In Bed with the Bachelor (Bachelor Auction Book 5) Read Online Free PDF

the strangest thing happened,” she continued, talking into the phone even as Jesse turned that scowl of his on her again, except this time he was much, much closer and she could smell him, soap and snow and man, while their eyes locked. “There’s a gigantic snowstorm coming in and everything’s shutting down, which means I could be stuck here for days if I don’t drive out now. And luckily, there’s this guy—”
    “I’m sure that’s a great comfort to your fiancé,” Jesse muttered, still holding her gaze with his, even as he swiped that hat off of his head and let his dark-blonde hair do what it would. “As it would be to anyone. Some random guy.”
    “—this friend of the family—”
    “I grew up in Billings. I’m not from Marietta. Your aunt knows my relatives but she doesn’t know me, personally, from a can of paint.”
    “—this weird, socially awkward guy who might or might not be some kind of questionable painter,” she said tartly, and had to remind herself she was leaving a message, especially when Jesse’s hard mouth kicked up a little bit in one corner. Just the littlest bit, and yet her heart soared as if she’d won some kind of Olympic event. “He and I are going to drive home. That sounds insane but really, it’s only about ten hours or so.” Jesse’s brows lifted as if that was funny. “I looked it up,” she told Terrence. She was definitely talking to Terrence. “So I’ll see you in ten hours! Yay!”
    Michaela ended the call, and she should have turned away then, clearly. She had no idea why she just sat there, practically nose to nose with this man, as if neither one of them had anything better to do. As if this was at all safe, this thing she refused to acknowledge was swirling around in what little space was between them.
    “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