And then it began.Chapter FiveFaithFor so long I’d been dreaming of this very moment, watching Mr Lindon take his place at the podium and getting ready to lead this auction.
This wasn’t like watching the TV versions. I mean I loved those, I always got a thrill from watching the bids rise and the hammer crash down, but this was a whole other league.
I guess it was the firmness of his expression. The way he naturally controlled the room, the bidders, the everything. Because he did. Mr Lindon was such a natural leader he controlled everything that he wanted to.
I only wished that included me.
I grabbed one of the listing guides and flicked through, even though I already knew it by heart from the days before I’d spent studying it every spare minute. I knew about the oil paintings, and the vintage tea sets, and the bureaus and the mirrored cabinet with wall mounts. I knew about it all, and loved it all, and only wished that one day it would be me up there leading an auction like this one.
Right now there was a whole load more to it than that, though. Right now it was also about Mr Lindon and the spotted navy blue of his tie, and his suit jacket so sculpted. It was about how much he made my breath quicken just to watch him in place. It was about the flutter between my legs, and the burn of my cheeks, and the way I felt like the whole room could see how much I wanted him.
Even so, I couldn’t pull my eyes away. I was transfixed, pulled to him like some crazy hypnosis.
I took a breath as he did, both of us in the strangest sync as his stare swept across the room again. He stopped before his eyes met mine, and I felt a pang. A pang of need.
Please look at me. Please, Mr Lindon, please look at me.
He didn’t. He didn’t look at me.
He addressed the crowd with his short, clipped tone, sounding every bit the well-spoken master. He spun the hammer in his hand, strong fingers truly owning the handle.
I knew where else they’d truly own.
The flutter between my legs met the one in my belly as the bids started coming. My heart was zipping and my head was spinning and I couldn’t hold back the smile.
Hands raised all over the room as the bidding ramped up in earnest, and he read them like a book, tipping his head this way and that to the audience without ever losing the moment. He paused just long enough to let the tension rise, and smirked just enough to encourage those bids even more, and it was perfect. He was perfect.
I squeezed my hands together when the hammer came down for the first time, and I was grinning like an absolute crazy, loving it all.
That grin was still there when the next round began. This one was a tea set, from the sixties. He led it like a dream, smashing the estimate into the ground and almost doubling it before the hammer came down. That’s when it hit me all over again, just how much I wanted this. How much I wanted to be the one up at that podium, driving up the interest to whole new levels. How much I wanted to read the crowd and know exactly when to push and when to close.
How much I wanted him to watch me do it, like I was watching him right now.
How much I wanted to be his good little girl and make him so proud of me.
He didn’t look over in my direction once through the whole first batch of listed items. I felt a twinge of rejection, as though I was nothing to him in that room, but there was a dance of something else along with it. A knowing that he was avoiding me for a reason. He just had to be.
I’d felt it all week, him finding me in the main office before I had the chance to seek him out in his. The way he’d keep his distance and not stepped anything like up close to me.
Yeah, he was avoiding me for a reason. I just daren’t hope it could be… want… wanting me...
The hammer came down again and I couldn’t take the flush down deep. I couldn’t take the sight of him up there anymore without clenching my legs real tight, worse and worse until the grin faded and my lips opened just enough to breathe. My knickers were damp and my thighs were clammy, and I needed my fingers down there so damn bad it almost ached. He was my beacon. The man I adored. The one I needed to claim me for his own and make me his on my eighteenth. It would be the greatest birthday present of my life to have him take me.