Seducing the Bachelor (The Bachelor Auction Returns Book 3)

by Sinclair Jayne

  “Colt, you told me you didn’t even hunt as a child, which is such a normal thing for a Montana kid. And I’ve see you take spiders outside.”

  “I thought of them as targets,” he said after a long time into the silence, not even sure if she were still awake. “Not people. I never think of them as that. And that’s why I can’t try to contact you or think about you. I have to get in my zone to operate like that. To do the job. To function like that. I have to be totally separate from myself. And I won’t be able to function properly if a piece of me is still here with you and Parker.”

  He could feel the pulse in her neck kick up, and she swallowed hard, and that killed him. Just killed him. Her eyes searched his in the darkened room for the longest time. He wanted to look away, but if she were brave enough to try to look into whatever soul he might have left, he should have the stones to let her. But then she surprised him, by smoothing her hand over his heart in a rhythmic circle. Then she placed his hand over her heart.

  “You will always be here, Colt. I will keep you safe, and I’m glad you know how to do your job and keep yourself safe. Keep thinking that way, and if you don’t come back to me, back to us, back to Marietta, I want you to find that sense of home and of belonging where ever you decide to go, Colt. You deserve a lot of happy.”

  He stared at the play of the shadows on the ceiling and walls for a long time while he listened to Talon breathe deeply beside him.

  *

  “Talon,” he whispered.

  Talon woke up disoriented. She opened her eyes and saw Colt dressed and standing beside the bed. “Oh, is it morning?” she asked, confused. She sat up. Registered his two bags by the door, the fact that he’d showered. She caught his hand.

  “I’m sorry to wake you.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I wasn’t going to, but I want you to hold on to something for me.”

  “Of course.” She tried to pull her scattered wits together. He was leaving. Leaving. And she wanted to remember every moment and every detail and every word. “Anything.”

  He had something in his hand that glimmered in the faint moonlight peeking through the window.

  “This is the one thing I have from my past,” he said. “The only thing I kept that’s part of me.”

  She reached for a light, but he stilled her hand.

  “I was wondering if you would hold on to it for me. Keep it safe.”

  “Of course.”

  She looked down at it but all she could see was a square or rectangle of worked and etched silver and then some sort of stone in the middle.

  “Will you wear it?”

  She nodded, overcome. She’d never had a gift from a boyfriend before, and it was something from his past that he wanted her to keep safe, to wear. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

  Please let it be symbolic.

  He put the chain and pendant around her neck and then threaded the complicated clasp together. She crossed her fingers under the sheet and mentally chanted “please, please, please, come home safe to me.”

  The silver was warm against her skin as if he’d palmed it for a while before putting in on her neck. His thumb traced her cheekbone.

  “Go back to sleep, Talon. You can catch another hour before your shift. I fed Dude so he’s good for a while.”

  But she got up. “I’ll walk you to the door,” she said. “I can make you breakfast.”

  “I’ll get something at the airport. Besides,” he said as she followed him into the kitchen. “Nick just drove up and I don’t need him to see you naked. I’d have to kill him.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Not funny.”

  He laughed and then ducked back into the bedroom and came out with the khaki t-shirt. He looked at her then the t-shirt. “It definitely looks better on you.”

  He slipped in over her head, and she hugged the fabric to her, hoping it would retain his scent forever.

  “Bye, Talon.” His lips briefly touched her cheek and then he was gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Talon tried not to tick off the days on the calendar, or the weeks or months, or notice it was still more than a month away from Colt finishing his six months active duty requirement. One more month before she could wait and hope. Her hand, like it so often did, wrapped around the pendant until the fused glass ball, swirling with different blues, streaks of green, and a hint of metallic glint seemed to warm. She read the inscription daily, “you are my world” and even though Colt hadn’t had it made for her, he’d given it to her for safe keeping. Something from his childhood, which had to mean something.

  Had to, even though most of the experiences from a childhood had been disappointments and change and what had felt like abandonment, this time, this man could be different. He wasn’t at fault for what had happened before. And she was an adult now. In charge of her life as much as a person could be. She couldn’t lump him in with her past pain, although some days it was easier to talk herself off that ledge than others.

  Parker made it easier. He was busy even though school was out, and he was fired up about the rodeo that was coming to town this week. Almost all the downtown businesses had decorated their storefronts, and Talon had heard the chamber was hosting a contest for the best themed window display. Of course, the Main Street diner had participated, and Talon had enjoyed the whole process of brainstorming ideas and then working on painting the wood cutout cowboys on bucking horses, which one of the brothers of the diner’s chef had made in his home woodworking shop.

  She’d always loved art classes and had taken an embarrassingly long time with one of the cowboys making him look as much like Colt as possible, which had brought her a lot of pride and pleasure and more than a little embarrassment and sympathy when Tanner, Meghan, and Leanne had noticed the resemblance. She knew she should start the process of emotionally moving on sooner than later, but there was always time to grieve for lost dreams. Hope was something to hold on to.

  She heard one of the line chefs call one of her table numbers and she jumped guiltily. Usually, she was too busy during her work to get lost in her thoughts. She served the breakfasts and then returned with the freshly brewed coffee to choruses of thank-yous. She cleaned off another table, tucked the tip in her apron pocket and looked up as the bell on the door rang. An arrestingly beautiful woman hesitated for a moment, scanning the diner and then she moved forward.

  “Hi, welcome. Table for one? Do you want to sit at the counter or a table?” Talon asked, cheerfully grabbing a menu. Hard to believe this women went anywhere alone. She was so beautiful in an ethereal and exotic way if there could be such a combination. Talon chided herself for staring.

  “Wow, that’s a beautiful necklace,” Talon said, noting the turquoise and silver necklace that nestled on her bare skin between her exposed cleavage. “And belt. Are you an artist?”

  “An attorney,” she said, sitting down at the table.

  “There’s an art to arguing.”

  The woman smiled, just a quick twitch of her lips, and Talon caught her breath. She really had it bad if she started picking people’s features apart and noticing little things that reminded her of Colt.

  “Sorry,” Talon started. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please, and lots.”

  Talon laughed and returned with a large mug and an assortment of sugars, natural sweeteners like agave, since this woman didn’t look like she was from around here. Bailey Zabrinsky dressed a little fancy like this and definitely wore a lot of jewelry to advertise her jewelry-making business, but this woman was wearing a silky, black button-up shirt that was not buttoned up very far, which showed off her lightly tanned torso far below where a hint of a lacy bra would break the deep plunge of the V-neck and exotic necklace that also had, were those claws, like from a real animal?

  This wasn’t LA. And it was 8:45 in the morning. Late by diner breakfast standards on a weekday, but way too early for that much skin. Talon pinched herself. She sounded like a small-town hick and a prude, but she wasn’t the
only one who was staring, and why not? The woman’s thick, long, dark hair fell down to her waist, and the extreme widow’s peak framed her small, heart-shaped face and classically beautiful features. Hard to tell her age. Mid-thirties? Mid-forties? Her body-hugging, short skirt didn’t come close to mid-thigh and the flashy black and gold cowboy boots screamed “look at me”.

  And everyone had when she’d strolled in.

  “What do you recommend?” The woman asked in a low voice that was musical.

  Talon found herself almost mesmerized by the woman’s unusual eyes. They were very light blue, almost mercury-colored, and heavily lashed, and had almost a hint of Asian shape. She had a very direct stare that seemed to size everything up in an instant. Whatever kind of attorney she was, Talon had no doubt almost everyone would wilt under her cross-examination.

  Talon inwardly sighed. She felt so average next to the woman. If she’d been blessed with an eighth of this woman’s beauty and charisma, Colt would have come running back.

  “Well.” Talon paused and leaned over to look at the menu, seeing it as if for the first time through the eyes of this exotic stranger, who was so slim and elegant she couldn’t eat very much to keep that figure, but maybe God had blessed her with a fantastic metabolism along with everything else she seemed to possess.

  “I always like…”

  “Where did you get that necklace?”

  “What? Oh.” Talon straightened as if she were guilty of something.

  Involuntarily, her hand crept up and covered the pendant, then she forced her hand down, resisted tucking it back into her shirt because she didn’t want to show it off and have to answer questions about it and how Colt had given her such an unusual piece but had never come back or emailed, skyped, called, or even texted.

  “A…a…friend,” she said.

  “Who?” The woman reached out to touch the pendant, but Talon stepped back.

  “It was a gift, well…” Colt had asked her to keep it for safekeeping, not necessarily forever.

  Which meant he was going to come back, her heart jumped. But maybe he’d just send for it. And his truck. Her stomach bottomed out.

  “It was given to me.” she amended.

  “That usually implies a gift.” The woman raised one perfectly arched eyebrow and one corner of her mouth followed suit. “It’s quite beautiful.” She looked at Talon more closely. “And unusual. Often individual art pieces like that are inscribed by the artist.”

  “Oh,” Talon said, feeling more nervous now.

  What if the woman accused her of stealing it or accused Colt of stealing it as a child although she couldn’t even imagine that. She didn’t know where he’d gotten it. He’d said it was a piece of his past. That he’d had it since he was a child. What if he’d found it or…

  Her mind refused to go there. The past was the past, and it needed to stay there.

  “Is it inscribed? Signed by the artist?”

  Talon felt like she was hearing the woman from a long way away. What if it was hers somehow? What if she demanded it back? How would Talon prove that it was Colt’s? That he’d given it to her as a goodbye present?

  “There’s no inscription.” She lied. “I love it. He gave it to me a while ago. I recommend the…”

  “Who gave it to you, a boyfriend? What was his name? Does he live locally?”

  “He grew up here but is away now,” Talon said coolly.

  She wanted to ask some questions of her own, but this woman oozed wealth and sophistication. She said she was an attorney. Talon had no doubt if this necklace and the woman were connected somehow, she would come out on the losing end. But what if this woman knew Colt? He hadn’t told her much about his trip to the attorney, but she knew he had more questions than answers. Indecision clawed at her.

  “Where did he get it? Did he say?”

  “No.”

  “Pawn shop? In Marietta? When?”

  Talon huffed out a breath and held her order form in front of her like a shield. “It was a gift from my boyfriend. I didn’t grill him about where he got it, but he’d never steal anything. Never.” She drew herself up to her full five-ten, taller, if she put her hair up in a messy bun, but no, it was down in her youthful ponytail, darn it. “He’s a soldier who’s serving our country.”

  “A soldier?” The woman repeated the word in astonishment.

  “Are you going to order or not?”

  The woman seemed flustered now. Her hand went to her neck and touched the silver engraved discs, turquoise stones, and some other kind of stone before she pushed the menu away. She dug out her purse and pulled out a ten.

  “Thanks for the coffee. Sorry for bothering you.”

  She stood up and Talon felt bad to see that the woman’s hand shook as she ran her slim fingers through her thick hair. Head high, her eyes bored through the fused glass on the pendant, and then she woman strode out of the diner and just as they had when she’d entered, all eyes followed her progress.

  “What was that about?” Deanna, one of the other servers, demanded.

  Talon tucked her necklace back inside the neck of her western-style shirt.

  “No idea. Changed her mind, I guess.”

  “Never thought I’d see her back in town again.” Gene Roberts, one of Talon’s regulars, commented darkly and indicated he wanted more coffee.

  Talon poured. “You know her?”

  Gene snorted. “Always know trouble when it walks through the door,” he said.

  Talon could believe the beautiful stranger had caused her fair share of problems over the years. Probably a lot of bar fights if she were the type to frequent bars, but that didn’t seem very likely now. Surely, the problems she caused now were of the more professional variety although the woman still oozed sex appeal.

  “Trouble on two legs,” Gene said, shaking his head. “Haven’t laid eyes on her in over thirty years but if she’s back, things are going to change and not for the good.”

  Talon felt a chill of foreboding, but then she shook it off. Gene was an old-timer and loved to tell stories, and flaunted his flair for the melodramatic with pride. Marietta was a wonderful town. Nothing other than a bar fight could happen here.

  “What’s her name?” she asked curiously, wondering if somehow she could be related to Colt. A cousin, maybe?

  “Samara Wilder. But most folks called her Whim since she was a bitty thing and because she was so impulsive, but when she hit her teens she just became Wilder.” He shook his head.

  As the week wore on, Talon was exhausted. The diner had been so busy she’d been picking up extra shifts. The town was becoming more of a tourist destination for all seasons, and the rodeo was a huge celebration.

  She’d promised Parker they would go tonight to see some of the cowboys and animals arriving, especially the bulls, which fascinated him. She’d started picking up more morning shifts, so she could do more with Parker after his sports practices, and he wouldn’t have to hang out at the diner while she worked. Since she hadn’t accepted the placement in the Washington State vet program that Noah had bullied her into applying for, she wouldn’t need to keep her days open for study since she’d finished her BS degree online. Noah was disappointed in her. He felt like she was giving up too easily and that three years was a small price to pay for the rest of her career, which he assured her could happen in Marietta. She couldn’t explain to him how she felt unable to move forward. Leave Marietta. Leave Colt’s house. Start all over once again.

  She had just taken a tray of food over to a group of cowboys, who’d been flirting with her shamelessly, when she looked up and out through the window. Across the street a gorgeous, shiny blue truck had pulled up to the curb.

  “Now that’s a ride,” one of the cowboys said and whistled in appreciation.

  “Bit flashy for me,” another said. “A bit girlie. I’m all about big black trucks and big black motorbikes and big black stallions.”

  “More like black and blue ass the way you got tosse
d by Diablo last week.”

  Everyone at the table laughed except Talon because the truck’s door swung open and Colt stepped out like a blockbuster movie star, well-worn jeans, combat boots, V-neck, long sleeve, blue tee pushed up to his elbows and leather jacket dangling by a finger. He looked better than anything Talon had ever seen and her empty tray clattered to the floor as she ran out the door, and across the street to fling herself into his arms.

  “You came back.” She buried her face against his broad should and held him as tightly as she could. “You came back. You came back. You’re really here.” She burst into tears.

  His hands smoothed down her body.

  “I guess that answers my first question that you’re glad to see me.” His voice was low and amused in her ear. “But the tears are beyond my skill set.”

  She linked her arms around his neck and cried harder. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s not yet six months, but you’re here. You’re really here. I missed you. I missed you so much.” She speared her fingers in his shorn hair, making a face because the little length he’d had was gone.

  He laughed. “It’ll grow. Uh, Talon, breathing would be good.”

  “Sorry.” She managed to peel herself off him a little bit so that she could gaze into his face.

  He looked the same mostly. Tanner. Thinner. And so wonderful she could hardly believe he was real. That he was here. That he was hers. Her hands explored his body, making sure he was in one piece even though he looked fantastic.

  His thumb stroked across her lower lip, which parted, and she sucked his thumb into her mouth. Her eyes shone and she held eye contact as her tongue played with the pad of his thumb.

  He groaned. “Two minutes in town, and I’m going to be arrested for lewd conduct.”

  She stepped back into his body and sighed.

  “I wanted you to come back so much,” she whispered. “I missed you. I thought about you every day. I prayed that you were safe and happy and totally focused on your mission.”