Page 8 of Hockey Heart

The Goddess balked at this. The Cardigan wasn’t going to stop. There must be a limit? Some point where the scales went over. But, looking at her, it didn’t seem that way. She was unrelenting in the pursuit of her prize.

“Fifty-one,” the Goddess said weakly. She was reaching a point that she wasn’t prepared for.

“One hundred!”

There was a gasp from the crowd and all eyes were now turned to the Cardigan, who was bouncing in glee, before they turned back to the glaring Goddess who looked stunned, and then, after swaying for a moment, she sat down.

“SOLD! For… Ladies and gentlemen… ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS! Give it up for Solly Ricek, and…” The announcer stretched his hand out toward the Cardigan.

“Beth Gibson!” She yelled back.

“Give it up for Solly Ricek and his very generous date for the evening, Beth Gibson!”

Solly was sweating profusely on the stage now, his eyes darting from the audience to the scowling terror that was sitting by the stage trying to murder him with her eyes.

“Oh, I know her!” Kensy said in my ear, nodding at the Cardigan, “She’s the one who got divorced from that tech billionaire, it was in all the gossip news, took him for everything she could get.”

“Well, now she’s got Solly Ricek too,” I said back, still shocked at what we’d just witnessed.

“Poor Solly, she’s going to eat him alive,” said Kensy, and I nodded in agreement before we both looked back over at the seething brunette. Someone came to put a reassuringhand on her shoulder, and she batted it away with a vicious swipe.

“Next up… Mister Safe Hands… The man you want between your pipes,” a few chuckles came from the now enraptured and engaged crowd, “give it up for Dan Janek!”

“Yes!” Kensy screeched, before yelling out, “Three hundred and twenty-seven dollars!”

The presenter looked a little annoyed that his announcement to start the bidding had been taken away from him, but he rolled past it.

“An opening bid already… Three hundred dollars!”

“And twenty-seven!” Kensy yelled back, but he ignored her as the other bids started coming in.

“Four hundred… Five… Six… One thousand…”

I looked at Kensy and she shrugged.

“I went all in, worth a shot.”

Dan Janek pulled in a decent twenty-eight thousand dollars while Kensy glowered as a cheerful middle-aged mom skipped over to the stage to claim her prize.

“Ugh, she wouldn’t know what to do with him.”

“Probably put him on babysitting duty for the night,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

But there was an anxious feeling in my stomach that I was trying to ignore, and it was growing rapidly. Then it was quickly joined by my heart thumping like thunder in my chest as I noticed a shadow looming on the side of the stage.

“Here we go! Our next item, the man with the iron fists, and ladies, it’s not just his fists that are rock hard…” the announcer winked to an equal scattering of chuckles and groans. But I didn’t laugh or groan. I couldn’t. My hands were sweaty and my mouth wouldn’t stop awkwardly twitching.

Kensy turned to me and saw my face. “You okay, Sarah?”

“Uh-huh,” I managed to mutter back, swallowing down a gulp as the man from all of my recent fantasies stepped out in real life before me onto the stage.

“…Hayden,The Hellraiser, Raynor!”

Kensy howled along with the crowd, but I was detached from it all, my eyes feasting eagerly on his frame. His roguish brown hair and dark stubble, his huge chest underneath a stretched white t-shirt that looked like it might tear open with just a flex of one of his muscles. He looked even bigger in person than I had expected.

“So then, who wants a night with theHellraiser?”

There was a wild ripple of excited cheers, but I was entirely removed from it, fixated only on Hayden beaming from the stage at all the attention that was being given to him. For a second, his head passed over the clapping hands and it seemed like he was looking right at me. A tremble ran through me before I noticed Kensy tugging on my arm.

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