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er couldn’t believe it could possibly go higher, but she imagined there was more going on than just a charity bachelor auction. Those two women were going after each other like old rivals and Bert was just the latest prize to fight over.
“Five thousand from the lady in the pink! Do I hear fifty-five hundred? Five thousand going once?”
“Seven. Thousand. Dollars,” Estelle shouted.
Like a tennis tournament, everyone turned back to Vera.
She had visibly paled at Estelle’s bold bid. Swallowing hard, her lips pressed into a thin line of irritation. She shook her head, tucking her paddle away. “She can have him!”
Before anyone could change their mind, Allison wrapped up the bidding for Bert at an astounding seven thousand dollars. That certainly heaped an enormous amount of pressure on all the bachelors who came after him.
The rest of the auction wasn’t as exciting. Brian Green, Pepper’s date to the eighties prom last fall, went for eight hundred dollars to one of the elementary-school teachers. Mack, the divorced fire chief, went for twelve hundred to Cheryl Buckman, who ran the ice-cream parlor Scoops. Pepper’s brother, Logan, earned an even thousand from a teller at the bank. Lastly, Simon got a five-hundred-dollar pity bid from Lydia Whittaker and no one outbid her.
Poor Simon, Pepper thought. He’d be spending Valentine’s Day with a harpy, but at least she’d be happy. She finally landed a Chamberlain.
After a while, Pepper started looking forward to the end of the night in the hopes that Vera might jump Estelle in the parking lot and she could catch it on her camera phone. That was way more interesting than any other love connections happening this evening.
“We’ve come to our last bachelor of the night,” Allison announced about an hour and a half later. “That’s right, ladies, it’s that bad boy with the big, shiny Harley, the one and only Grant Chamberlain.”
Grant stepped out from behind the curtain to a roar of applause. The minute the lights hit him, Pepper felt her heart skip a beat in her chest like she’d been hit with paddles of a defibrillator. He was wearing a black, slim-fit suit with a black shirt and tie. Even though he was indoors and it was nighttime, he was wearing his trademark Ray-Ban sunglasses. The glasses always seemed to accent the square line of his jaw and the sharp angle of his nose.
His full lips curled into his charming smile, with the slightest hint of a dimple visible on his cheek. It reminded her of him looking at her, just like that, from between her trembling thighs.
Damn him for being so sexy. His confidence made him that much more attractive. And frustrating. And irritating. Her fingers itched to reach for her paddle, but she resisted. She wasn’t going to pay for his time, even when he smiled at her that way.
“The lucky lady with the winning bid will go with Grant to a romantic dinner at Brio’s in Birmingham and if she likes, he’ll take her on an exhilarating ride down a windy country road on the back of his motorcycle.”
Pepper could almost see all the wild fantasies rushing through the heads of every woman in the room. It was a nice thought—hair blowing in the wind, thighs clamped around Grant’s narrow hips, arms wrapped around his waist. Even she could imagine the hard feel of his abs beneath the thin cotton of his T-shirt and the vibration of the engine against her most sensitive parts. There was a rumble of approval as they readied their paddles and sized up their competition.
Good luck to them, Pepper thought.
“This sexy Chamberlain is a chip off the ol’ block. Let’s cut to the chase and start the bidding at a thousand. I can tell from here that this young stud is worth every penny.”
At her bold assessment, Grant turned to look at the MC with wide-eyed surprise, but he didn’t get long to react. The bidding had begun.
Like a beach ball bouncing around the room, the bids flew fast and furious. Unlike Bert, who had two determined bidders, there were fifteen or so women bidding in smaller increments. It still shot up to quite the amount, though. Before long, they’d topped three thousand.
Suddenly Pepper felt awkward. Even though she and Grant weren’t dating, she didn’t exactly want to sit around and watch other women battle for him. Looking around the room, she spied Adelia Chamberlain coming back to her table with a glass of ice water. Maybe another drink would help. Or perhaps it was the right time for a restroom break. She could beat all the other women who would rush the ladies’ room when the auction ended.
Pepper slipped her purse onto her shoulder and picked up her paddle so she could dump it in the bathroom trash can. “I’m going to get some air,” she whispered to Ivy, then started to get up.
The ambush was sudden and unexpected. When they first came in, Pepper had noticed the cable that the A/V people had taped to the floor, but the room was much darker now. Adelia didn’t see it and caught the toe of her shoe on it. She didn’t fall, thank goodness, but she did stumble, slinging her full glass of ice water into Pepper’s lap.
With a cry of surprise and alarm, Pepper leapt out of her chair, holding her arms high to avoid the water that practically covered her from neck to knees.
“Four thousand!” Allison Price announced from the stage.
The MC’s words were an even larger shock to Pepper than the water. She turned her head toward Grant and the action onstage. He was looking straight at her with a wide smile of confidence across his face. He winked at her, and Pepper felt her stomach sink into her boot. Allison was pointing in Pepper’s direction, trying to coax a higher bid out of the audience.
Yes, please, she screamed in her head. Make it forty-five hundred. Hell, make it four thousand and one penny. Just outbid her. She was answered with deafening silence. The only one in the room making a sound was Allison up onstage. It seemed that suddenly, all the battling women had given up.
Even Grant wasn’t worth that much, and she agreed.
“No!” Pepper shouted, but there was no stopping it.
“Going once . . . going twice . . .”
“I didn’t mean to—”
