LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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