The three buzzes turned out to be a false alarm, but now I was in the lobby, I scrolled through my notifications just to check everything else was in control.
As I headed back into the ballroom, proceedings had heated up. There was an emcee on the stage with a small woman who looked rather familiar.
The red-lipped pixie.
Now she was sans cream puffs, she looked even more delicious. She wore a fire-engine-red dress that cinched in at her tiny waist and matched her lips perfectly. Her sleek black bob and diminutive height weren’t my normal type, but there was no doubt she was beautiful. She had one hand on her hip and was forcing a smile.
“Fifteen hundred,” the emcee said. “Do I hear sixteen hundred?”
Several auction paddles were thrust in the air and I couldn’t help but notice that most of them weren’t looking at the stage or the auctioneer. They were looking at Arthur. Was it his lot or something?
He must find it uncomfortable having eyes on him all the time. I was well known by name in some circles—after all, I was the best at what I did when it came to protecting the online presence of the biggest companies and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. But people didn’t know my face. And thank God.
“Are you bidding, sir?” a woman behind a trestle table by the door asked.
“What’s for sale?” I asked.
“A date with the beautiful woman on the stage,” she replied.
I narrowed my eyes. Cream Puff was an auction item? “Can I get a paddle?”
She handed me what looked like a table tennis bat, and I strode toward the stage as the bid for a date with Cream Puff went up in one-hundred-pound increments. Bids were starting to slow as the auctioneer asked for two thousand pounds.
“Twenty-five thousand,” I bellowed, raising my paddle.
Gasps echoed around the room and I felt a thousand pairs of eyes swing from Arthur to me. Cream Puff squinted, trying to see who she was going to have to go to dinner with, but the lights of the stage were shining right at her—she wouldn’t have been able to tell that it was the man she was ogling earlier in the evening.
I slid back into my seat and gave my name to the woman with the clipboard who’d come over to take my details.
“Interesting,” Arthur said from next to me. “If you’d wanted to date my daughter, you could have done it for free.”
My heart sank to my knees. Cream Puff was Arthur’s daughter? “I had no idea she was your daughter, Arthur. My apologies. Of course, I won’t take her out. This is a wonderful cause and the point was to make a donation, not win a date.” That explained why everyone’s attention was on Arthur during the bidding. Everyone wanted to impress him.
“I hope you’re not going to back out. It’s about time Parker did something that was about enjoying her life rather than trying to fix the world. It will be good for her.” He turned to me and patted me on the shoulder. “For you too, I think. And better you than some of the old men in this room. Make sure you both have fun.”
“I’ll treat her like glass, Arthur. You have my word.”
Dinner with Arthur’s daughter wouldn’t be so bad. It just would be better if I wasn’t so attracted to her. I’d just have to keep my flirting in check and make sure things ended when dinner did. No problem . . .
As long as she didn’t cover herself in cream and tempt me to lick it from her.
Three
Parker
Twenty-five thousand pounds? For a date with me? I was a little dumbstruck at the figure and frustrated I hadn’t been able to make out who had placed the bid. The lights had been so glaring that I’d not seen anything.
Sutton rushed up to me as I was helping to pack up backstage. “Trust you to have the hottest guy in the room bid on you.”
“I did? Did you recognize him?” It was kinda nice that someone handsome had bid. It might be fun to go on a date under these circumstances—where it was nothing to do with attraction or the possibility of a relationship. Instead, this was all about Sunrise.
“I recognized that I’d like to climb him like a tree, does that count?”
I elbowed her in the side. “Maybe you should go out on a date with him.”
“Speaking of.” She elbowed me back and nodded to the door where the hard hunk of muscle I’d crashed into earlier stood. I glanced back at Sutton. “That’s the guy?” Maybe covering myself in cream just before one of the most important nights of my life hadn’t been for nothing.
We locked eyes as he strode toward me, the sexy crinkles at his temples sending my stomach into a spin. That’s when my father bellowed, “Parker! I want to introduce you to your dinner date. Meet my very good friend, Tristan Dubrow.”