Free The Bachelor's Promise (Bachelor Auction) by Naima Simone Page B

said it couldn’t be a B&E when he had a key. Your key. The one you’d given him.”
    Horror ate at her, and she lifted a hand to her chest, covering her heart as if the gesture could calm the rapid thump - thump . Her father wouldn’t have thrown her under the bus. Lied to save his own skin. Really? a tiny, ashamed voice sneered. He wouldn’t?
    “He then had no problem reminding me of my mom’s promise to look out for you. Putting your father in jail wouldn’t be taking care of you; it would harm you. And since you had given him the key in the first place, you would probably be arrested as well. He didn’t hesitate to use you as his means of staying out of jail. And in return, he told me what pawnshop I could find my mom’s things at, so I could buy them back. I managed to recover everything except the necklace.”
    “I’m sorry.” Those two words—so inadequate for the pain her father had caused this man. But they were all she had to offer him. “But he lied, Aiden. I didn’t even know my key was missing until I arrived at the house and couldn’t open the door. We were friends. I thought you knew me better than that.”
    Silence fell between them, burdened with the past, the grief, the anger, the hurt. Though he didn’t reply and his ice-hard expression revealed none of his thoughts, she could still feel the weight of the emotions roiling between them like a mass of dark thunderclouds.
    This—her coming here, to his home—was such a bad idea. She was a reminder of the pain and loss in his life…and of the men who’d caused them. First, Dad with Aiden’s mother. And then Tony with Peyton. She’d come to Boston to approach him about keeping his promise to Caroline, but not to interfere in his life. Not to inflict more damage on a wound that was obviously still open and sore.
    “You don’t want me here,” she pointed out, all too aware that for the moment, she had no other options.
    Again, he didn’t reply. At least, not immediately. Instead, he stared at her with that scalpel-sharp gaze. She struggled not to flinch under its razor-like edge.
    “What I want,” he murmured, eliminating the space between them with long, measured strides, “doesn’t matter.”
    Aiden simply left, the soft click of the bedroom door closing behind him her only answer.

Chapter Seven
    The discreet chime above the door of King Gallery announced someone’s arrival. But the melodic, cultured voice that carried just a hint of the South relayed to Noelle exactly who had entered the art gallery’s hallowed and freestanding walls.
    “I’m back, Noelle, sweetie,” purred Loretta King—who was channeling Diana Ross’s Mahogany today in her white fedora and black-and-white pantsuit—as she swept past Noelle in a cloud of Chanel No. 5. The proprietor and owner of the prestigious and renowned King Gallery headed to her office, back from her lunch appointment. Noelle glanced at the digital clock on top of her cherry, roll-top desk. Four forty-five p.m. A long, late lunch. Not unusual, she’d learned in the week since she’d started at the gallery. Smiling, Noelle returned to the invoices she’d been going through.
    The first time Noelle experienced the flamboyant whirlwind that was Lo—you never called her Loretta if you wanted her to answer—she’d been a little shell-shocked and a hell of a lot intimidated. Because Noelle had researched the woman she would be working for, she knew Lo was every bit of sixty years old. But the tall, reed-thin woman, with skin like the smoothest, perfect ebony, and a mishmash of facial features that resulted in a stunning beauty, didn’t appear a day over forty-five.
    Besides her looks, six-foot height, and cultured voice that no longer carried more than a hint of her native South Carolina, Lo was as sharp as a razor and brilliant as Einstein. The founder of King Gallery in the South End’s SoWa—South of Washington—the creative and artistic epicenter of Boston, she was a reigning