Read In Bed with the Bachelor (Bachelor Auction Book 5) Online

Authors: Megan Crane

Tags: #Romance, #Fiction

In Bed with the Bachelor (Bachelor Auction Book 5) (3 page)

BOOK: In Bed with the Bachelor (Bachelor Auction Book 5)
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“I’m sure Terrence would enjoy any date you might plan for him,” she replied, and then she smiled as if she had no idea what a reckless smile like hers could do. It was more powerful than it should have been. It made Terrence Polk, that piece of shit, seem like a decent person instead of the epic loser Jesse personally knew him to be. It made Michaela hard to look at directly, and not in a bad way. Not in any kind of bad way. Worst of all, it shot through him like pure sugar and too much heat, and he scowled at her as if she’d done it
to
him, deliberately. “He’s very romantic.”

“Have you actually met him?”

“I’ve been dating him for two years and engaged to him for six months.” She didn’t
quite
roll her eyes. “But no. We’ve never actually met.”

“You’ve been engaged to him for six months after the two years or during the two years?”

She laughed, but not like she thought it was all that funny. “Because those six months are what make the difference? That’s what determines whether or not I know him, in your unsolicited opinion?”

“I,” he heard himself say, harsh and rough, like a complete dick, “am not going to go on anything even remotely resembling a date with Terrence freaking Polk.”

He expected her to flinch away from him. Cry, maybe. He probably deserved it.

But Michaela only eyed him. Not without wariness. But not as if she was about to wheel around and race for the door or the safety of the group she’d come in with, either.

“Really, you don’t have to do anything,” she said calmly. Too calmly for his peace of mind, in fact, and he opted not to analyze why that snuck beneath his skin and stuck there. “My aunts and cousins mean well, but they shouldn’t have interfered. Terrence has a lot of plans and a lot of balls in the air. He always does and, sooner or later, they always work out. It’s just a question of waiting to see which one works out first this time.”

And this was not his business, Jesse thought, looking down at this woman who had
complicated
all but stamped on her forehead. It wasn’t his business and she wasn’t his problem and this was not the kind of thing he wanted in his life in any way, shape, or form. Hell, no. It meant nothing at all to Jesse that Terrence Polk had managed to snow this admittedly lovely stranger into overlooking his basic worthlessness as a human being. That was her mistake to make, and the fact her lips were a temptation made real was unfortunate, nothing more.

This had nothing to do with him.
She
had nothing to do with him.

“Have him look me up if that takes longer than expected,” Jesse said, so gruffly he was practically a parody of his uncle. But he figured there were way worse things he could be—like too involved with any woman ever again, for any reason. He’d sworn that crap off right along with his ex and his father. He’d meant it then and he still did. “I’ll let him buy me a cup of coffee.”

Chapter Two


T
he only thing
more disconcerting than Jesse Grey scowling at her in the shadows of a wild west saloon after a long, strange evening was Jesse Grey in her Aunt Cathy’s front hall the following afternoon, looming there next to the framed needlework and dated, vaguely floral wallpaper, looking six times more dark and annoyed than he had the night before.

“Oh. Um. Hi,” was Michaela’s bold, incisive response to the sight of him. She’d walked in from the kitchen, expecting to see one of her cousins after she’d heard the door slam, and she’d stopped dead in her tracks when it had turned out to be Jesse, of all people, instead. She assured herself that was a perfectly reasonable response. It wasn’t every day a man who looked like Jesse turned up, much less unshaven and dangerous-looking, wearing those damned jeans and a knit hat tugged low, with nothing but a fleece against the snow outside.

Terrence would agree that this was reasonable. Rational, even, given Jesse’s astonishing good looks. It would be odd if she
didn’t
have this reaction to him. So there was absolutely no reason at all that she should feel something a whole lot like guilt that she did.

“What are you doing?” She swallowed. “Here, I mean?”

He glared, apparently not finding any of her responses all that reasonable, and she ignored the little part of her, down deep inside, that agreed.

“Are you ready?”

“Ready?”

His jaw, already a masterwork of carved marble, turned even more stony as she watched. “To go.”

Michaela blinked. She was aware, on some level, that she was still standing there half in and half out of her aunt’s front hall, rooted to the floor, like maybe he wasn’t the only thing made of marble. “Go? Go where?”

That scowl of Jesse’s took on a life of his own. The fine, masculine lines of his rangy body all drew tight and the way he glared at her should have knocked her back a few steps. Instead, she could only gaze at him as she understood, for the first time in her life, the real meaning of the word
dumbfounded.

“Did you get hit over the head?” he asked, gruffly.
More
gruffly. “And let me give you fair warning. If you repeat that question back to me, I can’t promise I won’t lose my shit.”

Michaela opened her mouth, then shut it, and she could have sworn the gleam in his dark eyes that followed then was her reward. Or his grumpy, pissy, overtly male version of laughter. Or one of the many things about him she definitely, one hundred percent, should not allow herself to find attractive in any way.

Hi, honey,
she’d chirped into Terrence’s voicemail when she’d gotten back to the upstairs bedroom she’d shared with her mother last night.
Crazy night! Who knew a bridal shower could take such a strange turn? Ha ha ha—but do I have a story for you!

Luckily, Terrence had yet to call her back, which was not uncommon. Michaela reminded herself that she thought it was deeply silly so many couples she knew got all uptight about things like returned phone calls. She congratulated herself on the fact that she and Terrence were so much more mature than that, that they’d transcended all the childish jealousy and insecurity that marked so many of the romantic relationships of their friends. Thank God for their reasonable, rational, completely un-dramatic way of handling things! She was grateful every day. But the fact Terrence had been unreachable since Michaela had left Seattle on Wednesday night meant the story that was Jesse Grey was still hers and only hers.

Which, she thought as she gazed up at Jesse in her aunt’s front hall that felt smaller by the minute, felt a smidge too much like some kind of intimacy.

“I’m sorry,” she said. It occurred to her that she’d apologized an awful lot to a man she hadn’t known existed twenty-four hours ago. There was something about that, which struck her as unbalanced if not outright wrong, and she frowned, which probably shouldn’t have felt
quite
so liberating. “But I can’t figure out why you’re here.”

A man wearing a bright blue stocking hat had no business looking that sexy, Michaela thought as he glared back at her as if her frown was a direct challenge to his authority. Or that… edible.

She needed to get a hold of herself. It had been a long night, filled with disturbing dreams, most of them featuring Jesse Grey and his astonishing abdomen, despite the fact she’d only glimpsed it beneath last night’s t-shirt, and Michaela was appalled at herself. Deeply, resoundingly appalled.

Not that she was feeling whatever she was feeling and working that out in her subconscious, because there was nothing
wrong
with that, per se. Of course there wasn’t. Humans were resoundingly
human
, she and Terrence always agreed. They were always going to do
human things
, at the end of the day.

But she couldn’t seem to control this—
herself—
at all. That had never happened to her before. She didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with it.

Hi sweetie!
she’d sing-songed into Terrence’s voicemail this morning when she’d woken in what she wouldn’t call a panic, because that suggested things she refused to think about and were likely the kind of silly, overwrought nonsense she and Terrence didn’t believe in anyway.
What a crazy weekend! I can’t wait to tell you all about it! You’re going to laugh!

But right at the moment Michaela did not feel at all like laughing. Not when Jesse Grey was taking over the whole of the front hall as if he was a black hole, light and air and energy collapsing into him and simmering there in the set of that mouth of his, the glitter in his milk chocolate gaze, neither of which—she told herself stoutly—affected her. At all.

“I’m your ride,” he said, after a long pause that Michaela thought might have lasted several years.

She stiffened, while her head toppled off into the gutter. She was certain he could
hear
it. “I beg your pardon?”

Jesse smirked. “I’m your ride,” he said again. “To Seattle.”

When she only stared back at him, he sighed and then jerked his head toward the door behind him and, she supposed, the world outside it she’d completely forgotten about since she’d set eyes on him. Again.

“A big storm’s about to hit,” he grated out. “I’m driving west because I can’t get stuck here and they’re grounding planes at the Bozeman airport. Your aunt and my uncle decided you should come along, but you’re more than welcome to stay here snowed in until later this week. Your call.”

She should have some kind of response to that. Michaela knew she should. She should
say
something, nip that crazy suggestion in the bud, assuring this odd and unfriendly man she absolutely did not need him to drive her anywhere, much less some seven hundred miles west to Seattle.

But instead, she stared. Every vivid thing she’d dreamed about traipsed through her head, kicking up heat and making her face go red, and what little air was leftover in the space Jesse Grey didn’t take up seemed to sizzle.

The fact was, she needed to get back to Seattle. Fast. Her boss Amos was one of her closest friends after all they’d been through and all these years they’d worked together, but he was incredibly demanding and still her boss all the same. And that was apart from all of her own duties and responsibilities that she’d put on hold to come here and play The Bride for her very traditional and Very Concerned family members, who didn’t understand a single thing about her life. Not any part of her high stress job and certainly not her relationship with Terrence.

Michaela thought if a big snowstorm was coming, the absolute last thing she needed was to stay here in Marietta one second longer than necessary. She would have to fend off six or seven thousand more rounds of the
what do you do again
game. Which was irritating after almost a decade, but still much better than the pointed prodding about her upcoming wedding, which was, in turn, no more than thinly-veiled, intrusive questions about hers and Terrence’s relationship.

And if this morning were anything to go by, her cousins and aunts would do nothing but talk about Jesse until he’d achieved mythic status in her head, colonizing everything. Which meant, as strange as it sounded even in her own mind, that among all the other reasons she needed to get home ASAP, the quickest way to be rid of Jesse Grey was to go with him.

“I’m not packed,” she said, like the idiot she was in this man’s presence and nowhere else.

And that marvelous mouth of his curved then, as something that might have been humor, if much harder, moved through his gaze.

“You have five minutes.”

Michaela took more like twenty-five. She confirmed her flight out of Bozeman that evening really was likely to be cancelled, she texted Amos to inform him the weather might keep her away from the office longer than she’d planned and he should try not to freak out, and she threw her things into her small, carry-on roller bag. Then she paused to make the usual series of mild death threats to her meddling, irritating, cackling relatives, gathered around her aunt’s kitchen table, until her mother cut her off midstream. Bonnie Townsend sipped at her coffee in that delicate way of hers that made Michaela feel like some kind of lumbering wildebeest in comparison, the perfectly-shaped eyebrows Michaela had been envious of all her life high on her forehead.

“My goodness, Michaela,” she murmured in repressive tones. The same way she’d chastised Michaela for her impatience with her family’s inability to understand every last one of her life choices only last night.
They want to know these things because they love you, not because they want to annoy you. I don’t think it would hurt you to try to remember that
. “If you’re not interested in having a favor done for you, I’m certain there are more gracious ways to say so.”

Feeling suitably chastened and about an inch tall, as ever, Michaela buttoned her lip and wheeled her suitcase out into the hall, where Jesse Grey was making like a column of granite. Except less approachable and far less sunny of disposition.

“Okay!” she chirped like some kind of psychotic kindergarten teacher, as if that might soften him up. “I’m ready!”

BOOK: In Bed with the Bachelor (Bachelor Auction Book 5)
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