by Law, Kim
“I need to go.”
He motioned to the camera. “Get back up there. This is the best part of the night.”
She shook her head. Not even the threat of losing her job could get her to stay. Hell, it wouldn’t matter after tonight anyway. “You do it.”
Before he could object, Vega made a dash for the ladies’ room, hearing the bids continue to go up behind her. And then one of them stopped.
Her heart stopped as well.
“Any more bids?” the announcer asked.
She peeked out of the corner of her eye to see who had won him. Purple Curves. Bile rose in her throat. Vega looked at JP and found him watching her.
“Going once.”
She swallowed. She couldn’t buy him; everyone was watching. She tried to move, but her feet were rooted to the spot. JP’s lips pressed into a straight line, disappointment obvious.
“Going twice.”
What good would it do? One night with him?
It wasn’t like she could even use it to talk him into the interview. He’d unequivocally said no.
His eyelids dipped slowly, but right before they broke contact, she caught something that kicked her in the gut. JP turned to the woman who was about to win him and gave her a brilliant smile.
Vega had seen hurt in his clear blue gaze.
She raised her arm in the air to get the auctioneer’s attention.
Chapter Ten
“Seventy-eight thousand to the lady in black and white. Woo-wee, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t go anywhere just yet. We have a new bidder in town.”
Every single eye…and camera…turned to Vega as the auctioneer crowed. What in the world was she doing?
Panic began low in her belly, and sweat broke out on her upper lip. She had just done the one thing that was her top priority not to do. She’d called attention to herself. In a big freaking way!
As she stood there, unable to move or even blink, she sought out JP and found his gaze glued to hers. A new look colored his features now, but the fear shredding her from the inside out kept her from being able to decipher what it might mean.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Staring into JP’s eyes kept her from running screaming from the room, but nothing, it seemed, was going to save her from the bright lights she’d just stepped right in the middle of. But she had stepped in them, so she wasn’t about to get out of this until she won that damn date. And kept that money-grabber’s hands off him.
Purple Curves upped her bid, and Vega once more signaled to top it. She wasn’t even looking at the auctioneer at this point, only at JP. And he at her.
As the bidding slowly climbed, thousand after thousand, the fear began to change to something else. Something Vega hadn’t felt in a long time. Pure, unadulterated excitement. She might have been standing there doing the stupidest thing she’d ever considered, but oh, the outcome was going to bring a rush of joy unlike anything she’d ever felt.
She wanted JP. He wanted her. And as soon as the other woman sat down and shut up, they could figure out what came next.
Vega gave a nod to bid one hundred thousand dollars, and a whoosh went through the crowd. If she wasn’t mistaken, the highest bid up until this year had been eighty-five thousand.
And she’d just bid one hundred.
Panic once again flamed inside her as the silence stretched. Everyone in the room turned to Purple Curves to see what she would do. Even the auctioneer seemed to be out of words.
Slowly, like a man-eater closing in on her prey, the woman raised her hand, eyed the piece of meat she intended to purchase, and clearly enunciated the words, “Two hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
Oh. My. God.
Reality hit Vega like a rush of ice water poured down the front of her overheated chest. She was in the middle of the Fox Theatre, in the center of what seemed like every camera in Atlanta, and she could either up a quarter-million-dollar bid, and thus have to explain not only why she wanted to win JP so bad, but how she came up with the money. Or she could step away and figure out some story to sell so she didn’t look like she’d been doing exactly what she had been doing.
Fighting over a politician in public.
With a gracious smile, she turned to the woman and dipped her head in concession. Purple Curves had won.
Now she needed to find a way out of there before having to answer too many questions.
* * *
Vega dropped her head to the portable desk in the back of the news van and moaned. She could not believe how this night had ended. Bad enough she’d thrown herself in the middle of the auction, but she hadn’t even won. Afterward, she’d had to stand there as reporter after reporter had sought her out to ask who she was and how she felt about losing. And every last bit of it had been her own fault.
Darrin rapped on the desk beside her head. “Let’s get back to it.”
“Ugh.” Vega lifted her head. “We can’t possibly put me out there like that. We have to edit this.”
He shrugged. “What’s the big deal? You clearly have the hots for the guy, and you got carried away. He’s a Davenport. It’s the news. Bob will have our throats if we give him anything less than this. Plus, it’s terrific.”
Darrin reversed through the footage that had just made Vega pound her head. Though he wasn’t a photographer, the man had done a fantastic job. The camera had been positioned on JP, so he’d caught the flare of joy turned to predatory heat.
He’d then sought out the bidder who’d put such a look on JP’s face. None other than Vega herself. He had zoomed in on her. Hair touching the middle of her back, eyes glowing, a woman on a mission. Though she’d worn no makeup, the passion on her face as she’d bid, chin raised, lips full, had reminded her of the more famous shots in her modeling days. The ones her agent had promised would move her to the top and keep her there.
Back and forth Darrin had captured them, Vega, JP, and Greta, until finally it had been clear the other woman wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Once she’d bid, Darrin had instantly focused back on Vega and had caught the defeated look on her face perfectly. She’d given her conciliatory nod, and the camera had returned to JP, who wore the same look that had been on her own face only seconds before. Defeat.
The footage was perfect. Exactly what she would have done. And there was no way to not use it in the broadcast.
“It isn’t that I have the ‘hots’ for him, as you keep saying. I was doing this for the station.”
“Get real.” Darrin’s normally deep, smooth television voice changed to something tight and unrecognizable. “You were doing this for you. Look at your face in that shot. You seriously want this guy.”
“No.” She was flat-out lying, and she knew Darrin was as aware of it as she. “Well,” she conceded. “Sure. I mean, he’s hot. What’s not to want? But like I said earlier, it was for an in-depth interview I’m working on.”
She refused to admit defeat with the interview, allowing Darrin to blab the information to Bob before she got a chance.
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “So you’re finally taking Bob’s suggestion to shoot for an anchor position.”
Ah…that was his problem. He thought she was going for his job. “Of course not. I’m not kidding when I say the last thing I want is to be in front of the camera.”
“Then I don’t get it. Why an interview? And how would you have come up with that kind of money if you’d won?” His voice took on an edge she’d never witnessed. “Did Bob get the station to spring for it? I don’t see him doing that unless you agreed to be on camera. We both know you’re his pet project, and he wants you out front.”
“Absolutely not.” Geez, he needed to let up on the anchor thing. She hadn’t realized he was so insecure. “I’ve been playing the stock market for years now, and I have to say, I’ve gotten pretty darn good.” At least that wasn’t a lie. Not completely. Though most of her remaining nest egg was directly from her modeling days. But had she won, she stil
l would have made JP pay her back. She wasn’t blowing all her savings for one night with him.
Two nights, maybe.
She silently kicked her inner voice in the shin and told it to forget about JP. No matter how hot their chemistry, it wasn’t going to happen.
“And what?” Darrin asked. “You were going to blow it all right here? For an interview that you claim you don’t even want to make?”
She sighed. “I want to create the interview, Darrin. That’s all. I want to get the footage, find out about his homelife, his downtime, all the things no one has been able to get, then pull together a one-hour special that someone else—you, even—could anchor. But to answer that devious mind of yours, what would be in it for me would be a photographer position with the Atlanta office. I want out of Savannah.”
“That’s bullshit. You want my job.”
“Oh, get over yourself.” Vega stood and paced the small space. She wanted to be away from the jerk. Darrin had been nothing but a pain in her butt since the day she’d met him. “Your job wouldn’t interest me if it was the only way to put food in my mouth.”
Again…not entirely true. But not because she wanted to eat. She’d done without food many times.
No, her secret desire to be in front of the camera was purely because she thought she could make a difference. She wanted to do pieces on the underprivileged. To bring those people and places to the focus of others’ eyes.
Thanks to her past, she’d never get that opportunity, but maybe with a larger station she could eventually get the chance to create the specials, even if she wasn’t actually the on-air face.
“I don’t care what you say. I think you’re hiding something.”
Darrin stomped away, the back door of the van slamming behind him, and Vega pushed thoughts of him out of her mind. She needed to finish the edits and transmit them to the station so she could drown her sorrows in the bottle of vodka she’d talked out of the bartender in the hotel.
A man-eating, money-grubby slut had won the man she’d suddenly figured out she wanted. It seemed an alcohol-induced coma was highly deserved at the moment.
She reran the footage, laying in the last of the sound bites while also looking for ways to downplay her actions. All without shortchanging the station. They may be getting rid of her, but she owed Bob. She wouldn’t do anything to damage the station’s reputation.
He had offered her her first job out of school, an unknown in the world of television photography, and he’d been a staunch supporter over the years, going to bat with corporate when they’d wanted to force her in front of the camera years ago. Most field photographers had to be on camera these days. She’d proven herself by getting some of the best stories and doing the best legwork of anyone at the station.
Now, because of her actions tonight, the station was already getting only half the good stuff. She couldn’t shortchange them anymore. The after-auction interview with JP and Greta had been done, but everyone had been just as interested in Vega. She’d ended up on stage alongside them, had pasted on a fake smile, told her story about hoping to use the date to learn more about him for an interview, and how she’d been willing to part with her hard-earned money to take the chance. And WSAN and their Atlanta affiliate had both gotten very little screen time due to Darrin being unable to both run the camera and interview her at the same time. He’d had to resort to capturing footage while other reporters threw out questions, occasionally tossing in one himself from behind the lens.
And to think, last night she’d been worried about being seen having a single dinner with the man.
JP had tried having a conversation with her before she got away, but his date wouldn’t allow it. She’d just paid good money for his attention. Ever the public figure, he had been aware she was his priority of the moment.
Vega had quietly slipped off the stage and out of the building without so much as a backwards look. Her time in Atlanta was over. And her time with JP should have never begun.
* * *
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Early the next morning, Vega rolled over in bed and grabbed her head. Dang, it felt like something was knocking directly on her skull. She’d had far too much to drink.
She did a mental head-slap when the night’s stupidity crept back to mind, then tucked one arm under her pillow and wiggled around to the side of the bed where the sheets were cooler. More sleep would delay having to relive it.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She cracked open an eye and peered through the darkness. That noise had not come from inside her head. She eyed the wall separating her room from Darrin’s. Had he gone out and talked a woman back to his room last night? She smirked. Probably.
Sighing, she pulled a pillow over her head and wondered if that’s what it would have sounded like if she’d won the date with JP. Because there was no doubt he would have seduced the panties right off of her.
And she would have wanted him to.
She squished her eyes shut as tightly as possible, willing sleep to overtake her. Maybe she should find that bottle of vodka and finish it off. Surely she could drink enough to blank out the past twelve hours or so. Maybe even enough to forget the jealousy that had roared through her at the thought of that gold digger getting her paws on JP.
With a growl, she pounded the pillow covering her head, disgust making the shots of vodka threaten to reappear. She had no one to blame but herself. After all, she was the one who’d stepped into the minefield. And, as if to ensure the television exposure was as bad as it could possibly be, she’d done it beside JP Davenport.
Freaking perfect.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“Vega! I know you’re in there. I checked at the front desk. Now open this door.”
She sprang upright, instantly alert. The thumping was at her door. The voice, of course, JP’s. She swung her legs to the side of the bed, her head fuzzy, but not the full hangover she’d assumed, and checked the bedside clock.
“Vega!”
The raised voice was suddenly too much. Abandoning every other thought, she marched to the door, flung it open, and scowled. “What in the world are you doing here? It’s five o’clock in the morning.”
JP faced her, clean-shaven and fresh. He wore a dark suit and the wickedest grin she’d ever seen. “Morning, darlin’. Time for our date.”
Vega grumbled under her breath and turned her back to him. “I didn’t win a date. Go away.”
That she walked away from the door without closing it made it clear she didn’t expect him to do as she’d said. She would never admit it, but she didn’t think she wanted him to go away. She’d made a fool of herself for this man, and apparently, she wanted more.
Sighing in disgust at her own thoughts, she clicked on a lamp, crumpled into the nearest chair, and peeked at him through her lashes. Dang, he looked good this early in the morning. How did he do that? “What are you doing here, JP?”
He entered and softly closed the door behind him, then stood with hands on hips, staring at her. “I figured you deserved credit for bidding last night, so I’m here to take you out anyway.”
She opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t want a pity date, but he spoke first.
“I have my plane waiting, enough fuel to escape, and all day to play.”
She gaped. He had his plane ready to take them away? “Even if I wanted to go out with you, I really couldn’t now. We were all over the news last night. We’d be recognized in an instant, and I still don’t wa—”
“But you didn’t win,” he interrupted. “So no one will be expecting to see the two of us together.”
The reminder of who did win and the fact that it meant he’d soon be taking her out did nothing to improve her mood.
“Plus,” he began, opening the closet door and rummaging around in her clothes. He passed over each article as if not finding what he was looking for. “You do want to go out with me.”
“No, I don’t,” she grumbled. She did. More than anyt
hing in the world. But no way would she admit that to the man who had women fawning over him with every step he took.
He glanced over his shoulder. “You suck as a liar, you know. What’s the matter? Are you jealous of Greta?”
“No!” Vega shot him a scathing look. What a jerk. Like there couldn’t be something other than jealousy to make her not want to go out with him.
“Then what? Oh, wait.” He faced her. “Are we back to whatever makes you not want to be seen with me—even though you publicized your infatuation last night?” His wink and wicked smile softened his teasing.
“Stop it,” she moaned. She lowered her head in dejected shame. “I can’t believe I let everything get me so carried away. Can we just forget about it already?”
“Oh, no way, baby.” His voice grew heated. “You looked hot standing there bidding on me. I can’t let that go. Now tell me, what’s really the matter? And what’s the reason behind why you don’t want to be seen with me?”
She fiddled with the loose hem of her cotton sleep shirt, just then realizing how she’d answered the door. She gingerly touched a strand of hair and wondered how bad her bed head was. “Let’s put it this way.” She met his gaze. “I’m not exactly the type of woman you want to be seen with. Trust me.”
His lips flattened as he stared at her. “You still won’t tell me what you’re so afraid of?”
Not if she was afraid, but what she was afraid of. She shook her head. Her past was of no concern to him.
JP studied her again, then with a decisive nod seemed to make up his mind. He stepped into the bathroom, leaving the door open, and the sound of running water soon filled the space. “I brought disguises,” he called, raising his voice to be heard over the water. “We’re going to Anguilla, so no one will even expect to find me there, much less the both of us. You have nothing worthy of the Caribbean in the closet, so we’ll get you some clothes when we get there.”
He exited the room, a wet washcloth hanging from his hand, and headed her direction.