Page 50 of Auctioned To Be Mine

She walked to the window and looked out, then turned and looked back down the length of the room. “We’ll cover it. Get a giant curtain and just cover it up.”

“You’re very good at this,” I said.

“I grew up going to big parties and events my whole life.”

I thought about what she’d told me at dinner about her family, about where she came from. I didn’t push it. I needed to investigate who she really was. But I didn’t have time. I had way too much going on.

I pulled out my phone and ordered food from the Chinese place two blocks away. It was going to be a working dinner. I wanted to pick her brain. The woman was a fountain of creativity and I wanted to tap into it. Victoria sat down on one of the velvet couches and pulled a notebook out of her canvas tote and started writing things down.

I sat on the couch across from her and watched her work.

“You’re staring,” she said without looking up.

“I’m thinking.”

She glanced up at me, and the corner of her mouth curved. She looked back down at her notebook. “Callum, a proper runway show with a live auction component takes months to plan. You don’t have that kind of time.”

“We already have most of it ready,” I said. “I went and watched my cousins host runway shows, so I know how all that fits together. We have the clothes, the models, and most of the guest list. What we don’t have is the charitable framework and the auction structure, which is where you come in.”

The food arrived forty minutes later. I carried the bags back to where Victoria had spread her notebook and a handful of printed pages across the coffee table. She looked up when I set the bags down and her nose twitched at the smell.

“Is there a breakroom up here somewhere?” she asked, already reaching for her papers and stacking them carefully. “I’m not eating sweet and sour chicken on this couch. Do you know what that sauce does to fabric?”

“There’s a breakroom in the back,” I said. “Come on.”

I grabbed the bags and led her toward the back, where shoppers would never see. It was a different world from the showroom. It was still raw and functional. Exposed ductwork overhead in some spots.

But the breakroom itself was nice. It had four couches and some tables and chairs. The couches were beautiful pieces but they weren’t right for the showroom floor. Wrong scale, wrong tone, wrong everything. So they ended up in here.

Victoria stopped walking when she saw them and looked at me.

“Rejects,” I said.

She smiled and dropped onto the green one. I set the bags on one of the tables and started unpacking containers. Garlic and ginger and something spicy filled the space. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until that moment.

“What did you get?” she asked, leaning forward to look into the bags.

“Everything,” I said.

She laughed and reached for a container. I watched her pry the lid off and investigate the contents before helping herself to what turned out to be the kung pao chicken. She took a few bites and then pulled out her notebook. I noticed she was always multitasking.

“Okay,” she said between bites. “Tell me about the guest list.”

I opened a container of fried rice and considered the question. She was writing while I talked, her fork hovering between bites.

“You need a few names in that group who will post,” she said. “Not the press. A handful of guests who have personal followings. You want them to share the show with their own opinions. They connect and their followers connect through them. That’s where you get the organic buzz. That’s worth more than any press release.”

“You really do know how to do this,” I said.

She glanced up. “I do.”

The more we talked, the more I wanted her. Yes, I wanted sex, but shit, I wanted the woman.

18

VICTORIA

He was watching me. He’d been watching me for the last ten minutes. And it was very literally making me hot. My skin was tingling. And then there was the throbbing somewhere I didn’t want to think about. I shifted on the couch. I thought maybe it was in my head, but no way. That man was looking at me like I was on the menu.