There was a man for that.
Refusing to be outdone, Serendipity’s women had decided to chip in by preparing down home country meals served in festive picnic baskets to the men they bid on. All for a good cause and all in good fun.
He’d given up praying the night Aaron had died, but he mumbled under his breath something that might have been a prayer. He hoped this scheme of Martin’s wouldn’t backfire. Cash didn’t know how it could get any worse, but with the downhill slide he was on, it wouldn’t surprise him if it did.
He growled under his breath and climbed the stairs to the makeshift platform. He’d watched the previous bachelors hamming it up for the crowd, curling their biceps and showing off their muscles. One guy had even run up a tree and done backflips across the stage, much to the audience’s amusement.
Cash was an athlete on the back of a horse, but he couldn’t do a backflip to save his life. He wasn’t going to flex his biceps, either, not even if Martin pressed him to do so. The auction was already degrading as it was. If the ladies wanted to bid on him, they would just have to take him as is.
He plucked off his hat, curling the brim in his fist until his knuckles hurt. The muscles in his shoulders and arms clenched, resisting the sudden hush of the crowd.
Instead of the cheering and catcalls the other men had received, people were either staring mutely or whispering to their neighbors behind their hands.
He glanced at Martin, who gestured for him to do something, but there was nothing to do. He’d made an entrance, all right, just not the kind he’d wanted.
Raising his chin, he gazed across the crowd. No one would meet his eyes.
His throat was as raw as sandpaper and he couldn’t keep still. He wiped his free hand across the rough material of his jeans, stilling a tremor that had nothing to do with his snapping nerves at being plunked in front of an unyielding audience, and everything to do with counting the minutes since the last time he’d experienced the sweet burn of alcohol.
He was as dry as the Sahara. He’d thought that after three days, he ought to be over the worst of the physical withdrawal, but if anything, he was feeling worse now than he had those first horrible couple of days.
This—abstention—wasn’t a part of his cleanup act—or at least not one meant for the benefit of the camera. Drying out was his own personal journey, made by his own choice and determination.
At the moment, it was his own personal torment.
“Now, ladies and gents,” Jo announced in a singsong voice, “you’ll be happy to hear that our very own Cash Coble is back in town, fresh from his success on the national rodeo circuit.”
Success?
That was embellishing the truth if Cash had ever heard it, but he appreciated Jo for trying to help him. A man was only successful until he wasn’t.
And Cash wasn’t.
“Now, anyone can see that Cash here is easy on the eyes. Better yet, his agent informs me that he is ready and willing to help you out, no matter how big or small your project. Whatever odd job you’ve got, Cash is your man, ladies.”
This was usually the point where the crowd broke into an uproar of laughter and the single ladies started tossing out bids.
However, the entire crowd was acting peculiar, milling around in small groups and having personal conversations rather than paying attention to the unsteady cowboy rooted to the platform.
No one called out a bid.
Not. One. Woman.
While Serendipity was full of good people, Cash knew how easy it was for gossip to flood such a small town. A perpetual game of Telephone where the story changed bit by bit as it went from person to person.
Cast blame first and find out the truth later.
Only in Cash’s case, the truth was far worse than anything these spectators’ minds could conjure, something he would carry with him to his grave, a burden that was his alone to bear.
“Come on, ladies,” Jo urged. “Let’s see those hundred-dollar bills waving in the air. Remember, it’s for a good cause,” she reminded everyone. “The new senior center ain’t going to build itself without your generosity, so I’m going to ask you again. Who will start the bidding at one hundred dollars?”
Cash waited, tapping his hat against his thigh.
Nothing.
There wasn’t a single bid, even with Jo’s urging. And if Jo couldn’t get a response from this otherwise receptive crowd, there was no hope whatsoever for Cash.
People might not believe it from the way he’d been acting recently, but he had a heart, and it was stinging nearly as bad as his ego.
There was no way he would let anyone in Serendipity know how their collective rejection affected him. He shook his head and scoffed audibly, then straightened his shoulders, jammed his black Stetson on his head and turned to stomp down the platform stairs.
“Three hundred dollars,” came a female voice that carried across the silence with the pure tone of a bell.
He turned to scan the crowd.
Who had bid on him?
“Once, twice, sold,” Jo said, speaking faster than any real auctioneer Cash had ever heard. She banged her gavel on the podium that had been placed on the stage for just that purpose. “Alyssa Joan Emerson, come on up here and rope your prize.”
Of all people, not only an Emerson, but Lizzie—Alyssa. He couldn’t get over how his best friend’s kid sister had bloomed into a beautiful woman. Her wavy strawberry-blond hair was grown out now, more blond than strawberry. He didn’t recall her eyes being so very...brown, like deep, rich dark chocolate.
Little Lizzie Emerson, all grown up.
* * *
Alyssa wasn’t in all that much of a hurry to claim her prize, as Jo had called winning Cash Coble. She wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision at all. This might very well rank up there among some of the most foolish decisions she’d ever made.
But when no one else offered to buy Cash, her soft heart had gotten the best of her and her mouth had worked faster than her head.
Her oldest brother, Eddie, accused her of letting her empathy get the best of her. She led with her heart instead of her head. She felt too deeply—and then acted on those emotions even—often—to her own detriment.
She couldn’t seem to help herself. She chose to believe the best about people, even when they showed themselves to be untrustworthy.
Was she crazy, bringing Cash back into her life? Even without all she’d heard about the kind of man he’d turned out to be, she suspected Cash would be a problem for her.
She had so many other challenges to face.
Despite her best efforts, tears burned at the backs of her eyes and she blinked rapidly. Cash would be a constant walking, talking reminder of the brother she had recently lost. Cash and Aaron had been best friends since childhood. After graduating from high school, they had traveled the pro rodeo circuit together.
Sweet, fun-loving Aaron.
How was it that he’d been the one to get behind the wheel of a car drunk and fatally crash into a tree when Cash was still alive?
It didn’t seem fair.
Alyssa was ashamed that such a horrible thought had passed through her mind, and yet there it was.
She didn’t want Cash here. She wanted her big brother back, with his jokes and smiles and unceasing teasing.
Ironically, there had been a time when she would have given anything to have Cash notice her. As a teenager, Cash had worked in