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‘A couple of hundred dollars max. Maybe a thousand if they really, really wanted the date.’
‘I can match that.’
Penny put out a hand, and I looked down at it, perplexed.
‘Shake it.’
So I did.
Two of the others went before me.
A young guy with sandy hair and the most intense eyes I’d ever seen. His date went for nine-fifty to a woman who looked old enough to be his mother. A gaggle of disappointed younger women had pouted something rotten at losing out to her. But even pooling their money, they didn’t have enough to outbid her. Penny herself was bidding furiously to win a date with the second man, Danny.
A hand drifted over my arm, right where my rolled sleeve lay.
‘Good luck,’ Eva said into my ear, standing on her toes to reach.
‘You too,’ I said. ‘Hope the amount of people here is helping the bar.’
‘I’m thrilled. I’ve never seen it so full, not in all the years Pop ran it.’
‘He’d be so proud of you,’ I said, wanting to scoop her up into my arms and dash her back to Olympus with me. She could live in luxury. Zeus would never let a human enter Olympus, however. The price of trying was death.
‘Next up, we have an exotic specimen to Coal’s Lake. Welcome Amor to the stage.’
Tearing myself away from Eva, I alighted the stage to a series of hollers and whoops from the crowd. The music dipped as Penny started calling for bids. A rush of them came at first as the price rose by ten or twenty dollars at a time until it stalled near four hundred dollars. The highest bidder was a sweet-looking woman with a shy smile.
‘Any further bids,’ Penny said.
I sought Eva in the crowd, just in time to see her raise her hand and shout, ‘Four-fifty.’
Knowing she couldn’t afford it made her bid hit me right in the gut.
‘Five-hundred,’ shouted the other.
‘Five... fifty,’ Eva said before biting her lip. My beautiful one.
‘Six,’ came the reply.
Eva shook her head sadly, indicating her limit. She mouthed, ‘Sorry.’
Giving her a smile that I hoped gave reassurance, I looked at Penny. ‘Remember the anonymous bidder?’
‘Oh shit, yeah,’ she replied under her breath.
‘I have an anonymous bidder who contacted me with an upper limit bid on Amor. We’ll go up in fifty-dollar increments until either the upper limit is reached, or Miss Patty-Ann declines to bid further.’
Sweat gathered at the base of my spine as the bids rose.
We hit one thousand when Patty-Ann threw up her hands in defeat. Relief washed through me.
‘And the date with Amor goes to our anonymous bidder!’ Penny sang out to applause and drunken hoots.
When I craned my neck to find Eva in the crowd, I couldn’t see her.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
EVA
