The Bachelor's Baby (Bachelor Auction Book 3) (6 page)

“No, I just want to ask you something.”

“Oh, come in for coffee,” she invited breezily, waving in the direction of the house that was too far down the drive to see from here. “Meet Blake and Ethan and we can talk—Oh my God. You want me to come to your place, don’t you?” She would have laughed aloud at herself if she didn’t want to cringe in embarrassment. She covered cheeks that felt sunburned, hot and tender, even through her gloves.

“I was just going to say the invitation to see the place is still open.” She could hear the mirth leavening his smooth, sexy voice. “I might even have a bottle of red wine, if you prefer that over a cup of coffee. But after what we’ve been talking about, I understand if you don’t want to go home with someone you don’t know very well.”

“When I said I was taking precautions, I was serious. I haven’t had a social life for weeks. No impulse shopping or popping out for an errand. I use the treadmill in the gym in my building instead of running outside. It’s stifling and the walls will close in again when I get back. Honestly, the idea of being able to spend an hour with—” She cleared her throat, skin feeling tight. She tried to sound flippant, but it came out husky, “a
neighbor—
”

He snorted at the descriptor.

“I’m just saying, I really am tempted. It would be nice to feel normal again. I always feel so much better when I’m home,” she added, accosted by a poignant feeling. She wasn’t ready to leave this time and she suspected this man was the reason.

He shifted to face her, leaning his wrist on her seatback so he edged into her space. “C’mere,” he invited.

“What.” A grin tugged at her mouth, but wicked, sexual reactions took her at the same time. Her nipples prickled and her breathing changed. “You want to kiss me?” She wanted him to. Rather badly.

“I do.”

“Is it a test?” She turned her head, aware of how close he was, how he smelled faintly of aftershave and clean Montana air.

“Little bit,” he murmured.

“Gonna leave me here if I don’t pass?” she challenged, trying to sound urbane when she actually felt girlish and shy.

His fingertips played gently against the ends of her hair, coaxing her to lean a fraction closer toward him. “I’m the one making the pass, sweetheart.”

He closed in. Warm male lips brushed hers, giving her a moment to savor the sensation of smooth, sensitive skin rubbing lightly against her own. Then he pressed with more purpose, enticed her into parting her lips and playing her mouth against his in delicious rubs as he gradually settled into the kiss. He stole over her so skillfully, she was caught and held before she realized how completely he owned her.

She thought—

Actually, there were no thoughts in her head. Just his scent and the warm dampness of his strong mouth exploring hers. The tip of his tongue briefly tagged her inner lip. Their breaths hissed quietly as their breathing changed. His cheek was smooth enough not to snag her knit gloves, making her want to pull them off so she could run her fingers into his hair.

She slanted her head, encouraging him to deepen the kiss. Pressing the back of his skull to encourage more pressure.

His free hand settled on the side of her neck, thumb stroking deliciously under her throat while he pulled at her bottom lip, his flagrant sucking making arousal bloom down her front, spiking her nipples into sharper peaks and spearing hot need between her thighs. Oh man, did she want to go home with him.

And he was drawing back, making her primal core weep.

“What do you think?” he asked in a voice that was like a velvety summer breeze caressing her naked skin.

She made herself sit straight, breath unsteady and way too revealing of his effect on her. Her fingertips pressed her buzzing lips, trying to calm the rest of her.

“I didn’t realize it was that kind of test,” she said, voice papery.

“It’s not. Come over for a drink if you just want to throw off the shackles for a while. I wasn’t trying to see if you put out. But if we were going to fizzle, I figured here was a better place for it.”

Fizzle? She choked on a laugh, mildly horrified by that phrase ‘put out,’ and even more horrified by how disappointed she would be if he left her here instead of taking her to his place.

“Do you think we fizzled?”

“Ha! No,” he said firmly, making her tuck a grin into her collar.

It was gratifying and flattering, but…

“You do this a lot, don’t you?” she asked in a voice that came out smaller than she meant it to. “Pick up women, I mean.”

Silence as he eased back into his own seat, then he sighed. “I’m not good at relationships, Meg. A lot of it was the nature of my job, but the truth is, I’ve never seen myself married with kids and the whole nine yards. But I like women and I like sex.” His jacket shifted as he shrugged and made himself more comfortable behind the wheel. “What do you want me to say? That I’ve never taken a woman home? You’d be the first here. Does that help?”

“I’ve never done it,” she said, then hurried to add, “I mean, I’ve had relationships. Just not, um, such a brief one.”

Somewhere along the way, maybe because she had friends that she respected who sometimes had one-night stands, she had developed a sense that they could be empowering. She didn’t feel emboldened, though. She felt insecure. Longing gripped her, like she was wishing for something she would never get.

“That’s not the sort of first I’d like to be for a woman,” he said dryly. “Don’t change your values for me, Meg. Call me the next time you’re in town and we’ll do lunch in Great Falls.” He put the truck into drive.

“No, wait—” She covered his gloved hand with her own, could sense the strength in his firm grip of the stick. This evening couldn’t end with her packing and nursing
What If
. “I’m really attracted to you, Linc. I know I’ll regret it if I don’t go home with you.”

He studied her in the blue gloom off the dash for a long moment.

“Sure?”

“I am.”

He reversed back onto the road.

*

Linc was experiencing
something new himself and wasn’t sure what he thought about it. He hadn’t been glib when he’d told Meg he liked women. He liked to think he understood them better than a lot of men did. A guy didn’t grow up with just his mom and not learn to accept that females had specific foibles. They liked to share things that seemed painfully intimate. They had tender hearts. And after his mother’s experience, seeing that she’d never remarried or even been serious with another man after his father, he had recognized that when a woman gave herself up to a man’s strength, it came at a cost to her. A man had to show some appreciation for that, not take for granted he was entitled to it.

So he was highly cognizant that Meg was parting with some of her principles even just coming home with him.

He took his time ambling down his long drive, trying to decide which was least caddish: enjoying whatever she chose to give him, or rejecting her and driving her home.

Quite the no-win situation he’d put himself in.

The motion sensor turned the porch light on as he parked. He told her to wait for him to come around. “There’s a lot of ice,” he explained. Plus he liked having an excuse to offer his hand and feel the weight of her slight grip in his.

“Don’t take things wrong when you see how it’s set up in here,” he said as he pulled open the screen door and pushed the interior one for her to enter. “I probably won’t get to renovating the upstairs until next winter.” He flicked on the light.

“Oh!” She covered her mouth, muffling her laugh, blue eyes dancing with humor as she eyed him over her glove before she looked back at the king size bed in the middle of the living room. “At least it’s made.”

“Yeah.” He bit a fingertip then pulled off his leather glove. “Full disclosure? The sheets are clean. It was a bachelor auction,” he excused over her trill of laughter, motioning for her to turn so he could take her jacket.

“You’re quite the Boy Scout. Prepared,” she chuckled.

“Exactly.”

“Well, full disclosure, I shaved my legs.”

He liked the cheeky grin she sent him as she unzipped her boot and let it fall open around her calf before bracing on the wall to work it off her foot.

He toed out of his shoes and hung his jacket, then moved to the fireplace, not because it was cold, but to provide some atmosphere and help him keep his hands off her.

He kept one eye on her though, wondering what she thought of the place. It wasn’t a disaster, but it wasn’t as ship-shape as he usually kept his surroundings. Of course, for years he hadn’t had a real home. Just an apartment he went back to between jobs, before shifting cities and ghosting in and out of the next one.

Here, he woke up in the same place and set down the litter of daily life. The dishes were clean, but still in the drying rack. Half of the kitchen table was a semi-organized pile of tools, supplies and paint chips. The wall between the living room and his office was nothing but exposed studs and wiring. His television topped his dresser in the corner near the fireplace and he kept sweeping the sawdust he made into a pile beside the compost bucket.

“I should call Blake and tell him where I am.” She glanced around. “Do you have a land line?”

“I have satellite,” he said, offering his cell phone from his chest pocket.

“You have too much money,” she contradicted, taking the phone and placing the call. “Hey, it’s me. Have you talked to Liz? Ah. Tetanus shot.” She glanced at Linc as though filling him in. “Good idea.” A pause, then, “She exaggerated. I didn’t win, but yes. Our new neighbor. He drove me home.” Another pause. “
His
home. No, I don’t need you to come and get me.” She gave Linc an exasperated eye roll. “I’m helping him tape drywall, what do you think? We’re having a drink,” she allowed with tested patience, then, “I know what time my flight is. Did you seriously just give me a curfew? Go to bed, Blake. Do not wait up.” She ended the call with a maddened, “Bruh-ther.”

“He’s going to punch me in the jaw if he sees me in town, isn’t he?”

“No,” she scoffed. “He’s going to show up in about fifteen minutes with his shotgun.” She negated the threat with a shake of her red curls and moved through the ground floor, exploring how he was modifying the sunroom into an office that was open to both the kitchen and a new side door. If it had been daylight, she’d have seen his million-dollar view across his land. For all his business acumen, he’d bought this place because he’d known he’d never tire of the roll of hills, the carpet of trees and the climb of mountains against the wide, changeable sky.

The fire caught and he closed the screen, moving to the cupboards next to the sink.

“So… Coffee? Or I have a cabernet franc—no idea of the quality. It was a gift and I don’t really drink wine. Scotch. That’s for medicinal purposes. Tequila—actually, you’re going to think I’m a souse. Look at this.” He opened the cupboard all the way, falling back a step so she could see how full the shelf was. “I was given a lot of bottles from my colleagues when I was leaving. Plus I always liked to have something in my travel bag for the hotel room, even though I hardly ever drank it, so I got in the habit of accepting whatever freebies the airlines offered.” He brought out the shoebox that was overflowing with single-shot bottles of spirits. “I never realized how bad this looks. I could open my own liquor barn.”

“That’s funny,” she chuckled, coming to stand next to him so she could finger through the miniature bottles. “But I think the real sign of an alcoholic is empty bottles, not full ones.”

He watched her, admiring yet again how pretty she was. Elegant as a thoroughbred with her fine-boned features and graceful movements.

Her touch on the bottles slowed. “I should tell you something,” she said, twirling a translucent green bottle like it was a ballerina. “I’m not on anything. So, unless you kept more than alcohol in your travel bag…”

“I did. Do. Have something.” His voice, his brain, receded into some far off place. His entire awareness narrowed to her shyly down bent face, the speckles of dark brown freckles across her nose, the crackle of the fire. The smell of cinnamon and cloves that hovered in a cloud around her.

“I’m nervous,” she admitted quietly.

“Don’t be. If it doesn’t happen…” He didn’t want to think that way. “I’m not going to pressure you,” he soothed, practically hypnotized by the sheepish blue gaze that lifted to his. He cupped the side of her face, fingertips combing into the cool tresses of her ginger hair, downy warmth filling his palm. “But I do want to kiss you again.”

She let go of the bottle so it clinked lightly against the ones in the box and lifted her hand to his shoulder, angling herself into him, lifting her mouth in invitation…

He reminded himself that he’d just promised not to rush her, but it was hard. He was hard. The semi-arousal he’d been trying to ignore since this morning, when he started wondering if he’d see her again, pulled to demanding attention. His scalp tingled and his lungs felt tight. He kissed her with as much control as he could manage when arousal was blinding him. When she tasted like something heady and drugging.