Colton Cowboy Standoff. Marie Ferrarella

      “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