Page 8 of One Night Flame

Two more shot up.

I gave the front row a slow turn, threw in a wink over my shoulder, and added a little flex for good measure. Not my best work. Okay, maybe I leaned into it with a deliberately awful dance move that made one of the teenage girls squeal-laugh like I’d just done something TikTok worthy.

“C’mon now,” I teased. “Don’t let me go cheap. We need new jaws of life, people. You want to explain to your grandma you lowballed the rescue guy?”

“Two hundred!” someone shouted.

“Three!” another called, waving her paddle.

“Four fifty!”

“Five hundred!”

Okay, now we were cooking. I paced the edge of the stage, milked the spotlight a little longer, just until?—

“Seven fifty!”

The voice cut clean through the noise. Confident. Commanding. Absolutely not playing.

I blinked and scanned the crowd for the bidder.

And then I saw her. Steel-gray hair. Lipstick that could cut glass. A glint in her eye that said she didn’t bluff and didn’t lose.

Mrs. Henderson.

Oh no.

I was ready for a cougar. A soccer mom. Maybe even a wildly drunk twenty-something waving her bestie’s paddle like a dare.

I was not ready for someone’s actual grandma.

“Eight hundred!” someone else shouted—sounded like Sarah from the bank.

Mrs. Henderson didn’t even blink. She turned, lifted her paddle with absolute finality, and said, “One thousand dollars.”

The room gasped. Loud enough that it echoed. Someone in the back muttered “damn” under their breath.

I swallowed hard.

One thousand dollars.

For me.

And not in the fun, somebody-wants-to-kiss-me-behind-the—food-tent-at-a-barbecue way. In the someone’s-knitting-me-a-scarf-and-asking-about-my-mortgage kind of way.

I pasted on my best pageant smile. “Sold,” I said into the mic, voice steady even though my brain was skidding. “To the lovely lady in the back. Come on up and claim your prize.”

I was half-joking, but she didn’t hesitate. Mrs. Henderson made her way down the aisle with surprising speed, hips swinging like she owned the joint. Which, to be fair, she kind of did. This was Huckleberry Creek—everyone knew her, and more importantly, everyone knew not to cross her. The woman had connections, opinions, and a killer poker face.

As she reached the stage, I extended my hand gallantly. She ignored it completely, patted my cheek like I was a good boy who’d finally brought home a decent report card, and leanedin close enough for me to catch a whiff of lemon verbena and subtle menace.

“Relax, sugar,” she said, voice low and velvet-smooth. “I didn’t buy you for me.”

I blinked. “I—what?”

She grinned. “I bought you for my granddaughter.”

“Your granddaughter…” I asked, trying to keep my voice low and respectful and maybe just a little panicked, “She’s, uh… legal, right?”

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