Page 60 of Crazy About Love (All About Love)

“Already heading over to you.”

We click off, and I run back inside. I’m sure I’ll come up with a way to pay Liz back for this, if it works.

The winner’s not as easy to spot as I would’ve thought, given her eccentric appearance. I swim through the sea of sweaty bodies, the music in the room back to thumping through the floor. My boss waves at me from the middle of the stage, purple lights hitting her wide smile. I have one of the world’s coolest bosses, and when she does a happy dance I almost do one too. Tonight was supposed to be a night for celebration.

Damn it, it still can be. Just have to find that bidder.

The crowded place elevates my panic, and every second I spend on the floor feels like it’s ticking down to an eternal state of singlehood. Shoving through a group of women who weren’t so lucky in the bidding and are drinking themselves into a blissful stupor, I just start screaming at random.

“Winners!” I shout, making the girl on my right jump so high she spills her pink drink.“Where are you?”

A few laughs erupt from the bar right in front of my face, and girls who heard me hold up their bachelor name cards. I smooth down my dress and laugh off my complete blindness, following the line of women down until I find the one who isn’t deep in conversation with the winner next to her. Her purple bangs dangle in front of her face as she takes a long sip of Sam Adams. A beer girl; I’m already in trouble.

I’m in such a rush that I don’t even take a breath to calm myself or talk through what I plan to say before I step over and set my hand on the bar next to her.

“Hiya!”

“Taken,” she mutters, holding up the card for bachelor nineteen—the card that should’ve been mine. I nearly grab it and run off in a minuscule moment of insanity. She looks up from her drink to give me a once-over. “I’m sure you’ll find someone, though.”

I blink. “Oh, I’m not hitting on you. I, uh…I help run the auction.”

“Check or cash?”

“Huh?”

She raises a thin eyebrow, taking another swig of her beer. For someone who just won the highlight bachelor of the night, she could be a little more enthusiastic.

“I take it you want to collect my bid.”

“No.” She’s quite the assumer. “I actually want to take your bachelor.”

“Get in line.” She laughs, shaking her head at the other women at the bar. “Like I told the girls who wanted a trade, piss off.”

Whoa, okay. If that’s how she wants to play it…She has no idea what I’ve done to get to tonight, how much restraint I’ve had to use. It’s been a very long three weeks sinceIwas in Alec’s bed, and every day from then till now I’ve been biting my tongue and orchestrating this night so that there will be absolutely no question in his mind that I have fallen madly in love. No smart-mouthed, beer-drinking assumer is going to take him from me now.

My spine straightens, and I cross my arms. “I’ll give you five hundred bucks.”

“You expect to pay my bid too?” She sets her beer on the bar. “Is he worth two months of your salary?”

I’m going to punch those assumptions right back into her mouth.

“Yes,” I say. “And then some.”

She gives me a slow smile, pushing away her drink. “Looks like I got him for a steal.”

“Five hundred and twenty,” I say with a lot more threat than the amount deserves, but I’ve already gone all in, and I can probably scrounge up a twenty from somewhere.

She flips her purple hair from her face, laughing at me again. “Seriously, go away.”

“I’m not leaving. I need tonight.”

Her amused expression turns hard so fast I almost believe it was the sudden green light drifting over our heads that gave her a very unflattering, villainess quality. But the light disappears and the straight line of her mouth remains.

“What makes you thinkIdon’t need tonight? Why the hell would I come to a place like this unless I was desperate, hm? I won him; I’m not trading him for another guy or for money. Tonight is for me, and you can either scamper off or I’ll make you.”

I eye her hand for rings. My fingers are naked and have been for a year now, the only piece of hand jewelry I used to own now in a pawnshop somewhere. Just want to make sure that if punches are thrown I’m not going to get sliced by a rock.

She has a single band on her right thumb that chains to her forefinger. I can handle that.

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