The Bachelor's Baby (Bachelor Auction Book 3) (8 page)

He walked back into the room, naked and totally comfortable in his skin. Godlike with his faint tan lines of a pair of shorts across his hips and the rest of him a faded bronze. He was really well built, honed and not manscaped into boyhood.

He detoured to flick off the track lighting in the kitchen, leaving only the small bulb over the sink to light his way back to the bed. The flames in the fireplace cast moody shadows on the half-finished room.

She pulled the sheet up to her breasts as he approached, breath held, waiting for him to lead because he did this all the time and she didn’t know what was supposed to happen next.

“Do you want to go home?”

His gruff words made her flinch. Of course that’s what would happen now, but she had thought…
Don’t think, Meg. Get dressed
. That meant getting out of bed and revealing herself, though.

“I—Of course. I—”

“I don’t mean I want you to go,” he said in that same gruff voice, catching the edge of the sheet and dragging it half off of her as he slid under it and settled onto his back. His knuckles brushed a tickling caress against her upper arm. “You just looked like you wanted to.” He cleared his throat. “But I’d rather you stayed a while.”

Maybe that was his post-sex voice.

“C’mere,” he invited, lifting his arm to make a space beside him.

“You cuddle?” She slid down on the bed, more for the cover of the blankets than anything, and let him pull her into his cooled skin.

“I prefer to think of it as after-play with potential, but sure.”

She smiled as she settled her head on his smooth golden shoulder and both his arms came around her. They both warmed.

“You were sitting here thinking, if that jerk thinks I’m leaving without that drink he promised… Weren’t you?”

“Mmm, yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking,” she lied, relaxing.

“What was it really?” he asked as the silence stretched. “Because I thought this was really good. If I read you wrong—?”

“No!” She had to laugh a little at that. And be grateful she could hide her discomfiture by bringing the wrinkled edge of the sheet up to her chin and keep her gaze on where their bodies were a tangled pile beneath the covers. “I was thinking this is strange,” she prevaricated. “To be intimate with someone I don’t really know.”

He didn’t say anything and she found herself itching to smooth the dusting of chest hairs in front of her eyes so they were all flattened in the same direction.

“I see the appeal though,” she admitted. “You don’t have to be anyone but who you really are.”

He shifted and touched her chin, urging her to tilt her face so he could see her. His expression was relaxed, but circumspect. “That sounds odd. Who do you usually pretend to be?”

“I don’t pretend to be anyone,” she said, ducking her head again. “I just—”
What the hell,
she thought
. True colors
. “I meant that you can just be natural. I always struggle with that. I’m adopted and knowing that has always made me wonder how much of my thoughts and reactions are hardwired from my birth parents and how much comes from where and how I was raised. If I have a disagreement with a man, I’m never sure if it’s a male-female thing or a genuine personality conflict. I tried to
be
the real me when I started working, using my birth name, but that wound up feeling like an on-air personality, kind of manufactured and fake. When I’m in a relationship, I’m always conscious of every word or action, wondering what characteristic or part of me might become the thing that makes or breaks us.”

“Sounds like you put a lot of pressure on yourself.” His fingers picked up her hair in a soothing, rhythmic comb. “I’m getting the real Meg, though?”

“I think it’s fairly obvious I wasn’t holding anything back, isn’t it?” she grumbled, cheeks hot and nose burrowing into the sheets. The covers smelled like laundry soap and him. Maybe a bit of them together. It was potent and sexy.

“Hey, don’t be embarrassed,” he said, closing his arms tighter as he rolled into her and used his leg to pull her half under him. “If I’m the only man who’s ever seen you really let go in bed, then I’m counting myself lucky as hell. You’re incredible, Meg.” His lips grazed her shoulder, leaving a tickling, hot brand.

“So are you,” she said, nuzzling into his scent, stroking his flat hip with her palm. “But is this the real you?” She tilted her head back to look at him.

“What you see is what you get,” he said without dissemblance. “A man of simple needs.”

“And not one for commitment,” she stated, more to remind herself because a part of her was opening up to this man who seemed to accept her exactly as she was. “Did someone break your heart a long time ago?”

“I had a few bruises in the early years,” he allowed. “But I guess I haven’t met anyone who inspired me to commit.”

Ow
.

She dropped her gaze.

“Meg,” he admonished in a murmur.

“I’m not—I realize this is just this. I don’t expect you to want to commit to me.” She was glad her tone stayed steady when she was actually rather stung at being lumped in with the rest of his short-term lovers. “I’m just saying, maybe if you dated a woman for real, instead of bringing her home for sex right off the bat.” Her fingertips moved without her thinking, smoothing those chest hairs into a neat pattern.

“I’ve committed to this ranch and you don’t live here,” he reminded her. “The point is moot.”

She scowled at his breastbone, then let out a sigh of defeat.

“This is what I’m talking about,” she groused, forcing herself to embrace the closeness of the moment rather than dwell on the distance between them to come. “Do I feel rejections extra hard because I have female hormones? Is it my nature? Is it because I was put up for adoption before I had a proper attachment to my birth mother?” Rubbing her cheek sulkily against the pillow bunched under her head by his biceps, she added, “And now I’ve shown you what a head case I really am, of course you don’t want anything to do with me. Are you laughing?”

“No,” Linc said, sounding sincere, but amused. “I like that you’re being honest, even though you’re making me feel guilty. I didn’t mean for what I said to sound like a rejection. I just don’t see a future, under the circumstances.”

“No,” she agreed unhappily. “You’re right. There’s not.” So there was no reason he should feel
inspired to commit
.

Even if she was thinking,
I wish he did.
It was so silly! She didn’t even know him.

He drew in a breath and let it ease out. His arm grew heavier on her.

She nudged herself into him. “Don’t fall asleep. If I miss my flight, Blake will never let me hear the end of it.”

He rolled away and picked up his phone, starting to set the alarm.

“You want me to sleep here?” It was a pathetic consolation prize, but made her feel sweet and special all the same.

“Would you rather I drove you home right now?”

“No, this is nice.” She hadn’t had free rein over a man’s body in a long while and couldn’t remember a time when she’d curry-combed her palms over such a fine one. “You’re really muscle-y. And you smell good.” A faint hint of soap along with light sweat and sawdust and fire smoke.

“You don’t color your hair,” he said as he set aside his phone and smoothed her hair away from her cheek. His eyelids were heavy as he admired her. “I like that.”

“How—? Oh.” A blush hit her as she recalled how thoroughly he’d gotten to know her. Her loins tingled, growing hot and wet, making her rub her legs restlessly against his hairy ones. “How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Turn me on with just a comment. An observation, not even a compliment.”

He grinned. “What happens if I do compliment you? Because I think you’re very pretty, Meg. Your legs don’t quit, your breasts are perfect—” He lightly palmed one for emphasis, “—and you’ve got exactly the right amount of sass.”

“Did you say ‘sass’ or…?” She glared a warning look through her lashes.

“The right amount of sass and ass,” he assured her, rolling her beneath him.

She ran her fingers into his short hair and arched, caressing him with her nude body, feeling the thickening of his erection between them and smiling. “I’m thinking complimenting me turns
you
on. Better keep at it.”

He did, saying sweet, outrageous, dirty-ish things while kissing and teasing and caressing. This time, they dawdled about getting to where they were going, prolonging the pleasure, but the end game was the same. Both of them let ragged cries fill the room while they shattered in release.

*

Linc didn’t consider
himself a particularly deep man. He saw what needed to be done and did it. Sometimes choices were hard, but there was usually a smart choice and that was the one he always tried to pick. He didn’t agonize or get emotional. He didn’t wonder whether his dad dying when he was a kid had had any lasting effect on him.

But as he drove Meg home in the early morning, blade down on the truck and snow still falling, he wondered if that early experience
had
caused him to pull back from making serious attachments all his life. Meg had asked him about his plans for the house and he’d explained the updates and re-plumbing he intended and as he’d listened to himself, he’d thought,
That’s a lot of house for one man
.

When he thought about having a family, though, something in him recoiled. Shied like it was explosive and dangerous and carried a lot of potential for pain.

Maybe he did have unresolved grief issues, he thought broodingly.

“Park on this side. I’m staying in the spa,” Meg said with a tap of her nail against her side window.

He veered to the right across the plowed space between the house and a small outbuilding. The one-level building was quaint with a little porch, obviously too modern to be a renovated homestead.

“Your brother has a spa?”

“Blake’s first wife wanted to open a hair and nail salon out here, but never got it off the ground. Liz actually knows what she’s doing and is investing with her family to run it as a retreat for their big-money clients in California.”

“Your brother okay with strangers coming and going?”

“He doesn’t love it, but his first wife did such a number on his finances, the ranch needs the income. Technically, I’m her first client so Liz can write off the heat and electricity. She’s quite the penny pincher. She’ll be so good for Blake. Hey, wanna hear a secret? I think she’s pregnant,” she said with hushed excitement. “That’ll be so great if she is. He deserves more kids.”

Linc put the truck in park and shifted to face her, bemused by her animation when he was about as done in as it got. They’d carried on like rabbits on ecstasy, dozing a little before waking at the alarm and making love again. He was as horny as the next man, but no woman had ever got him up again and again like she did. He was disappointed as hell that she was leaving.

“Are you and your brother…?” he wasn’t sure how to phrase it.

“Related? No. He’s a local boy. His birth parents died in a car crash. Our parents, these ones-” she pointed at the house, “put their names in with agencies all over the country. I came from Illinois.” She set her gloved hands in her lap. “So I guess that’s where I belong.”

She sounded melancholy again, making him think of all the times he’d stood somewhere he didn’t want to be and wished himself back in Montana. After his mom passed, he had finally realized life was too short to waste it. He’d made the ranch happen, knowing there would be hardship, but he was living his goal, not leaving it on the end of a stick like a carrot to get him through days he was only tolerating.

He opened his mouth to give her a pep talk along those lines, but the lights in the house came on.

“Blue probably barked, the tattle-tale,” Meg muttered, flashing her white smile as she added ominously, “Big brother is watching now.”

“Want me to stick around? What time are you leaving for the airport? I could drive you.” That hadn’t been on his agenda at all, but now he’d said it, he wanted to.

“That’s sweet, but a pretty big favor to ask when we’re…”

He could only see her profile and watched her look down, mouth pursed.

“I had a really nice time tonight, Linc. Thank you.” She looked over at him and her eyes seemed to sparkle. “I won’t say I’ll call next time I’m in town because that might not be convenient for you, but…” She cleared a catch from her throat.

Something foreign and uncomfortable clenched in his chest, a kind of guilt that she expected him to find someone else in the meanwhile. He probably would, and it already felt like cheating.

“Call,” he said with a grate in the back of his own throat. “Let me know you landed safe. I want to know what the police are doing about that guy. You be careful.”

“I will,” she promised. He could hear the rueful, stirred note in her voice. She liked his protectiveness.

He
wanted
to protect her. If he wasn’t so dug in, with a truckload of heifers to prepare for, he might have gone to Chicago and ensured she was safe.

Hell. He ran a hand down his face, reminded himself how long he’d waited to be here.
Women
. He’d seen them play havoc with a lot of men’s plans. He wasn’t about to put his life on hold so he could go to Chicago for an affair that would end anyway, and probably with a lot more drama than this parting right here.