The Bachelor's Baby (Bachelor Auction Book 3) (11 page)

“They’re a bunch of clowns,” Blake said with a peeved noise. “What is it? Steel?” He sounded like he was weighing a reluctant sense of obligation, adding with resignation. “I’ll change and get my tools. Liz can drive Ethan over when he gets off the bus.” Blake started toward the house.

“Oh, hey,” Linc protested. “I wasn’t trying to—”

“Forget it. I’d say I was being neighborly, but sounds more like a favor for family.” Blake took another stride, stopped, and shot a loaded look back at Linc. “We can talk about your intentions. If I don’t like what I hear…” He hitched a shoulder. “Accidents happen.” He didn’t smile and neither did Linc.

‡

M
eg had forgotten
what an impact Linc had on her. By the time she’d had her pregnancy confirmed by a doctor, she’d convinced herself that her state of fertility had made him seem so irresistible the night of the auction. But he really was that tall and strapping, his rugged features rakish and sexy with that short beard grown back in and his piercing green eyes. His direct manner was pure alpha dominance that made her weak. He certainly wasn’t easy to stand up to.

In fact, she’d already been feeling extra vulnerable when she’d arrived on his ranch. Hungry, thanks very much, because nothing stayed down these days, and tired from all the work of arranging her abrupt departure from her job and life in Chicago. That can of soup he’d opened had smelled revolting. She’d been standing there feeling insecure and overwhelmed, her entire world upended. That stupid king-sized bed of his had been right there, unmade in his living room, a giant reminder of her condition and how she’d wound up in the family way.

From pretty much the first moments of realizing she was pregnant, she’d been anxious to see Linc face to face and tell him, but she’d barely been able to talk.

And when she had, he’d been mean. So appalled.

She sniffed and turned her mind from his reaction, having cried her heart out while Blake and Liz held a mumbled convo in the kitchen. Then Blake had left and Liz had made herbal tea and sandwiches. Eventually Meg had learned that Blake was going over to help Linc with his roof. Traitor. She and Liz had talked until Liz had to drive out to meet the kids at the road so she could take Ethan directly to Linc’s. Liz had come back with her daughter, Petra, and that’s when Meg’s mood had finally begun to lift.

Meg had been too emotionally exhausted to cry anymore and Petra had been over the moon when she learned about Meg’s pregnancy. Meg had thought about keeping the kids in the dark, but she was probably going to be losing her lunch on a regular basis. There was no hiding it. Besides, the kids needed to know why she was moving back to Marietta. After discussing it with Liz, they’d decided Meg’s situation was a useful cautionary tale for a pair of high schoolers with the normal dose of adolescent curiosity about the opposite sex.

Petra offered to sleep in the spa building so Meg could have her old room, but Meg wouldn’t hear of it. She felt like a big enough fool as it was. She didn’t need to disrupt Blake’s new family before it had properly settled. Petra insisted on at least carrying Meg’s bags and offered to help her unpack.

“Sweetie, you’re about the best niece I could have ever asked for,” Meg said with a sad, tired smile, impulsively hugging the sixteen-year-old. “But I think I’ll have a nap and unpack later. It’s been a big day.”

“Okay. And, well, sorry about the mess in here, with the drop cloths and everything. Mom can’t paint so I was going to do it over the weekend. I’ll just move it all to the other room then go do my homework.”

Meg was so tired she didn’t even hear Petra leave. When she woke, it was dark. She clicked on a light, used the bathroom, washed her face and combed her hair, hoping to look less like she’d been orphaned by war when she went in for dinner.

Car doors slammed and she could hear male voices. Blake and Ethan were home. Moving back into the bedroom, she found the thick cardigan Liz had loaned her, the one that felt like a security blanket when she hugged it around herself. Glancing outside when she heard another engine, she saw a second pair of brake lights douse and a man climb from a pick up truck.

Her heart gave a lurch in her chest.

Linc
.

He looked right at her. She stepped away from the window, but knew he’d seen her. Footsteps squeaked on the snow, getting louder as they approached the door.

He knocked. “Meg?”

She wasn’t ready for this, but supposed it was unavoidable. Cracking the door, she saw fat wet flakes were starting to fall beyond his wide shoulders, already dusting the vehicles.

She couldn’t make herself look into his face or even say anything. Could only stare at the small triangular tear on his shirtfront.

“Do you want to go into town and get a bite?” he asked. “Talk?”

“We can go into the house to eat if you’re hungry. Liz was making stew.”

“I can wait. She brought sandwiches when she dropped off Ethan. But I want to talk.”

Meg vaguely remembered watching Liz make what looked like a lot of sandwiches, saying something about how the kids were always hungry when they got home from school and that Blake hadn’t had a proper lunch.

“Can we?” Linc prompted. “Will you let me in?”

She stepped back and he bent to untie his boots, leaving them outside as he stepped into the service area of the spa where a sink with a lip for hair washing was mounted near a shelf awaiting linens and other supplies. A manicure table was set up with an array of polish across its front and a giant massage chair with a pedicure tub stood under a criminal amount of shrink film.

Glancing toward the house, Meg saw Blake’s silhouette watching from the window in the back door. She closed him out and pointed to the wooden pegs beside the door to indicate that’s where Linc should hang his coat.

“Are
you
hungry?” he asked as if it suddenly occurred to him. “Because we can go in if you are.”

“I don’t keep much down anyway. I’ll wait until you’re gone and I’m not so worked up.” That was probably too much information. She clenched her hands together, knuckles like pearls, they stood out so shiny and white.

“What do you mean? Morning sickness or something?” He sounded nonplussed.

She nodded jerkily. “That’s why I was so upset earlier. I was hungry too, and, you know, hormones,” she lied, trying to cover up that she’d been gutted like a fish, gasping and screaming in airless agony.

“Meg, don’t let me off the hook—” He started forward, palm up in entreaty.

She took a step back.

He stopped, hand falling. “Jesus, Meg.” If she’d wanted to strike back at him, she might have found the way. He sounded really stunned and offended. “I won’t hurt you. Please tell me you believe that.”

She pulled in her lips with contrition, having acted out of instinct. “I know,” she said in a small voice. “It’s just been…” She scowled at a spot on the wall somewhere past his elbow, clasping Liz’s cardigan close around her. “I’m being silly,” she mumbled. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not,” he said with an impatient sigh. “I know this isn’t fine. Meg,
look at me
.”

She didn’t want to. He’d see how battered and crushed she was.

Swallowing, she let her eyes come up, already flinching from whatever she would see in his face.

He looked tortured. Tired and aged and filled with regret. “I’m sorry,” he said, stubbled beard not disguising the way his face spasmed with compunction. “Of course I want my baby.” His voice went low with hushed, masculine emotion.

It made her prickle all over, even behind her eyes, because finally he was saying what she’d been aching to hear. Pressure filled her chest. New tears, but different. Cautious relief.

“I never saw anything like this happening to me,” he continued, big shoulders lifting in a fresh shrug of utter bewilderment. “I think, after my dad died, I made an unconscious decision never to risk leaving my own kid to deal with something like that. Losing him, losing my mom…
I
don’t want to feel that kind of sadness ever again. So I’ve avoided getting into a situation where something could happen and I might.” He implored her to understand, palm out and up again.

Marriage. Babies. She supposed that’s what kind of situations he meant and she understood. To some extent she had done the same thing, always letting relationships fizzle at the first sign, fearing that rejection was inescapable. It was a different side of the same dread of loving and losing.

“I won’t turn my back on my kid, Meg. I wouldn’t do that. I’m sorry I made you think I wanted to.”

She nodded, tongue-tied by emotion, accepting the apology because she believed he was being sincere, but still silently holding up thick walls against him, wary of another knockout blow.

“So… Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just trying to get it all straight in my head. You’re keeping it?” he asked.

She shot him a glare. What did he think?

*

Linc held up
a hand, silently urging her to keep what looked like a livid reaction in check. “I’m just making sure I have my facts straight because I really wasn’t tracking well the first time we talked. You said you’re moving back here?”

She nodded jerkily. “I want my family around me. I need them. Liz
is
pregnant, like I told you that night.” She looked at him like this was important information so he nodded.

“Good.” He supposed. He was flying blind here.

“She had a miscarriage once before. That’s why she isn’t telling anyone. Most women wait until the three month mark to say anything, just in case.”

“Is that what we’ll do?”

Her blue eyes came to his, surprise and wariness in their turbulent depths. It struck him that this was it, their first decision as parents. Shit got so real in that moment, his heart tipped and rolled crazily, like a silver marble in a pinball machine. What
if
something happened?

“I guess,” she said faintly. “Except for, you know. Family.”

The word hit him in the face. Sure Blake had thrown it at him, but so sarcastically Linc had dismissed it without absorbing it. But
he
was going to have a family now. Meg and a baby.

The unacknowledged fear that had kept him dodging entanglements all his life sat up like a troll, but beyond that, he experienced such a clench of yearning, his eyes stung. He could only stare at her, ears ringing, thinking,
Don’t let anything happen
.

Shakily he had to turn away, rub the frozen terror off his face and get a grip on his twitching limbs. Into his state of apprehension, a thought crept.

“What happened to that guy? The, uh, fan.” His blood moved like broken ice in his veins, sharp and painfully cold, thinking of her and the baby being in danger.

“He posted bail, but it turned out it was actually his family moving him into a psychiatric hospital. It took a few days for me to learn that and I’d already put in my notice and made the decision to come back. I didn’t want to change my mind again. I want to be here.”

He tried to read her thoughts, tried to imagine how he would be feeling if she’d actually stayed in Chicago and had his baby without telling him.

That would be worse. He would have been ignorant, but if he’d ever learned at a later date… It would have been far worse than this.

Maybe some of that disapproval showed on his face. She hurried to say, “I’m not going to live
here
. I’ll find a place in town. Skye offered me her place for a few weeks, since she’s on the road with Chase and—what?” she prompted, making him realize he was shaking his head.

His mind was finally capable of serious, productive thoughts. He was starting to not only see the solution, but already projecting to each step of what had to happen to recover from this serious skid off his planned path and onto the new track.

“Move in with me,” he said. It was the smartest choice.

“What? No.” She knotted the belt on her sweater decisively. “No, Linc. That’s—No.”

His gut tightened like she’d kneed him there. He reminded himself he’d done some fierce rebuffing of his own today. But why would she refuse so reflexively? Manners? To hell with that. Fastidiousness?