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

Iridescent green and turquoise swirled in the depths of the blue, with hints of metallic glint that caught the light streaming in the window of the cabin. He tucked the necklace back into the cube and turned several of the pieces in different directions, locking it back into place.
    Immediately, his hand missed the feel and the weight of the necklace, the way the silver warmed in his hand. He cursed his sentimentality.
    His mother had left him. Again and again. He didn’t even know if that had been her necklace. Not for sure. And he sure as hell had never been her world, but when he’d been a kid, he’d liked to think that somewhere at some time there had been a man who had loved his mother enough to think that she was his world. He’d also thought as a kid that they would find each other again, this man, his father, and his mother, and they would be happy together. Happy enough to come find him.
    A childish dream. He’d known it even back them. Hope was a kick in the gut. Talon had probably had similar dreams. Both of them abandoned. Hoping to be reclaimed like luggage. He had shut himself off from hope. She still seemed to have it, embracing life and people, trying to make a connection.
    How?
    All he’d wanted last night was to be deep inside her body. That was all the connection he ever wanted, but he suspected Talon wanted a lot more than his inadequate best.
    So why was he still here? He’d gone for a pre-dawn run. Had a shower. His eyes quartered the cabin. It looked like nothing he remembered. The last time he’d been here, the cabin had been unfinished. The roof had been solid. He had redone it, nailing on the tar paper and weather proofing, screwing in the tin sheets and adding the insulation, but the inside had never been dry-walled or insulated. There had been running water, connected to the second well, and it had been plumbed to connect to the septic system. But it had been totally rustic. Hot in the summer. Frigid in the winter.
    Still, he had loved to sit in here on his free moments. Read a book, stare out the window and imagine himself like a cowboy of old, riding the range, driving the cattle higher to the spring pastures and then back down again in the late fall. He sat cross-legged and leaned against the wall of the main room, letting his gaze wander up to the loft area, where a fan now hung.
    It wasn’t so bad here. He could breathe here. No bad memories here. No sounds either.
    Until the quiet fall of footsteps on the porch.
    “Hey, mister.” A small voice called out. “Mister Ewing?”
    Colt allowed his eyes to close briefly. The kid. He knew it was coming. He hadn’t had to deal with a kid since… He broke off that thought and popped to his feet, bracing himself against the wall.
    He opened the door.
    “Wow! You’re tall,” was the first thing out of the kid’s mouth. “Mom says you’re a soldier. Are you for real? Have you killed anyone?”
    The question wasn’t one he hadn’t been asked before, but it snapped him out of his relaxed contemplation of cataloging the changes in the cabin. Instantly, the tension was back in his neck, his shoulders, even though he’d tried to run out the knots this morning.
    “Yes.”
    The kid stared back at him in awe. Dark hair, widow’s peak, grey eyes. He had the stare of someone much older.
    “My mom says killing is wrong.”
    “She’s right.”
    “She doesn’t even eat meat. Why’d you do it then?”
    “My job.”
    Again that solemn, judging stare.
    “You want pancakes?”
    He must not have answered quickly enough because the kid added. “Blueberries.”
    *
    Talon felt like she’d taken the coward’s way out, sending Parker to ask Colt if he wanted to eat breakfast with them. She’d expected to hear his truck roar to life any second as she lay gritty-eyed, staring at her ceiling for most of the night. She didn’t recognize herself as the woman who’d kissed a man she’d met only a few hours earlier, had let her hands walk all