The Bachelor's Baby (Bachelor Auction Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

to appear.
    “That sounded sad,” he noted, oddly caught by her change of mood. “You just said you’ll be back to visit.”
    “I will, but I realized this trip that I probably won’t come back here to live. My safety net is gone. So yes, I’m sad.”
    And apprehensive, if he wasn’t mistaken. He wouldn’t call himself deeply intuitive, but you didn’t work closely with men in tight confines around heavy machinery without learning to read faces. Hers was taut beneath her projection of friendliness.
    “Problems at work?” he asked.
    She flashed a glance up at him, wariness practically sparking off her like static, before dropping her gaze to her drink and asking, “Why do you say that?”
    Interesting.
    “You said you didn’t have a safety net here anymore. That implies you need or want one. What’s wrong? Are they downsizing or something?” He intensified his scavenge across her features, trying to read clues in an expression that went from poker-bluff to surprised and maybe…relieved? Because he hadn’t guessed correctly?
    “No, I have a job as long as I want it,” she said with more confidence than most people showed these days. “The safety net remark just means—” She shrugged. “I took a chance when I moved away. Most people want to know there’s a Plan B when you take a risk, that you can fall back on the familiar. I’ve always had that and it was comforting. But I don’t really need it anymore. I’m pretty established in Chicago.”
    He’d never had a fallback. Once his father had died, he’d been his mother’s backup as much as the other way around. She hadn’t pulled any punches about their situation, and he’d felt the gravity of their circumstances every single day. By the time they’d been kicked out of Charlie’s, he’d been the breadwinner and fully responsible for the both of them.
    “You like Chicago?” he asked, curious how she’d wound up there from here.
    “I’d better, hadn’t I?” she scoffed, pretending to be tough again, then quirked her mouth in rueful confession. “Things have been less than ideal lately. I’m given to understand it won’t always be this way, but for now it sucks and I would have preferred to know I could run home anytime. But now I can’t. So I’ll have to grin and bear it.”
    His hackles rose as a suspicion formed, one that always had the power to light his fuse. “What are you talking about? Not sexual harassment?”
    “What? No,” she dismissed, plainly surprised. A frown of mixed emotions chased across her expression. After a brief second of indecision, she allowed, “Not exactly.” She took a deep swallow and she set her drink away, hand tremoring a little. “It’s nothing, really. Kind of a stalker.”
    The same but different. His insides went cold. “Are you serious?”
    Her nod was more a hitch and shrug, trying to be dismissive, like it wasn’t a big deal. “I haven’t told anyone here, not even Blake. He’d lose his mind and there’s nothing he could do. Everything that can be done, has been. The station has been great, following up with the police to take every measure, hiring me personal security, but…” She shrugged. “There’s only so much they can do.”
    “You can’t go back to that,” he stated.
    Her impatient wave dismissed his remark. “I can’t quit my job. It’s an inconvenience—”
    “It’s more than an inconvenience, Meg,” he cut in, old anger rising like a skeleton from a grave.
    “Whoa,” she cautioned, palm almost touching his chest. “I can see you’re on my side, which is nice, but this is exactly why I haven’t told Blake. You guys with your overdeveloped protective instincts. Changing my routines is an inconvenience,” she clarified. “Never going anywhere alone is a total pain, but I’m not about to let a stranger cut short a career I’ve spent my whole life building. I’ll figure out how to live my life around these restrictions.”
    He told himself to back off,