Her Perfect Hero. Kara Lennox

items for sentimental reasons.

      The crowd was made up mostly of men in jeans and T-shirts. They didn’t look like collectors or antiques dealers. But, then again, how would she know what such people looked like?

      The one man she’d been most anxious to see wasn’t in the crowd, however. Tony had left abruptly two days earlier, without his darned old ashtray. She felt bad about the way they’d parted, with her all mad. She shouldn’t have let him get to her. If she were one hundred percent confident in her plans, his arguments should have just harmlessly rolled off her back. But the truth was, she was scared to death of what she was attempting.

      Maybe she’d managed a tearoom, but she’d never started her own business from the ground up. She was a mass of insecurities.

      The quality of her sleep had deteriorated still more, because she couldn’t get the feel of Tony’s embrace out of her mind—nor the way he’d looked into her eyes just before releasing her.

      But she had to. Getting involved with a sexy firefighter—or any man, for that matter—wasn’t in her plans.

      An older man in a suit approached her and she pointed to the clipboard sitting on the bar. “Fill out your name, address and phone there and I’ll assign you a number.”

      “I’m not here to buy, Ms. Polk.”

      She looked up sharply, alarmed by his stern tone. “Then what can I help you with?”

      He held up a badge for her to see. “I’m the fire marshal. There’s a strict limit of one hundred people for these premises, in terms of fire safety, and you’ve already exceeded that limit.”

      “A hundred?” Surely that was wrong. The number seemed very low to her. Her building wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t a broom closet, either. “Are you sure?”

      “It’s posted by the door. This old building is a historic landmark, which means we take extra care. Have you had the sprinkler system inspected?”

      “I’ll be doing a complete renovation, and fire safety will be my number one priority,” she assured him. “But for the auction, I can’t just go kicking people out who’ve already registered.”

      “I’m afraid you’ll have to, ma’am. Unless you want me to do it. But then I’d have to charge you a hefty fine.”

      Julie was steaming. The firefighters were behind this, she was sure of it. They’d probably been searching for some way to foil her auction—and they’d found it. Maybe the maximum occupancy was a hundred, but she doubted it had ever been enforced until now.

      She supposed she had no choice but to comply with the fire marshal’s order. The auction was starting in fifteen minutes.

      So she went to the auctioneer’s microphone, turned it on and announced that all those who hadn’t registered, plus those with numbers higher than ninety-seven, would have to leave because of the fire code. Including herself, Belinda and the auctioneer, that made one hundred. Her announcement produced lots of grumbling, but everyone complied. Once the extras had left, there was plenty of room in the bar. She smelled a rat, especially when the fire marshal shot her a victorious smile.

      He parked himself at the door, keeping careful count of all those who came in and those who left.

      As the auction progressed, Julie was increasingly disappointed in the results. She’d been to a few similar events before, and usually there was heated bidding, at least over some of the items. But with her auction, once someone bid, the rest of the crowd stayed maddeningly silent. She’d put modest reserve prices on the more valuable things, and most of these did not achieve the minimum bid and so remained unsold.

      The auctioneer was sweating, talking up individual items, sharing the stories Julie had written down for him. Finally, though, he shrugged his shoulders and shot her a bewildered glance, validating her own feelings that this was an aberration.

      Was it fixed? She took a closer look at the predominantly male, casually dressed crowd, and an awful realization occurred.

      They were firefighters. Cops and firefighters. Every single blasted one of them. And they were cooperating, to ensure she did not succeed.

      Her face grew hot. How could they be so hateful? Such bad sports? Couldn’t they accept that Brady’s was gone now and leave her alone? How could anyone get so riled up over a stupid old bar, even if it was a historic landmark?

      She caught the eye of one man who’d bid on the wooden Indian and gotten it for a hundred dollars when she knew it was worth a lot more. But she’d purposely set her minimum bids low because she wanted this stuff gone. He gave her a potent, malevolent look, confirming her suspicions.

      There wasn’t a thing she could do. It was probably illegal for a group of people to get together and refuse to bid against each other, but who was she going to call? The cops? They’d arrived early and gotten in line, ensuring they would fill in all the low-numbered slots, and the fire marshal had done the rest of the work to keep out legitimate collectors and antiques dealers.

      The auction was over in less than two hours, and she watched dejectedly as items from Brady’s went out the door—the neon lights, the rickety tables and chairs, the dartboards and pool tables, the TVs, even the liquor. A bottle of aged scotch was the one thing that had elicited spirited bidding.

      Clem, the auctioneer, approached Julie with a sheepish look. “I’m really sorry, Ms. Polk. I don’t know what happened. I gave it my best shot, but these folks just weren’t in a bidding mood.”

      She patted his arm. “It’s okay, Clem. I know you did your best. Just bad luck.” And some conniving firefighters.