Cowboy Be Mine

“I suppose we’ll get married now,”

Michael said.

Bailey’s heart beat faster, harder, painfully. “What do you mean?”

“If you’re expecting, we’ll do the right thing by the child,” he said, his tone practical.

Bailey pulled herself up tall, her spine rigid with pride. “The heck we will,” she declared. “I wouldn’t dream of marrying a man who thinks he’s going to do the right thing by me. If I was looking to be saved, Michael Wade, I would’ve married someone else a long time ago.”

What a fool I’ve been. Suddenly she couldn’t stay another moment around Michael. Not when it felt like her heart was being torn right out of her.

Cowboy Be Mine

Tina Leonard

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tina Leonard loves to laugh, which is one of the many reasons she loves writing Harlequin American Romance books. In another lifetime, Tina thought she would be single and an East Coast fashion buyer forever. The unexpected happened when Tina met Tim again after many years—she hadn’t seen him since they’d attended school together from first through eighth grade. They married, and now Tina keeps a close eye on her school-age children’s friends! Lisa and Dean keep their mother busy with soccer, gymnastics and horseback riding. They are proud of their mom’s “kissy books” and eagerly help her any way they can. Tina hopes that readers will enjoy the love of family she writes about in her books. Recently a reviewer wrote, “Leonard has a wonderful sense of the ridiculous,” which Tina loved so much, she wants it for her epitaph. Right now, however, she’s focusing on her wonderful life and writing a lot more romance!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

“I have loved Michael all my life,” Bailey Dixon murmured as she stood in her bedroom, staring in the dressing mirror at her full-length profile. “All I ever dreamed of was becoming Mrs. Michael Wade.”

She couldn’t say that to him. Michael didn’t love her. He would be astonished if she just breezed out of her house, drove her truck to his next-door ranch and said, “Michael, it’s time you and I—”

What? Put a ring and a commitment on their relationship?

Michael Wade was dead set against rings, commitments and anything that remotely felt like a relationship. A handsome, wealthy bachelor—in Fallen, Texas, he was considered a catch.

Michael Wade would never be caught.

Bailey was terrified of scaring him off. But she would if she mentioned the dreaded M word.

For six months, she had lived in the heaven of his arms—at night. It had happened by accident, almost. He had been under the weather with a broken ankle. Knowing he’d have almost no groceries at his place, she’d taken over a casserole and some soup. Very casually she had eased into his life, almost as if she belonged there.

Almost—as long as she stayed out of his heart. This particular cowboy was branded tough to tame. But she desperately wanted to tame him.

The question was—could she?

MICHAEL WADE knew himself to be considered a loner, possessed of a personality that earned him few friends but many wary acquaintances. He worked hard. He didn’t socialize much; he wasn’t interested in clowning around with the single guys in Fallen. Drinking and cutting up weren’t his thing, not after he put in long days on the family ranch, which had become his since his dad’s death. His mother had moved on a long time before, deciding she could no longer endure her husband suffering with unrequited love for the married Polly Dixon next door. At least that’s what one of his high school acquaintances had told him at the time. Michael had taken his mother’s desertion personally, though he never let himself think about it anymore. Today wasn’t going to be an exception. At thirty, he was a contented bachelor, exactly what a man with common sense ought to be. Women would be a cramp in his life he didn’t need.

Not even sweet Bailey Dixon, who got that soft, hopeful gaze in her eyes when he pulled her into bed with him. Maybe he wasn’t a gentleman for sleeping with her without intending more than physical pleasure. Maybe he should tell her to put her truck in reverse the next time she came around.

The trouble was, he was selfish. He liked her perky little smile. Her petite, curvy body fit his like his work gloves fit his hands. He enjoyed the way she didn’t ask for anything from him. It made it easier to ignore his pangs of conscience, which taunted that perhaps he and his hard-edged father had possessed something in common, after all—their attraction to calm, capable Dixon women.

What further annoyed the hell out of Michael on this crisp February day was that he’d caught himself thinking about Bailey more than once. More than twice. Maybe about twenty times. He found himself glancing toward her ramshackle wooden Victorian house, a half-acre from his, wondering what she was doing. Wondering if she’d come to see him tonight. She did come around, occasionally and uninvited, just when he started missing having someone to talk to and warm him up at the end of a long week.

She hadn’t been around in nearly two weeks, and he was about crazy from wondering when she’d be back. He was sorely tempted to ring her number and holler into the phone, “Where the hell are you?”

Something told him that wasn’t the appropriate way to draw Bailey to his bed, and he’d never had to invite her before. She just sort of made herself at home.

He blew out a breath in the frigid air, glanced one more time at Bailey’s house and turned his horse to head home.

The woman wasn’t going to get under his skin.

No way.

“YOU SEE MY PROBLEM,” Bailey told her older brother.

“I told you not to mess with him. I told you he wasn’t going to marry you,” Brad said sourly.

“What you told me doesn’t matter now, does it?”

Brad put his head in his hands. “I should go over there and beat his head in. I should shoot him.”

“That would upset me greatly.” Bailey set milk out for the youngest of the seven Dixon siblings, who were eyeing her and Brad curiously as they spoke in abbreviated terms so the children wouldn’t understand the exact content of the conversation. Bailey was twenty-five, and Brad was twenty-six. As for late-in-life accidents, their parents had five of them, now aged five, six, seven, eight and nine. It was like a tap that had been turned on and refused to shut off. Country people who had never strayed from Fallen, they’d married at fifteen, respect for each other forging their family tight-knit and strong. At forty-one, a cruel cancer stole Polly, and not much later, Elijah died of a broken heart, too weak to be willing to go on without his wife.

Contrary to popular belief, it was more than possible to survive on love. It was a richness no coin could purchase.

Their parents had left the family that knowledge, if not money. How to pay the overwhelming inheritance taxes on the house and property fell to Bailey and Brad to figure out. As the eldest, Brad should be head of the household, but he was happier letting Bailey handle most of the practical considerations. Now she’d added a further complication—one more mouth to feed.

She returned to washing dishes. “I knew what I was getting into.”

“As the man of this house, it’s probably incumbent upon me to at least talk to him.”

“No!” Bailey whirled around and eyed her brother sharply. “I’ll talk to him. When the time is right.”

“The clock is ticking,” Brad pointed out. “You need to speed up your timetable.”

“Brad,” Bailey protested. “Please! It’s not going to be easy. I don’t know how to tell him….” She fell silent, glancing out the kitchen window to the redbrick, sturdy ranch house Michael’s father had commissioned. What little she had of Michael, she didn’t want to lose.

Sadness struck her heart. She had a choice to make. She could tell him about the baby, and he’d no doubt do the honorable thing. But she didn’t want him that way.

She wanted him to be hers, body and soul and heart and mind.

Not trapped. Not forced—though she knew in her heart it would never happen. He would never feel the way about her she felt about him.

Brad left the kitchen, but Bailey hardly noticed as she stared through the window at the neighboring ranch. “Cowboy, please be mine,” she murmured through sudden tears.

“ARE YOU GOING to do any work today?” Chili Haskins turned to look at his loafing companion.

Curly Monroe looked indignant. “Should I?” He settled a bit more comfortably on the wooden fence rail they shared. “We’re almost old enough to be members of AARP.”

Fred Peters scratched his chin. “You mean that association of retired people? We ain’t that old.”

“Nah.” Chili thought that over. “We’re fence-sitters, not doing much of anything but sitting on this rail. But we’re not retired.”

“A fence-sitters’ country club,” Curly agreed, satisfied. “Kind of exclusive, if you think on it.”

“We need to do something, though.” Chili wasn’t as satisfied as Curly.

“No, we don’t. That would defeat the purpose of sitting on the fence,” Fred pointed out. “We’d have to turn in our membership in our own club.”

“We could do a little more than we’re doing to help Michael,” Chili argued. “He didn’t have to keep us on after his pa passed. He could have sent us packing. I say we help him out some way more than appointing ourselves the unofficial lookouts of the Walking W ranch.”

From their vantage point, they gazed at the sprawling ranch house.

“Big place for one person,” Fred mentioned.

“Yep. Gotta be lonely.” Chili had his two companions in retirement. He wasn’t lonely. Michael Wade had no one.

All three men glanced toward the dilapidated Victorian house perched on the opposite hill. Chili cleared his throat. Curly coughed uncomfortably. Fred shifted.

“Been a long time since she’s been a-calling,” Chili finally said.

“Maybe he ran her off,” Curly suggested.

It was a strong possibility. Michael didn’t want a whole lot of company, and especially not female, although there wasn’t a single unattached woman in all of Fallen who hadn’t brought Michael some vittles and a smile. Michael came out every once in a while to jaw with the self-appointed fence-sitters, but as far as they knew, Bailey’s nocturnal visits were an amazing exception to his self-imposed seclusion.

“You could casually ask him,” Fred said hopefully. “Ask him if he’s seen Bailey lately, as if you didn’t know he hasn’t.”

“He could casually poke me in the honker for butting in!” Chili was indignant. “Any more stupid ideas, friend?”

“We could mind our own business,” Fred acceded. “That would probably be best.”

They were quiet for a while, returning their attention to the ranch house. Michael walked onto the porch, stared at the cloudless sky for a moment, then glanced nonchalantly toward the Victorian before realizing the fence-sitters were watching. He gave a curt wave and retreated into the house.

“If he did run her off, he may be regretting it,” Chili noted.

“Sometimes a man doesn’t have to say with words what’s on his mind,” Curly said softly. “I knew he liked that little gal.”

Fred sat straighter. “Maybe we could help out.”

“How?” Chili demanded. “We’re ranch hands, not matchmakers.”

“I don’t like being retired,” Fred stated. “I want to be useful. I want to help Michael, not be a burden.”

Curly leaned back on the fence. “If something happened between those two, Bailey is going to be the hard one to convince, I hate to tell ya.” It was true. They’d known Bailey since she was a baby. All her twenty-five years she’d been stubborn. If she’d parked her blue truck in her own yard for two weeks, maybe she’d parked it for good where Michael was concerned. It would be tough to convince her to do anything she didn’t have a mind to.

They saw the curtain on the west side of the ranch house move slightly before it fell back into place.

Curly’s jaw dropped. “He’s looking for her!”

“He sure enough is.” Fred’s tone was filled with astonishment. “Looks like he’s got it bad!”

A few moments later, a black truck pulled up the lane to the Victorian house. Bailey, dressed in high heels and a pretty blue dress, hurried from the house and got in before her caller could even ring the doorbell. The truck headed down the lane a second later.

“What is Gunner King fetching Bailey for?” Chili demanded.

“Didn’t look like he was fetching her.” Fred’s voice was even more astonished. “I believe he was calling on her. I never saw him open a car door for anyone else before. And did you get a load of how short Bailey’s dress was?”

Curly blinked his eyes rapidly. “I sure as shooting hope the boss didn’t see her leave with Gunner.”

It might just put the finishing cap on the enmity the two ranchers held. The fence-sitters snapped their gazes to the ranch house just in time to observe Michael heading toward the barn. A few moments later, he tore out on his horse in the opposite direction Bailey had gone.

“I’d say he did see.” Chili hopped off the fence, sighing. “Boys, as much as we oughta be enjoying our golden years, we’ve got work to do. The toughest we ever done.”

Curly and Fred slid down to join him.

“They say that force is the only thing that gets two immovable objects together,” Chili intoned. “And that two points make a line if you draw it straight enough.”

“And that absence makes the heart go wander,” Fred added, eager to assist, though misquoting.

“So we got force, two points and a wandering heart,” Curly said doubtfully. “What does all that mean?”

Chili picked up his pace. “That if we get caught assisting this situation, Michael may very well kick us off our fence and send us off to the retirement home for doddering ranch help.”

“Is there a reason we want to be told to pack our bedrolls?” Curly wondered, hurrying behind him. “I like having the run of his kitchen and den. I like that big-screen TV!”

“Because Michael’s father hired us, trained us and kept us when we was just green boys,” Chili said over his shoulder. “He kept us on through the lean years when he had to let everybody else go. He treated us like we were something when we couldn’t get a job shoveling manure. You think about that, you think about his boy all locked up in his pride. You think about why he is that way, and then you tell me we’re not the only ones who can help Michael. And don’t expect those young pups he hired to do the job right. Any of the jobs right around here,” he said with righteous disgust.

“Isn’t that kind of like the blind leading the blind?” Fred asked, puffing to keep up with Chili. “Us helping Michael with his love life?”

“Exactly. And that’s the reason we can succeed.”

“Because we don’t know much about women?” Curly asked.

“All we need to know is that he’s happy when Bailey’s been by to see him and he’s grouchy as all get out now that she ain’t.” Chili turned to eye them both. “For the sake of old man Wade, we gotta try. Or else Michael’s gonna end up like his pa.”

“Oh. Bitter and mean,” Fred remembered.

“The old folks’ home would be better than that,” Curly concurred a bit desperately. “You’re right. We’ll follow your plan.”

Chili nodded his appreciation. “Good. Force and two points to tame a wandering heart.”

They all knew what lay ahead. It would be more painful than busting a bronc. It would be more back-breaking than branding.

Getting Michael Wade to act on his emotions and tell Bailey how he felt about her would be worse than having wisdom teeth dug out.

It was the ultimate impossible mission. Because where Michael was just a bit unbroken when it came to matters of the heart, Bailey was downright stubborn. More than ornery. Danged one-way, and a female who was as one-way as Bailey wasn’t likely to be persuaded to draw the line straight between Michael’s point and hers.

Chapter Two

Michael wasn’t jealous that Bailey was out with Gunner King. He would never stoop to such an emotion. Clearly, Bailey had thrown him over in favor of his rival, and that was her right. They’d had no commitment, no agreement that they couldn’t date whomever they chose.

He leaned back in the saddle and stared into an old pecan tree at an owl, which scrutinized him with unblinking interest. Of course, he would have thought that she wouldn’t step out with other men while the two of them were physically involved. That was it. They had shared a physical involvement. Nothing more, but did that mean they could date other people? Not once had the question, nor the desire, entered his mind the entire time Bailey had been coming around. He would have never thought to question whether their situation was monogamous. Plainly, she didn’t feel the same way.

If she was trying to make him jealous, it wasn’t going to work. His mother had tried to make his father jealous by making goo-goo eyes at Sherman King, Gunner’s ever-bachelor divorced father, but she hadn’t succeeded. Her husband had possessed an iron grip on his emotions, and so would her son.

He thought about Bailey’s mother as he rode slowly toward the house. Polly Dixon had loved her stargazing, painting, ne’er-do-well husband with every ounce of her soul. She would never have played games with his heart. He had been more than man enough where she was concerned. Michael had heard the ranch hands laugh every once in a while as they commented on the sagging porch and the peeling paint of the Dixon home, testament to Mr. Dixon’s uselessness. “Whatever ol’ Elijah Dixon lacks in muscle, he must make up for in other ways!” They’d laugh. “The ol’ guy must have plenty ’tweenst to keep his wife at home with all those young uns!”

Michael tried not to think about the crude remarks. He wouldn’t let himself wonder if he hadn’t possessed enough ’tweenst to satisfy Bailey, making her search for more interesting pastures.

No, he wouldn’t allow his mind to travel this torturous path. Life was about iron control.

He rode around the side of the house to the front and glanced toward Bailey’s house, the cross-timber rails separating her pie-shaped yard from his less sloped property. She and Gunner had returned, and Gunner was protectively helping Bailey toward her porch, wrapping her coat more closely around her to ward off the chill February wind.

Every ounce of Michael’s steely resolve turned into soft, bending ore at the sight of Gunner’s arm around his—Michael’s—woman. If this was how his father had felt when his mother had flirted with Sherman King, no wonder he’d turned into such a gnarly, difficult old man! “Red-eyed with jealousy, that’s what I am,” he muttered, as he went to unsaddle his horse. “So much for iron control.”

There was no controlling Bailey—she was as resilient and headstrong as her mother had been. She’d do whatever she wanted to do, and if she’d thrown him over for Gunner, then there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it except hope his insides didn’t feel like worms were tunneling through them forever. He didn’t think he could stand it.

When he left the barn, he refused to look at the rambling house again. It hurt too much. Keeping his gaze down as he strode to his porch, he jerked off his leather gloves finger by finger, as if he couldn’t remove them without carefully observing his hands.

So he missed the Rodeo Queen standing on his porch, holding a fresh-baked pie that smelled like peach as he hurried to escape inside his house, burning with indignation that Bailey knew he’d seen her date.

“Michael!” Deenie Day cried with delight. “I’ve been wondering where you were!”

“Out riding,” he replied, not liking her on his porch one bit. He could never think of her as anything except the Rodeo Queen, because she lived her title like some people wore clothes. He’d never seen her without lush, big hair sweeping her skull like a royal mantle and toxifying the air with hair spray fumes. He’d never seen her without her bright, white, toothy smile, as if a camera might pop out from anywhere to take her picture.

“Riding!” she exclaimed, loud enough for her voice to carry to the neighboring house. “It’s too cold for that, honey! Let’s go inside and let me warm you up with some of my delicious homemade pie.” She squeezed his biceps. “I want to know if it’s true that the way to a man’s heart is through his tum-tum,” she said, patting him there with a hand that lingered.

He was not interested in eating Deenie’s peach pie. The Rodeo Queen wanted him to bite into something far more serious than pie, like serious courtship. There was no path to his heart; she and every woman on the planet could save their question for a man interested in answering it.

Five young Dixon children spilled out of the house toward their beloved Bailey, whooping and calling her name as if she’d been gone for a year instead of an hour.

“What a bunch of wild Indians!” Deenie exclaimed. “How can you stand living so near them, hon? All that noise would drive me out of my mind.”

He barely heard her, though he thought Deenie could match the children decibel for decibel. He watched Gunner swing the littlest Dixon into his arms and keep the rest from jumping up on Bailey. Smarting with jealousy, he saw Bailey and Gunner suddenly witness Deenie’s presence with interest, and though his mind warned him he really didn’t want to do this, he allowed her to pull him inside his house with a well-manicured hand.

“Now, then,” she said silkily, “you just sit right down and I’ll warm this up in the microwave so it’s good and hot.”

Michael stared into Deenie’s determined eyes and knew he was in big trouble. She had far more on her mind than getting the pie good and hot, and red-eyed idiot that he was, he had let her inside his house, his only refuge.

He wished uncomfortably that Bailey would make one of her appearances before matters got too far out of hand, before Deenie got to where she was really heated up, but as he glanced out the kitchen window while Deenie’s back was turned, he saw Gunner and Bailey go inside her house.

Michael was on his own.

BAILEY COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d gotten sick to her stomach in front of Gunner. It was so humiliating! She had hoped that her nausea would hold off for the time it would take her to discuss the employment opportunity Gunner was offering. Secretarial duties at his home office four hours a day during the week would bring her a badly needed income, and most importantly, keep her near the children. Though Brad was a wonderful caregiver and loved watching their siblings—he liked to sketch and paint them—five rowdy bodies under the age of ten was a lot for anyone to handle. They had agreed she should listen to Gunner’s offer. She’d gone with him to see his office setup and learn everything her job would entail.

And had been horribly ill not ten minutes after she’d walked into the enormous King mansion. The cook had been preparing sausage links and beef tacos for the hands, and though she’d tried to fight off the green sensation stealing through her insides, she had barely made it to the bathroom Gunner swiftly helped her to.

Gunner had brought her home and assisted her to the worn red-and-white check sofa to sit. Her mother had loved to sit here and gaze out the big window at her children playing while she folded laundry. Bailey felt a twinge sitting in her mother’s place, almost as if she could feel her mother’s presence.