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She pressed play on the video again.
“Oh, just asking,” Emerson said. “Tell me something, what's the view out of your bedroom window again, what can you see?”
Chris raised an eyebrow as he sipped on the beer again. “Huh? Dude, you've been in my room. You know what the view from my window is. Why the hell are you asking me that?”
“Just humor me, man. I'm, uh, testing your short-term memory.”
“Uh, okay bro,” Chris replied. “If I look out my window, the first thing I always see is the big water tower on the hill.”
“Yeah, that's right. I can't see it from my side of the apartment,” Emerson stated.
Leslie paused the video again. “Do you know what this means?” she asked. “Has it hit you yet?”
“Umm…I t ink it might have,” I replied, realization beginning to dawn on me.
“Brooke, what's the first thing you notice when you look out of your bedroom window?”
“The… shit. The big water tower on the hill.”
It hit me like a ton of bricks. “Oh my God,” I exclaimed. “It was Chris. It was Chris all along.”
“Damn right, girl! All the porno practices you heard through your wall—that wasn't Emerson! His room was on the other side of the apartment!”
“Oh no,” I gasped, as I felt my blood starting to run cold. “Oh my God, Les, I made a terrible mistake.”
“Yeah, you did—and so did Emerson when he assumed you were the one who called the cops. But, he's really, really sorry about doing that. I’ve talked to him, ya know. There’s one thing I can say for sure. All he wants is you, Brooke.”
“But what if… What if it's too late? I sent him a really nasty message telling him to never speak to me again. And, I did that all because I made a horrible assumption about him.”
“Well, I guess that means you're both even,” she chimed. “And it is time to put the mistakes of the past behind you and do what's right! Fix this mess!”
“But how am I supposed to do that?”
“I hope you've got your credit card on you,” she said with a cryptic smile.
Stacy came backstage just as I was about to ask what the hell she meant by that. “Brooke, we're about to start again, come on!”
“I'll chat to you after the auction is done,” I said to Leslie. “Thanks so much for showing me this. We can sort this out after the auction.”
“Oh, I think maybe you'll sort it all out before the auction is over,” Leslie declared with a wink.
I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but the cue music had already begun. I hurried back to the stage and took my place.
“Ready to call out the next guy?” asked Stacy.
“As ready as I’m gonna be,” I replied.
We continued with the auction until we reached the final candidate. I glanced back at the silhouette standing in the shadows at the edge of the stage. Something about the figure commanded my attention, although I couldn't quite place what it was. I didn’t have time to try to decide what it was. Stacy called out his name and I flipped t
he page to read his bio to the audience.
“And the final bachelor of the evening is Ricardo Daniels. Come on out, Ricardo!”
The man walked out into the spotlight and my heart almost stopped. It seemed Ricardo Daniels was the alter ego of Emerson Reed.
Taking in the sight of Emerson looking absolutely gorgeous in a dark gray suit and coordinating tie, was almost more than I could recover from. My stare stalled on his slicked back hair and square jaw, rough with stubble. He held a picnic basket and big bouquet of flowers. That wasn’t all that unusual for the evening, but the ribbon around them with my name printed across it was.
I put down the program and began to speak from my heart instead. “Ricardo, otherwise known as Emerson, is twenty years old. This bachelor is extremely intelligent, generous, sweet, and hard-working. He has a heart of gold. He loves riding motorcycles and has a passion for science, physics, and chemistry. To top all of that off, he’s a big Game of Thrones fan. And, as perfect as he looks, sometimes he makes mistakes—like all of us do because we're only human. In my opinion, ladies, our last bachelor is the catch of the evening. We're going to start the bidding at $100.”
