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!”
