The Bachelor's Baby (Bachelor Auction Book 3)(2)

Gripping the steering wheel, she told herself to get it together. It was time to let go of her obsession and enjoy her job for what it was: a successful and lucrative career.

She also had to buck up, get out of the truck, see how deeply the wheels were buried, and dig them out. Blake kept a pile of gravel and a sack of salt in the bed of the truck for exactly this situation.

At the very least, getting out to curse at the ditched wheels would be cathartic.

With an angry groan at herself, she threw herself out of the truck and slammed the door.

The dry, subzero temperature stole the air from her lungs, making her nostrils pinch and her earlobes sting where they poked out from beneath the edge of her chic city hat. She hugged herself against the cold and watched her breath cloud, forcing herself to absorb the barren desolation around her. To accept it.

It was time to accept that she was alone. She wasn’t going to find the magical connection that would ease the ache inside her. She couldn’t rely on Blake and Ethan to caulk all the holes in her soul. She was the solution. She had to fix herself.

Her breath released in a big cloud of resignation, loud in a world that was utterly silent. No animals, no birds, not even a predatory cat. She’d been stalked by a young cougar once, when she’d been a teenager riding her horse. It had been a scary half hour, more because she’d feared she would have to shoot it and hadn’t been sure she’d have the nerve. She liked cats. In the end, a spooked pheasant had sacrificed its life for hers.

The fan in Chicago had given her a similar feeling. Was the guy just curious? Or dangerous? He’d been confronted and warned, which was a relief, but guilt squirmed in Meg. How was she different from him? Hadn’t she pieced together the backgrounds on countless women, even tailed a few, trying to figure out if they could have been her mother?

Shivers from the bitter cold gripped her, but a strange level of peace returned to her psyche as she absorbed what had once been a very familiar atmosphere. Winter in Montana. No traffic. No people. No problems beyond the basic one of survival.

For the first time in weeks, her brain calmed. Despite the desolation around her, she always felt safe here. The potential stalker wouldn’t know her as Meg Canon or think to look for her here in Marietta. On air she was Virginia Leonard, her birth name. In her head, in her soul, she was Margaret Canon. Meg.

Funny how she hadn’t realized that until this moment.

She always felt better when she let go of that other person she was trying to be and embraced herself. Why had she never noticed that before?

She was so absorbed in relief, as tension and anxiety eased, she didn’t hear the engine or crunch of tires on the snow-encrusted road. When a shiny black pick up truck stopped in front of her, so did her heart.

The tinted window slid down and the man behind the wheel was unfamiliar, but she was only here a couple of times a year so she didn’t know all the faces in Marietta anymore.

Oddly, she wasn’t afraid, despite the caution that city-living had instilled in her. Logic told her to shift her weight toward the door of the truck, but for all she knew, she’d locked herself out. And this was Marietta. He wouldn’t have stopped to hurt her. He’d stopped to—

“Need some help?” he asked.

His voice was made for broadcasting, deep and rich with calm authority. So was his face, with his chiseled jaw and steady gaze beneath straight eyebrows that bent perfectly at the outsides to set off his startling green eyes and sharp cheekbones. He wore a closely shaved beard that framed a mouth that wasn’t too wide. It was full-lipped without being pouty. His upper lip was not as full as the bottom and it was just a little bit asymmetrical, so he looked like he was suppressing a hint of humor.

He was easily someone you could stare at for an hour.

He was easily someone she was gawking at.

“No,” she answered belatedly, shaking off her fascination, not feeling the cold all of a sudden. In fact, she was growing hot from deep within.

Wow. She hadn’t felt such instant attraction in… Her mind wasn’t even working. A while. A very long while.

It was embarrassing to be this affected. She was worse than Bambi’s mom, standing here dumbly fascinated.

“Sure?” he asked. He’d come up from behind her and could see plain as day that the truck was cock-eyed on the road, back tires broken into the heavy snow on the shoulder. “I have a winch. Lemme turn around and pull you out.”

I have a shovel, she would have protested, but he drove past her, up to where he could turn around. And he had a winch.

Of course he had a winch. She hadn’t even thought to look if Blake had one, and yes, he did. Not that there was anything stronger than a few saplings to hook to. Letting this guy help her would be a heck of a lot easier than doing this herself.

She eyed him as he returned. Money wasn’t terribly prevalent here in Marietta, but this guy was obviously doing well for himself, with his chrome rims holding his top of the line snow tires on his spanking new truck.

He positioned his vehicle in front of Blake’s battered specimen and climbed out.

She eyed his seasoned cowboy hat, new sheepskin jacket without so much as a hayseed on his pristine white collar, faded jeans and worn-in work boots. They weren’t horse-riding cowboy boots. They were hammer-swinging construction boots.

Huh.

“You’re the new guy,” she deduced, staying back since he seemed to know what he was doing. “You bought the Hartstocht’s old place.” The Circle H had been foreclosed five years ago. The ‘sold’ sign had been the talk of the town through Christmas. “Lincoln Brady, is that right?”