The figure had hit eight thousand, the blonde and her three friends laughing as they tossed it higher and higher like a volley-ball being lobbed over a net. Jake had hated volleyball ever since he’d been an oversize, clumsy fourth grader who always got picked last for the team in gym. And he especially hated being the ball.
Though the bidding women were laughing, their amusement held a hint of malice and their smiles were tight. They might have started this as a game, but now their competitive spirits were rising.
He didn’t know how long it might have gone on, if he’d continued to be nibbled at in one-hundred dollar bites. Suddenly the whole room froze again. Because another voice—from the other side of the ballroom—shouted, silencing the three bidding crows.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Jake visualized it, asked the Fates to be kind, then followed the spotlight.
And for once, he realized, his loopy kid sister was right. He’d asked, and the universe had answered. Because the winning bidder was his beautiful brunette.
2
“HOW SHOULD THE CHECK be made out?”
Her pen perched above her open checkbook, Maddy lifted an expectant brow, having finally reached the front of the checkout line for tonight’s auction. It was her bad luck that her bachelor had been second to last in the event. If he’d been one of the earlier “prizes,” she would have been able to pay the fee and escape early, without running the risk that she’d actually have to face her legally purchased slab of beefcake.
That was the last thing she wanted. She’d done what she’d set out to do—what Tabitha had guilted her into doing. She’d stopped her stepmother from hooking up with another man, at least for tonight. And, at least, with that particular man.
Judging by the look on her stepmother’s face, she’d had absolutely no idea any of her husband’s family members had been in the audience. When she’d seen Maddy from across the crowded room, Deborah Turner had paled, her eyes had widened in shocked guilt, and she’d rushed out, her nasty, troublemaking best friend Bitsy close behind her.
Too bad Maddy hadn’t been outbid at that point. She could have saved herself twenty-five thousand dollars. Because, while she hadn’t dated in a while, she most certainly was not desperate enough to actually take advantage of the “prize” she’d just won. If he’d been a regular bachelor? Perhaps. But knowing he was a gigolo who prostituted himself? Never.
It’s for a good cause, she reminded herself, knowing her family’s charitable foundation, which she managed, always supported the worthy children’s program anyway.
“I am in a bit of a hurry,” she prodded, offering the harriedlooking woman running the payment desk a smile to take any sting from her words. “This really is a wonderful program and I’m so glad to be able to support it,” she added, meaning it. “But I do have another engagement.”
That wasn’t exactly untrue. She did have a standing engagement with her remote control and the latest disc from her Grey’s Anatomy Season 2 DVD set. Better that than sticking around and actually having to converse with a man who accepted money from bored, lonely, rich women.
“You won bachelor number…”
“Nineteen,” Maddy supplied, not likely to forget him anytime soon. Oh, she might have no respect for the man, especially because her stepmother had wanted to cheat with him. But he was so damned gorgeous. Even his photograph in the auction program hadn’t prepared her to see him in the flesh.
She’d been expecting some kind of skinny, pasty, girlie kind of man like the character in American Gigolo. She had not imagined anything like those shoulders, which were about the width of a small bus, or the bulked-up chest straining against the fabric of his tux. Nor the thick dark hair, cut short enough to tempt a woman to do some finger tangling while not drawing one bit of attention away from the slashing brows, the prominent cheekbones, the stubborn chin.
He was all man. Nothing like what she’d expected. Although, she had to admit, her ideas had been based on movie references and her own interactions with weaker-willed men who used women. Don’t even go there, a voice in her head reminded her.
“You can make the check out to Give A Kid A Christmas,” the attractive, dark-haired woman behind the counter said. She offered Maddy a grateful smile. “And thank you so much. Yours was the most generous donation of the night.”
“I’m sure it’ll be put to good use.”
“Absolutely,” the woman said. She gestured toward the nearest door. “By the way, we’ve set up a private reception down the hall, for our winning bidders and our bachelors to meet. You know, to break the ice before any private, um…meetings.”
Assignations was more like it.
Addressing the check, Maddy merely smiled politely, not replying. Then, giving the woman her payment and taking a tax receipt in return, she deliberately swung around and walked in the opposite direction.
She’d done her job. Now she needed to get out of here. She’d come in late—having been tipped off by Tabitha that her target would be auctioned off second to last. She hadn’t seen anyone she knew, other than her stepmother and the woman’s friends. Hopefully, she could escape without any further public exposure of her foray into the flesh trade.
She almost made it. She was mere feet from the closest ballroom exit when she was stopped by a movable wall disguised as a tuxedo shirt.
Her heart leaped in her chest, thudding in excitement, even as she mentally cursed the bad luck. Because Number Nineteen had tracked her down.
“Hello,” the wall murmured. “I’m Jake Wallace.”
Maddy growled a little, annoyed at herself for feeling an immediate tingle at the warmth emanating off the solid man now blocking her path. And for leaning forward the tiniest bit and breathing a bit deeper to catch a better whiff of his warm, spicy scent.
“I know we’re supposed to be meeting in the reception room,” he added, “but I’d rather head to the hotel bar, too, if that’s where you were going. I don’t think I could stand another hour with that crowd.”
Funny that he already knew, somehow, that Maddy was not of “that crowd.” Oh, she fit in financially, and she had the family connections and pedigree to mix with the best of Chicago society. But she didn’t like them, didn’t feel comfortable with them, preferring to listen to Tabitha’s cutting first-person reports rather than experience the flighty world of the rich-and-shameless personally. Her social interactions usually centered around business—fund-raisers, executive dinners. Certainly not hot-body auctions.
“That is where you were going, right? You weren’t trying to ditch me.” It wasn’t a question and his tone held a hint of laughter. She didn’t think his amusement was caused by conceit, but rather the incongruity of a woman paying twenty-five thousand dollars to spend an evening with a man and then walking out the door without ever meeting him.
It was kind of crazy.
“I, uh…the ladies’ room,” she mumbled, hating herself for letting the inane excuse cross her lips the very moment she uttered it. Ladies’ room indeed. Deborah, her socially impeccable—if potentially adulterous—stepmother, would be flaring her nostrils in mortification. If she wasn’t cowering somewhere, wondering if Maddy was going to rat her out for trying to buy her way into this man’s arms.
He cleared his throat. “It’s that way.”
His arm moved, the hand gesturing back the way Maddy had just come. That hand was darkly tanned, strong, with neat blunt fingernails and not a hint of kept-man elegance. They looked