Page 68 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

“Dawson, honey, are you okay?” she asked. “You look like you’re about to eat a horseshoe.”

“He’s fine,” Damon answered for me, grinning. “He just spotted Sadie’s new friend.”

Mom peered out into the crowd, then let out a soft, considering sound. “I just met him. His name is Peter.”

Right, I had a feeling it was her ex. Mom just confirmed it.

“Peter,” Damon repeated, as though trying it on for size. “Are you sure his name isn’t Clark?”

She pursed her lips. “No, I’m certain. Peter. From New York.”

“Really? ‘Cause I think it might be Clark, as in Clark Kent. You can’t tell me that is not Superman.”

I should have laughed, if only to show my brother he wasn’t getting to me. I couldn’t. Instead, I watched Peter lean in toward Sadie, saying something I couldn’t hear but which made her expression flicker, as if she’d just caught a whiff of mildew in a bouquet of roses. She blinked once, nodded, and then—deliberately—notched her body a half-step away from him. I wondered if anyone else could see the minute choreography, the dance between what she wanted to say and what she couldn’t.

Mom sighed, “She wasn’t thrilled to see him.”

“No,” I agreed. “She wouldn’t be.”

Damon elbowed me. “Well, if you want to go over and save her, do it now. Otherwise, she might get carried back to the big city on the back of a flying superhero.”

The hell she would. Everything inside of me was telling me to fuck this auction, walk over and insert myself in their conversation.

Gen returned, this time with a bullhorn, putting the bachelors into parade order. “Places, everyone! Let’s go, Lockhart boys, upstage right.”

I felt Mom’s hand at my elbow, warm and steady. “Don’t do anything rash,” she warned in a whisper. “Let her fight her own battles. If she needs backup, she knows who to call.”

I nodded, but the words barely made it past the white noise of irritation in my head. I stared into the crowd and saw Sadie standing alone. Peter was nowhere to be found. I craned my neck and saw him walking away from her, he didn’t look too happy.

Before I could decide whether to abandon my post and responsibilities to make sure she was okay, the auction started, with Gen welcoming the crowd and explaining the rules. There was a lot of hollering from the back row, mostly from the old-timers who’d been day-drinking since breakfast, and even more from the table of bridal shower attendees armed with custom T-shirts and dollar bills.

Then Gen brought the house down with my intro. It was over-the-top, embarrassing, but the crowd lapped it up. “Our first bachelor is none other than the infamous Dawson Lockhart, eldest son of the Lockhart dynasty, man of mystery and muscle, and, ladies, rumor has it he’s got a heart to match that jawline. When he’s not wrangling cattle, he’s rescuing animals, drinking black coffee by the gallon, or breaking hearts left, right, and sideways. He claims to prefer horses and dogs to people, but that’s only because none of you have convinced him otherwise!” She winked at the assembled masses, lips painted fire-engine red.

I played my part. I smiled, answered her questions, and tried to keep my head in the game. But all the while, my gaze kept drifting back to Sadie. She was clapping for me, cheering along with the rest.

The bidding started at a hundred bucks, which was less than I’d paid for a pair of boots that fell apart in the rain, but it quickly took off like a stampede. A brunette in an all-denim jumpsuit shouted, “Two hundred!” and a table of retired teachers instantly countered. Within seconds, it was a bidding war. Gen kept up a rat-a-tat commentary, hyping my virtues in ways that made even me blush. “He’s a man of the land, ladies—he can mend a fence, wrestle a bull, and still make it home by six for dinner! Look at those arms! He’s practically a monument to American agriculture!” I could barely keep a straight face.

At four hundred, the local librarian entered the fray, nearly smacking her seatmate with her paddle. At six hundred, a group of middle-aged runners in matching 5K T-shirts pooled their resources and began bidding as a block. By the time it hit eight hundred and fifty, I was starting to worry about someone’s mortgage payment.

But then came the real shock: Sadie entered the game. She had her paddle raised, eyebrows up, a look of “try me” aimed at the rest of the room. I knew she didn’t have that kind of disposable income, especially with all the time she’d taken off to be with Buddy and the improvements she’d been making on the farm, but she was doing it anyway. That was her way, never the center of attention, but always the wildcard. The number leaped to a thousand, then twelve hundred, and there was a pause as the crowd recalibrated.

Sadie put her paddle down, and gave me a slow, deliberate shrug. She was out. I understood completely. I was flattered she’d bid at all.

The next bid nearly took me out at the knees. Five thousand dollars. I turned to see who’d made the offer, and there she was, Annabeth Timmons, queen of the Historical Society and rumored to have single-handedly funded a restoration of the town library because she couldn’t stand the carpet. She was in her eighties and wore a sequined visor indoors, which was either legendary or insane, depending on the day.

Gen slammed her hand on the podium with a flourish. “Sold! To Miss Annabeth Timmons! Five thousand dollars for four hours with Dawson Lockhart—that’s an hourly rate that would make a Wall Street banker blush! Hope you’re worth it, cowboy.”

I bowed, and let the applause wash over me. As I wandered off the stage, I heard Annabeth call out, “I bought him for my granddaughter!” which prompted a new round of laughter and more than a few side-eyes from her table. The granddaughter in question, a pretty redhead with a magazine-perfect smile, was seated beside her and buried her face in her hands.

Damon intercepted me as I hit the stairs, clapping a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Julia only got three grand for the entire week with Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. You’re getting five grand for four hours. I put it down to inflation.”

I ignored my brother and made my way through a minefield of congratulations and lingering perfume. At Annabeth’s table, I stopped to thank her, and she patted my cheek with a hand that smelled of lavender and lemon tart. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” she said in a low voice, leaning in conspiratorially. “I’m just making sure my granddaughter doesn’t end up with one of these tech bros from Portland. You’re solid. Country stock.”

The granddaughter looked up, her cheeks flaming. She was objectively stunning, glossy brown eyes, movie-star dimples, a smile that was brighter than the sun. If I were any other man on earth, I’d probably have been over the moon. But as I shook her hand and made polite small talk about the upcoming “date,” I caught myself glancing back at the exit, searching for Sadie.

She noticed, because she was sharp. “Don’t worry,” she apologized. Her voice was gentle but edged with something like sympathy. “I know this is not romantic, and I promise to make this as painless and quick as possible.”

I got the feeling this wasn’t her first rodeo, that she’d probably been through a dozen of these awkward setups. The last thing I wanted her to think was that I was upset about the lunch that her grandma just paid five thousand dollars for. “Oh, I didn’t…I wasn’t…” I stumbled over my words.