The Bachelor's Baby(13)

“I won’t. I swear. But what happened? How did she make him stop?” She was listening carefully, eager to put an end to her own situation.

“She didn’t. I did. And got my ass kicked in the process.”

Meg delivered news on a daily basis. She knew what a beating looked like. Terrible things happened to good people all the time. It was her job to hold herself at a distance, but certain things still had the power to leave a mark if she saw a personal connection. Those were times when her emotions refused to be shoved into neutral and this was one of them.

“How old were you?” she asked with a kind of morbid dread, wanting to know but not. Her heart felt clutched in a vise.

“Fourteen. I guess there was a silver lining because a grown man beating the hell out of a teenager gets charged for it, especially when the cause of the dispute is made clear to the officer.”

“I should hope so,” she muttered, outraged on his behalf. “Did he go to jail?”

“Probation. And he served in another town, not that we would have seen him if he’d stayed. That’s how we wound up working on a ranch again.”

“Again?” she repeated curiously.

“My parents were ranchers, but Mom had to sell when Dad died. I was ten and we moved into town. She worked in the doctor’s office during the week, but went out on Saturdays to clean for Charlie. It was one of his hands who was cornering her up there, coming into the doctor’s office if he was in town. She couldn’t afford to lose either job so she didn’t say anything.” Linc glanced pointedly across to her. “It’s not your fault this is happening to you, Meg.”

Little did he know. She sighed and linked her gloved fingers in her lap, not trying to explain that she may not have done anything overt to encourage her rabid fan, but she did have a tab to settle with the Universe.

“Did this Charlie feel bad or something?” she asked.

“Yeah. After the guy was arrested, Charlie showed up at our apartment. The other hands used to call him Chuckles. Facetiously. He never smiled, didn’t say two words if none would do. I was still moving pretty slow, had a couple of busted ribs. He was grizzled and scary looking, but he was genuinely sorry that his employee had frightened Mom and hurt her son. He was also down a body at the ranch after firing the S.O.B. He looked me over, said I’d do once I healed, then asked Mom if she’d like to take over the books on top of keeping house. We moved out there and lived over the cookhouse. She kept the men fed along with everything else.”

“That sounds like it was a good situation.” She was reading his tone as much as his words. “What made you leave?”

“Charlie died. The ranch went to his nephew in Florida and he sold everything off then put the property on the market. That put us out of work and our home so I got Mom settled near her sister-in-law and took a job on the oilrigs. I was twenty, trying to pay for school. The money was green.”

“So seductively green,” she agreed dolefully, having been tempted herself by the bigger paychecks far from home along with everything else the city had offered. “Is your mom still near Lewiston?” He hadn’t mentioned her when she had asked about his family.

“She passed away a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. Typical dumbass kid, I figured I had plenty of time to spend with her after I’d ticked off all my career goals. You’d think I’d have learned after losing Dad that parents aren’t immortal.” His voice was heavy with self-recrimination.

“I was in Chicago when my mom passed. I still hate myself for not being here, even though I couldn’t have known it would happen,” she admitted, still experiencing a pang even this many years later.

“It’s just you and your brother?” He slowed for the turn into her driveway then halted with just the nose of his truck off the road.

“And Ethan. He’s sixteen and been with us half-time since he was a baby, um—Is there a problem?” she asked as he put the truck into park.

“No, I just want to ask you something.”

“Oh, come in for coffee,” she invited breezily, waving in the direction of the house that was too far down the drive to see from here. “Meet Blake and Ethan and we can talk—Oh my God. You want me to come to your place, don’t you?” She would have laughed aloud at herself if she didn’t want to cringe in embarrassment. She covered cheeks that felt sunburned, hot and tender, even through her gloves.

“I was just going to say the invitation to see the place is still open.” She could hear the mirth leavening his smooth, sexy voice. “I might even have a bottle of red wine, if you prefer that over a cup of coffee. But after what we’ve been talking about, I understand if you don’t want to go home with someone you don’t know very well.”