In Bed with the Bachelor (Bachelor Auction Book 5)(10)

“This does not look good,” she said instead, after a moment or two, still with her gaze trained on the treacherous road outside the SUV. Her voice was huskier than before, and Jesse would have had to have been a saint not to respond to that—to feel it scrape over him in a hundred inappropriate ways it was far healthier not to think of in any detail.

And Jesse was a lot of things, but a saint wasn’t one of them.

“No,” he agreed, keeping his attention on the road and the rapidly decreasing visibility. It was far safer than what was going on in this SUV. Or inside of him. “I think we’re going to have to stop for the night.”

He expected wailing, carrying on, or some passive-aggressive version of either. Hysterics, maybe. Some kind of attitude or fit, anyway, from a woman who had pretended to be asleep for hours rather than interact with him. But the SUV was quiet, except for the rhythmic thwack and swish of the windshield wipers and the crunch of the tires against the increasingly snowy road. And beside him, he heard her shift in her seat. That was the extent of her outward reaction.

“By the side of the road?” she asked. Calmly, he was surprised to note.

“I think we’re close enough to Missoula to make it,” he said gruffly. “It’s not great out there, but I don’t think it’s bad enough that we need to pull over. Yet.”

“We passed Butte already?”

He’d thought he should have stopped at the former mining town when they’d passed it. But she’d been “sleeping” and he’d been irritated beyond measure and had thought if he just kept going, he could outrun the storm and have them halfway across Washington State before midnight. At the moment, that entire previous thought process seemed like nothing but hubris.

“About two hours back. Under normal conditions we would have made through Missoula already and be on our way into Idaho.”

“Then we must be close,” she said, in that same calmly enthusiastic voice she’d used on him in Grey’s the night before. Jesse didn’t know why tonight, he found it something an awful lot like soothing.

She didn’t say much more as Jesse navigated the rest of the way into the outskirts of Missoula, the roads getting more slippery and dangerous by the mile. They skidded into the first motel parking lot they found with a VACANCY sign, and Jesse figured he wasn’t the only one fending off the rush of adrenaline that they’d made it. In one piece. He shifted the SUV into PARK and blew out a long breath.

They grinned at each other then, over the kick of relief and danger narrowly averted, and Jesse was sure that was the only reason his chest felt tight. He rubbed at it, annoyed.

“I’ll go get us a couple of rooms,” she told him after a moment, as he let out another breath. She set about zipping up and pulling on her scarf and her gloves, and he felt the loss of that expansive grin of hers like something physical.

What the hell was the matter with him? He needed a hot shower and a beer. And a good night’s sleep now that he wasn’t taking up residence on the couch in his uncle’s office in the back of Grey’s. That had been his best option as far as a peaceful sleep in Marietta went. It was that or deal with his Uncle Ryan and Aunt Gracie, who were certain to ask entirely too many questions about Jesse’s relationship with his father. No thank you. Or his cousin Luce, their daughter, who was two years younger than him and possessed of three maniac kids and a deadbeat husband she’d just kicked to the curb, all of which made her way too maudlin when she’d had a few.

Or worst of all, subject himself to his grandmother’s sharp tongue, because Elly Grey had never met a member of her family who didn’t disappoint her deeply and Jesse was certainly no exception. More Calamity Jane than Mrs. Butterworth, that one, the cousins always muttered amongst themselves. He hadn’t wanted to give her the opportunity to expand on her reasons for thinking less of him by the day. His grandmother was a woman best loved from a minimum safe distance, but Jesse was getting too old and too soft to bunk down on couches while avoiding the fallout from her version of a loving chat.

That was what the matter was, he assured himself—not enough sleep and none of it at all comfortable. Because he refused to allow it be anything else.

Next to him, Michaela had to shove against the wind to get the SUV’s door open, and then she was dashing out into the sullen fist of the winter storm, bent nearly in half as she made her way to the neon-lighted motel office where the VACANCY sign still glowed and briefly lit up the side of her face.

And she was just as pretty in that purple glow, damn her.

Jesse took the opportunity to get a hold of himself. He decided it was because it had been a long time since he’d been out in a serious Montana snowstorm and maybe the soft rain of a Seattle winter had softened him up too much. It took getting used to, the full-throated howl of a Montana winter. But a few minutes later Michaela appeared again, looking slight and easily swept away, as she charged out of the motel’s office door and through the driving snow back to the SUV. And he thought it was a little bit more than winter when he had to order himself to stay still.

She laughed as she threw herself back into the passenger seat and then wrestled her door closed, and he wasn’t prepared for that. Or for that flush on her cheeks. Or the wild, gleaming sparkle in her bright, hazel eyes when they met his.

He didn’t know what expression he had on his face then. He didn’t have the slightest idea how he was looking at her, but he suspected the spiral of sensation he could feel working its way through him was hunger, pure and sharp and deep. And that it was stamped there across his face like a mask.