough to ask her sister, Mara, to care for her children. Wyatt’s parents had both agreed to take in Fox and Sloane.

Because they were close and always had been, when Wyatt had inherited the Crooked C from his grandmother, he’d set aside forty acres on the southern part of his property and offered it to Fox so that his cousin was able to breed his horses. In return Fox worked closely with Wyatt and could always be called upon to help out when Wyatt needed him.

No one had been happier for Wyatt than Fox when Wyatt had gotten married. Fox had also been there for him when Bailey had suddenly taken off for parts unknown. Fox had been the one to slowly ease Wyatt away from trying to drown his pain in alcohol when that process threatened to get the better of him.

Fox’s patience and efforts had paid off. Wyatt had finally gotten back to his old self, albeit more closed off emotionally than he’d been previously.

But that could all change again with Bailey coming back, Fox thought.

Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe that only looked like Bailey. After all, why would she suddenly come back after all this time?

“Hey,” Fox said, doing his best to sound cheerful, “that wasn’t—?”

“Bailey?” Wyatt supplied. Turning on his heel, he walked away from the front door. His voice was flat as he answered, “Yes, it was.”

Bordering on shocked disbelief, Fox walked into the house right behind Wyatt. He glanced over his shoulder one last time even though the car and the woman were gone. “You’re kidding.”

“Not something I’d kid about,” Wyatt assured the younger man.

Fox closed the door behind him and went straight to the coffee maker on the kitchen counter. He needed a hit of coffee, the stronger the better.

“What’s she doing here?” Taking a mug from the counter, he filled it to the brim with inky-black coffee. “Did she suddenly come to her senses?” he asked even though he doubted that was why Bailey had suddenly turned up.

“I don’t think that’s why she’s here.”

Fox looked at the man above the rim of steaming black liquid. “Then why is she here?” He burned his tongue and swallowed a curse. Blowing on the liquid, he waited a second before taking another sip, slowly this time.

“She came to ask if I’d make a baby with her.”

Fox had just taken another sip of coffee. He started choking and almost spit the liquid out in a spray. He managed to swallow it at the last moment.

He set the mug down on the kitchen counter, and his eyes were watery as he stared at his cousin. “I thought you just said that she asked you—”

“She did,” Wyatt said quietly.

Forgetting about the coffee, Fox focused his attention on Wyatt. He didn’t want to see the man he thought of as a brother getting hurt again. “When did all this happen?”

Wyatt nodded at the closed front door. “Just now.”

That didn’t seem possible, Fox thought. “She didn’t give you any warning?”

Wyatt shook his head as he walked back into the living room. “Nope.”

Fox was right behind him. “You’re telling me that Bailey didn’t call you first to see how you felt about this?”

Feeling suddenly drained, Wyatt sank onto the sofa. The same sofa he had just been sitting on with Bailey beside him. It almost seemed like a crazy dream now.

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

Fox was trying to get this all straight in his head. “And you haven’t heard from her in the last six years, right?”

Wyatt’s eyes shifted, slowly looking toward his brother. “Not a word.”

Fox emitted a low whistle. “Hell, Wyatt, what are you going to do?”

Wyatt laughed even though the situation was far from funny. “Damned if I know.”

Fox’s mind was racing now. “She’s not staying in town, is she?”

The corners of Wyatt’s mouth rose in an ironic smile. “As a matter of fact, she isn’t.”

Fox looked at his cousin suspiciously. “I don’t like the way you phrased that.” And then it hit him. “Wait—she’s not staying here, is she? Please tell me she’s not staying here.”

“I could,” Wyatt answered, “except that I made it a point never to lie to you.”

Astonishment nudged its way into Fox’s soul. “She’s going to be staying here,” he concluded incredulously. He stared at Wyatt, unable to believe what the other man was telling him. Maybe there was some mistake. “You’re actually considering doing what she asked?”

“Well, I—”

Wyatt got no further than that before Fox barked, “Wyatt, are you out of your mind? This woman did a tap dance on your heart, disappearing on you without even having the decency to tell you why to your face, and now she’s popped up out of nowhere, asking you to sleep with her—”

Maybe it was nerves that made Wyatt laugh at the way Fox was phrasing his narrative. “Actually, sleeping isn’t exactly a factor here—”

Fox wasn’t in the mood to see the humor in this. “You know damn well what I mean. Maybe you don’t remember what you were like after she left because most of the time you were too anesthetized with whiskey to know your own name. But I remember the whole thing. Clearly,” he emphasized. “She practically destroyed you—and I’m not going to let her get a chance to do it a second time,” Fox informed him angrily.

Wyatt knew that the other man meant well, but this was his problem to deal with. “You don’t have anything to say about it.”

“The hell I don’t,” Fox snapped. “For better or for worse, you’re my family and I care about you. Now you might not be able to say no to that woman, but I certainly can,” Fox informed him with finality.

Wyatt raised a salient point. “She didn’t ask you to father her baby, Fox. She asked me.”

Fox scowled. He was incensed and didn’t like being tripped up because of words. “You know what I mean,” he growled.

“Yeah, I do,” Wyatt replied. And then his voice softened. “And I know you mean well but, ultimately, this is my decision to make.”

“So you’re actually considering doing this?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Wyatt corrected him. To him thinking came before considering and he needed to think this all through, taking in all the ramifications, the extenuating circumstances as far as he was able. “Look, I’m the one who brought her out here and she sacrificed a lot to help me get the ranch up and running. I owe her.”

“Is that what she told you?” Fox chided angrily. “That you owe her?”

“No, that’s what I think. And it’s true. Bailey wanted to go to school to become a veterinarian and I talked her out of it, saying she could do that later because I needed her working alongside me at the time.

“I said the same thing to her when she wanted to have kids.” Wyatt went on, vividly remembering the circumstances now. “I said having kids could wait because we needed to focus our attention on the ranch and getting a herd going.”

Fox refused to allow Wyatt to blame himself. “So you wanted to build something and you did. That wasn’t a bad thing,” he insisted.

“No, it wasn’t,” Wyatt agreed. “But it wasn’t her thing,” he said, trying to see the situation from his ex-wife’s vantage point. “It was mine. Bailey didn’t get to do what she wanted, didn’t get to have the kids she wanted.”

“So she’s here to collect now?” Fox asked in astonishment. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Wyatt frowned to himself as he sighed. There were so many ambivalent feelings running through him. “Something like that.”

This still wasn’t making any sense to Fox. “Bailey’s still young,” he insisted. “She’s what? Thirty? Thirty-one?”

“Thirty-five,” Wyatt corrected him.

“Thirty-five,” Fox repeated, nodding his head as if this substantiated the point he was about to make. “Not exactly ready for the old age home. Plenty of time for her to have a baby.” He paused, looking at his cousin. “No offense, but why you? It’s been six years. She should have moved on.”

Wyatt shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “She said I was the best man she knew.”

“She joined a convent after she left you?” Fox wanted to know, keeping a straight face.

“Very funny,” Wyatt retorted. “No, apparently she made a discerning decision.”

Fox grew serious. “All kidding aside, Wyatt, you are the best man I’ve ever known, but even taking that into account, you could be letting yourself in for a lot of grief here.” He was silent for a moment, thinking. “Maybe she has an agenda, coming back to you after all this time.”

Wyatt had come a long way from the man he had been six years ago. That man had felt he’d had something to prove to his parents by making a success of himself. He was less driven now. Even so, it felt as if there was something still missing from his life. Maybe this was it. He didn’t know, but it was worth thinking about. “Like what?” he asked Fox.

“Your last name is Colton,” Fox reminded Wyatt. “She has your baby, she has a claim on the Colton money.”

Wyatt shook his head. “No, she said she didn’t want anything from me except my DNA.”

“Women say a lot of things to get their way,” Fox pointed out.

That might be so in some cases, but he’d believed Bailey when she’d said she wanted nothing from him. “When those divorce papers arrived in the mail, she never asked me to do anything but sign them. There was no settlement in her favor, no requests for alimony made. I was a Colton then, too,” he reminded Fox.

His cousin wasn’t altogether convinced. “Maybe she’s gotten smarter since then and realized she missed a huge opportunity.”

“Fox, you’ve met her. In some respects, you knew her almost as well as I did,” Wyatt argued. “Does that sound like the woman you knew?”

Wyatt had a point, Fox acknowledged. But he still thought Wyatt should hold off just in case. “People change, Wyatt.”

“People change.” Wyatt emphasized the word. “Bailey hasn’t. And she went back to school just like she wanted to. She got her degree and became a veterinarian,” he told Fox, realizing that a bit of pride had slipped into his voice as he’d told his cousin about his ex-wife’s accomplishment.

Fox studied Wyatt’s face in silence for a long moment. And then he nodded his head, not in response to anything the other man had said, but in response to something that had just occurred to him.

“You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?” he asked. “You’re going to tell her yes.”

But Wyatt wasn’t all that quick to confirm his cousin’s assumption. Instead he said, “Right now, I’m leaning that way.”

“Think long and hard, Wyatt,” Fox counseled. “Truth be told, until she stomped on your heart, I always liked Bailey. I thought she was good for you. But think about this... If you say yes and she has this baby, how are you going to feel when she takes it away? That’s what she said, right? That all she wants is your DNA and then she’s gone.

“I know you, Wyatt,” Fox told him. “You father that baby, you’re going to want to be part of its life and maybe Bailey won’t want that. Maybe she’ll just pull another disappearing act on you when you’re not looking, and this time, she’ll be running off with your son or your daughter. How are you going to feel then?”

“You’re asking too many questions,” Wyatt said dismissively.

“And you’re not asking enough,” Fox insisted. “You might have a big heart and be a pushover when it comes to Bailey, but I’m here to make sure that you’re not hurt again.”

Wyatt looked at his cousin impatiently. “I can take care of myself.”

Fox didn’t see it that way. “Obviously not.”

“I haven’t said yes yet,” Wyatt reminded him, hoping that would shut Fox up for the time being.

“But you’re going to, aren’t you?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question.

Wyatt cocked his head and pretended to listen to something in the distance. “I think I hear the horses calling you.”

For now, Fox gave up. They both needed a little space to allow this to settle. “We’re not finished talking yet. This isn’t over. In the meantime, I’m going to confiscate the alcohol you keep here.”

Wyatt knew what his brother was referring to. It wasn’t a period of his life he was proud of. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not about to make the same mistake twice,” he told Fox.

Fox paused by the front door. “Just remember that you said that,” he said before he left.

Chapter 4

Working alongside Fox today, Wyatt found that he had spent a good part of the time defending Bailey. He’d had no idea that Fox had so many misgivings about his former wife’s sudden reappearance. More, apparently, than he did.

Wyatt was well aware where his brother was coming from. Most likely, in Fox’s position, he might even feel the same way. But from somewhere deep within him, something akin to a sense of protectiveness stirred inside Wyatt. Right or wrong, he felt compelled to get Fox to change his mind, or at the very least to hold off making any final judgments against Bailey until she’d had a chance to redeem herself.

But after going back and forth for the length of the day, at the end of that time they were still at an impasse and Wyatt left it at that. Especially since he really hadn’t made up his mind one way or the other regarding Bailey’s request.

Preoccupied, Wyatt didn’t notice the car that was parked around the side of the ranch house until he had already walked inside. That was when the combined scent of chicken frying in the pan mingled with the light perfume she always wore seeped into his consciousness.

Bailey had returned.

Suddenly all the old, angry feelings came rushing back to him, fast and hard, like a river overflowing its banks, practically drowning him.

Wyatt forgot about all the things he had said to Fox in her defense, remembering instead the sickening, hollow feeling in his gut when he’d realized that she was really gone.

Walking into the kitchen, he saw Bailey moving between the counter and the stove, her back to him. For a second he thought of turning around and storming out, but that wouldn’t solve anything. She was there and he was going to have to deal with it.

“You made dinner,” Wyatt observed, coming up behind her.

Startled, Bailey nearly dropped the frying pan she’d just lifted from the burner. At the last minute she managed to hold on to it and shift it onto one of the other burners that hadn’t been turned on.

Catching her breath, she turned to look at Wyatt over her shoulder.

“Well, I thought you might be hungry when you came home after working on the range, so I looked through the refrigerator to see if there was anything I could use to make dinner.” She turned around to face him and smiled. “If I remember correctly, you have a weakness for fried chicken.”

He’d once had a weakness for her, as well, Wyatt thought.

“I like it,” he replied with a measure of indifference that sounded downright chilly to Bailey.

She tried not to let him see her reaction to his tone. Instead she smiled again then went back to getting everything ready.

“Good, because dinner’s almost ready.”

The scene was all too familiar to him, vividly bringing back the early days of their marriage when they had worked alongside each other and then taken all their meals together.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he told her gruffly.

In her estimation, Wyatt looked as if he wished she hadn’t, but Bailey ignored that.

“I could say the same thing to you about letting me stay here,” she replied, transferring the side dishes from their pots to serving bowls. The bowls were the same ones she’d used when they were together, she noticed. Nothing had changed.

Except that everything had.

Opening the cabinet drawer closest to her, Bailey looked for the set of tongs she thought would be there. But they weren’t.

She opened another drawer with the same result. Looking up at Wyatt, she asked, “Where are the tongs?”

Coming up behind her, he looked over her shoulder into the drawer, as if he expected them to suddenly materialize. When he saw they weren’t there, Wyatt thought for a minute.

“I think they’re in the barn,” he told her.

“The barn?” That was an odd place for them. Her brow furrowed beneath her wayward bangs. “What are they doing there?”

Wyatt shrugged. “I needed them for something” was all he said, unable to remember the real reason the tongs had made their way out of the kitchen and into the barn.

Feeling it best not to push the matter or to question him—she’d learned long ago to pick her battles—Bailey merely nodded. “Okay.”

Bailey used a fork in lieu of the tongs and put two pieces of chicken on his plate and then one on hers. Picking up both plates, she brought them over to the table, placing one plate in front of Wyatt and one opposite him, where she used to sit. She then got the two bowls, one filled with mashed potatoes and one with green beans, and placed them next to the two plates.

Finished, she sat.

Wyatt took his seat opposite her. He looked down at her plate critically. “You just took one piece of chicken.”

Wyatt started to pick up one of the chicken legs on his plate to transfer to hers but she pulled her plate back from him.

“I was never a big eater,” she reminded him, waiting for that information to sink in and ring a bell.

It did. “That’s right, I remember. Rosa kept trying to fatten you up, said you were too skinny and you were going to waste away unless she got you to eat more,” Wyatt said, referring to his former housekeeper.

Like the property, he had inherited the housekeeper from his grandmother. For just a moment, there was a fond note in his voice as he remembered their first days at the Crooked C.

“Remember how mad she got when it started raining in the kitchen?” Bailey recalled, laughing at the memory. “That was when we found out the roof we’d just finished putting in leaked. Badly. Rosa wanted you to go out right then and there and patch it.”

He recalled the incident. “Sometimes I got the impression that she thought we worked for her.”

Bailey nodded, laughing again. “She certainly was bossy.” When she’d returned this afternoon, it had become obvious to her that the housekeeper no longer lived there. “Whatever happened to her?” she asked.

“Rosa retired three years ago,” he told her as he continued eating. “Her daughter’s husband was killed in a tractor accident and she needed help raising her three kids, so Rosa left me to become a full-time grandmother.”

He remembered how the woman had kept apologizing for leaving him high and dry like that. He’d known at the time that she’d been thinking about Bailey deserting him three years earlier. He’d told the older woman that there were no hard feelings and had even given her a large bonus to help things along with her grandchildren.

“That’s too bad,” Bailey said, genuinely saddened to hear the woman had left. “I liked her. Who cooks your meals now?” she asked suddenly.

He fielded the question without flinching. “I do.”

Bailey stopped eating and looked at him. When they were married, Wyatt couldn’t boil water. When he’d been traveling the rodeo circuit, she remembered that he’d taken all his meals at any local restaurant or diner they’d come across.

“You cook?” she asked, not bothering to hide her surprise.

“I can get by,” he answered. Saying anything more would be bordering on lying. “Mostly I heat up things out of cans. But I can make eggs,” he added.

A warm smile spread from her eyes to her lips. “I guess miracles do happen,” she said wryly.

Mesmerized by her smile, Wyatt looked at his ex-wife for a long moment.

“Maybe sometimes,” he allowed then looked away.

He was closing up again, Bailey thought sadly. She could see it.

Bailey bit her lower lip. She was never going to get him to agree to go along with her proposition if he closed up. He’d never been particularly outgoing and cheerful, even when things were going well between them, but at least there had been glimmers of joy evident every now and then.

Now what she sensed was a bitterness that hadn’t been there before.

Had she done that to him?

Who was she trying to kid? Bailey upbraided herself. Of course she had done this to him. And now it was up to her to do what she could to undo that, to get him to open up again and be the man she had once known. She didn’t want him dissolving into a bitter old man, not when he had so much to offer.

“Well, I look forward to sampling some of your cooking,” she told him after a beat, not knowing what else to say. Things were awkward between them. That, too, was her fault, she thought.

“We’ll see” was all Wyatt said in response.

Several minutes later he looked down at his plate and realized that despite the tension between them, dinner had gone down very easily. If nothing else, he mused, the woman certainly knew how to cook. But then, she always had.

He felt a pang, sitting opposite her like this. It reminded him just how much he’d missed her all these years. And just how angry he’d been that she’d left, even though, theoretically, he now understood why she had done it.

Bailey’s voice broke through his ruminations.

“What?”

“You’re grimacing,” she noted. “Was something wrong with the chicken?”

“No, not at all. It was very good actually. You always did know your way around a kitchen.”

She’d never thought of it as an accomplishment but rather a necessity.

“I had to,” she told him matter-of-factly. When they were together, she hadn’t really shared very much about her mother. She hadn’t wanted him to feel sorry for her. It no longer mattered now. “My mom left when I was little and my father was even more hopeless in the kitchen than you were.”

“I think I resent that,” Wyatt quipped with a small hint of a smile.

“It wasn’t meant as an insult, just an observation,” she told him, not wanting him to think she was trying to belittle him. “I learned to cook because I had to. Old Prairie Dog Pat wasn’t about to let me slide,” she recalled, referring to her father by the name that everyone in the circuit called him.

Patrick Norton had been a very hard man to love, but she did because he was her father and, for a long time, her only family. From a very young age, she was the one who’d looked after him instead of the other way around. And he’d returned her devotion by finding different ways to belittle her because as she’d grown, she’d looked like the spitting image of the woman who had walked out on him, leaving him with a kid to raise.

Even after she had forged a career for herself as a barrel racer, and then left it all behind her to marry Wyatt, Bailey could still hear her father’s voice in her head, telling her that she would never be good enough to be accepted in Wyatt’s world. She was acutely aware of how little her father thought of her.

She supposed that, in part, her father was responsible for her ultimately leaving Wyatt. She’d felt she needed to make something of herself so that she could respect herself. Otherwise she’d been certain that no one else ever would, especially Wyatt.

“Anyway,” she continued, shutting away the wave of hurtful memories, “I’m sure you’ve gotten very good at it.”

A dry laugh escaped his lips. “Maybe you should reserve judgment on that until after you’ve had a chance to actually sample my cooking.”

That sounded promising to her—on more than one level, she thought. For her to sample his cooking, he had to make it for her. That in turn meant she had to be here for that. In a roundabout way, he was telling her that she was staying.

“I look forward to it,” Bailey told him.

“Uh-huh,” he murmured, pushing back his chair.

Seeing that Wyatt was about to take his plate to the sink, Bailey quickly rose ahead of him. Putting out her hand for his plate, she said, “I’ll do that.”

“Don’t.” It sounded more like an order than a polite admonishment to her. Bailey dropped her hand to her side. “You did the cooking,” he told her without any fanfare. “I’ll clean up.”

It sounded more like a business deal between two strangers instead of two friends. But then, they hadn’t parted as friends, she reminded herself. He probably thought it was quite the opposite.

“It’s your house,” she murmured, letting him have his way.

His eyes met hers. There was no softness in them. “Yes, it is.”

There it was again, Bailey thought. That cold note in his voice. So cold that it could freeze an entire lake in a matter of minutes with no effort at all.

It brought back feelings of guilt to her in vivid color. She knew that there was nothing she could possibly say that would change what had happened. All she could do was try to make it up to him now by finding a way to be useful, by trying her best to find a way to get him to come around a little.

She tried talking about what she knew was dear to Wyatt’s heart. “The ranch seems to be doing well,” she observed. “You must be very proud.”

He wasn’t the type to admit things outright. “I like it,” he told her evasively and then admitted, “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it.”

Well, this wasn’t going very well, she noted. “I saw Fox when I was leaving,” she said, trying again to get some sort of conversation going between them. “Does he still live on the edge of your property?”

“Fox bought that property from me,” Wyatt reminded her. “So he lives on his own place.”

“Sorry, my mistake,” she apologized. She’d forgotten about that. “But you still work together, right?” she asked.

Wyatt shrugged. “In a manner of speaking. He breeds horses. Some are mine,” he told her.

“He always did have a way with horses.” Bailey remembered. She’d missed being part of a family, even if it really wasn’t her own. She thought of Fox’s younger sister, who had also been adopted by Russ and Mara Colton after their parents perished in a car accident. “How’s Sloane doing?”

He thought about what Fox had told him regarding his sister. “A lot better now that she’s finally shed that hundred and eighty pounds that was really weighing her down.”

Bailey stared at him. “What?” That didn’t sound possible. She recalled Sloane being a petite, slender young woman when she’d left.

Wyatt explained his comment. “She divorced her no-good husband and, according to Fox, Sloane and Chloe will probably be moving back here soon.”

“Chloe?” Bailey repeated quizzically. This was a new name for her.

“That’s Sloane’s two-year-old daughter,” Wyatt told her.

“Sloane has a daughter?” she questioned, completely surprised at the news. It felt as if everyone was having children except for her. “I didn’t even know she was married until you just said that she got a divorce.”

“Yes, she did, and in her case, that’s a good thing.” He paused as he looked at her, his expression solemn. “I guess there’s a lot of that going around.”

She deserved that, Bailey thought.

“When is she thinking of coming out here?” Bailey was hoping to be able to see the woman before she had to leave.

That at least was an easy question, he thought. “Fox told me she’s going to try to be here in time for Grandpa Earl’s ninety-fourth birthday celebration.”

“When is that?” She wanted to know.

“This weekend,” he told her. Then he added a salient point. “My parents want to keep it strictly ‘family only.’ These days Grandpa Earl is pretty physically and mentally weak, and they don’t want to tax him any more than is absolutely necessary.”

That meant that she wouldn’t be allowed to come, she thought. “Oh.”

Wyatt heard the disappointment in her voice and told himself to ignore it. She’d made her bed.

But telling himself that didn’t help. She was here and he found that he just couldn’t shut her out.

“Would you want to come?” he asked her. “It’s being held at the Colton Manor,” he added. The Manor wasn’t exactly a place that was warm and welcoming despite all its opulent décor. “You remember it, right?”

“What I remember about Colton Manor was that you didn’t really like it,” she told him. “It was a beautiful place, though.”

He shrugged philosophically. “Well, if you can put up with it—and my parents—you can come with me if you’d like.”

She wanted to jump at the chance but she had a question for him first. She didn’t want to make him any more uncomfortable than she already had.

“You don’t mind your parents knowing I’m here?” Bailey asked.

“They don’t exactly figure into my day-to-day life,” Wyatt answered. “So, if you want to come along and wish Grandpa happy birthday, then sure—why not? Come.”

She smiled widely. “Thank you,” she told him. “I will.”

He found that he was unable to look away. Heaven help him, though he tried to deny it, he was still a sucker for that smile.

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