Shelter Me Home Read Online Free Page B

that’s settled,” Aanon said, snatching a pair of the newly poured shots and passing them down to the girls.
    Ben frowned. “Well, why not? She’s looking for a place. You’re looking for a renter. Bing bang boom. Thank you, Ben.”
    With a very put upon sigh, Aanon rocked his head back until the taut muscles in his neck stretched. “Look,” he said, leveling her with a steady glare. “I have a place fixed up for a ranch hand. Someone who will help me work my place and prepare for the winters here. Someone to watch and feed my animals when I’m away on business during the week. It’s set up as a cattleman’s cabin. It’s not a good place for a pregnant lady with no shot in hell at offering me any help at all.”
    Mortification burned up her neck like a brush fire and landed in her cheeks. She hadn’t been the one to ask for an explanation. His buddy Ben had done that, and Aanon had just ousted her secret to the town in the brand new place she worked. Her stomach clenched at the betrayal. Why would he do that?
    One look at her face and his dropped, as if he’d just figured out what he’d done.
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Ben. “Hot New Bartender, you’re with child?”
    Yeck. It sounded weird when he worded it like that.
    “How do you know she’s knocked up?” the blond-haired girl asked Aanon. “What’s going on?”
    Aanon threw down a ten and walked out of the bar.
    “What did you do to him?” the blond-haired girl asked, as if Farrah had forced him to impregnate her or something.
    “I didn’t do anything to him. I hitched a ride from him this afternoon. The baby isn’t his.” The need to clarify burned her up with white-hot anger. Why did it feel like every word that was coming from her mouth was a tiny bomb?
    With bellies full of libations and mouths full of gossip, the group trickled out the front door after that. Ben was sweet and tipped well, and he handed her his number before he left. “If you can’t find a place to stay tonight, call me,” he said.
    She thanked him and waved as he skirted the door after his friends. Crumpling the paper and shoving it into the side pocket of her suitcase, she threw herself into work. If there weren’t people to serve, she restocked shelves and got to know the aisles of fishing tackle in the back. She figured out the inventory list, and when Briney came back to take over, she asked him to show her how to close the register. When all was said and done, she made twenty three dollars in two hours of work. Not too shabby for a mid-afternoon snow shift. Before donning her winter clothes again, she made herself a sandwich and chips in the tiny kitchen off the back and paid Briney for them on the way out.
    “See you Thursday if the weather clears up,” he called with a wave.
    Stepping out onto the porch with a sense of accomplishment, she inhaled the clean Alaskan breeze. There really was nothing like mountain air. She’d forgotten its smell and allure over the years immersed in city smog.
    Dropping her gaze to the blanketing snow, she sighed. The job part was taken care of, but now she needed a place to stay the night.

Chapter Three
    Her fault , Aanon thought irritably as he rounded another back road in his Chevy. If she hadn’t shown up at that damned gas station all cute and needy, and then pregnant and even more needy, he’d be sitting in his house next to the wood burning stove reading the sports page of last week’s newspaper. Instead, he was driving around the woods in whiteout conditions because his stupid conscience would never let him sleep.
    She played on the weakest parts of him.
    Like an idiot, he’d called everywhere to find a room to rent for the night, and none of them had space. And not one of them had admitted Farrah into their care. So now he was headed back into town to make sure she wasn’t frozen on the side of the road somewhere. He was doing it for the baby. That’s all. Not for the woman or her smart mouth or sexy lips. Just