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He hadn’t been planning on that. Not one bit. What was Kelsey up to?
Catherine’s thickly kohled eyelashes fluttered a moment, then she beamed up at him conspiratorially. “Well. A four-figure bid? We don’t see that very often. Must have made an impression, Max.”
Raucous laughter erupted from the gathered women.
Cassandra flicked a dagger-filled glance toward Kelsey, then raised her hand once more. “Eleven hundred.”
Ooohs and ahhs sounded, and Max had to put his hand to his face to cover his laugh, the sounds so cliché, it was as if they’d been piped in from some old school laugh track from 1980s-era television.
Back and forth, the two women bid, everyone else quickly dropping out.
Until Kelsey finally looked at him, a strange light in her eyes, her cheeks just dusted with a blush. “Fifteen hundred.”
The place went absolutely silent then—with the exception of Cassandra, whose disgusted groan was clearly audible.
The look she shot Kelsey was pure venom, then she glanced up at him, the lines across her brow softening, as if taking in the sight of him one last time before throwing in the towel.
Cassandra stood up then, her mouth a tight, thin line as she sidled her way out of the living room, disappearing into the kitchen.
“Winner! Kelsey Burke, for the sum of fifteen hundred dollars! The largest winning bid of the night!”
Cheers erupted along with more than a little lurid catcalling as Kelsey made her way to the base of the stairs. Catherine put one foot on the lowest riser, placing her hand over the mic as she looked up to him.
“She’ll put ‘em on, and you just let her lead ya out. Okay?”
He nodded, even though fresh anger bloomed within him at the fact Kelsey had deceived him about that part of the tradition.
She raised the mic back to her mouth as Kelsey clasped the toy plastic cuffs about his left wrist.
“Need the other one, too,” Kelsey said, her voice almost drowned out by the raucous onlookers below.
“Rope that man!” someone called out, to another burst of crazed laughter and whistling.
Kelsey reached for his right wrist, but he clasped her hand, giving it a hard little squeeze, keeping his voice low.
“One is more than enough, Kels.”
She gasped, her mouth opening, eyes blinking rapidly a moment.
“Max, I need—”
“What you need is to get me out of here. We’ve got some talking to do, I think. Don’t you?”
“Shit…” she said under her breath. “Okay, come on.” She turned to the ladies, beaming at them, holding up Max’s one cuffed hand to more applause.
Mercifully, she led him along the foyer of the living room, and slipped out with him in tow, through the front door, the din of the raucous—and increasingly drunk—throng suddenly muffled as he dragged the door shut behind him.
She had the good sense to let go of the cuffs as soon as they got out to the driveway.
“Kelsey.”
She stopped a couple of paces ahead of him, facing toward the street.
The light was almost gone from the sky, lightning bugs beginning to flicker out over the broad green of the sorority house’s front lawn.
Her shoulders lifted slightly as she sighed. Then she spun on her heel, her arms wrapped about herself.
“Am I in trouble?”
