Page 34 of The Auction

“It’s not my fault she has bad taste in men.”

Kingsley laughed softly. “I’ll tell him you said that, too. He’ll be very hurt. He might even cry.”

Daniel met him at the door. “Has anyone ever told you that sarcasm isn’t sexy?”

“When you’re sexy, everything you say is sexy.”

“Say ‘Massachusetts,’” Daniel said. “I dare you.”

Maggie had told Daniel long ago that Kingsley’s English was perfect, except for his one Achilles heel—Massachusetts.

“Can’t do it, can you?”

“I live in New York for a reason.” Then he cleared his throat. “Mass-a-shoo—”

“I knew it.”

“Now I know why Anya hates you so much.”

“One of many reasons. You’ll keep on eye her, right?”

“You care about her, don’t you?”

“I couldn’t save Maggie. Eleanor didn’t want saved. Do I get to help one beautiful girl in my life? Just one? Too much to ask?”

Kingsley glanced up and Daniel followed his gaze. Anya was peeking over the staircase bannister down at them, eavesdropping. He didn’t mind. He’d been eavesdropping on her earlier. When they caught her looking, she straightened up.

“I have a question about the files,” she said to Kingsley.

A smile spread across Kingsley’s face. “I’ll be right up.” She disappeared. Kingsley met Daniel’s eyes. “Do you trust me?”

“Not as far as I could throw ten of you to Massachusetts.”

“Ah, fair. But I’m going to help you anyway.”

Kingsley patted his shoulder and sauntered toward the stairs. As he walked away, Daniel issued a plea.

“Please don’t.”

8

Two days passed. Long days. Daniel had meetings to keep him occupied—lawyer, accountant, financial advisor. Being rich was a full-time job, Maggie had warned him. True. Not that he was nostalgic at all for his salad days. Between being rich and being broke, well, it wasn’t a competition at all. Look at Anya, working two jobs and selling herself to a stranger in one week’s time to get her brothers and sisters out from under the thumb of an angry alcoholic father. Anyone who romanticized poverty had never been poor. But…he did sometimes miss having a real job. When he jogged past the Stephen A. Schwarzman building where he used to work, he was hit by a wave of nostalgia. The library was just opening for the day. Not too many tourists there yet in the Rose Reading Room to be offended by his sweaty t-shirt and track pants.

Daniel jogged up the stairs and once inside the scent of wood polish and old books hit him like a truck. He almost had to sit down, the memories washed over him so hard, so fast. The day he got the job at the most famous branch of any library in all of the United States of America…calling his parents from a payphone to let them know he was going to be okay, that they didn’t have to worry about him anymore…first day at work, taking the tour with Suzette Mayer who’d worked there for fifty years, knew every nook, every book, everything there was to know about the place and tried to teach it all to him in one day...

Boxes of dust. That’s what she gave him for his first task. So it seemed at least when he pulled off the parcel tape and a cloud of dust wafted into his face. He sneezed for five straight minutes before he went back to the box and found the papers of a famous dead poet inside, papers that had been moldering in a New England attic for eighty years. Suzette said they’d been saving that box for the “new kid.” Lucky him.

He was lucky. He loved the work, the quiet hours, the digging deep into the past like an archeologist-slash-treasure hunter. He did find treasure. Loads of it. The missing last will and testament of a long-dead industrialist, one that changed the life of a distant descendant. A first draft of an Emily Dickinson poem jotted on the back of an envelope. A previously unknown love letter from Georgia O’Keeffe to Arthur Stieglitz.

Daniel had brought Maggie here on one of their early dates, at night, using his key to let them into a staff door around the back. The place was empty but for the security guard and the cleaning crew. He’d taken her up to the third floor, to one of the Rare Books Rooms. He’d only brought her there to show off. The library was legendary. A work of art in itself. The Rare Books Room contained a million dollars’ worth of books and he had the key to the cases. She’d been dazzled. Though a life-long New Yorker, she’d never seen the hidden rooms of the library. Sure, she worked in a Manhattan skyscraper with people who made more money in a day than he made in a year but had she ever been to the secret storage room where all the Victorian-era pornography was hidden away, brought out only for authors and grad students doing “research?”

He remembered it like yesterday. It had been the first time they’d had sex. Here, in the library. First kiss in the Rose Reading Room. Second kiss as they turned the pages of a photo album full of sepia-colored photographs from a birching club that had been in business around the turn-of-the-century. Men being spanked. Women been whipped. By the time they made it up to the Rare Books Room, Daniel was dying to have her. He’d kissed her there too, after shutting and locking the door.

The entire time he’d been fucking her he couldn’t believe this incredibly beautiful obviously over-educated older woman had her legs wrapped around his twenty-five-year-old back and was tight enough around him to clench his cock like a hand. He had put his hand over Maggie’s lips to silence her moans. He had pushed a finger into her mouth and told her to bite him if she needed him to stop—otherwise he wouldn’t. She didn’t, and neither did he, and he came inside her so hard he’d almost blacked out.

After the sex, she’d done something even more wicked than fuck a librarian in his own library. She’d taken a pencil and one of the rare books—a first edition, first printing ofMobyDick, worth about fifty-thousand dollars—and written inside the back cover,Daniel Caldwell is a great lay.When he’d told her she was on the hook for fifty grand, she said she could afford it. When he told her she could get him fired for that, she promised she’d take the blame.

Daniel wondered…was it still there? He hadn’t erased it, worried he’d do the old book more harm than good. He took the stairs up the to the third floor and into the Rare Books Room. There was the big oak table where he’d had Maggie all those years ago. There was the barrister bookcase. There was the book. She’d only picked it because it had “Dick” in the title. The bookcase was locked and he’d long ago turned in his keys. He knew he should let it go, just enjoy the memory but for some reason, he wanted to see Maggie’s handwriting again.

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