LITMIR.BIZ

       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

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