Read The Bachelor's Promise (Bachelor Auction) for Free Online Page B

robbery…
    Then, the distance had become a clean break.
    But now his mother’s will—and it was her will, whether she’d legally recorded it or not—bound him to her.
    His cell phone chirped three times behind him, the discreet chime he’d set Friday night before leaving for the auction. It replaced his usual ringtone—“Bella’s Lullaby” from Twilight —which never failed to gain a derisive snort from Lucas. Fuck it. The song was pretty.
    Turning, he snatched up the phone from his desk and swiped the answer button without bothering to glance down at the screen. No need to. Only one person had the balls to call this early.
    “It’s six thirty in the damn morning.”
    “And you can tell time. Congratulations,” Lucas replied, his tone as dry as the dark alcohol in the glass tumbler on Aiden’s desk.
    Aiden grunted. “It’s too early, and I’m not nearly drunk enough for your charm.” Unfortunately, the oblivion he’d been chasing in the bottle of whiskey had proven as elusive as the “sure thing” Frank Rana used to brag about before hitting up Aiden’s mother for money. The only “sure thing” that could be counted on with Frank was booze and broken promises.
    Damn . He slammed that particular door shut. And laid the blame for it creaking open right at Noelle’s feet.
    “It’s not like you were asleep. Hell, have you even been to bed? You sound like shit,” Lucas said, the blunt assessment a prime example of why Aiden was considered the more affable of the two.
    “Your concern is seriously underwhelming,” Aiden drawled. “As much as I’m enjoying this call, what do you want?”
    “Are you okay?”
    Aiden closed his eyes. And there was the good and bad thing about having a friend who’d known you since childhood—they knew you so damn well you couldn’t bullshit them.
    “No,” Aiden admitted. “Fuck no.”
    A beat of silence passed between them, but they didn’t rush to fill it with a question or an explanation. Because neither was needed. Lucas had been there when Frank Rana and his children had come into Aiden’s life, had witnessed the devastation they’d waged and the wreckage they’d left behind. Lucas even knew about Aiden and Noelle’s budding relationship. His friend understood the effect of Noelle’s reappearance in his life.
    “What does she want?” Lucas asked.
    “For me to pay her graduate-school tuition.” He gave his friend the abridged version of his conversation with Noelle, including her one-fingered salute when she’d left him in the conference room.
    Lucas snorted. “You probably deserved that.”
    Yeah, probably. He’d been harsh, cutting. More so than he usually was with other people, both in business and his personal life. But everything about her got to him like a red flag waving in front of a bull. From the untamed waves of dark hair to the too-old-for-a-twenty-five-year-old eyes, the wide, carnal, unsmiling mouth to the petite, delicate frame that made him feel like a damn bruiser. She got under his skin.
    “What are you going to do?” Lucas posed the question that had been plaguing Aiden since falling into the office chair Friday night.
    “I don’t know.” Aiden sighed, rubbing his palm over the back of his neck. “I just don’t know. Goddamn it ,” he swore, low and hot, surging to his feet. He paced to the window. For once, the mesmerizing view of the glass-smooth waters of Boston Harbor didn’t calm him. “From the moment Frank came into our lives, all he did was take . For seven years, he lived off my mother and, later, me. When she became sick, I paid the bills, paid off the house. Not that I cared; I wanted to do that for her. But you would think, as a man, he would’ve had some scrap of pride making him want to care for the woman he was supposed to love. But he was selfish, a user, to the end. Still, that wasn’t enough. And Tony…” Rage at just the thought of Tony Rana swirled inside his chest like a simmering volcano one