Page 2 of Auctioned

“Topher?” I stare straight at the man in the perfectly pressed navy suit. His gaze is no longer on me.

He’s cutting into his steak.

Calmly. Another obvious sign that I had to have misheard him.

Of course I have.

After a long week at work, I’m exhausted. I love my job as a server, but pulling double shifts at the restaurant has taken its toll on me. That could definitely explain my disorientation.

Plus, I’m a nervous wreck. My stomach has been in knots ever since I decided to break up with Topher. I hardly ever dated anyone before him. I never broke up with anyone.

So yeah, my mind must be playing tricks on me.

“Hello?” I wave my hand to grab his attention. I should be embarrassed to raise my voice in front of James, who’s always so put together. The man who makes my heart race. Today, I don’t care. Mostly. “Earth to Topher?”

“You will be”—the steak’s juices paint the white porcelain plate in a dark shade of caramel—“auctioned off.”

Again with this auction thing.

This has to be a joke. One that isn’t even remotely funny.

I squint, staring at him silently. Waiting for the punchline.

It must be there somewhere. I’m just not looking closely enough.

But nothing’s out of place.

He looks the same as he did when he came to pick me up this evening.

His thick, dark, and short hair is styled to perfection. The oval shape of his jaw is set in place. He isn’t smiling or rubbing his mouth to hide the twitch of his lips.

Narrowed, harsh, pale-blue eyes glare at me.

He’s not fucking around.

This isn’t some sick joke.

Foolish me. Why would I think it is?

Topher hasn’t been remotely funny over the six months we’ve been dating.

In fact, since the day he took a seat next to me on the bench in Union Square, he’s always been somber. Definitely not what one would call funny.

For the first few weeks we’d been seeing each other, he’d been dark and mysterious. Since then, he’s been cold to me, and not in an attractive kind of way.

Not like his dad.

James. The man I haven’t been able to get out of my head ever since that first dinner at his place. Where Topher is uncaring and bland, there’s something about James that’s more than appealing to me. An aura.

I’ve been gravitating toward him for over a month.

I haven’t been able to stop.

At what I assume is six feet four—an inch or two taller than his son—James has the darkest presence I’ve ever come across. It isn’t fake. He isn’t putting on a show.

He’s simply dark.

Impossible to ignore.

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