Just About Sex (23 page)

The emcee spoke in the somber tones of a doctor verifying that his patient did, indeed, want to go ahead with the sex-change operation, and for the first time in the last several seconds, Alex stopped and thought about what he was doing.

He had just publicly declared that he wanted Simone and was willing to pay seven thousand dollars for her. The first prickles of unease ran over his scalp.

While planning this whole auction scenario in his mind, Alex had thought he’d go as high as five thousand, not
start
at five thousand. He did very well and had plenty of savings, but he wasn’t made of money, after all. And did he want to spend nearly his entire midyear bonus for this?

But then he caught sight of Romero’s smirking face again and the decision was made. How could he stand aside and let this jackass have a night with Simone? Alex raised his paddle. “Nine.”

“Alex,” Derek hissed, tugging discretely on Alex’s elbow. “What’re you doing, man? That’s real money. You need to slow down.”

Alex shrugged him off.

“Ten,” said Romero.

Alex brought his arm up, but a strangled noise over the crowd drew his attention back to Simone. Her narrow-eyed gaze latched on to his face, and he realized with a start that she didn’t look any too happy to be the most desired woman of the evening. In point of fact, she looked…angry. Very angry. Surprised—this was the first time anyone had ever snarled at him without moving his or her lips—it took Alex a minute to recover.

“E-eleven,” he said, feeling his face flush at the public stutter.

Simone’s frown deepened and she looked away from him.

That was when it hit him: once again, where Simone was concerned, he was an idiot.

He’d made a spectacle of her, again. As a bonus, he’d made a fool of himself by bidding against one of Cincinnati’s richest people, a man who’d reputedly made twenty million in endorsements last year.

What on earth was wrong with him?

“Twelve,” Romero said.

The emcee turned to Alex. Finally, good sense took over and Alex lowered his paddle and shook his head. He tried to console himself. At least he’d driven up the price a little. This was for charity, after all.

“I have twelve thousand,” the emcee cried. “Twelve thousand going once, twelve thousand going twice—sold! The date with Dr. Simone goes to Juan Romero!”

The crowd, with the sports table at the epicenter, erupted in cheers. Simone got to her feet and was immediately swallowed in her mother’s embrace.

The face of every person at his table turned to gape at Alex, as if they’d realized for the first time that he was a Martian. His humiliation worsened. Alex slumped back against his chair and tried to look unconcerned.

“What’s gotten into you, Daddy Warbucks?” Mitch cried, raising his voice over the emcee, who announced they’d take a short break before bidding resumed on the next item. “Did you hit the lotto?”

“Don’t start.”

“Whoa, man,” Derek said, his voice low and concerned. “So
this
is what’s been wrong with you.” He drew away as if he didn’t want to catch whatever painful malady Alex had contracted. “You’ve got it worse than I thought.”

Scowling, Alex grabbed his glass and tossed it back, remembering too late that it was empty of scotch except for what he could suck off a few melted ice cubes. He was staring at his glass, wondering how long he had to stay and pretend he was a gracious loser before he could go home and sulk, when he became aware of someone standing to his left.

Looking up, he saw Romero, flanked by a couple of his oversized cronies, staring down at him, a smug, pitying smile on his lips.

“I jus’ wan’ to see jour dead body,” Romero told him, and he and his boys laughed.

Rational thought flew out the window. The horrifying image of this muscle-bound millionaire riding around with Simone in his expensive car, swimming with Simone, laughing with Simone and, worst of all, touching Simone, hazed Alex’s vision and made him temporarily insane. A sudden infusion of rage sent him lunging to his feet and leaping for Romero’s throat.

Mitch and Derek must have known what he had in mind because they both surged up and grabbed him before he could even make contact with a snarling Romero.

“Come on, Aleex,” Romero taunted. “Ju want me? Huh? Come on.” He sprang forward, but his friends caught and held him on either side.

“Let him go!” Alex cried, desperately trying to break free. “Let him go!”

“Alex!” Derek hissed. “Think, man! You don’t want to get arrested for this nonsense! Think of your license!”

Still Alex strained to break free, thinking that an arrest and subsequent loss of his license would be a small price to pay for the pleasure of breaking a few of Romero’s teeth. But then he caught sight of Simone’s outraged face, and his blood went cold.

What was he doing?

Jerking free of Derek and Mitch, he tugged the edges of his jacket, straightening them. “I’m okay,” he said when Derek cupped his elbow again. “Don’t worry.”

Romero twisted free of his friends. “See ju later, Aleex. I think of ju next week when I’m wit Simone.” Tittering, he walked off with his entourage.

Derek turned to Alex and flapped his arms in disbelief. “What the—” he began, but Alex wasn’t listening.

When Simone lobbed one last glare at him then whirled away, Alex dove into the small crowd that had gathered to see what all the commotion was about and caught up with her in several long strides.

Oblivious to anyone who may have been watching them, he caught her silky bare arm when she reached for one of the doors leading to the gardens. “Simone.”

Her graceful shoulders stiffened slightly, but she didn’t look at him. “Leave me alone, Greene,” she snapped.

Pulling her arm free, she charged through the door onto the stone terrace overlooking the gardens and rolling green hills beyond. Looking back and forth as if evaluating her escape options, she selected one of the curved staircases. She started down, teetering dangerously on her high heels, and quickly disappearing out of sight.

Alarmed and undeterred, he rushed out the doors and after her. The fresh night air felt cool against his hot face, but he immediately knocked his head on some stupid glowing paper ball thing—were those supposed to be lanterns?—and bumped into a couple on their way back inside.

“Sorry,” he muttered, then ran down the wide steps after Simone, cursing all the way. What did she think she was doing, running down these uneven cobblestone steps with those shoes on? Did she have a death wish?

“Simone!” he bellowed once he’d caught sight of her again. “Slow down! Do you want to break your neck?”

Nearly to the bottom, Simone apparently decided he was right. She held the rail with one hand and quickly slipped off her shoes. Freed now, her shoes dangling by their straps from her fingers, she trotted off, not toward the ten-foot maze and rose gardens where other couples walked among the lanterns, but toward a barely visible path in the woods.

What the—?

Unable to think clearly, much less think of any other options, Alex raced down the path after her, ducking branches with every step. His anger—mostly with himself, but some with her—drove him on.

Look what he’d let this one small woman reduce him to. Desperate enough to pay five figures for the pleasure of her company. Almost fighting. Running around at night in the woods in a tuxedo. What next? Singing love songs under her balcony?

Cursing, he surged blindly forward through the thick trees. The light from the moon and lanterns didn’t begin to penetrate the absolute darkness here. He prayed some low-hanging branch wouldn’t decapitate him before he ever reached her. Only the faint rustling of footsteps ahead told him he was still on her trail.

Suddenly the woods gave way, opening to a small duck pond with an aeration fountain in the middle. In the dim light of the crescent moon, he saw a small white gazebo in a grassy area to his right, and, sure enough, there went Simone, running up the steps and inside as fast as her little bare feet would carry her. Fuming, he followed her.

Just inside the gazebo, she stopped and whirled, jammed her hands on her hips and planted her feet wide, as if she intended to throw him off her property.

“What’s your problem, Greene? I don’t want to talk to you! Can’t you take a hint?”

Furious and panting, he charged up the stairs and brushed past her, forcing her to stagger back a step. “What’s
my
problem?” he roared. “What’s
your
problem? Running down those steps in high heels! And running through the woods in the dark with no shoes on! Are you crazy? You’ll slice your feet to shreds!”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll happily slice my feet to get away from
you!
I’d swim across the pond to get away from
you!
” For emphasis, she jabbed an index finger at the water, where several ducks and Canada geese paddled with serene grace, oblivious to the unfolding drama around them.

Bowing, he swept his arm toward the pond. “Be my guest.”

But she didn’t move so much as an eyelid. Instead, she glared up at him, her glorious bosom heaving with anger.

“Why did you do that, Greene?” she screeched. “
Fighting?
Don’t you know the place is crawling with the press? Do you want to be arrested and have a video of the whole incident on the eleven o’clock news?”

He shrugged. Getting arrested was the least of his worries at the moment. “Someone needed to shut Romero’s mouth for him.”

“Come
on,
” she snapped, obviously not swayed by his logic.

Deadlocked, they glared at each other. Only their harsh breathing and the splashing water broke the night’s silence. After a while, some of the anger leached away from Simone’s face, until she seemed more curious than anything else. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before she managed to get the words out.

“Why’d you bid on me, Greene?”

The new huskiness in her voice kicked Alex’s racing heart into overdrive. Now they were getting to the heart of the matter. Finally. “
Why?
Because I want us to have dinner and you don’t respond well to traditional invitations.”

Her eyes flashed silver in the moonlight. “So you thought you’d have a pissing match with Juan instead? See who has the biggest balls and the biggest wallet? Maybe get revenge on the kind of guy who bullied you when you stuttered as a kid? Is that it?”

Anger and the sting of truth slashed through him at the same time, and he didn’t know which hurt worse. “You’re on dangerous ground here, Doctor,” he warned.

She showed no signs of backing down. “Why did you do it?”

“Because I want to have dinner with you.”

“A reasonable person doesn’t spend ten thousand dollars on
dinner.
”

Reasonable?
Was this a joke? He started to laugh, but his constricted throat twisted the sound, mangling it. “Don’t you know by now I stopped being reasonable the second I laid eyes on you?”

She went completely still.

Too late, he regretted his rash words and absolute lack of control where she was concerned. Getting into this here and now, alone in the dark on a romantic night, wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done, but what the heck. What else could he do?

He burned for Simone. Needed to touch her if he wanted to live. And any price he had to pay was well worth it. What did she want? Would ten thousand dollars do it? Done. His firstborn child? Fine. His pride? No problem.

It was time to tell her how he felt. How
much
he felt.

He stepped closer, breaching the safe distance between them. Her delicate scent—floral tonight, with a hint of sophisticated musk—filled his nostrils, and he felt both the blazing heat from her body and her panic. She didn’t like him this close. Not tonight.

Simone took two hasty steps back and froze. Something about her wild-eyed stillness reminded him of the feral cat that’d prowled his neighborhood growing up. If cornered, she’d fight, and fight hard.

She sucked in a harsh breath. “Why don’t you tell the truth, Greene?” Her voice, edgy now, rose steadily toward some ugly crescendo he didn’t want to hear, but he didn’t interrupt. “You think if you spend ten thousand dollars on me, I’ll hop into your bed, don’t you? Isn’t that what this is about? You think I can be bought by the highest bidder, just like—”

She fell abruptly silent, as if someone had jerked the needle off a record midsong, but he didn’t need to hear the words come out of her mouth to know what she’d meant.

“Just like who, Simone? Your mother?”

Her expression didn’t change, but she seemed to shrink in on herself, growing smaller and smaller until he wondered if she wouldn’t disappear altogether. “I’m nothing like my mother,” she whispered, with no real conviction.

“You think I don’t know that?”

Several beats pulsed between them. Suddenly, the air shifted, charging and humming with enough electricity to power Manhattan. Something deep within her eyes softened, and her lips parted in what might have been the beginnings of a smile.

Alex’s heart went wild, and he could feel the thrilling, primal pulse of his blood as it rushed through his veins and pooled in his groin. Waiting, and not reaching for her, was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

Luckily, it didn’t take long for her to sidle closer. “Why’d you do it, Greene?” she asked in a low, sultry voice. “You’re not made of money.”

Looking at her, he felt a need so great he was afraid it would flatten her like a tornado. With no hesitation whatsoever, he did something he’d never done before in his life: opened his heart and ushered a woman inside.

“I did it because I’m desperate to spend time with you any way I can,” he told her. “I don’t have any pride left. If the only way I can get you is to buy you, then I will. And I certainly wasn’t just going to hand you over to Romero.”

Simone drifted closer. Shorter in her bare feet, the top of her head hardly cleared his collarbones. “You silly man,” she said, reaching up to stroke his jaw with her soft hand. “Don’t you know that when I’m with him, I’ll be wishing it was you?”