In Bed with the Bachelor (Bachelor Auction Book 5)(9)
“You just said ‘yay,’” he pointed out, maybe five or six thousand years later. “It was like a verbal emoticon, except scarier.”
She lifted one shoulder and dropped it in a manner someone else might have called slightly belligerent, had they been nearby. But no one was. It was only the two of them, tucked away inside this SUV while the weather turned dangerous on the other side of the dashboard and the far savvier citizens of Marietta, Montana, stayed locked away inside their warm and cozy homes.
“I’m excited.”
“You were leaving a voicemail message. At least, I hope that’s what you were doing. Or that was a pretty spectacularly lame conversation you were having.”
“Is the issue here that I said the word ‘yay’ or that you feel qualified to judge the level of my excitement, for some reason?” Michaela asked, and she could feel how edgy her smile had become. “Because guess what? You’re a guy I bought in a bar. You don’t have the slightest idea what excites me.”
Jesse Grey stopped scowling then.
Right about the time her heart stopped beating, then kicked in again, like a gong.
A loud, low gong that made the whole world seem to dance and shimmer for a moment there, as if the threat of a Montana snowstorm was the least of its problems.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, in that low, faintly rough voice of his, as if he knew. Every too hot, too liquid, too damning part of her that was still dancing, still lost in that shimmer. That low, insistent tug that was beginning to worry her just the littlest bit. That dark bloom of pure fire that was consuming her alive, right there where she sat. Every last dream she’d had about him over the course of her very long, very restless night in her aunt’s spare bedroom with her mother in the twin bed across the pink carpet. As if he could see it all like stains, marking her up and making her that obvious, that ridiculous.
That doomed.
“You can do that while you drive,” she threw back at him because if she didn’t speak, she was afraid something much, much worse would happen than the breathlessness that stole through her and threatened… everything. She couldn’t allow herself to think about it. Nothing inside of her made any sense. “I’m going to take a nap.”
Chapter Three
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“I know you’re not asleep,” Jesse growled an hour or so later, when traffic ground to a halt yet again on the stretch of I-90 that skated along the thrust of the Rockies, rising up off in the west past Bozeman, and then sloping down on the other side of the Continental Divide. It was getting dark and icy—or more of each, really—and they still had a ways to go before making it to Missoula, the nearest city of any size. The driving snow and bitter wind that rocked the SUV made that goal seem more precarious by the minute, even to Jesse, who’d been raised in this kind of weather. “I hate to break this to you, but it’s harder to fake it than you might think. Men can usually tell. Consider that a public service announcement from me to you.”
That right there was the problem with all of this. With this stupid drive. With Michaela Townsend herself. He opened his mouth to be appropriately dour and matter-of-fact and what came out sounded more like flirting. If he was a fifteen-year-old boy with absolutely no skills or game of any kind, that was. And meanwhile, this SUV that belonged to his uncle was filled with the scent she carried in her dark brown hair, of grapefruit and soft spice, the suggestion of the vanilla-scented warmth of her skin, and entirely too much of her tempting body within easy reach.
She shifted then, sitting up straight and thrusting her legs out in front of her as she rubbed her hands over her face. Jesse felt more than saw her toss a look his way, but she didn’t say anything. She pulled her jacket tighter around her and blinked out at the deteriorating weather conditions all around them.
“I knew you weren’t asleep,” he muttered, because he was obviously insane.
“That must be why you’re so successful,” she said, in the way someone who really didn’t know what he did or how successful he really was might, and he liked that, too. That she lived in Seattle and didn’t know who he was. That she wasn’t one of those women who came after him like so many bloodhounds on the hunt. “Your discernment.”
“What is it you do again?” he asked. “No one said. They just mentioned your man Terrence was unemployed. Has been for a while, I think your cousin told me, nine or ten times. What’s her name? The loud one.”
“Missy, who is not loud, she’s emphatic. And it’s none of her business, or yours, what Terrence does or doesn’t do, thank you.” He thought she looked at him, though when he glanced at her, she was gazing out the window, a distinct line between her brows. “Terrence calls me a glorified office manager, which is close enough to my job title, I suppose.”
He opened his mouth to make some crack, but something in the way she’d said that pricked at him. Maybe it was his deep, abiding certainty that Terrence Polk was more likely to undermine than glorify anyone. “What’s your actual job title?”
She sat up even straighter in her seat, and he knew she wasn’t going to answer him. “I solve problems,” she said.
“You can get a job doing that?”
“Apparently.”
She didn’t expand on that. And Jesse couldn’t have said why that very nearly ached, down in his bones.