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Laughter rolls through the audience.
Jefferson resumes speaking into the microphone. “I’ve got an idea… You’ve run the bids over seven thousand and honestly, I’m tempted to see how high you’ll go, but I have a proposition.”
I stare at him, wondering if I should be worried. My brothers quickly express interest.
“Since you’re each willing to donate more than seven thousand dollars to the fire department, and the goal is to raise twenty thousand total, what would you say about making a collective twenty-thousand-dollar donation, and you’re all listed as winners?”
I’m regretting taking my glasses off since I can’t discern what’s happening in the flurry of activity. Based on the blurry forms I can make out, my brothers are moving closer to the stage and huddling for discussion. Otherwise, chatter has erupted.
I don’t recall any rules against pooling resources, but that’s even worse than one of them winning me. Anyone want my input? At least we’ve clarified that all I’m offering is four hours, nothing more.
“Sold,” Jameson booms over the fray.
My heart stills.
I’ve been auctioned to my stepbrothers.
Reality sinks in. I would have preferred that no one bid than to have to commit four hours of my time to my gorgeous-as-sin, jerk stepbrothers, who spent years doing nothing other than picking on me and excluding me—their annoying little stepsister.
Jefferson clarifies the arrangement over the PA. Wonderful. Let’s announce to the world that I’m a loser who got a pity bid from my brothers.
Meanwhile, I’ll fake a smile, ignore the bile rising in my throat, and remember that my selflessness will benefit a worthy cause.
Wishing I could see this with my own eyes, I squint—not a becoming look according to my mother. Even without the ability to focus, they’re now close enough for me to make out their thick bodies, their mannerisms, and their pure sex appeal. I swear these guys have some kind of pheromones that are designed to make me swoon.
And that’s the problem…as annoying as they are, they make parts of me tingle that aren’t appropriate.
Most of the girls from high school would have given a kidney to get bid on by my brothers. My siblings were hunky teenagers, then handsome young men, then the bad boys of Peach Bottom Valley. They’d been the heartbreakers. And yet, these three gorgeous men that I’m not biologically related to are completely off-limits.
If I hadn’t been their little stepsister, would I have stood a chance with them? They’re smart. They could handle a woman with a brain.
They.I scoff at myself.
My nerves rise up as Jefferson directs me to meet them at the winner’s table. I question if I’m going to vomit on the stage. But in the fashion that my mother taught me to always hold my composure, I plaster a smile on my lips, wave at the crowd…then wonder why the hell I waved.
I rush off the stage. The second I step behind the thick black curtain, my smile fades, and I head to the counter where I set my glasses.
The next mission will be to find my brothers and set this straight. What that means exactly, I’m not sure. Something along the lines of clarifying that I’m required to help them, not put up with rudeness.
Roxy should be taking the stage but ignores her name being announced over the PA. It takes me a minute, but I convince her that I’ll be fine, and remind her to do her part to raise money. Then on to my more difficult task.
Flinging the side door open, I set out to find my nemeses, and promptly crash into a wall of muscle—make that three walls of muscle. The scent of Axe body wash floods me with memories. I lift my gaze confirming that the three men I crashed into are the three who just bought me.
Now is not the time to go down the rabbit hole of my eternal attraction to them. Well, eternal might be a stretch, but I’ve looked up to them my whole life. The attraction component didn’t surface until I started noticing boys as more than friends, and my hunky stepbrothers were in their prime, ranging from four to ten years older than me.
A chuckle rumbles through my chest that Bradford, who prefers to be called Ford now, still wears Axe. He’s the oldest, and at thirty years old makes a gazillion bucks. They all do. Why would he still wear that? He could afford something much more elegant and sophisticated.
That is not a helpful thought. I step back, steady myself, and cross my arms. “You can’t bid on me.”
“We already did, and we won,” Bradford says.
“Tell them you take it back.”
“That’s not how auctions work,” Heathcliff explains. Their given names are as clunky as my Magdalena.
“There has to be some kind of family and friends clause. Isn’t it wrong to buy family members?” I’m grasping at straws.
“Well, technically, buying humans is wrong so I think we’ve already crossed that line,” Jameson says.
