The Bachelor's Baby (Bachelor Auction Book 3) (9 page)

“I had a good time tonight too. You’re a helluva woman, Meg. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you, but I’m damned glad I did.”

She tilted her head and leaned closer, saying, “Me too,” against his mouth.

It was a good kiss, one he didn’t want to finish. He cradled the side of her face and memorized the feel of her lips, the smell of her skin, aware of regret and something like craving infusing the moment. Not pleasant surface emotions, but deep, dark feelings that weren’t like him at all.

He was going to look back on this as a ‘could have been.’

Disturbed, he drew back.

She ducked her head, touched her gloved finger to her mouth, then turned away to open her door herself.

“I’ll walk you in—” he said, reaching for his own latch.

“No, it’s okay,” she said, forestalling. “Look. Blake’s letting the dog out. I’ll be fine. ‘Bye.” She slid out and closed the door, calling a soft, “It’s me, Blue.”

She moved into the glow of his headlights and bent to greet the animal that bounded toward her with a friendly, “Woof!” The dog circled her, tail wagging excitedly. Snow collected on his fur and in her hair. She chuckled and patted him and called him a nut-job. With a wave at Linc, she headed toward the little outbuilding.

Linc waited until she had gone inside, then slowly backed up and crawled out the drive, thinking the whole time that he was making the smart choice.

But it was hard. Very, very hard.

‡

M
eg got Linc’s
email from Lily, which took a few days. She hoped that was sufficient time that she didn’t look needy when she emailed him with a subject line of,
Good news / Bad news
.

I got home fine,
she wrote in the body.
Bad news is, my stalker broke into the apartment of someone with my same name while I was away. Good news is, they’ve arrested him and don’t think he’ll make bail. Which means I get my life back. Take care, M.

Short and sweet. She read it over a hundred times before she hit Send.

Two days later she got a reply:

Wind storm came through and blew the roof off my barn. I was going to replace it anyway, so I guess it’s good news I don’t have to tear it off myself, but it’s in pieces from here to your brother’s place. Now it’s snowing. I’ll be cleaning up ‘til August. I’m pissed right off.

She chuckled and sent back,
Try not to get too deep into that cupboard of booze
.

Too late
, he replied, and that was the last she heard of him.

March was a busy time for any ranch, she reminded herself, and if he had a barn to tarp and re-roof along with a house he was rebuilding, he didn’t have time for long distance flirting.

Or he might have someone else in his life.

The thought was like an ice pick in her chest, one she masochistically wielded to carve out her longing for more with him. It was so futile!

Besides, work was busy and required her full concentration. She had her eye on a full-time morning anchor position.

She remained distracted as the weeks passed, however, thinking about Linc while feeling moody and lovesick, flu-ish and tired. She was on her last nerve, thinking mornings were definitely
not
for her, hating how badly coffee was upsetting her stomach lately, forcing her to give it up when she needed it most. Then the station’s security manager caught up to her as she was coming out of the ladies’ room one day around ten am. She’d almost thrown up
again
and really did not need Gavin’s dogged determination to talk to her right now.

“It’s important,” he said, following her into her office and closing the door. “I just got a call. He posted bail.”

“Who—What? No!
How?
” she cried, thinking that it really didn’t matter how her stalker had wound up on the street, only that he had. “Oh my God, I really am going to throw up,” she groaned, reaching for a tissue and pressing it to her lips, fighting nausea and light-headedness as she drew her wastebasket closer to her feet.

“Flu?” Gavin guessed. “There’s always something going around this time of year, isn’t there?” he grumbled. “At least you’re not pregnant. That would be—”

He cut himself off as she shot him a panicked look, the word hitting her like a bullet.

“Are you kidding?” he muttered under his breath, dipping his head, thick brows going flat and heavy with gravity.

She couldn’t be. Could she? She was vaguely aware she was staring at him, but kind of saw right through him to Marietta and a man gilded in firelight.

Snatching up her mobile, she opened her period app. She was way overdue. Like totally missed one and was due for another.

It had to be wrong. Please let it be wrong. Except she knew deep down that it wasn’t the app that had gone wrong.

He’d used a condom!

Mostly. They’d been a bit sleepy and sexy that last time, putting off when he’d put it on, but…

She swore. Slapped the phone down and dumped her forehead into her hand, elbow braced on her desktop. A whimper lodged itself in her throat.

This was something that happened to high school kids. Not her. They hadn’t been
that
careless. It had just been a bit of teasing and fooling around.

“Seriously?” Gavin asked.

“No! I mean…
No
,” she insisted, because it was too much to take in. But it was possible. Improbable, but possible. And what other reason did a woman have for being this late with her cycle? She was not about to wish something awful on herself like cancer.

But a baby? She was so not prepared for this.

A knock at the door had her jerking her head up. One of the interns leaned in. “You’re on in five with your Look Ahead.” She glanced between her and Gavin. “Trouble?”

They all knew what kind of precautions Meg had been living under until a month and a half ago. The intern’s face fell into sympathetic lines.

Meg wasn’t about to explain she was white and near tears because a lot more than news about her stalker had arrived. A baby? How on earth would she manage all those restrictions pregnant? With an infant? If she took time off, would the station still pay for guards? She couldn’t even think about how terrifying it would be to have a baby’s safety to worry about along with her own.

In silence, she rose and wound her way to the news desk, probably looking and sounding like a zombie as she said her piece on camera. She didn’t even know what she read. Twenty minutes later, she re-entered her office, still in a state of shock.

Gavin was waiting, but he was wearing his jacket now. He said nothing, only held up a white paper bag with a drug store logo on it.

“What is it?” she asked, but already knew. Taking the bag, she peeked inside to see the pregnancy test.

“Let’s be sure we know what we’re dealing with before we figure out how to deal with the other.” He sounded so kind. He was only about ten years older than her, but had kids in high school and had been acting like a dad to her since the first worrisome emails had come in from her ‘fan.’

She nodded and went to the bathroom.

A few minutes later, denial and disbelief became shock and fear and, way back in her awareness: awe.

She was pregnant.

Having a baby had always been a ‘someday’ thing for her. Something she would plan for and maybe struggle to attain after the right man came along. There would be no unplanned pregnancy for her. She wasn’t going to be like her birth mother and wind up making a brutal decision because she wasn’t prepared. If she made a baby, she was going to do it
right.

Yes, she was that arrogant and perfect, she thought with a jab of emotion.

At the same time, what she’d always held in the back of her mind was the thought that if she
did
somehow wind up with an unplanned pregnancy, she would take her fertile self home to Montana, where Blake would help her because he already knew how to be a parent. He had been her fall back plan for more than a failed career.

She didn’t have that anymore. Oh, he’d help her, but she could hardly show up pregnant and jobless and expect him to take her in, not when his family had just doubled and he had his own baby on the way.

But as she made her way back to her office, feeling drunk and out of it because her mind was turned so far in on itself, she knew one thing: She couldn’t raise a baby here, alone, with some overly enthused admirer hunting her.

“Let’s take this down the hall,” she said faintly when she got back to Gavin. He was on his feet, hands in his pockets, expression somber.

He nodded and paced her to the Station Manager’s door.

“Elliott,” she said with a shaken knock on his open door. “I have to put in my notice.”

*

Linc was having
a day. Half the crew he’d hired to roof the barn had turned up hung over. He sent them home out of fear for their safety. The April day was dry at least, overcast, but threatening snow. A fierce breeze cut down the valley and went through the bunch of them perched on the rafters with no way to deflect it. He would have left the job for May if he didn’t have hay arriving next week. Instead he bit out orders and kept the men hard on task.

Then the truckload of fencing arrived. It was the wrong gauge wire. While he was off the roof, he went inside to make a bologna sandwich where he discovered he was not only out of bread, but figured out what the scritching noise in the ceiling was: a mama squirrel and her batch of babies. Fan-freaking-tastic. He didn’t have time to deal with that and certainly couldn’t get into town for groceries today.

Back on the roof ten minutes later, he was cold, hungry, and surly as an early spring bear.

When a blue sedan came down his driveway, it was an interruption he didn’t need. All he could think was a peeved,
What now?

Meg climbed out of it. Meg with her catwalk ensemble and creamy complexion that she turned up to the roof. The wind picked up her loose red hair and made it snap like a flag. “Linc?”

He was thinking,
You said you wouldn’t call
, which had been aggravating him, especially because she had ignored his last email. Now he
really
wished she had called before showing up because her timing was lousy.

“Hey, Meg.” One of the guys paused to salute. “Didn’t know you were home.”

Linc clenched his teeth as he waited out the small town niceties of asking after family before he interjected a, “What can I do for you?”

“Can I speak to you a minute?” Her face was as hard to read as her voice.

“What’s it about?” He looked around at the progress they’d made with the steel panels. Not nearly enough. He imagined she was looking for a rain check on that auction lunch, which he couldn’t accommodate. Definitely not today and probably not this week. “Now’s not a good time. Can I call you after dark and we’re done for the day?”

She had her arms folded against the wind and only lowered her chin so he saw even less of her expression. Her hand went to the car door, then she looked back up at him, seemed to hesitate, then, “Please?”

With a muttered curse, he told the men he’d be right back and made his way off the roof. Dropping to the ground, he grunted at the ache in his back and tried to work the stiffness out of his muscles as he stalked over to her and jerked his head toward the house.

“What is it?” he said shortly, hearing how gruff he sounded, but seriously. He had things to do and this was why he didn’t get involved. He didn’t like when women felt they had rights to his time.

She flicked him a wary look as he held the door for her and he hated himself a little. He’d liked her. They’d had fun that night and she didn’t deserve his brisk attitude.

Muttering another curse, he strode through the house with his boots on straight to where he’d taken out a can of soup earlier then decided he didn’t have time to heat it. He’d eat it cold while they talked, he decided, digging up the can opener from the drawer.

“Well?” he prompted.

She stayed on the mat by the door, arms still hugged tight across her middle, a hurt look on her face.