Colton Cowboy Standoff. Marie Ferrarella

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