Seducing the Bachelor (The Bachelor Auction Returns Book 3)

by Sinclair Jayne

  But she wasn’t good at hiding her feelings. And Tanner had been a good friend. Fun and kind and welcoming, especially when Talon had arrived in town knowing no one.

  “Tanner, can you keep a secret?”

  Tanner’s green eyes rounded. “Yes, of course.”

  “I really like him. He’s nice. He’s fun to hang around. He’s kind. He’s perfect.”

  “Awesome.” Tanner popped off the roof of the car and fist pumped the air.

  “The Lady’s Choice thing I chose was for him to help build a little tree house thing with Parker.”

  Tanner stared at her, her mouth pursed in a question but, for once, she was speechless.

  “That’s so you, Talon. Giving to a fault.”

  “But you gave me the date. And I’ve had a great time, but he’s going to be leaving in a couple of weeks going back to the army so I thought since I had tonight off I’d make him dinner.”

  Tanner gave in with good grace. She hugged Talon harder than usual. “Are you falling for him? Falling hard?”

  Talon tried to say “no,” but she just froze in Tanner’s hug. Tanner pulled away and looked into Talon’s face. “But, Talon, that’s wonderful. If you’re that over the moon for him, he’ll feel the same. He’s from Marietta. He’ll be back after his manly army thing. Is he being deployed?”

  She sighed. Colt didn’t tell her anything about his job. All she knew was that he was a Ranger and that was pretty badass. Although, she hadn’t researched it because if Colt wanted her to know, he would have told her. And he’d never said anything about coming back.

  “So maybe after he’s left we can do something?”

  “There’s that much to tell that you gotta wait two weeks?” Tanner quirked one eyebrow, her signature look.

  “I can always hope,” Talon said lamely.

  Tanner crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Okay. You win. But afterwards”—Tanner hugged Talon hard again—“I want you in one piece, heart whole, you hear me?”

  *

  Colt shook Paul Zabrinsky’s hand as he got out of his truck. “That’s a lot of reclaimed wood,” Colt said, walking around to the flat trailer.

  “One of my crews is doing a big remodel out toward Livingston,” Paul said. “It’s a family of horse trainers and they are expanding their equestrian facilities so they wanted the old barn pulled down, and I thought of your request for reclaimed wood.”

  “Thanks,” Colt said, shifting Dude in his arms so he could examine some of the wood while Parker looked at it as well. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Is it what you were looking for? Do you think it will work?”

  “What do you think, P?”

  “Awesome,” Parker said. “Our tree house is going to be the best in Montana.”

  “Tree house, huh?” Paul asked.

  “Come see,” Parker tugged Paul toward the stand of oaks.

  They stared up at the work in progress. Paul whistled. “I was thinking fort, but you were thinking Swiss Family Robinson.”

  Colt looked at the platform that now had a deck with a tire swing below and a hammock. The roof had two skylights and it was almost finished, and two of the walls had two cut outs for windows and one for a door. The stairs were complete as was the railing, which was made from fallen branches on the property.

  “Can I go up?”

  Parker led the way. A second room was started in another tree, and cable had been drilled in so that there would be a suspension bridge.

  Paul looked at everything. The way the house blended into the tree and conformed to the shape of it. Parker showed off shelves that had been built and other details. “You do construction in the army?” He asked Colt.

  “No.”

  “We used You Tube and the internet to design plans. I helped,” Parker said proudly.

  “Wow. Just wow.” Paul walked around, checked the corners, the roof. “Beautiful work Colt and Parker.”

  Colt felt himself tense as Paul looked some more at the roofline and other aspects of the build.

  “Hey, Parker, can you show me where the fireman’s pole will go?” Paul asked. “It hasn’t come in yet.”

  Parker dashed off and ran to the other tree house room that wasn’t yet finished.

  “I don’t know what your plans are,” Paul said. “But if you ever decide to leave the service, there’d be a job for you at Big Z’s, if you were ever interested or looking for something to get started. I know transitioning isn’t always easy. You are very skilled at carpentry, and the construction end of our business is growing. The town’s growing.”

  “I don’t know my plans yet,” Colt said. “Still got six months active. And I’m not sure if I’ll reenlist or not.” He felt stunned by the offer.

  “I just wanted you to know that there will always be a place for you in Marietta if you want to come home,” Paul said. “You could even set up your own specialty construction business if you wanted, building tree houses and such and work with us on the side to supplement your income as you get started.”

  Colt stared at Paul. “That’s a bit of a stretch from one project to a business.”

  “Have you thought of other careers?” Paul asked curiously.

  “No,” Colt said slowly. He hadn’t even tried to speculate. “It would have to be physical. Outside a lot, but…”

  The rest was left hanging as Parker bounced back in again. He showed Paul the blueprints, talked about changes they’d made. Colt let Parker tell the story. He should be irritated that someone he barely knew was offering him a job without very much information on him. He didn’t need charity. He didn’t need people trying to suck him back to Marietta, back to the ranch. Only he wasn’t as bothered as he would have expected.

  Spending time with Talon had banished so many of the bad memories from his childhood. He tried to tell himself it was just the intense and frequent sex, but it had become so much more than that from the beginning. She had a strength and sense of fun and tenderness that he had never been exposed to, and he soaked it up.

  He’d always lived his life moment by moment, keeping it tight. But now, he’d started planning ahead. He had to—ordering building materials, picking up Parker from baseball practice, feeding Dude, making dinner with Parker. He was getting into a different routine and, for the first time in his life, he felt almost normal. He would have thought hanging out with a kid would have been far beyond his skill set, but Parker made it easy. He was wide open, easy to read, natural. And he forced Colt to socialize. He’d even met some of the parents of other kids on Parker’s team.

  Unimaginable a few weeks ago. And the clock was running out. His watch beeped.

  “Hey, Parker, I got a quick meeting in town. Let’s roll. Thanks for the wood, Paul. Invoice me.”

  “On the house,” Paul said. “No one else wanted it. Besides, I’m considering it an investment.”

  Colt swung himself down to the ground, Dude tucked into his side.

  “You really ought to get a baby sling for that beast,” Paul said, hopping down beside him. Parker ran ahead.

  Colt could just imagine Nick’s reaction to him carrying around the runt puppy, which was not so runty anymore, in a baby sling. They’d all think he’d lost his mind. And considering how he’d been living these past few weeks, so would his team. But it was a good crazy.

  *

  “I don’t really understand what this means.” Colt stared at the neat pile of papers in the dark blue folder.

  Mia Zabrinsky sat next to him at the oval conference table.

  “Your original adoption papers are sealed by the court,” she said. “Mr. Meizner and his wife were the second couple to adopt you. They had lost their son. But she left him, taking you with her, and then she brought you back to the ranch after a few years and she left on her own sometime later. We could try to get the first set of documents unsealed if you wanted to pursue that with the intention of finding your birth mother and father, but…”

  Mia’s words were
lost in his churning thoughts. Why the hell would he want to know who his birth parents were? They’d given him up to a couple who’d then adopted him to the Meizners. And then Mrs. Meizner left. Everyone had had their reasons. He’d had no control over it and he was who he was. Mia had given him a handwritten letter from Meizner, which he hadn’t opened. And probably wouldn’t. Water under the bridge. And as he sat there facing Mia, he realized he wasn’t angry anymore. And that it was time he stopped acting like an angry, hurt boy.

  Talon had been right. He was the heir. And if he wanted, he could come home.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Talon skidded to a stop, a poof of dust danced around her feet as she looked up in the trunk of the tree to see Colt, arms wide, holding a window frame as he maneuvered it into position. Wow, he was beautiful. It still hit her like a punch how physically beautiful he was; it hurt her to look at him. He was infinitely precious, and she couldn’t quite believe she was so lucky that he was hers.

  The whispered warning that it was only for a few weeks had been silent for several days now. Talon knew his leave would end, and he’d need to go back to Texas, but she didn’t think about it. And they hadn’t talked about the future. Oh, she’d wanted to, but she’d been too scared to bring it up. She didn’t want him to say “Thanks it’s been fun,” and then add that he’d never come back. Never. And before she’d gone to the cabin that glorious afternoon almost three weeks ago and taken off her shirt, she’d asked herself if she could do this, have a physical relationship without involving her heart? And she’d known the answer had been no, but she’d done it anyway, because at least now she would have the memories of being in a relationship. Doing normal things and extraordinary things. Cooking. Watching Parker play baseball. Walking around town. Grocery shopping.

  And she’d kept telling herself to notice everything, cherish everything, because it was finite, but somewhere she’d started hoping that it wasn’t. Colt could fall in love with her and Parker. He could want to stay in his childhood home and build a life with her and not reenlist. Or he could reenlist and visit them when he was home again. Falling in love and staying did happen to people, she’d told herself fiercely. It could happen. Why not her?

  Now Colt was nailing the window frame in and Talon noticed his movements didn’t seem as graceful and efficient as usual. They were choppier. And he hadn’t noticed her yet. Usually, he was so attuned to everything he heard the truck on the gravel drive and her footsteps as she hurried through the small oak savannah that separated the house from the start of the pastures. But not today.

  She watched the flex of his tattoo across his broad shoulders. The twisted trunk of the juniper tree as it “grew” up from the low-slunk waistband of his pants. She remembered what he’d told her, the tree represented many lives and she loved to trace the lines in the trunk and the branches as they grew. Colt stopped work suddenly. Seemed to freeze and then square his shoulders before turning around.

  Talon felt like she’d been forced to mainline ice water. Everything in her seized up and froze. His expression was shuttered. Dark. She had no idea how to read him like this, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She hadn’t seen him this far away since the first night she’d driven him here.

  “Hi.” She wanted to smile, to recapture the happy mood from earlier when she’d dropped Parker off at school and Noah hadn’t needed her for a couple of hours so she’d raced home.

  But even Talon, who’d spent most of her life pretending that things were fine when she was afraid they weren’t, couldn’t go there.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  “Nothing.”

  He looked so wary. Tears pricked her eyes, but she wouldn’t go there either.

  “What happened?”

  “I need to keep working,” he said breaking eye contact.

  She nearly stamped her foot in frustration. He was shutting her out and the one thing she couldn’t bear from him was distance.

  “This was supposed to be a fun after school project with Parker not a mission you have to complete in twenty-four hours like a contestant on Amazing Race or something.”

  “There’s always been a deadline, Talon.”

  And didn’t those words just hypothermia the parts of her that weren’t yet in deep freeze.

  “I’m coming up,” she said, walking around the tree to the stairs that he had built with the help of one of the contractors who worked at Big Z’s as well as three of his other bachelor auction buddies. She knew Parker and Colt had told her not to visit the tree house until it was finished, but when he hadn’t met her at the cabin after she’d texted, she’d been worried. The cabin was their spot. Colt ate dinner at the main house with them, but that was it. He wouldn’t make love to her there.

  “You’ll distract me.” He walked through the house, that didn’t yet have a door to the other expanded deck that was the first thing he’d completed.

  “Good.”

  She marched up the stairs determined to at least fight, to not just accept. “Spill it. What’s bothering you?”

  “Nothing’s bothering me, Talon.”

  “Insert swear word here,” she said. “Yes, something’s up. Stop playing hero. And stop using building a tree house as a shield.” She grabbed the sides of the Dutch door that he’d picked up as if he were going to frame it while she stood there, trying to get him to talk to her. She held on tightly, her eyes glaring into his cool ones through the dirty glass pane. She was pulling the door towards her with all her strength, which he matched, although he didn’t look as if he were making nearly the effort. Probably not any effort at all.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. Suddenly he swung his leg out below the door, knocking her off balance, and even as he caught her in one-arm before she hit the deck, he used his other hand to easily prop the door against the outside wall of the house. Talon was looking down at the sanded planks of the deck while Colt leaned in close above her. He lifted her so she came in contact with the hard, long length of him that she was beginning to crave with the intensity of a long term addict. Her breath hitched.

  With his free hand he pulled the band out of her hair so that it tumbled over her shoulders and in front of her face.

  He hissed in a breath. She reached up and wrapped her fingers around his arm, not to push him away, but to hold on tight.

  “I don’t want to talk.” His voice was a growl in her ear that hit her like a flamethrower and, when he turned her to face him, she was already slicing her fingers through his hair and slamming her mouth into his in a desperate kiss that burned through both. Something was wrong and she was terrified, but she continued to kiss him, even as her fingers unbuttoned his pants and started to tug them down his hips at the same time he pulled apart her shirt, western-style snaps popping. He unclipped her bra and tossed it aside with her shirt, his mouth fastening hot and hard on her breasts while his hand cupped her ass and ground her into him. She whimpered in pure pleasure.

  “How do you do that?” His ragged voice demanded against her breast. “Get me so jacked up for you in an instant?”

  There was no way Talon could answer because his fingers made short work of her button fly jeans and they were already pooled around her ankles and his thumb was parting her slick seam and she moaned against his mouth as he expertly pressed and flicked her clit.

  “You’re so ready for me,” he said, satisfaction hard in his voice.

  He lowered her to the wood floor and lifted her arms over her head so they brushed the branches that Colt had cut to be the railing of the platform deck.

  “Hold on to this.” He commanded, his voice low and intense.

  Talon was so excited she could barely breathe, and she watched him almost in a haze of need. Her fingers curved around the wood. He already had her boots off, socks, panties, and jeans and had tossed them over his shoulder where they landed in a scattered pile behind him. His hands circled her ankles and he pulled her legs wide, his burning gaze fastened on her glistening, sw
ollen feminine core.

  “Don’t let go.” He commanded as she did so she could sit up and reach for him.

  “Why?” she asked breathlessly.

  His eyes bored into hers with the same intensity he’d been watching her physical arousal build.

  “Because then I’ll stop.” His fingers began a seductive dance at her core that had Talon arching off the wood deck. “And you’re not going to want me to stop.”

  She thrashed trying to arch more fully into his hand. She wanted, no she needed him to… “Please, Colt, please.” She chanted as he brought her quickly to the brink and then he backed off, and then each time she let go of the railing he stopped and leaned back on his heels utterly out of reach.

  “You’re so wet,” he whispered when her hands anchored to the railing again, and he watched her erratic breathing, the pulse beating in her throat, and the flush spreading over her face and neck and chest. He leaned forward, brushing her parted lips with a gentle kiss so sweet her eyes pricked with tears. “And I’m so, so thirsty.”

  He scooped his hands under her thighs so her legs were over his broad, muscled shoulders, and she was completely exposed to him. “Don’t let go,” he said, his mouth an inch from her throbbing, weeping mound. “Promise.”

  “Okay.” She could barely get the word out.

  He inhaled her aroused scent and his eyes drifted shut sensuously before he opened them again and the fierce, commanding warrior was back. “You didn’t promise.”

  “I promise,” she said quickly. “I won’t let go.”

  Of you.

  And then he lowered his head and Talon was awash in waves of the most powerful pleasure that dragged her further out to a sea of roiling sensation. She had no idea how she kept holding on to the railing because she felt like she was drowning and Colt was the only safe port in sight. She thrashed under him as her first climax crested but he only renewed his sensual assault by sliding two fingers deep into her core and stoking the front of her vaginal wall, which he’d discovered one morning as her most intense erogenous zone while his tongue and teeth continued to work her clitoris.