The Bachelor's Baby (Bachelor Auction Book 3) (10 page)

Remember when I said I was lousy at relationships, Meg?

“Look,” he tried. “It’s been a shitty day and I’m an ass when I’m hungry. If you want to do lunch in Great Falls we can, just not for a few days. I have to get that roof on.” He grabbed a spoon and dug into the can. It had a layer of yellow fat on the top that he tried not to think about. He scooped a gummy bite into his mouth.

“No,” she said with a catch of a humorless laugh in her voice. “I’m not here about…that. Not exactly. I mean—” She lifted a hand in a gesture of helplessness. “I’m pregnant.”

The bite of cold chicken and rice congealed in his mouth.

And she was telling him because…?

He swallowed the lump and it stuck in his throat. “I wore condoms.”

“Not the whole time.” She flicked a blushing, you-know-what-I-mean look at him.

Okay, they’d messed around a little that last time, maybe enjoyed a few strokes bareback. He’d never done anything like that and it had been an impulse as they got carried away, both still half asleep. But it had only been a few before he’d grabbed a brain and covered up. Hell, he’d have been completely empty of sperm by then and you didn’t get a woman pregnant like that anyway. That was urban legend stuff.

Wasn’t it?

He set down the can of soup. “Meg,” he protested, starting to wonder exactly what kind of nut-case he’d brought home that night.

Whatever she read in his tone made her stiffen. “I didn’t think it could really happen like that either, but I haven’t been with anyone else.”

He searched her expression, seeing mostly anxiety. He shook his head, refusing to believe this because it was too far out there. “Are you serious right now? You think I got you pregnant?”

“I know I’m pregnant, Linc. There’s no
think
about it.” She was really white, her freckles standing out like little brown dots.

“Well, it’s not mine,” he blurted, furious that this was even happening. Panicking. “I wore condoms. They didn’t break. Were you poking holes in them when I wasn’t looking?” he demanded.

“No!”

“’Cause I wear them for a reason. I don’t
want
kids,” he railed, hearing himself sounding like the biggest asshole on the planet, but
fuck
. Did she know what she was saying? “I am not interested, Meg. I told you that night that I wasn’t ever going to marry and have kids.”

“Okay!” She held up a hand. It shook and her lips were white. Her blue eyes were wide and dark and shiny. Deeply wounded. “I hear you.” Her voice was so jagged with emotion it sent a preternatural chill over him. “If you don’t believe me, fine. I didn’t come here for anything except to tell you. I have to tell Blake that I’m moving back here, and he’s going to ask who the father is. I’ll tell him and everyone else it was someone in Chicago. Have a nice life, Linc.”

She turned and was slamming the door behind her before he’d properly absorbed what she’d said.

Fine? His brain was having a nuclear meltdown with how
not fine
he was with any of this. He’d been a golden boy of crisis management on the rigs, never letting emotion get the best of him, always taking stock and forming a plan of action faster than anyone else.

He stared at the door, trying to grasp what had just happened.

Meg was pregnant. She wasn’t standing here insisting he claim it as his though. She didn’t care if he believed he was the father. But it sounded like she’d come here directly from the airport. Like that was the only thing on her mind from her door across the country to his.

Now she was planning to tell her brother she was moving back here. But she was going to tell him the father was back in Chicago.

While, at some point in the future, a kid might start running around town wearing something like Linc’s face.

Linc didn’t care much what people thought of him, but he knew what he thought of men who didn’t care for their own children.

He’d worn a condom, he tried reminding himself, but that argument was falling away as he saw again her rigid body language, like they’d been throwing punches and all she’d wanted was to get away in one piece to nurse her injuries. She’d retreated with the speed of the combatant who’d taken a swift one-two and lost.

Hell, she hadn’t even put up a fight. He was the one who’d started swinging without even considering what he was saying.

“Meg,” he called, far too late because he could hear the sound of her engine receding. He swore. Self-contempt bubbled up inside him. He reached for his keys, wondering if he was being a fool, but he had to talk to her. Had to know.

Was she really pregnant with his kid?

The teeth on the keys bit into his palm.

If she was, what the hell was he going to do?

*

Meg hadn’t expected
a warm embrace into delighted arms, but she had hoped for civility. She had anticipated his disbelief, but not such unequivocal rejection.

She would
not
turn into a hormonal mess, though. Even though her worst nightmare was being pregnant unexpectedly and having the father not only send her packing, but showing zero interest in his child.

How could he?

Thank God her driveway was so close. She could barely see, her eyes were welling so full. Sobs were backing up in her throat, suffocating her with pressure from belly to behind her eyes. Her breaths were starting to clog with the tears she was swallowing back, making each gasp a choke of anguish.

Bastard
.

Not you, baby
, she thought, having too much trouble staying in the ruts of the drive to take her hand off the wheel and pat her tummy. She tried not to project hatred at stupid, freaking Linc Brady. It was the worst sort of atmosphere for a growing fetus, but she hated him
so much
.

She managed to jerk to a stop next to Liz’s car, then felt her shoulders shake and buckle. Sobs started pushing themselves out. Tears began to roll down her cheeks.

Through the blur, she saw the door opening on the spa and Liz stepping out. She wore something like bib overalls and maybe some yellow rubber gloves on her hands, but Meg could hardly see her through the blur.

Oh God, how was she going to get through the next fifteen minutes as she told her family she was pregnant and the father didn’t want her baby? How would she get through the rest of her life?

I’m not interested. I don’t want kids
.

Liz disappeared as a wall of black slid into place next to the passenger window.

Meg blinked, not sure what had just happened. Then she realized it was another vehicle, a black truck, parking next to her. The door opened. Linc’s plaid shirt and open sheepskin coat got out—

No, no,
no
. She gathered her scarf up to her face, desperately trying to stem the tears and pull herself together. Had he followed her? Been right behind her all the way down the drive and she didn’t notice?

“Meg,” he said, voice muted by the closed windows. His hand went to the passenger door.

No
. She climbed out on the driver’s side, looking toward the house, the barn. Looking for escape.

“Meg, listen,” Linc said over the roof of the sedan.

Blake was coming toward them from the barn, using a blackened cloth to wipe his hands. “This is a surprise. What’s—” He paused as he got a look at her ravaged face, her panicked expression. “What the fuck is going on?” He leveled a filthy look at Linc, so fierce and brotherly Meg wanted to cry for another reason entirely. “Liz, get in the house and call the police.”

“Whoa,” Linc said, tough and firm, holding up a hand. “We do not need the police. Meg, please tell your brother we don’t need the police. She just told me something, and I reacted badly, but I haven’t touched her. It was just an argument. And I only came to talk, Meg. You have to know what you said was a shock.”

Her silk scarf was covered in make-up and she actually used it to wipe her nose, thinking it was insult to injury because she liked this scarf and now she’d have to throw it away.

“Meg?” Blake prompted.

“We don’t need the police,” she managed to say, aching for privacy so she wouldn’t have to hold her emotions so hard in check. “But we don’t have anything to talk about, Linc. Just go.”

“Meg,” he persuaded, taking a step as though he planned to come around the hood toward her.

She retreated a step and Blake said, “Get in your truck and leave, or we will call the police.”

“Meg, come on,” Linc said, not moving, paying no attention to Blake. “Maybe you’ve had some time to get used to this idea—”

“A week, Linc. I’ve known for one week and not once have I thought,
Well, screw him. I’m not interested
. I didn’t think,
Hey, I know, I’ll drop this baby on him and walk away and pretend it’s not mine
.”

She was distantly aware of Blake swearing, of Linc’s shoulders slumping, of her making a fool of herself by starting to cry again, openly and hard, no hope of making it stop this time. The magnitude of her situation rose up like a wave to encompass her and she began to drown, feet glued to the ice beneath her.

“Meg, hon, I want you to come in out of the cold,” Liz said, appearing like the angel she was. Her arm was motherly and comforting as she hugged Meg to her side and steered her into the house. As she got Meg out of her shoes and coat in the mudroom, she said with brisk sincerity, “I don’t care what happens with you and Linc. You know you’ve made me the happiest woman in the world right now, don’t you? Our babies are going to grow up together.”

She clasped Meg in the fiercest hug ever.

*

Meg went into
the house and Linc found himself in a stare down with her brother.
Hi, we haven’t met, but I’m Linc Brady, the guy who knocked up your sister and told her to get lost
. No wonder the man looked like he wished that rag he held was a gun.

“It was a shock, all right?” Linc said. “I’m pretty careful and really didn’t see this coming. I said the wrong things.”

“Meg and I are adopted,” Blake said flatly. “I lost my parents or I would have stayed with them. I had grandparents in town who couldn’t take care of me, but they were in my life until they died. She never had that. Every single day, she tortures herself, wondering why her birth parents didn’t want her.”

Linc ran his hand down his face, trying to wipe away the shame that had to be reflected there because it filled him to the point his skin ached. He’d knocked her down then kicked her. Cut her where she was already open and tender and sore.

Normally he didn’t care what people thought of him, but the disdain on Blake’s face was hard to look at. Because he deserved it.

“It was a shock. That’s all I can say,” he said, not about to get into how unlikely pregnancy had been.

But he was accepting that it was real, that Meg believed it was his. She was too hurt by his rejection to be lying.

“For the record, my first wife sold me a false bill of goods on my son. Meg would never do that to a man and certainly wouldn’t lie to her child.”

It took Linc a minute to realize Blake meant that he hadn’t physically fathered the boy he called a son. Wow. That made him feel like a really low son of a bitch if he was having trouble accepting a kid that really was his flesh and blood.

“I came over to talk,” Linc said, trying to impress on Blake that he was ready to man up, but as his thoughts took their first delicate steps into this new vision of his future, he remembered what his present looked like. He swore tiredly. “We have a lot to figure out, obviously. But it sounds like she’s too angry to hear me right now and I don’t want to upset her any more than I have. And I’m going to wind up with a barn full of snow if I don’t get back to my place and finish my roof. I’m not trying to shirk. I’m going to do right by her.” Whatever the hell that meant. “I just—” He turned to his truck. “Better go for now.”

“I heard about your roof blowing off,” Blake said behind him. “That’s the shits. Who’ve you got putting on the new one?”

Linc told him. “I can’t say I’m impressed with their work ethic. They probably stopped as soon as I left.” He’d raced after Meg, catching up to her in this driveway, worried by her bumpy way of hitting practically every pot hole up to the house. He’d thought she was going to shake the baby loose.