Chapter Sixteen #3
It wasn’t long before Glamma called it—sold— and then Goldie, who apparently had been the winning bidder, jumped to her feet, spun to face the audience, and yelled, “Eat your hearts out, ladies!”
Wyatt laughed. The pitbull leaned against his calf, and a woman two tables over said something to her friend I was absolutely not going to repeat.
“Well,” Wyatt said into the microphone, his voice a low rumble. “Whatever we end up doing, I’m sure it will be entertaining.”
I snickered. I did like that he was being such a good sport about having his grandmother’s friend buy him.
“Actually, Wyatt,” Goldie eyed him for a moment, “my Sam would be terribly jealous if I went out with you, so I’ve decided to pass my date off to someone else.”
“What a turn of events, ladies and gentlemen!” Glamma cooed into the microphone, and I could’ve sworn she was focused directly on our table just before Goldie pointed. “Adele Masterson!”
Adele inhaled her white wine.
She coughed, gasped for breath, blinked, and opened her mouth to protest, but Glamma moved on before a single syllable could come out.
I pounded on her back.
Wyatt walked off stage, not bothering to hide a self-satisfied grin, the mischievous gleam in his eyes, or the confident, smug-like swagger.
Adele sat there completely still, likely in shock and unsure how to deal with this public ambush. I patted her knee, hoping to provide a smidge of comfort and praying Glamma wouldn’t pull that stunt with the last bachelor.
“And now,” Glamma said, “our final bachelor. Personally, one of my favorites. Ruby River’s most talented and eligible veterinarian—Marc Kingsley.”
The sound of his name caused a flutter within my veins that quickly spread throughout my traitorous body.
Marc walked out in a tux that had no business looking like that on a person, and my brain, which had been functioning normally up until that precise moment, briefly lost its signal.
Holy crap, that man’s body … I was not going to finish that thought.
I was going to sit here and behave like a reasonable adult who had not once expressed an opinion, out loud or in my head, on the exact width of those shoulders—or strength of those biceps.
Chaos took four steps onto the stage before promptly slipping out of his leash, like a tiny, confident escape artist, and sprinted backstage.
Marc ran after him.
The audience laughed and waited.
“This,” I said, “is going to be a disaster.”
“No. This is going to be comedy gold.” Cheryl glanced at me sideways. “You should bid on him.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Wouldn’t he then have to do what you wanted for the whole date?”
“That’s not a reason to purchase a human being.”
Adele, who had found her footing again and appeared to be channeling her current feelings into helpful advice for others, leaned in. “It’s for charity. And you still haven’t let go of your past anger. Maybe a date will help.”
“You still have anger,” I pointed out.
She paused. “My past anger is telling me you should make him squirm.”
“That’s your anger talking.”
“Surprisingly transferable.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said.
“It could be romantic,” Cheryl offered as Adele rolled her eyes.
“You only think so because you read morally gray romance,” I grumbled.
She grinned. “You want him.”
Now I was the one choking on my drink. “I’m not bidding on anyone.”
Adele gestured toward the empty stage. “Someone will.”
My stomach tightened painfully. I ignored it. “Good for them.”
“You’re going to sit here while some random woman wins a date with him?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yup.” I let a few seconds pass. “Besides, any extra money I have is currently tied up in the shop.”
Adele tilted her head. “So if you did have the money …”
“That is not what I said.”
I looked back at the stage. Marc had reappeared holding Chaos against his chest with one arm, the goat’s legs hanging at slightly different angles, both of them looking like they had a frank conversation backstage and had reached an uneasy truce.
They were, objectively, stupidly cute together.
I hated that.
“Let’s discuss the qualities of our final bachelor,” Glamma said, “now that he and his precocious goat have rejoined us. He’s intelligent, dependable, and has delivered more puppies and kittens than anyone in this room.”
The crowd laughed.
Marc shook his head slightly, somewhere between embarrassed and resigned, which was a look I was intimately familiar with and had spent a considerable amount of energy trying not to think about.
“And the winning bidder,” Glamma added, with the particular smile of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing, “gets a private dinner. Cooked by our bachelor himself. At his home. Tomorrow.”
A murmur started within the crowd.
Marc tensed and his eyes narrowed as he turned to stare at his grandmother.
Clearly, that point had not been discussed.
“Starting at fifty dollars.”
The bidding was slower than Wyatt’s—steadier, more deliberate. Chaos surveyed the room from the crook of Marc’s elbow with what appeared to be genuine skepticism. He craned his neck to eat Marc’s cuff. Marc adjusted his grip without looking down.
A small unwilling sound moved through me that I didn’t acknowledge.
Then Janine raised her paddle. “Three hundred dollars.”
The satisfaction on her face was immediate and proprietary, like she was already planning the menu.
Marc’s jaw tightened. He was good at controlling his emotions, but I’d known him long enough to catch the microexpressions.
He hated everything about this. Being on display, being bid on, being scrutinized like a line item or a piece of meat.
He adjusted Chaos’s weight against his chest, the tux jacket pulled across his shoulders, and I examined my program as if there was a code I needed to find within its text.
He’s not a bad guy.
The thought arrived uninvited and made itself comfortable in my psyche. I resented the hell out of it.
He’s not a bad guy, that same voice said, and he would have a terrible time with the awful golddigger.
Glamma raised her eyebrows. “Three hundred dollars. Do we have three-fifty?”
Adele elbowed me, but I didn’t move.
Janine’s smug smile settled into something permanent.
Adele elbowed me harder. I was going to have a bruise.
“Three-fifty, going once—”
My hand moved. My brain had filed a formal objection, but my hand had already made its decision and raised the paddle before the memo arrived.
Marc’s head snapped toward me.
Fuck my life.
The stage was close. Our table was close. The distance between his eyes and mine was way too close, and the silence that happened after my bid lasted approximately one thousand years before Glamma’s voice started up again.
I gave my program my full and undivided attention.
“Excellent! Three-fifty. Do we have four hundred?”
Janine raised her paddle.
I turned to Cheryl. Cheryl’s eyes were laser-focused on Janine. “She’s not getting him,” she said, which technically was not a sentence I expected her to say, and yet here we were.
“Adele—” Cheryl nudged her.
I only had five hundred dollars in my bank account right now.
“I have a hundred I could give you,” Adele said immediately.
“Four-fifty!” Glamma announced.
I raised my paddle.
Janine’s went up again.
I raised mine again, and so did Janine.
“I have at least a hundred I can give you too,” Penny offered quietly, pushing a folded bill toward me across the table like we were executing a covert operation.
I was doing the math in my head and getting slightly nauseous. We were up to six-fifty.
At seven hundred, I hesitated. Janine watched me do it. That same predatory look of satisfaction from earlier crossed her face—she had identified exactly where my limit was.
Fuck.
I was out of money. The girls had given me everything they had to spare.
Seven hundred dollars. I was going to lose a charity date to a woman who had called Glamma’s name weird and a shelter cat ugly without remorse.
The universe, apparently, was watching.
“Seven hundred and twenty-five dollars,” Cheryl grabbed my paddle and shoved it into the air.
Janine opened her mouth.
“Going once,” Glamma said, and her voice had a speed to it that suggested she, too, had formed opinions about Janine. “Going twice—sold!”
The room applauded.
“Well that was rigged,” Janine huffed.
Something about her tone snapped the last frayed wire of my patience I'd been carefully maintaining all night. The words lined up on my tongue, every single thing I’d been storing up since she’d opened her mouth about the cat, about Glamma, about the men in this room like they were on a menu …
“Stop being a fucking cunt, Janine. You lost fair and square. You didn’t even really want him for him,” I spat out.
She pursed her lips, stood, and stalked out of the room.
I sat there, paddle in my hand, staring at the stage where Marc Kingsley was watching me. His gaze was steady, intent, direct—there was a new glint in his eyes, a possessiveness that had sweat trickling down my back and my heart rate picking up.
The applause was still going. Chaos was now trying to eat the microphone stand. Glamma was gently extricating it from his mouth while maintaining full composure.
I had just spent seven hundred and twenty-five dollars I did not have on a date with a man who made me feel like maybe my hatred had been misplaced. That my carefully maintained grudge was starting to shift and crack and become something else entirely.
Cheryl leaned over. “You’re going to be fine.”
“I’m going to throw up.”
“You’re going to be fine,” she repeated, with cheerful certainty. But she was not in my body, the body that was currently full of anxiety and regretting every decision I’d made tonight.
My eyes returned to my program.
Marc Kingsley. Veterinarian. Below his name, in neat small print: Chaos. 6-month-old Nigerian Dwarf Goat. Playful, food-motivated escape artist. Looking for his forever home.
I set the program face-down on the table, picked up my drink, and gave myself very clear instructions to not let my gaze settle back on the stage.
I did it anyway.
Marc was still there.
He wasn’t smiling, exactly. But the controlled neutrality he’d been maintaining since he walked out onto the stage changed to something more intense, and I would spend the entire drive home telling myself I’d imagined it.