Colton Cowboy Standoff Read online

  Two exes reunite as danger rocks the family ranch.

  A Coltons of Roaring Springs romance

  Years after ending her relationship with her husband, Wyatt Colton, Bailey Norton shows up on his doorstep with an unexpected request: to father her child. Unresolved passion sets off sparks between them, but Bailey must resist Wyatt’s undiminished allure—and show her true grit when the Colton ranch is mysteriously sabotaged. Can this Colton cowboy lasso the culprit and a forever family?

  He was standing far too close to her.

  Turning from him, she knew she had to create some space between them before she did something stupid that she would regret. If she didn’t manage to put a little distance between them, she was going to wind up making love with him.

  And that would add a whole new set of complications to an already tenuous situation, she thought ruefully.

  She suddenly became aware of the fact that the silence between them was intensifying. It made her even more uneasy.

  “Um, maybe I should make you dinner,” Bailey said.

  Walking away from Wyatt, she had every intention of going to the kitchen and doing just that.

  But Wyatt caught hold of her wrist, stopping her. When she looked quizzically at him over her shoulder, he slowly turned her around.

  “Is that what you really want to do?” he rasped.

  His dark blue eyes were holding her prisoner. Bailey found that she could barely draw in a breath.

  * * *

  The Coltons of Roaring Springs:

  Family and true love are under siege

  * * *

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  Dear Reader,

  Six years ago, Wyatt Colton’s wife, Bailey, left him without any warning. Shortly after that, divorce papers arrived in the mail, signaling an end to a marriage that he had thought was going fine. It took him a long time to get over her and get on with his life—not an easy feat when his own father was just waiting for him to fail and come back to the fold to take over the family “empire.” Then, just as suddenly as she left, Bailey turns up on Wyatt’s doorstep, asking a stunned Wyatt for a favor. She doesn’t want to get back together or pick up where they left off. What Bailey wants from her stoic ex-husband is a baby. Because of health issues, time is running out for Bailey and the situation is “now or never” as far as having a baby is concerned. Wyatt is, and always was, the best man she has ever known, which is why she wants him to father her child.

  Will he say yes, or will he send her packing after all the damage she has done to his heart and his self-esteem? Come, read and find out how he reconciles his pain with what he does next.

  As always, I thank you for taking the time to read one of my stories, and from the very bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

  All the best,

  Marie Ferrarella

  COLTON COWBOY

  STANDOFF

  Marie Ferrarella

  USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author Marie Ferrarella has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Harlequin, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com.

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  The Coltons of Roaring Springs

  Colton Cowboy Standoff

  Top Secret Deliveries

  Cavanaugh’s Secret Delivery

  Cavanaugh Justice

  Mission: Cavanaugh Baby

  Cavanaugh on Duty

  A Widow’s Guilty Secret

  Cavanaugh’s Surrender

  Cavanaugh Rules

  Cavanaugh’s Bodyguard

  Cavanaugh Fortune

  How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

  Cavanaugh or Death

  Cavanaugh Cold Case

  Cavanaugh in the Rough

  Cavanaugh on Call

  Cavanaugh Encounter

  Cavanaugh Vanguard

  The Coltons of Red Ridge

  Colton Baby Rescue

  Visit the Author Profile page at

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  To

  Every couple

  Who had their hearts set on a baby

  And found that the path was not always that easy.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Excerpt from Snowbound with the Secret Agent by Geri Krotow

  Excerpt from No Stone Unturned by Julie Moffett

  Chapter 1

  “Hello, Wyatt. How are you?”

  The woman’s low, melodic voice hypnotically wove its way into his bloodstream.

  Wyatt Colton stood in the doorway of the Crooked C ranch house, completely speechless and trying to remember if he’d somehow gotten drunk last night without having any memory of it.

  But he knew he hadn’t.

  He’d cleaned up his act several years back, substituting work to numb himself instead and to blanket the hurt he’d felt when she’d left him. Last night, like so many other nights, he’d been dead tired and had just fallen into bed, still dressed with his boots on.

  The same way he’d woken up this morning.

  But a hallucination was the only way he could explain why he was suddenly seeing Bailey, tall, golden-brown-haired and beautiful, standing on his porch, talking to him as if it was just any other day.

  As if nothing had ever happened.

  As if she hadn’t ripped his heart out of his chest, breaking it into a million pieces when she’d suddenly walked out on him and on their marriage without giving him even a single warning regarding her intentions.

  He felt as if he’d been torpedoed when the divorce papers had arrived in the mail.

  “Stunned,” Wyatt finally said, answering his ex-wife’s question when he was finally able to find his tongue and get it to work.

  His tongue might be working but his brain was another story.

  The first year after Bailey had left, he’d kept fantasizing about situations like this one. Scenarios in which he would open his front door—the door of the ranch house they had begun to build together—and find Bailey standing there. Sometimes repentant and contrite, other times smiling through tears, but always telling him that she’d been wrong to leave him. The scenarios would always end with Bailey throwing her arms around his neck and him forgiving her as he lost himself in the sweet taste of her lips.

  As time went on, the fantasies occurred less and less frequently until he was finally able to make it through a whole month without aching for her.

  Well, almost.

  However, the pain did ease up and he felt he was almo st human again...

  And now here she was, standing in front of him, in the flesh, and Wyatt found himself suddenly catapulted back to the shaken shell of the man he’d been right after Bailey had left him.

  Staring at her now, he couldn’t help thinking she looked almost shy standing there. As if she didn’t know what seeing her like this was doing to him.

  “May I come in?” Bailey asked in a quiet voice, shifting and feeling somewhat awkward standing there on the front porch.

  Her fingertips were cold, colder than even the Colorado January air warranted. Wyatt looked almost like a stranger, not at all like the man she had loved and lived with six years ago. His shaggy, dark brown hair, bits of gray just coming in at the temples, framed dark blue eyes and a left cheek with a slight hint of a dimple.

  Had she made a mistake, coming back? Was he going to turn her away after all?

  For a moment it seemed as if Wyatt wasn’t going to answer her question. And then, when he opened his mouth, she could feel her heart squeeze in fear, afraid that he would say no and then close the door on her.

  So when Wyatt finally said, “Sure,” and stepped back to allow her access into the house, Bailey felt the corners of her eyes growing moist.

  Willing her tears not to fall, she walked into the wide, warm, inviting living room.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” she told him after a beat. She slowly looked around and took in the room in its entirety.

  Initially they had worked on this room together but hadn’t gotten nearly finished when she’d suddenly taken off.

  It all came flooding back to him, every detail, every feeling, as if it had been just yesterday.

  “It needed furniture,” he told Bailey with a careless shrug.

  Bailey looked around again, taking more in. They had only finished building half the ranch house before she’d made her mind up to leave.

  “Well, you did a nice job, Wyatt,” she murmured and then added, “Really,” in case he thought she was just mouthing empty words.

  Wyatt frowned. His guard was up, but even so he could feel her getting to him.

  She always could.

  His resolve kicked in. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be set up for another bout of mind-numbing disappointment, he thought fiercely. He’d barely survived the last time and had just gotten to the point where he was breathing regularly.

  He couldn’t go through all that again.

  He wouldn’t be able to survive it.

  His dark blue eyes narrowed as he looked at the woman he had believed would be by his side forever. The joke was on him, he thought bitterly.

  In the beginning it seemed as if Fate had purposely thrown them together when he’d left home and embarked on making a name for himself outside the oppressive Colton sphere of interest.

  All of his life he’d been overshadowed by his family and his last name. When his father, Russ, wouldn’t allow him to do what he’d wanted to do—insisting instead that his oldest son get a business degree so he could take over the family business—Wyatt had abruptly dropped out of college, left his family and taken to the road.

  His father had all but gone into a rage when he’d learned that his firstborn was following the rodeo circuit.

  It was on that same circuit that Wyatt had met Bailey-Ann Norton.

  A rodeo brat whose father took her with him as he went from town to town, following the circuit, Bailey had never known another life. Eventually she’d become a barrel racer.

  Their attraction was immediate and strong, but she hadn’t thought there was any serious commitment on his part. That hadn’t happened until Wyatt had learned his beloved grandmother had died, leaving him a sizable amount of land right outside of Roaring Springs, Colorado.

  It seemed like an omen, the next step in his desire to make something of himself apart from his father’s almighty influence. Tired of the aches and pains he’d accumulated as a bull rider, Wyatt decided to change his plans—again. He’d asked Bailey to marry him and help him create a home and a ranch.

  He remembered that Bailey had never looked more beautiful than when she had smiled up at him and cried, “Yes!”

  They’d returned to Roaring Springs and started building their home and the ranch he envisioned.

  He’d thought things were going well. Obviously he’d thought wrong. A few years into their marriage, Bailey had suddenly left him.

  Wyatt felt as if he’d been gut-shot.

  It had taken him all this time to get over her, to get on with his life and finally become whole again.

  And now she was back!

  Why was she here?

  It made no sense to him.

  He wanted to know. “Did you come back here just to give the place a once-over?” he snapped, a cold edge in his voice.

  Bailey’s courage almost failed her then. But she had come this far—she couldn’t just back out now. She had to tell him why she’d sought him out after all this time.

  “No,” she answered Wyatt quietly, “that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Then why are you here, Bailey?” he demanded.

  Bailey took a deep breath, hoping her voice wouldn’t crack. She raised her head slightly, doing her best to look and sound as if she was in command of herself, in command of the moment. She knew that her ex-husband didn’t like displays of weakness. He valued bravery, even in an enemy, which she knew was the way he probably thought of her. At least to start with.

  Her dark eyes met his.

  You’ve got this, Bailey, she told herself. Her voice sounded as if it was echoing in her head as she answered his question.

  “I’m here because I want to have a baby and I want you to be the father.”

  Chapter 2

  His eyes might not be playing tricks on him but his ears had to be, Wyatt thought. He couldn’t have heard what he thought he’d just heard.

  “Say what now?” he asked, unabashedly staring at Bailey.

  Wyatt vaguely remembered that when they’d first gotten married they had discussed having children, but they had decided it would be best to wait a few years. At the time he’d felt their energy had to be focused on making a go of the ranch. But, he remembered thinking, they would have plenty of time for kids later.

  The subject had never come up again. In the beginning they’d been too busy with the house and the ranch, and then, when there might have been a better time to start a family, Bailey had taken off.

  “A baby,” she repeated, her eyes on his. “I want to have a baby, and whatever our differences might be, I still think that you’re the best man I ever knew and I want you to be the father.”

  Wyatt was attempting to process the words he had just heard. Moving like a man who couldn’t quite feel his legs, he walked farther into the sprawling living room and sank onto the comfortably worn leather sofa. Once sitting, he indicated that Bailey should sit on the sofa, as well.

  When she did, only then did he speak.

  “Just like that?” Wyatt asked her, astonished. “I don’t hear from you for six years and then you walk back into my life, telling me you want me to be the father of your baby?” Even as he said the words out loud he couldn’t quite believe this was happening. Bailey had always been so levelheaded, so sensible, and this was a totally irrational request. “Why?” He wanted to know. “Isn’t there anyone else around?” he demanded.

  “I don’t want just ‘anyone,’” Bailey told him softly. “I want you.”

  It couldn’t be as simple as that. There had to be something more to it, he thought. Something she wasn’t telling him. He frowned. “Assuming I believe you—”

  “You should,” Bailey interjected. Why would he think she was lying? She’d never lied to him before, she thought defensively.

  “Assuming I believe you,” Wyatt deliberately repeated. “Why a baby now, all of a sudden?”

  Bailey took a breath before answering. She supposed he had a right to know.

  None of this, including coming out here, had been easy for her. She wasn’t the type who asked for favors. On the contrary, she had always gone out and gotten whatever she wanted or needed all by herself.

  But this time was different. This time she couldn’t be the lone wolf. She needed help.

  “Because I’m running out of time,” Bailey confessed.

  That was twice he’d been caught off guard in the space of less than ten minutes.

  “You’re dying?” Wyatt asked in a hushed, stunned voice as he stared at her in disbelief. Bailey had always been so bright, so lively. He couldn’t begin to imagine her being felled by some sort of terminal disease.

  “No,” Bailey quickly answered, wanting to correct any misimpression he might have gotten. “I’m not dying. But my chances of getting pregnant are.”

  She looked pretty healthy to him, Wyatt thought, confused. He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  Why couldn’t he just say yes to her request? Why did he need this all spelled out for him?

  “This isn’t easy for me to talk about,” Bailey told him, wanting to beg off from making any elaborate explanations.

  “Take your time,” he told her. “You came out all this way to talk to a man you turned your back on, so this has to be important to you,” he surmised, waiting for her to speak up.

  Bailey didn’t know if he was being incredibly sensitive or if he was just being sarcastic. Either way, she knew she was going to have to ride this out and answer his question. Wyatt was her only hope and that meant she had to make him understand so that he would agree to father this baby.

  Taking a deep breath, she plunged into the explanation she was afraid he would find as embarrassing as she did. Or at the very least, confusing.

  But there was no way around it.

  “My cycles have always been inconsistent...” she began, her throat feeling particularly dry.

  “Cycles?” Wyatt questioned, not really sure what she was talking about.