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She was out. Complete seclusion was calling her name, and she was ready. She had already started to envision what it would take to wrap everything up. Her staff was hand-picked and trained by herself. They could run her whole operation without her being there. She supposed she just needed to decide if she wanted to sell up or keep her companies.
It hadn’t been a bad life. Maybe she still yearned for a loving husband and children, but she believed that after she turned forty, she resolutely shut that door, and it couldn’t be reversed. Not now.
Bored with the auction and desperate to get home, where she could just breathe and start planning her new life, Adrienne paid little attention to the bidding wars happening around her.
She had also stuck to her guns and not once allowed her gaze to vacillate at all toward the three mysterious men. They were going up last for auction.
When her purse buzzed softly against her thigh, she was glad for the distraction.
But the text message left her cold.
“You okay?” Miriam asked beside her, sensing her entire body freeze up. She nodded a little too enthusiastically.
“Just work.”
“It’s not just work. What was that about?”
“Nothing. I’m fine,” Adrienne said, smiling broadly.
“You sure?” Miriam gave her that look. The one she issued when she knew Adrienne was lying.
“Of course.” Another lie.
“Something is wrong, but I know you well enough to know that you’re only going to tell me when you want to or need to. So, I’m going to wait, okay?” Miriam patted her hand, looking at her with genuine concern in her eyes.
“Okay,” Adrienne whispered, biting the side of her cheek to stop herself from crying. That would be a horrendous sight to see. Miriam’s words came to mind.
Unless you’re watering revenge plans, your tears are wasted.
A single drop slipped onto her cheek. She wiped at it, but in an instant, her life flashed past her. Every decision she made, every person she brushed aside. The people she let in were the ones she kept outside, allowing them to look in but keeping up her no-entry sign.
It was a stupid epiphany to be experiencing at a charity auction where socialites got to spend vast amounts of money bidding on men they were either married to or had never seen in their lives.
She quickly righted herself and calmed her mind. But the letters of the text kept swimming before her like eye-floaters buzzing behind her vision before they formed the words that made her want to die. She was far too displaced and off-balanced to regain her signature equilibrium. Miriam’s hand tightened on hers.
“Do you want to leave?”
She shook her head. She was not having a panic attack over that text. That would give the other person in question more power than they deserved.
She was not having a panic attack right there at Cassie’s charity auctions. Not when there were those three men on the stage, looking at her as if they were still undressing her.
She bit her lip, something she hadn’t done since she was a teenager. Her body became a flustered mess. Her nipples ached, and she wanted fresh underwear immediately, but … but …
“Three hundred thousand dollars,” she said, raising her paddle when Emerson Foley came onto the stage.
Miriam’s gasp echoed around her, riddled with shock, but Adrienne ignored her for a little while. She wasn’t even listening to Cassie, who was acting as the auctioneer as well.
“Four hundred thousand dollars,” someone else said behind her.
“Five hundred thousand,” Adrienne said before Cassie could say anything else.
“Six hundred thousand.” Someone else shouted.
“Ten million dollars for the three of them,” Adrienne said, using her paddle to point to Emerson, Darien, and Austin. She wasn’t prepared to enter a bidding war. She wanted to annihilate her enemies and leave the battlefield with her spoils.
…Before she changed her mind.
Chapter Three
