In Bed with the Bachelor (Bachelor Auction Book 5)(6)
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.