what Bailey erupts like.” The freckles on his face were darker than Bailey’s and smudged with syrup.
Eight-year-old Paul shook his head. “She’s more like a geyser. They spew all the time.” His tone was righteous with the superiority of greater age.
“She erupts,” Sam insisted belligerently.
“Spews!” Paul stated authoritatively.
“Erupts!” Hating to be wrong, indignant because he was younger than Paul and stinging from Paul’s know-it-all tone, Sam launched a sneaky fist at his brother.
“Spews! Bailey, Sam hit me!” Paul cried.
Bailey didn’t see the hitting, but the back seat warfare made her want to slide under the floor mat.
Suddenly, all the well-behaved Dixon children were shouting, the din like loud surround-sound in a movie theater.
“Paul’s looking at me!” Sam shrieked. “He’s making those wolf fangs you told him not to!”
Baby began crying in the front seat. “I want my lamb baby!”
“Hey!” Brad tried to pin arms and separate bodies, but the commotion swelled out of control. Beth screeched at the top of her lungs, pressing against the car door to keep herself safe from flying limbs and starting to cry because her freshly ironed dress was getting mussed. Bailey was so weak she could only groan. She didn’t want to move and risk the nausea returning. The smell of syrup and bacon clung to the occupants of the car, and with the uproar behind her, she seriously feared her stomach would have another heave of volcano or geyser proportions and illustrate Sam’s and Paul’s argument more vividly than they were.
“Enough!” Michael roared.
The car quieted instantly. Even Bailey rolled her head to stare at him. No one had ever heard Michael raise his voice.
“Now, if you can’t behave—Paul, don’t look at Sam—I won’t take any of you with us the next time I take your sister out.”
Bailey’s lips parted. Take me out? Is this a date? It certainly sounded that way!
Apparently, Michael thought so, too. “Your sister and your brother,” he amended quickly. “If you can’t act like big people, you don’t get to go with us. Got it?”
There was a chorus of yes, sirs, and the back seat remained quiet.
“Now. About your virus, which got this whole debate started, Bailey.”
She felt Michael’s gaze on her, questioning. “It’s nothing,” she reiterated.
“It’s something. You’re not skimping on going to the doctor because of money, are you?”
“No. I told you, I went to Doc Watson.” She didn’t dare look at him.
“I’m taking you home,” Michael said, his voice strong and determined. “And I’m checking on you tonight, after I’ve done my chores. If you’re not better, if you’re not looking a lot more like the Bailey I know, I’m hauling you into Dallas to a first-rate physician.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he put a restraining hand on her leg. “I mean to have my way about this, Bailey. It doesn’t do your family any good if you don’t take care of yourself, and money shouldn’t be an issue. You’ve rarely been sick a day in your life, but if one of my cows was as sick as you are, I’d be calling out the vet. And if you’ve been ill like this for a week, you need a good, thorough going-over by a qualified city doctor. In fact, I’ve got a good mind to call Doc Watson and tell him you need a prescription to get you on the road to recovery. I’ve got my cell phone with me, and—”
“Michael! Please just take me home!” Bailey realized he was about to call Doc Watson. “I promise I’ll be better soon.”
He slowly turned off the cell phone. “Okay. But much more spewing or erupting, and off you go. If the kids get sick with this bug, you’re going to have a real mess on your hands.”
Bailey tore her gaze away from his. She had one. He just didn’t know how serious the mess was.
Chapter Five
Bailey dove into bed as soon as they arrived home. She was too mortified to do more than mumble a hurried thanks to Michael. He was staring at her with such worry that she quickly made good her escape to the soothing safety of her bed.
When she awakened hours later, shadows were growing long and dark on the bedroom walls. February days were so short! Almost as if reminding her time was running out. She couldn’t procrastinate much longer with what she had to tell Michael.
The thought made her weak with unhappiness. She did not want him to say he would marry her. Yet that was likely what the tough-to-tame cowboy would do. He had an honorable character.
But he would never be truly hers. If six months of sleeping with him hadn’t brought them closer together, her distended stomach was certain to push them further apart.
She belted a pair of jeans, which still fit her snugly, pushed her head through an oversize sweater, pulled a hand through the long strands of hair, brushed her teeth and headed downstairs.
Her brother was working on a jigsaw puzzle with the children. “I’m sorry, Brad,” she murmured. “You could have used the good light of day to paint.”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “We’ve about got this puzzle whipped, and I’m determined to finish.”
She picked up the box. It was a thousand-piece puzzle, and the scene wasn’t well defined.
“Challenging,” she commented.
“Yeah, but they’d graduated from five hundred pieces and wanted to go for tougher.”
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