The Bachelor's Baby (Bachelor Auction Book 3) (15 page)

After getting the groceries into the cupboards and fridge—the man
really
needed a woman to cook him something decent—she slipped upstairs to scope the layout and saw such potential her blood sang. The previous owners had been victims of hard years, ill health, and a lack of willingness to advance with the times, but they’d had age-old romanticism. They’d placed the homestead in the perfect spot on the property so a vista rolled away from the master bedroom windows and sunlight poured in through gabled windows in the smaller bedrooms.

The entire house was desperate for updating, of course. The wallpaper was peeling, the blinds on the windows so faded and brittle they looked like they’d disintegrate into powder at the least touch. The stairs creaked atrociously as she came down and the kitchen door stuck so badly she wound up going out through the office door and circling around to properly see the back yard, but, “Oh,” she breathed.

A broken picket fence bordered a small orchard of apple, plum and pear. Overgrown raspberry canes were looped down to the ground and pinned by the melting snow. Weeds and grass poked up around everything, but she saw abundance and felt like she’d swallowed the sun. There was where she’d put the cold frame and there was where the compost would go and over there was where their son or daughter could swing while she planted the garden.

She started to well up and had to blink several times because this could be her home and would, no matter what, be their child’s home. Getting a place in town, renting, wouldn’t be the same as this. This was where her baby would know he or she belonged.

This was where she, Meg, wanted to dig in and put down roots and
be
home.

The window in the kitchen door rattled and wood protested with a harsh scrape as Linc pulled it inward. He stepped onto the dilapidated veranda, then tested one of the uprights as he passed it. It seemed solid enough, but the steps were soft, bowing under his cautious steps. He bounced on the last one and said, “Don’t use these until I get them replaced.”

“’kay.” She surreptitiously brushed at her cheeks, embarrassed to be caught crying
again
.

“Are you all right?” He came through the snow toward her, stopping where she’d come up against the gate, but hadn’t wanted to force it inward against the heavy snow.

“I’m just thinking that the baby will always think of this as home. And how ironic it is that I spent all that time in Chicago, looking for my family, and my closest bloodtie will wind up living next door to where I grew up.” Tears wet her lashes.

His concerned expression softened to empathy. He dragged the gate inward, plowing the snow and waving her to come toward him.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” he asked, one hand reaching for hers.

She clung hard to his bare hand, tense, feeling like she stood on the highest perch, staring into a pool of still, depthless water below. Leaping was inevitable, she just had to take a deep breath and jump.

“I’m really scared,” she told him. “But maybe if we just lived together for the first while, to be sure…?”

“Engaged,” he said, more like it was his terms for acceptance rather than a suggestion.

“Sure, I guess, just… What are you doing?”

He was drawing her closer, stepping so his big boot knocked snow into her shoe but it didn’t matter because his crooked finger went under her chin, urging her to look up into his eyes.

“Sealing the deal,” he replied. The words heated and dampened her mouth before the brush of first contact made her lips tingle and singe. He soothed the sensation with a firmer press, an insistent cover and fit and then a quest. A search for her response.

She gave it up to him, wrapping her arms around him, chest aching with pressure from inside and out. Nothing had changed and everything had. Where her first kisses with him months ago had pulled forth a stronger physical response than she’d ever experienced, this one was equally sensual but amplified by emotion. Sweetness and yearning and a deep need to meld with him in every way saturated her entire being as they kissed and kissed and kissed.

A single honk of a horn made them jerk apart.

“Guess they’re finished,” Linc said wryly. He stole a last, brief taste and stepped back, running a quick hand down to make an adjustment to himself. “The effect you have on me, Meg…” he muttered. “I have to go out there with a check,” he added with a disgruntled scowl, swearing and shaking his head in disgust as he hitched himself onto the veranda and pushed through the swollen door into the house.

She walked around outside, smiling secretively, enjoying the sun and meeting him a minute later as he waved off the delivery truck. Afterward, she asked him to show her the barn, which he did and they tramped past the corral where there was no helicopter. He told her he’d taken it to a hangar in Bozeman for storage.

They began talking about his plans and continued inside, heading upstairs where she tentatively offered some ideas, things that he hadn’t considered because a baby and a wife hadn’t been on his radar. He nodded agreement and they finished downstairs where he started a fire and she ate a handful of dry soup crackers while sipping a glass of water.

“What do you think of organic certification?” she asked him.

“The bureaucracy is a pain in the ass, but…” He stood and wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans, then planted his hands on his hips. “I’ve left my options open since you mentioned it. It’s a niche market that’s going mainstream.”

“So you’ll consider it because it has potential financially, not because it’s the better choice, ethically.”

“I’m not a hippie, Meg.”

That made her laugh. She slid sideways against the counter as he came to pour himself a glass of water, still grinning.

“Is that on my account?” she asked, watching his throat work as he swallowed. “Because I put the beer you bought into the fridge. Have one. I don’t expect you to abstain because I am.”

“I’m driving you home later,” he said, then cocked a look at her that was very male and sexy. “Aren’t I?”

She swallowed and set down her glass of water, noting a little tremor in her hand.

“Déjà vu,” she murmured, remembering the last time they’d stood at this counter and…

Oh dear
. Their gazes tangled and…

“Is it… Do you think it’s wise if we… Linc,” she finally said, throatily, aching with indecision and longing.

“I can’t think of anything else, Meg,” he admitted with a hiss of exasperation. “You’re all I’ve thought about since the first time you were here and… I’ll give you the truth because I want you to know.” An expression of mild torment flickered over his face. “There haven’t been any other women. I kept thinking I should find someone, get over whatever it was we’d had, but… I kept thinking it’d be better with you and I didn’t want second best.”

Her heart crept into her throat as he spoke, hammering in hopefulness. “You’re not just saying that?”

“I didn’t think I’d see you again. Not this soon. Sure as hell not like this. I
wanted
to quit thinking about you, but I couldn’t.”

“I kept looking for another email from you, after the one about losing your roof. When you didn’t send anything else, I figured I should try to move on, but…”

“I sent you a picture of the barn. Asked you what color tin I should put on. Is that why you didn’t answer? You didn’t get it?”

“Really? No,” she said, reassured and not only accepting the closeness as he moved in, but pressing herself into him and sliding hands around his waist, anxious to let him know she hadn’t ignored him on purpose. “No, I would have said red. You did good.”

He breathed a sigh of relief against her mouth. They kissed softly and it was apology and greeting and tenderness that moved easily into a more carnal expression. A need for real closeness to cement what was happening between them. She moaned. He shifted a hand to her butt and drew her in, strong and sure.

Her heart leapt and the sexual chemistry caught. They tangled tongues and stroked and rubbed and groaned into each other’s mouths. When he pulled back and looked at her, a question in his eyes, her whole being trembled in anticipation.

She moved past him, catching at his hand to bring him to the bed. They undressed together, natural and oddly comfortable, then he followed her into the rumpled sheets and reached to draw her under him.

With a little gasp and a catch at his hand before he took a firm hold of her breast, she said, “Can you, um, be gentle?”

“Meg.” Horror shadowed the gaze he snapped to hers and he lifted his hand away. “We don’t have to do this—”

“No, I want to Linc, I really do. They’re just swollen and sore…”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured, tracing light fingers against the sensitive swells, stroking her nipples ever so gently with the seam of his lips. “It’s like torture, asking me to go slow when I want you this bad.”

She could feel. He was hard against her thigh, so hard and hot and insistent. Her bones felt weak, her legs needing the stroke and kindle of twining with his.

“You don’t have to wear anything,” she reminded.

“Are you serious?” The green in his eyes intensified to the emerald gleam found in the very hottest fire.

“Unless…”

“No, I’m good. I had a physical before I bought this place, wanting to be sure I could do the work.” He smiled, slow and pained. “But I am never going to last if we start like that.” He slid down to kiss between her breasts. “You know what I think about when I’m in the shower, Meg? How you practically screamed that first time. Like no man had ever got you off by going down. Do you have any idea how much it turns me on to know I did?”

She strangled out a protest, catching at him and pulling him back up to her.

“Trust me,” she said against his mouth. “I won’t last either. I think about that, too. Everything. That last time when you were naked inside me…”

He made a feral noise and slid between her legs like a missile with a homing device. She was wet and needy and he was sharp and hard and they slid and locked together with cries of mingled relief and craven hunger. Trembling, they held each other close and tight.

“You feel incredible,” he groaned, moving carefully, gritting out, “I’m trying to be gentle.”

His fist knotted under her shoulder. Her nails dug into his back and she arched to take him as deeply as possible with each slow stroke. They kissed and broke away for gasps and mutters of encouragement, delicately tormenting each other into such acute need the world fell away.

When the tension became too much, when tingles danced across her skin, teasing her toward release, she jerkily urged him to quicken his pace.

“Meg,” he protested, abbreviated thrusts growing tighter and harder.

“Yes, Linc. Like that. Don’t stop, please don’t stop.” She basked in his lovemaking, released herself utterly into his possession and when climax hit, she fell through the middle of the earth.

He came with her, hard body clenched, a yell of pleasured triumph leaving his lips as he poured himself into her.

‡

L
inc woke in
their new master bedroom five weeks later and wondered how the hell this had all happened.

Meg slept beside him, her nose under the edge of the blanket, only her red-gold brows visible along with a few ribbons of her wavy ginger hair. She’d called Blake late that afternoon when Linc had taken her into town to see the apartment and brought her back here. Meg had told Blake she was staying the night and she’d been in this bed every night since.

Linc liked it. A lot more than he’d anticipated for a man who’d been such a confirmed bachelor. In fact, he was a man who liked to be in control. He was the type to set goals and achieve them. He didn’t go with the flow and leave things up to chance, but here he was, living with a woman he barely knew, anticipating a baby with her and feeling genuine excitement at the prospect.

And he liked Meg a lot more than he’d expected, even though they bickered sometimes. Last night was a perfect example. He’d thought this was a dumb place for the bed. He was paying people to finish his house, which annoyed him, and she’d had a lot of strong opinions about the bedroom. He knew she deserved to weigh in on the decision-making, this was her home, too, but it wasn’t like him to give up final say on something so personal. The bed had been the last detail after so many rounds of debate he’d been sick of it.

He’d made her cry. Which had made him feel like the biggest heel.

Meg kept telling him she wasn’t usually so emotional. He was learning to apologize and cuddle her through the tears. She was always perfectly reasonable after the storm of reaction played out. She’d figured out that putting a sandwich in front of him before talking about something serious made him a lot more willing to compromise and after he’d eaten dinner, he’d agreed to leave the bed where she wanted it, at least on a trial basis.

Now he had to admit she was right. He would even swallow his pride and say so once she woke up. He wanted to let her sleep, though. She was always yawning and, even though the morning sickness had eased up, still green in the mornings.