Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
I only catch the first half of her rules since Jess has found me in a sea of many and shoves me toward the stage like her legs are filled with alcohol. “This is the part we’ve been waiting for.” I think that’s what she says, but don’t quote me on it. “How do I look?”
“You look… drunk.”
She swings her arm through the air and clicks before muttering, “Goodie… ‘cause that is the exact look I was going for.”
I’m not surprised when Jess’s auction exceeds the ones before her. Drunk is a good look for her, and despite Caleb trying to act oblivious to that, the bids Fitz placed on his behalf is a sure-fire sign of this.
Regretfully for Caleb, a security detail job doesn’t earn enough to go against the man Jess was dancing with before her auction. He bid thirteen hundred dollars to secure a one-hour lunch date with her.
Now, it’s my turn, and I’m as nervous as hell. My knees wobble when I stop under the bright spotlight highlighting the stage, and it has nothing to do with the glare Jack is hitting me with. It’s from the heated stare of a man on his left. He appears just as powerful as Jack, but he has an arrogant edge that is a little off-putting.
“Where shall we start the action?” the hostess queries. “What about one hundred? Do we have one hundred dollars for this beautiful lady in red?”
My throat dries when the gentleman I referenced earlier commences bidding. “One thousand dollars.”
“One t-thousand dollars. Okay,” the hostess stammers out as shocked as me. “Do we have eleven hundred?”
“Two thousand.”
This bid comes from the right.
Regretfully, it isn’t from Jack.
“Alrighty then. It looks like we have a bidding war on our hands. Do we have three thousand?”
I choke on my spit when bidder one attempts to knock the competition on their ass. “Ten thousand.”
“Woah. Okay. Ahh…” The hostess’s mouth is as gaped as mine. “Ten thousand dollars. Do we have any other interest?”
The room is silent, except for bidder number two. “Twenty thousand.”
“Thirty thousand,” bidder one immediately bounces back.
After shooting bidder one a riled look, bidder two waves his auction stick in the air before muttering, “Forty thousand.”
I can’t breathe.
I am in absolute shock.
Even more so when bidder one fires back, “Fifty thousand.”
And so the bids continue until they reach an absolutely ridiculous amount.
“Thirty million dollars.”
This bid is from Jack, and he looks as furious as the man who commenced bidding.
“Thirty… million… dollars,” the hostess gabbers out between big breaths, her wheezing easily audible in the room’s silence. “Going once. Going twice. And sold! Congratulations, Mr. Carson, you just bought yourself a lunch date with this beautiful young lady for thirty million dollars.”
I’m so dazed, I don’t realize I’m being ushered off the stage straight into bidder one’s hand until he uses it to steady my swaying steps. “Whoa, careful, darling. We don’t want you getting hurt.” His Texas drawl is as thick as his mustache. “Although I didn’t come away with a victory tonight, I’m still in with a chance, right?”
“Over my dead body,” Jack interrupts, his voice fiercer than the cut of his tuxedo. “Octavia, come here.”
I don’t know what shocks me more. That the bidders of my auction are still fighting even after the hammer has been banged or Jack calling me to his side as if I’m a lap dog.
Thirty million dollars or not, he doesn’t get to treat me as if I am a possession.
Too angry to think straight, much less stand, I tilt closer to the gentleman keeping my legs upright.
He reads the situation in the completely wrong manner. “It seems as if the lady doesn’t want to go with you, Jack, so how about you return to liars and cheats over there and leave her in my more than capable hands?”
“Stay the fuck out of this, Silas.” Against the screaming protest of my buckling knees, Jack tugs me behind him in a protective manner before getting right up in Silas’s personal space. “Or I’ll have you thrown out of this event like I had you removed from your companies.”
Silas doesn’t appear the least bit worried about his threat. He huffs out a chuckle before threatening, “You wouldn’t want that, or I might have more than a word with the media on the way out. I might even give them a whole exposé on the amazing Jack Carson.”
When Jack storms Silas until they are chest to chest, I grip his arm to try and pull him away. This type of behavior is not acceptable in any form, much less at an event to raise money for victims of abuse. “It’s fine, Jack. I’ll go. Just let it be.”
He stares Silas down, my promise not enough to keep his feet moving. “If you so much as breathe in her direction, I will take every single penny I earned for you and use it to destroy you.” Like it is even possible, he takes another step closer to him. “I am not joking, Silas. Anything you think you can do to me, I can do to you ten times worse. I will fucking ruin you.”