Then Sandra was done, Bobby was back on stage, and the auction began. Bobby introduced everyone, but he’d brought in a real auctioneer to do the actual selling.
Jenny didn’t know any of the men who went first. After the gavel fell the first few times, the only thing she was certain about was that she didn’t have enough money. A guy with a slicked-back ponytail, a tie and a leather jacket oh-so-casually thrown over his shoulder went for nine hundred dollars. Jack Roy went for more than one thousand. Heavens, Don Two Eagles went for a healthy six hundred.
Then Bobby said, “Ladies, a true diamond in the rough—Bruce Bolton!” and the crowd went wild. Jenny had only met the senior Bolton once, at the wedding where he’d mostly stayed by the bar with a group of equally crusty-looking bikers. Josey didn’t like him much and Jenny had gotten the feeling that Ben didn’t exactly get along with his father.
Bruce Bolton trotted out on stage, looking for all the world like Hulk Hogan in a tux, only with less hair. The man was eating up the catcalls from the audience. He posed and preened while Bobby and the auctioneer cracked jokes about Bruce’s “staying power.”
Luckily, the bidding started. Jenny was shocked when Cass bid the first fifty dollars, and more shocked as she kept right on bidding, blowing all other hopefuls out of the water. She finally got her man for a cool $1,850.
“You bought Bruce?” Jenny couldn’t help but whisper even as Cass smacked the tabletop in victory.
“That man’s been bossing me around for years.” Cass’s smile was nothing short of wicked. “’Bout time that particular shoe was on the other foot.”
Jenny decided it was best not to ask what, exactly, Cass meant and was thankful when she left to claim her prize.
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of good-looking men, insane bids and suggestive innuendo. Some of the guys from the rez—guys Jenny knew—brought in a pretty penny.
She tried to be happy at the huge dollar amounts being raised—all of this money was going to the school, to the TAPS program. They had to be nearing thirty-five thousand, at least—and they hadn’t even gotten to the bike. This was wonderful. This was great.
She was on the verge of tears.
Finally, the end was near. She knew this not because she was keeping count of the number of hot men who’d paraded across the stage, but because Bobby auctioned himself off. He winked, blew kisses and waggled his eyebrows like a true lothario as the numbers went up and up.
Then the gavel fell. Jenny craned her neck around and spotted the busty redhead who was celebrating her victory in a sloshed way as the gavel fell. Nearly five thousand dollars.
Holy cow. Before the hugeness of that number could truly register, though, Bobby took the microphone. “And now, ladies, the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the man of the hour, ‘Wild’ Billy Bolton!”
Except the man who walked out on stage wasn’t Billy—not the Billy she knew, anyway. Oh, he was tall and broad, and his hair was the same golden brown, but that’s where the resemblance ended. This man had neatly cropped hair that sported a hint of wave. This man wore no beard, which made his strong jaw that much stronger. True, he was in a close-cut gray suit and not a tux—he didn’t have on a tie, just a white button-up shirt with the top two buttons undone. He walked out on stage, paused, pivoted—and looked directly at her. The glare—for that’s what it was—was white-hot, but she wasn’t scared of it, nor of him.
Jenny wasn’t sure if she was breathing or not. Billy looked ferocious, but she could see underneath the fury that he was unsure about this whole thing. That meanness was the cover he hid behind. Everyone else probably saw a brutal man, but she saw someone else. The man she wanted.
Bobby, darn his hide, opened the bidding up at five hundred dollars. Jenny knew she didn’t have a prayer, but she held up her paddle anyway. So did half the room.
The bidding quickly left her in the dust. A thousand, two thousand—the number grew faster than Seth’s shoe size. The auctioneer had abandoned the fifty-dollar increments he’d used for everyone else and was going up by two hundred dollars a shot. Even so, the bidding hit five thousand within five minutes, and at least four women were still in the running.
How ridiculous was she? Ridiculous enough to think she and her meager little $743 had a shot in heck of winning this auction. She almost wished Cass had come back to the table so that her saucy attitude would distract Jenny from her misery.
Billy seemed almost as miserable. He’d been standing up there for a long time, looking uncomfortable. For his sake, Jenny wanted the bidding to end so he could get off the stage.
Six thousand dollars came and went. The only consolation Jenny had was that another woman dropped out. Although she knew it was pouring salt into the wound, Jenny tried to see who the remaining three bidders were.
One was a raven-haired stunner in one of those slinky black dresses; the other was petite and curvy, with big blond hair. Jenny couldn’t spot the third woman, but the auctioneer kept mentioning three numbers as the bids went up and up and up.
She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her hopes sank even further. She knew that if she’d bought Billy, she would have finally, finally broken her decades-long drought. She wouldn’t have had to wait for another date—wait for the cameras to stop and the stars to align and the world to be perfect, because it already would have been. She would have gotten into his bed and stayed until she’d screamed in pleasure. She would have gone to sleep in his arms and woken up there, without a teenager standing over them. It would have been selfish and naughty and very, very good.
She eyed the two women she could see. Instead, Billy might be doing those things with one of them. She tried to hold on to the idea that he wouldn’t sleep around at the drop of a hat, not when he was already involved with her, but she couldn’t compete with those women and, really, how involved were they? Was Billy strong enough to resist those feminine charms? Seven thousand dollars came. The raven-haired woman dropped out, sitting down with a look of disgust. But the petite woman was still bidding against the last, unseen bidder.
The whole room was holding its breath as the bidding slowed near the eight-thousand dollar mark. The petite woman was clearly at her breaking point, taking longer and longer to think about each increase. The unseen bidder didn’t waver, though. She hit each call without skipping a beat. Jenny scanned the room again, but couldn’t see who was pulling the trigger.
Then it was over. The petite bidder couldn’t break nine grand. The gavel swung down, and someone else bought Billy. Maybe it was better she didn’t know what the winner looked like. That way, it wouldn’t haunt her dreams.
One last thing remained, and that was the bike. Ben wheeled it out. Jenny tried to pay attention, because Bobby brought all the kids up on stage, with Seth front and center. Billy was still out there, looking a little more relieved that the bidding was over. He put his arm around Seth’s shoulders as people took photos of them and the bike.
It was hard to look at it. It should have been perfect. Heck, it was perfect. Seth looked up to Billy; Billy had taken her son—a boy he didn’t have to do a darned thing for—under his wing. Together they’d built a bike, a real, tangible thing that Seth was proud of. She still wouldn’t go so far as to say that Billy was father-material—even cleaned up, he projected an air of danger that was unmistakable—but he’d exceeded her every expectation, and then some.
Yes, it was perfect. Except that someone else had her man.
After the photos, the kids were ushered off stage and the bidding began. Billy stood behind the bike, his hands on the handlebars. He tried to smile—clearly Bobby had told him to—but it looked more like a snarl than anything else. Jenny knew she should pay attention—Seth would want to know how much his bike went for. But all she could think was that she needed to leave before she saw who held Billy’s winning bid. And after that? She had a phone now. Maybe she could wait a few days and then call Billy. Hopefully, by then, his evening with the winner would
be over and she could try to pretend that it had never happened.
God, what a depressing thought.
The bike went for nearly thirty thousand dollars, which was a darned impressive price. The whole evening had probably raised close to seventy-five thousand dollars for the school. She could run TAPS and feed the kids an evening meal and even pay for prenatal care for years on that kind of money—everything she’d ever wanted and probably some things she hadn’t even thought of yet. She should be thrilled. She would be thrilled, by God.
Starting tomorrow.
Tonight, she needed to suffer her defeat in peace and quiet. She stood to go get the kids when someone grabbed her arm. “Come with me,” Cass said in the kind of voice that left little room for disagreement.
“The kids…”
“You’re needed at the registration desk.”
Cass didn’t explain. Maybe there was a problem with one of the girls helping Josey?
Cass cut through the crowd, pulling Jenny along so fast that she struggled to keep her shoes on. Some of the crowd was departing, but many of the women were hanging around in tight clusters, refreshed drinks in their hands. For them, the night wasn’t over.
Cass led her past the line of people waiting to pay, right up to the front. Josey was standing behind Livvy as the girl ran credit cards. “Oh, there you are.” Josey grabbed a sheet with a receipt stapled to it. “Here.” She shoved the paper into Jenny’s hands. “And take this.”
“What?” Jenny looked down. It was a receipt, all right—for $8,750. And a ponytail holder. She looked at Josey. “Wait, what?”
“Don’t worry about Seth. Mom and I have the kids covered. Have fun!”
“What?” Jenny stared at the paper in her hand again. $8,750—that was how much Billy had sold for. What was going on?
Then a hush came over the crowd. Still swamped with confusion, Jenny looked up and saw Billy—the new and improved Billy—coming toward her. His head was lowered, making him look like a bull charging. Straight at her.
All eyes were on Billy and, by extension, on her.
“Ready?” he asked in an extra-gruff voice.
“What?” Even to her own ears, the refrain was getting tired, but she had no idea what was going on.
“You won me, didn’t you? It’s time for our date.” The corner of his mouth curved up in a victorious smile—so much easier to see without the beard covering it up.
So much hotter, too.
The crowd around them murmured in curiosity. No doubt about it, she and Billy were the center of attention. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw the petite blond glare at her.
But she didn’t care. All she could do was look up into Billy’s eyes in wonder. “Now?”
“It’s after the auction, isn’t it?” His grin got a little more wicked as he took a step closer. She felt the power ripple off of him and surround her. Despite the jealous looks, she felt safer near him now than she ever had.
He’d meant that literally? She looked at Josey, who nodded and waved her away. “I’ve got the kids,” she said again.
Stunned, Jenny looked back down at the receipt in her hand. “Paid in full” was stamped on the top, but she sure as heck hadn’t fronted the money.
Realization slapped her across the face. “You?”
There could be no mistaking the look of intent on his face, not with that wolfish grin and certainly not with that covetous gleam in his eyes. “Me.”
And he guided her toward the door.
Fourteen
Billy led her to his bike in the parking lot, his hand firmly around her waist. Wait—this wasn’t his normal bike. The bike that Jenny had seen at the school only had one seat.
This bike? Same black-and-chrome colors, but the handlebars were so low that they looked almost normal. But that wasn’t the biggest change. No, the biggest difference between the other bike and this one was the extra seat on the back, complete with a backrest.
“You planned this all along, didn’t you?” she heard herself ask.
“I told you we’d have a date after the auction.” He spun her around in a tight embrace. “This is after the auction.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was a surprise.” Was she imagining things, or did he blush at that? “And we didn’t want Bobby to find out.”
That she could see. She didn’t want Bobby involved with this at all. “Well, I am surprised.” The understatement of the year.
He reached up and brushed her hair away from her mostly bare shoulders. His fingers trailed down her arms, setting off a cascade of goose bumps. “You’ll get cold,” he said as he stepped back and slipped off his jacket.
Jenny felt her breath catch in her throat. She’d seen his chest bare once, and she’d seen him in T-shirts, with and without his leather riding vest, plenty of times. But the wide expanse of his chest barely contained by a crisp button-up shirt took all of her confusion and uncertainty and agony over the auction and blew it away like a bunch of leaves in a fall breeze. The only thing that was left was sheer, knee-shaking desire.
So she hadn’t realized he was such a literalist. He’d gone to this much trouble to rig the auction for her—and plunked down almost nine grand to get a night with her? No schools and—she looked around—not a single camera in sight. She had no idea how that was working—it wasn’t a far stretch to say there were a hundred cameras here. But she wasn’t in front of one.
A small crowd of jealous-looking women were milling around the front door of the building, looking daggers at her. Seth was out there, too, along with Livvy and a few of the other kids. But they were all standing around Sandra and Josey, waving. Even Seth smiled.
“He’ll be okay,” Billy said, doing that thing where he read her mind. “He’s going home with Ben and Josey. Video games all night.”
“You thought of everything, then?”
He draped his jacket around her shoulders and she slipped her arms in. She swam in the huge thing, but it was warm and smelled like Billy—faintly of leather and the wind. Then he swept her hair back into a low tail and waited until she’d secured it with the band Josey had given her.
Billy handed her a small helmet. It fit, another sign of how much he’d planned ahead. She hadn’t exactly ridden a lot of motorcycles, but now was not the time to chicken out. Taking a deep breath, she looked at the bike, looked at her dress, and did the only thing she could—hiked her dress almost up to her hips and slid one leg over the seat.
A noise that was far too sexy to be a purr but not aggressive enough to be a straight-up growl came from deep in Billy’s chest. Without another word, he slid onto the bike in front of her.
“Hold on,” he commanded.
She was only too happy to comply. She slid her arms around his chest, loving the way the warmth of his body surrounded her. Then he fired up the bike and rolled slowly out of the parking lot.
She didn’t know where they were going. Well, she knew they were probably headed for his house, the one with the fabled pool table, but she had no idea how long she would be on the back of this bike. Billy gunned it and they flew, the wind biting at her bare legs. She pressed herself farther into Billy’s body, trying to steal as much of his body heat as she could.
Billy brought the bike to a stop at a red light. He reached back and slid a hand up her bare leg, all the way up under her dress. The feel of his hand on her bare skin—skin already chilled by the night air—had her doing a lot more than just breaking out in goose bumps. She out and out shivered against him.
Then they were off again, going faster this time. The warmth of Billy’s back warred with the cold of the wind, and all of it was topped by the building excitement. A whole night with him. A night where she could be selfish and wouldn’t have to second-guess herself in the morning.
Oh, she needed this.
She couldn’t tell if Billy lived a great distance from the auction site or if time was playing tricks on her. The bike hummed between h
er legs, driving stark desire up into her body with a relentless pace. They took a couple of corners a little too fast, so she had to grip Billy extra hard to keep her balance.
Eleven years. The number kept repeating itself. Eleven whole years since she’d done something this wild, this crazy. Eleven years since she’d done something for her and her alone. But she wasn’t the same girl she’d been back then. She’d never had sex as an adult, with a man as confident, as capable, as Billy. It didn’t matter how wild his reputation was—she was making a conscious choice to be with him.
She had no idea what she was doing. Really, her life since Billy had rolled into it had been uncharted territory. None of it—not the slow flirtation, not the tension and most certainly not the dance—was something she’d been sure about.
She turned her face into his back. Even with the wind pulling at them, she could still smell the leather that was him. Without letting go, she spread her fingers against his chest, copping a feel of his massive muscles. She couldn’t wait to strip the shirt off of him and touch what she’d only seen. She could hold on for a few more minutes, couldn’t she?
Those minutes felt long, but finally they slowed. Jenny could see house lights off at great distances, but none were close to the long drive where Billy was pulling up. Before them was a wall of garage doors—three of them—but that’s all she could see of the house. The center door opened and they rolled in before the bike came to a stop. Behind them, the garage door shut with a clang.
When Billy kicked out the stand and the bike lurched to the left, Jenny felt herself clawing at his chest to keep her balance.
“I got you,” he said, and she heard the amusement in his voice. “Can you stand?”
She nodded, which was silly. He couldn’t see her head bobbing behind him. She got the helmet off and handed it to him. He hung it off the handlebar and waited. Going slow, she swung her leg over. Her dress was at the breaking point, but as she stood, Billy’s hand slid up the inside of her leg to above her knee.
Bringing Home the Bachelor Page 12