Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Cole’s smile has never left his face. “Yeah, I did.”
Frankie playfully taps a finger to his chin. “And am I right in assuming … that Noah here … is the ‘more’ to your story …?”
Cole’s smile deepens. “Yes.”
“Should I just go ahead and call it?” Frankie asks Cole before facing the audience to ask them. “Well? Should I call it, guys?”
The audience shouts their approval all around me while Mae’s gorgeous brother scowls in my direction, eyes narrowed bitterly.
“$3,000 going once … $3,000 going twice …” Frankie claps his hands together and makes a funny noise for a gavel. “Ga-dong-ong! It’s a done deal! Official! Noah Reed, mi nuevo amigo, you are going on a date with your muy guapo hero Cole Harding! Everyone, give these handsome men a round of applause!”
Around me, a happy storm of cheers, screams, and whistling.
But Cole doesn’t head backstage as directed. He hops off of the stage, winds his way through the labyrinth of tables, and rushes straight up to me. He scoops me straight off the chair I was ever so carefully balanced on, sets me on the ground before him, and puts his lips on mine.
The roar of the crowd that follows is miles away. I hear little of it. All I know is Cole and this three-thousand-dollar kiss.
I would’ve paid a million.
Chapter 22
Cole
I can’t say I would’ve guessed in eight lifetimes how this event would have ended. But it certainly wasn’t with Noah bidding every last dollar to his name on me.
Of course, I was never letting that happen. “I’m covering your bid,” I tell him later. “Every last dollar.”
The event has wrapped up and everyone is gathered in the McPherson house for a (somewhat) intimate after party—the crew members, us bachelors and our friends and family, Tamika and the newspaper people, and a number of specially invited guests.
Noah makes a face. “No, you’re not.”
“I am. I mean, rumors are going around that the whole thing was rigged and you and I were this big rehearsed performance, so why not buy my own date?” I squeeze him against me. I swear, I haven’t let go of him since the auction ended.
He shakes his head. “We’ll discuss this later. Besides, you and I weren’t even the biggest deal of the night.”
We both glance over at Dean.
And a beautiful woman named Candace, standing by his side with a glass of champagne, who paid top dollar for him.
It’s true. When Dean and Anthony finally emerged for their auctions—poor Anthony with his nose bandaged so tightly to keep it from bleeding, you’d think he was wearing a diaper on his face—a bidding war began that put mine to shame. Five women fought for Dean, and the bids grew so large that even Frankie looked like he might need assistance. One by one they dropped, until the war at last concluded with a bid of $7,500 by none other than Candace. Apparently, she is a CEO of some Austin-based food company and just happened to visit the Spruce area on a whim, having caught wind of the upcoming bachelor pageant. Their chance meeting at that coffee shop and the seven minutes of conversation that they shared must have been an act of fate, bringing the two together.
And so it seems that Dean King has found his Queen.
Anthony’s auction was considerably less lucrative. At first, the bids rolled in at a sleepy snail’s pace. It seemed like Frankie was a second away from jokingly placing a bid himself just to nudge the ball in the right direction when suddenly the floral-shirt guy came back into the picture with a bid, stunning the women. Anthony, who at this point had lost all hope and commitment to the entire ordeal, simply shrugged and said, “Sure, fine, whatever, whoever can bid on me, I don’t care.” And suddenly men and women began throwing in their bids while Anthony, only half paying attention, kept touching his bandage and wincing in pain. His auction soon concluded with a comparatively modest bid of $1,075 from a lady in the second row.
That lovely lady isn’t here. Anthony, last I heard, crashed on the guest lounge sofa from exhaustion—and also likely from being tired of everyone’s consolation and insistence that his whole night “totally didn’t go all that badly”. He likely just wishes all memory of it would wash away as quickly as humanly possible.
Other than Anthony, everyone else seems to be having a great time tonight. Cissy and Nadine keep cracking each other up in the living room, kicked back on the sofa with their heels off, downing a bottle of wine and irredeemably intoxicated. Dean and Candace are seated at a tea table by the back window overlooking a garden, getting to know one another better. Tyrone and Omar mingle with the other couples in attendance, including local fashion designer Lance Goodwin with his long-time boyfriend Chad, as well as my recently-wed bosses Jimmy and Bobby. I’m not sure where Tanner and Billy are, but Jimmy assures me they probably just had to head back home to their kids, who didn’t come to the event, as it “likely would have bored them twice to death”. Mindy and Joel similarly had to duck out early to relieve “whomever was lucky enough to babysit the little monsters”.