Marie Ferrarella - Colton Cowboy Standoff

But after going back and forth for the length of the day, at the end of that time they were still at an impasse and Wyatt left it at that. Especially since he really hadn’t made up his mind one way or the other regarding Bailey’s request.

Preoccupied, Wyatt didn’t notice the car that was parked around the side of the ranch house until he had already walked inside. That was when the combined scent of chicken frying in the pan mingled with the light perfume she always wore seeped into his consciousness.

Bailey had returned.

Suddenly all the old, angry feelings came rushing back to him, fast and hard, like a river overflowing its banks, practically drowning him.

Wyatt forgot about all the things he had said to Fox in her defense, remembering instead the sickening, hollow feeling in his gut when he’d realized that she was really gone.

Walking into the kitchen, he saw Bailey moving between the counter and the stove, her back to him. For a second he thought of turning around and storming out, but that wouldn’t solve anything. She was there and he was going to have to deal with it.

“You made dinner,” Wyatt observed, coming up behind her.

Startled, Bailey nearly dropped the frying pan she’d just lifted from the burner. At the last minute she managed to hold on to it and shift it onto one of the other burners that hadn’t been turned on.

Catching her breath, she turned to look at Wyatt over her shoulder.

“Well, I thought you might be hungry when you came home after working on the range, so I looked through the refrigerator to see if there was anything I could use to make dinner.” She turned around to face him and smiled. “If I remember correctly, you have a weakness for fried chicken.”

He’d once had a weakness for her, as well, Wyatt thought.

“I like it,” he replied with a measure of indifference that sounded downright chilly to Bailey.

She tried not to let him see her reaction to his tone. Instead she smiled again then went back to getting everything ready.

“Good, because dinner’s almost ready.”

The scene was all too familiar to him, vividly bringing back the early days of their marriage when they had worked alongside each other and then taken all their meals together.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he told her gruffly.

In her estimation, Wyatt looked as if he wished she hadn’t, but Bailey ignored that.

“I could say the same thing to you about letting me stay here,” she replied, transferring the side dishes from their pots to serving bowls. The bowls were the same ones she’d used when they were together, she noticed. Nothing had changed.

Except that everything had.

Opening the cabinet drawer closest to her, Bailey looked for the set of tongs she thought would be there. But they weren’t.

She opened another drawer with the same result. Looking up at Wyatt, she asked, “Where are the tongs?”

Coming up behind her, he looked over her shoulder into the drawer, as if he expected them to suddenly materialize. When he saw they weren’t there, Wyatt thought for a minute.

“I think they’re in the barn,” he told her.

“The barn?” That was an odd place for them. Her brow furrowed beneath her wayward bangs. “What are they doing there?”

Wyatt shrugged. “I needed them for something” was all he said, unable to remember the real reason the tongs had made their way out of the kitchen and into the barn.

Feeling it best not to push the matter or to question him—she’d learned long ago to pick her battles—Bailey merely nodded. “Okay.”

Bailey used a fork in lieu of the tongs and put two pieces of chicken on his plate and then one on hers. Picking up both plates, she brought them over to the table, placing one plate in front of Wyatt and one opposite him, where she used to sit. She then got the two bowls, one filled with mashed potatoes and one with green beans, and placed them next to the two plates.

Finished, she sat.

Wyatt took his seat opposite her. He looked down at her plate critically. “You just took one piece of chicken.”

Wyatt started to pick up one of the chicken legs on his plate to transfer to hers but she pulled her plate back from him.

“I was never a big eater,” she reminded him, waiting for that information to sink in and ring a bell.

It did. “That’s right, I remember. Rosa kept trying to fatten you up, said you were too skinny and you were going to waste away unless she got you to eat more,” Wyatt said, referring to his former housekeeper.

Like the property, he had inherited the housekeeper from his grandmother. For just a moment, there was a fond note in his voice as he remembered their first days at the Crooked C.

“Remember how mad she got when it started raining in the kitchen?” Bailey recalled, laughing at the memory. “That was when we found out the roof we’d just finished putting in leaked. Badly. Rosa wanted you to go out right then and there and patch it.”

He recalled the incident. “Sometimes I got the impression that she thought we worked for her.”

Bailey nodded, laughing again. “She certainly was bossy.” When she’d returned this afternoon, it had become obvious to her that the housekeeper no longer lived there. “Whatever happened to her?” she asked.

“Rosa retired three years ago,” he told her as he continued eating. “Her daughter’s husband was killed in a tractor accident and she needed help raising her three kids, so Rosa left me to become a full-time grandmother.”

He remembered how the woman had kept apologizing for leaving him high and dry like that. He’d known at the time that she’d been thinking about Bailey deserting him three years earlier. He’d told the older woman that there were no hard feelings and had even given her a large bonus to help things along with her grandchildren.

“That’s too bad,” Bailey said, genuinely saddened to hear the woman had left. “I liked her. Who cooks your meals now?” she asked suddenly.

He fielded the question without flinching. “I do.”

Bailey stopped eating and looked at him. When they were married, Wyatt couldn’t boil water. When he’d been traveling the rodeo circuit, she remembered that he’d taken all his meals at any local restaurant or diner they’d come across.

“You cook?” she asked, not bothering to hide her surprise.

“I can get by,” he answered. Saying anything more would be bordering on lying. “Mostly I heat up things out of cans. But I can make eggs,” he added.

A warm smile spread from her eyes to her lips. “I guess miracles do happen,” she said wryly.

Mesmerized by her smile, Wyatt looked at his ex-wife for a long moment.

“Maybe sometimes,” he allowed then looked away.

He was closing up again, Bailey thought sadly. She could see it.

Bailey bit her lower lip. She was never going to get him to agree to go along with her proposition if he closed up. He’d never been particularly outgoing and cheerful, even when things were going well between them, but at least there had been glimmers of joy evident every now and then.

Now what she sensed was a bitterness that hadn’t been there before.

Had she done that to him?

Who was she trying to kid? Bailey upbraided herself. Of course she had done this to him. And now it was up to her to do what she could to undo that, to get him to open up again and be the man she had once known. She didn’t want him dissolving into a bitter old man, not when he had so much to offer.

“Well, I look forward to sampling some of your cooking,” she told him after a beat, not knowing what else to say. Things were awkward between them. That, too, was her fault, she thought.

“We’ll see” was all Wyatt said in response.