In Bed with the Bachelor

Part of the Greys of Montana Series
Part of the Montana Millionaires Series
HEAT LEVEL:
Satisfyingly Spicy

Our latest bachelor has enough family in Marietta to qualify as an honorary native, but hails instead from Seattle, WA, which is where he’ll fly you for a glamorous weekend on the shores of the sparkling Puget Sound.  Jesse Grey will treat you the way a local boy turned construction tycoon should: five star accommodations, gourmet dinners, and celebrated Washington wines.  We just can’t promise he’ll smile much.  Or at all.

Sold to the highest bidder!

Jesse Grey, notorious bachelor and one of Seattle’s foremost construction tycoons, has been roped into participating in the Marietta Bachelor Auction thanks to an expertly executed guilt trip laid out by his family.

Michaela Townsend already has a fiancé and certainly doesn’t need another man in her life. So when her family buys her surly, sexy Jesse at the auction and wrangles him into driving her from Montana to Seattle, she’s appalled yet disturbingly attracted.

As far as Jesse is concerned, Michaela is forbidden fruit. Even though he knows her fiancé isn’t all he seems, Jesse would never take what didn’t belong to him. But how long can he resist the one woman he shouldn’t touch?

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In Bed with the Bachelor

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Jesse Grey was the most beautiful man Michaela Townsend had ever seen in real life.

So absurdly, dizzyingly, inarguably gorgeous that it didn’t matter that he was scowling at her—that he’d been scowling pretty much nonstop since he’d slouched out onto the makeshift bachelor auction stage in the Montana saloon, in this pretty little town where Michaela’s mom had grown up and where so many of her aunts and cousins still lived, supposedly to sell himself for a good cause.

She’d realized he was beautiful then, of course, through the din of the relatively polite applause of the assembled, primarily female, crowd who’d gathered for this event. It wasn’t something anyone was likely to miss on that rangy, six-foot-and-then-some frame of his. All that mussed-up, dirty-blonde hair, as if he couldn’t be bothered to tame it, so busy was he being growly and attractive, even in a situation like this charity auction where some of the other gentlemen had opted to spruce themselves up a little bit. The better to kick start the bidding, no doubt.

But not Jesse Grey, who looked as if he’d just swanned in from moving heavy things with those sculpted arms of his, or had, perhaps, spent his afternoon riding motorcycles hither and yon like the epitome of some testosterone-fueled fantasy man. Then there were those delicious, milk chocolate, melt-in-your-mouth eyes to consider—not that eyes could melt in someone’s mouth, Michaela chastised herself—and of course, that alarmingly fit body of his packed into jeans and a dark t-shirt, which she hadn’t actually realized could exist in the real world.

That body, she clarified to herself, not the battered, vintage concert t-shirt he wore like a second, expertly distressed skin. It was all… washboard abs and the suggestion of those crazy diagonals dug over his hips and that masculine hollow between his pectoral muscles—

“I’m so sorry,” Michaela said, blinking to clear her head, which was how she realized she’d been gaping at this man in the first place, there near the back wall of the bar in all the post-auction excitement. “I’m babbling. In my own head. I didn’t actually know that was possible.”

His scowl deepened. Improbably, it only made him sexier.

“I’ve never bought anybody before,” Michaela said brightly. That mouth of his flattened, which seemed to have a direct relationship to that odd tugging sensation, low in her belly. She charged on, not sure what was spurring her along—that strange, new sensation, or the sense of something like panic that went along with it. “Not that I bought you tonight, of course—my family did that! I’ve never attended a bachelor auction in my life! Even for charity! Although, I don’t know, maybe they’re all for charity or they’re just a Magic Mike strip club thing? My cousin Missy made it sound like she travels the world on a grand and rotating circuit of bachelor auctions wherever they might pop up, but maybe she meant she goes to Chippendale’s a lot? Anyway, it was all her idea. She and all my aunts and cousins and they only each gave a little but that’s why it added up so fast and—”

“Hey,” he said then. Really, it was more of an order. “Breathe.”

His voice was flat. Casually certain, as if he was used to instant obedience. And yet still a rough kind of velvet as it slid over her, like a caress—

An engaged woman should not have such thoughts, Michaela reprimanded herself, and then was instantly annoyed she’d had such a dramatic, conservative thought in the first place. Because her fiancé Terrence would more than understand. Terrence and Michaela were rational, reasonable adults who had long ago agreed that monogamy was silly and possessiveness was unattractive, and Michaela hated that she kept finding these little corners of ugly, outdated ideas inside her own head.

It was because this was her own pseudo-bridal shower, she thought then, and so what if her cousin Missy had somehow commandeered the initial shower idea involving baked goods and her aunt’s living room and turned it into a bachelor auction at a saloon? That didn’t excuse the weird, old-fashioned things that kept popping up inside of her at the strangest moments. More and more often, the closer they got to the wedding, if she was honest. She shoved that aside.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, trying to focus on Jesse Grey, supernaturally beautiful human, as if he was a mere mortal. Because he was. Of course he was, despite appearances. That was the point. “I’ve never been given a—uh—contractor? Local-boy-turned-tycoon? Whatever you are?—as a bridal shower gift before. I’m not sure about the appropriate way to handle this situation.”

She was still staring, wasn’t she? It was like the whole crowd around them had disappeared somehow into the chocolaty goodness of his gaze, more compelling than the most wicked, decadent dessert—

“I’m Michaela,” she said, sticking her hand out, in some parody of a normal person. A normal person who really, really wanted dessert. “Michaela Townsend.”

Jesse Grey, the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen outside of a Hollywood movie, shifted slightly, so he was no longer leaning there against the back wall of Grey’s Saloon. He looked down at her proffered hand as if it was spiked and potentially poisonous, and that seemed to take a very long time. But then, at last, he took it.

Mistake! Everything inside Michaela screamed, and she would have been annoyed with herself for that, too, but she was too busy being caught up in what was happening between them.

His hand was warm. Slightly rough, as if he sandpapered his palms or perhaps actually worked with those hands of his, with the long fingers she was tempted to consider elegant despite their obvious strength. That tugging thing inside of her shifted. Became heat.

He scowled as if she’d given him an electric shock, but he didn’t jerk his hand away the way she was tempted to do. The way she should have done, she realized, a long beat later, when she only stood there, gripping him as if he was a brilliant burst of light and some kind of savior, too.

He was the one to let go. Eventually.

“Jesse Grey,” he introduced himself, a considering sort of gleam in his dark eyes that made that heat bloom. Spread. “But you probably got that from the auctioneer.”

It was only to be expected, Michaela thought in a slight daze, that a man who looked the way he did should also sound the way he did. All dark, sinful things and that rough edge besides.

“Like the bar!” she said. Idiotically. “The one we’re standing in right now.”

“This is a saloon, Michaela,” Jesse said in a voice that was not quite a drawl, but wasn’t quite so surly, either.

She opted not to reflect on what her name sounded like, coming out of that mouth. Like a month of desserts, all of them too decadent to be believed.

“This is the Wild West. And if you look behind the bar, you’ll see an old man I vaguely resemble, also named Grey. It’s the family curse.”

Michaela pivoted obediently and blinked in the direction of the figures behind the bar. All good looking men in that rugged, Montana way, and none what she’d consider particularly old—but only one man was standing still, half in shadow, his arms folded over his chest while he glared out at the crowd as if they were doing something to him by drinking his liquor.

“The surliness is the curse?” she asked. “Or the family resemblance? Oh, or maybe the saloon is the curse? Though I guess all those things could be connected.”

She regretted that the minute she said it. It took a moment or two to look back at Jesse, though she could feel the way he looked at her, as if he’d set that whole side of her body on fire. Obviously, she told herself, this was what men like him did. That was why normal people didn’t have much to do with such creatures, with all that fire and brimstone and drama, to say nothing of the intent way he gazed at her, then.

The room fell away again. As if it had never existed. As if the pack of her relatives, stuffed into two gleeful booths on the other side of the saloon, was little more than a memory. As if he was the only thing in the whole of Montana and the great, wide world beyond it.

“So,” he said, his voice even, in a way that made her insides feel shaken loose from their moorings. “You won me. Or more specifically, a date in Seattle. Let me know the dates that work for you and I’ll fly you out. We’ll have fun.”

The way he said the word fun seemed to dance down the length of her spine like the obvious lie it was. Or maybe it was that his definition of fun wasn’t quite the same as hers. His, she was quite certain, included all manner of dark and tangled and needy things she didn’t know anything about. She could see that as easily as she could see that ridiculously beautiful face of his.

“Oh, well.” She almost let out a horrible, inappropriate giggle, but somehow kept herself from it. She’d felt this way once as a little girl, when she’d come face-to-face with a coyote on a hiking trail in the hills of southern Oregon where she’d grown up. Her parents had gone on ahead, around the next curve in the switchbacked trail, and she’d been briefly and terrifyingly alone. Just like back then, it was as if everything inside of her stilled, yet went on high alert. As if this absurd specimen of beautiful male was as dangerous, as predatory, as a wild animal. But that was ridiculous. “I actually live in Seattle.”

That considering gleam in his gaze became more intent. “Do you now.”

Nervous, she thought. A little bit wildly. He makes me nervous. She cleared her throat and told herself that was absolutely the right word to describe the sensations dancing inside of her. She was nervous, nothing more.

“Yes, and in fact, I think that’s why my aunts and cousins pitched in to buy you,” she told him. With perhaps a bit too much nervous in her voice. “They know who you are, of course, because so many of them are from here, and they really thought it would be a great idea to spend some time with you.”

“For five thousand dollars.” His voice had gone flat again.

Cool. Though his silky chocolate eyes were anything but.

“You probably could have just asked, sweetheart. I wouldn’t say I’m a nice man, necessarily, but I don’t bite.” He didn’t smile. She wasn’t sure he could, despite the hard gleam in his dark gaze that felt like acrobatics deep in her gut, like a wicked grin from a different man. “Much.”

There was a loud, buzzing sound. It took Michaela a breathless moment, then another to realize it was a kind of white noise and it was filling up her head. Her body’s defense mechanism against imagining this man and his… bite. She thought maybe she was coming down with something, suddenly. She was hot, then cold. She could hear Terrence’s reproving voice in her head then, warning her for the nine millionth time that if she insisted on reading those filthy romances in what little spare time she ever had, her mind would turn to mush. She always agreed with him that she should stop, that she should read Worthy and Important Works That Would Expand Her Mind and Impress Others, and then she went ahead and downloaded more of the books she actually liked onto her e-reader anyway.

Jesse Grey made her feel… mushy. Like a really good romance novel, in fact. The kind that took her breath away and kept her up half the night, desperate to see how it ended.

But it was the thought of Terrence that finally penetrated the haze she’d been in since her cousin Missy had shoved her toward this man to “collect her prize.”

“It’s not for me,” she assured Jesse. Or maybe herself. “It’s for Terrence.”

He eyed her. “Terrence?”

“My fiancé,” she supplied. Helpfully, she thought.

His gaze then seemed to pry off the top of her head and rummage around inside, and Michaela would have had to have been half-dead or an idiot not to recognize the danger in that, something far more precarious than nerves—but she didn’t do a thing. She didn’t look away, step back, run from him the way she should have. It was as if she couldn’t. As if her body was going to do exactly as it pleased, and what it pleased was to stand right there in front of this beautiful, lethal man and… wait.

“You in the habit of setting up your fiancé on dates with other men?” Jesse asked, and there was a different note in his voice. Lazy, maybe, with an edge. It colored his gaze, too, making his eyes seem shot through with whiskey—

Or maybe Michaela had had too many of those slushy drinks her cousin Missy had insisted upon ordering by the table-load earlier.

“Only when it might help him out,” she said, feeling something much too close to drunk. It was definitely the slushy stuff, she assured herself. Nothing else. Not that focus of his, turned on her like that, as if she was somehow as fascinating as he was. Certainly not. “Terrence has had a run of bad luck, you see. It could happen to anyone these days, with the economy being what it is.”

“Is Terrence an economist?”

Michaela thought the question was on the dry and pointed side, which was only one of the many reasons she needed to ignore all the stuff going on inside of her. She pushed on.

“My aunts seem to think you might be able to point him in a better direction, since you’re the construction guru of Seattle. Their words, not mine.” She laughed nervously. Definitely, that was nerves. “Do you prefer ‘tycoon?’ Is that pejorative? I know successful men sometimes prefer to pretend they’re not all that successful, for various privacy reasons. Terrence was involved in this kind of weird hotel situation but it fell apart about ten months ago and he—”

“Please tell me you’re not talking about Terrence Polk,” Jesse said, his voice back to flat and a different, assessing light in his chocolate liqueur gaze. A light that made her think yes, this lazy, dangerous, coyote of a man could indeed be the successful businessman her relatives seemed to think he was, despite all that natural beauty of his, which had made her doubt it.

“Oh, do you know him?” Michaela asked in a rush of… something. Something she knew had to do with that cool, crisp knowledge in Jesse’s eyes that she very much wanted to avoid examining any more closely. With every last particle of her being. Because maybe the truth was, despite what she’d told Terrence and herself a thousand times, she wasn’t actually that mature after all. “We’re getting married in June.”

End of excerpt

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Mar 20, 2015

ISBN: 9781942240464

In Bed with the Bachelor

is available in the following formats:

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Reviews

In Bed with the Bachelor

It goes without saying that I loved this book. The prose is slick, the imagery is superb and the storyline is a logical progression of fascinating steps. The sexual attraction between Michaela and Jesse builds deliciously yet for these two it is obvious that the attraction is more more than skin deep and besides this story is gripping. This book is an absolute credit to Megan Crane!

- Shelagh Merlin, Netgalley Reviews

I really enjoyed this story! I’m a sucker for sexual tension and this one has it in spades, from the first moment they lay eyes on each other. The ethical dilemma is the wedge between them – Jesse determined to never be the other man, yet Michaela being in an open relationship means that for her it wouldn’t be cheating. So you have more than one kind of tension in the room with them, and it leads to decisions big and small on both their parts. They are both really attractive and engaging characters, all the more so for their determination to do the right thing. As they spend time together they both open up their lives to each other, making for bonds that are not easily broken. I found the story to be difficult to put down, wanting to see how things would end up. It was an entertaining read from start to finish. 4 stars, and a great addition to the Bachelor Auction series!

- Christine Epp, Netgalley Reviews

In Bed with the Bachelor is the fifth novel in the Bachelor Auction series and was written by Megan Crane. Out of all the books, this one felt the most different and maybe it’s because the lead characters pushed each other and not in a playful kind of banter. Jesse doesn’t try to be the brooding, sexy guy that women want to be with. The pain of having his ex-girlfriend and father do what they did is enough to make any guy surly and moody. I thought Michaela would be meek but she proved she could give as much as she took.

I so loved how real this story felt because it didn’t have any insta-love or insta-lust going on. Yes, there was an attraction there but both Michaela and Jesse fought it for as long as they could. The ending isn’t your typical happily-ever-after either, making this an even more worthy book of my non-stop oohing and aahing. A bookaholic like me who’s been reading two or more books a day this past month is always on the look out for that something more, something different. I found it in In Bed with the Bachelor. 5 stars! ♥

- Jen Valencia, Netgalley Reviews

5 Stars! “I love Megan Crane books! And whenever I read one I know its a Megan Crane book. Ms. Crane has a talent for creating really interesting and emotionally conflicted characters. She allows the reader to get into the head of the characters. And I love to know and understand what the characters are thinking.

And oh boy does she know how to write men. I think my favorite exchange between Jessie and Michaela was when he referred to Michaela’s boyfriend as a douche because Michaela usually carries her own luggage. Jesse is rough and surly, but this exchange demonstrates that deep down he is a gentleman.

In Bed with the Bachelor was a great book. I could not put it down and ended up staying up half of the night to finish it.”

- Stephanie Schumacher, Netgalley Reviews

5 Stars! “This story is FULL of angsty goodness, Jesse Gray is dealing with the ultimate betrayal by none other than his own father. Michaela Townsend seemingly has it all but a snowed in interlude at a hotel with Jesse has her questioning everything she thought she believed. The romance and sexual tension between these two was pulse-pounding. I was on the edge of my seat wondering if THIS was the moment through the whole story. Unlike the other Bachelor books this one has very little secondary character interaction, but what there is is wonderful and significantly drives the plot. Another hit from the Bachelor Auction series.”

- Elizabeth Wright, Netgalley Reviews

5 Stars! “Of the… Bachelor series books, I was most impressed with this book. Ms. Crane wrote a beautiful realistic story about two strangers who feel an immediate attraction for one another, yet struggle to come to terms with more than the physical connection they feel for each other. The narrative and dialogue feel real to me and it is a heart-wrenching story that I will happily recommend to my listeners and readers. Very well done.”

- Pam Stack, Authors on the Air, Netgalley Reviews