Read Online Seducing the Bachelor (The Bachelor Auction Returns Book 3) by Sinclair Jayne - Free Book Online

had was his sorry ass looking for a quickie before he blew out of town for good this time. She’d find a decent guy, he told himself. A man who would make love to her properly. Make sure the gutters were cleaned out on the house. Not leave for months on end.
    Shit. Again hand through his hair. Wiping down his face. Like he’d find the words he needed there.
    “I’ll walk you back to the house.”
    “Did I do something wrong?” she asked as she paced beside him. “Are you mad because we didn’t…”
    “Of course not.” He stopped. “No. I went too fast. I…” How did he put himself, his life into words. “I don’t have a normal life,” he said in the biggest understatement of the year. “I am away a lot.”
    What the hell he thought that would explain he had no idea, but Talon seemed to be thinking about it.
    “I just got back from an assignment.” He tried again. “I don’t always adjust right away.”
    And there was understatement number two.
    “You can’t blame yourself,” she said. “What you do is so challenging and heroic, and I think I was putting out some pretty ‘come here, baby’ vibes.”
    They started to walk again. He inhaled deeply. He’d forgotten how crisp the air was in April at night. The smell of the grass and the dirt and the evergreens.
    “I think you are really a special person, Colt.” She said as the lights from the porch came into view from the trees. “I hope that you stay in Marietta during part of your leave. I’d like to see you again.”
    Obviously, she’d see him again. She still hadn’t had her date or whatever she wanted him to do. He had a feeling mutual orgasms were off the table. As they should be, he kicked his libido hard, which still hadn’t completely recovered from that cabin kiss.
    “Maybe I could make you dinner again. You could tell Parker something about being a soldier.”
    Most of his life was classified.
    “I think I’m the one who’s supposed to be treating you,” he said, stopping in the tree line. “Lady’s Choice.” He reminded.
    “Oh, that.” She smiled, and he noticed this time it had a touch of sadness in it. His fault probably. “That was a pretty amazing kiss.”
    “You’re going to have to make me work harder than that, Talon.”
    She smiled, and this time is was more genuine. “Okay, then. I’ll try to be creative.”
    “Knock yourself out.”
    He walked her to the porch. She turned to face him. He waited. She always had something to say. But she was silent, her expressive eyes searching his. He wondered what she saw. Then he did something he couldn’t remember ever doing. He kissed her cheek.
    “Good night, Talon.”
    She ran up the stairs and slipped through the door. He stared at the door for a while, thinking of the woman and child behind it. The ghosts. The nightmares. The memories. He looked at his truck. So easy to fire it up and drive. He’d done that his whole life.
    Colt jammed his hands in his front pocket, avoiding his keys clipped to his belt loop and walked back to the cabin.

Chapter Seven
    T he next morning, Colt looked at the etched words on the back of the hand-worked silver piece— You are my world .
    He touched the tiny script, traced each letter as he’d done hundreds, maybe thousands of times as a young boy. It had been his mother’s necklace, at least he thought so. The only thing he had left of her except a few snippets of memory, and even those he wasn’t sure of. It could have been an aunt or a foster mom as sometimes the faces, the hair, the rooms were different. He hadn’t come to live at the ranch with his uncle, who now might not have been his uncle, until he was eight.
    He didn’t regret tossing his uncle’s two letters in the trash unopened, but he hated the mystery. Thinking about it. Talon was making him think. This place was making him think. The homey house. The refurbished cabin.
    He turned the necklace over and saw the deep blue orb inlaid into the silver casing.