Rush to the Altar (9 page)

At ten o’clock the lead singer announced their last song, a slow one, and said that the auction would follow. Jake had to laugh. The crowd was certainly in the right frame of mind to spend some serious cash.

Maddie gave him a hesitant look. Maybe she didn’t want to dance the slow one with him. She had kept him within arm’s distance during the fast ones. The thought sent a swirl of confused unease through him. He didn’t usually attach himself to a woman for the evening without being on a date. Why did it feel like they
were
on a date? He didn’t want to let her go and he most certainly didn’t want her to dance with anyone but him. He reached out and grasped her hand, pulling her toward him. “It’s the last dance. We can’t quit now.”

She nodded and let him pull her into his arms, even letting her forehead press lightly against his shoulder for a moment. He felt her take a long breath and knew, instinctively, that she had closed her eyes.

Was she playing some game? Hard to get? He internally shook his head at the thought. Maddie may have her secrets but her heart was pure, her intentions open and honest. He leaned his face toward the pile of elegant curls on top of her head. She sure did smell good, too. His hands were at her waist, but he wanted to move them to her back and pull her closer. He looked around at the other dancers, wondering if anyone would notice. The fabric of her gown was like silk or satin or whatever lingerie was made of, very slippery and silky, very easy for his fingers to skim over. He tightened his hold on her waist, allowing his hands to move slightly around and pull her closer, leaning his head toward her ear, trying to think of something clever to say. He loved it when she smiled at him, immediately understanding where he was coming from.

“You having fun?”

She tilted her head back to look into his eyes and gave him a little nod and that smile he was hoping for.

“You want to go out?” It popped out before he really had thought about it.

“Now? I can’t leave. I’ll probably be here all night. I have to oversee some of the clean-up when everyone leaves.”

Jake groaned internally. He was really messing this up. “I meant some other time. Next weekend, maybe.”

“Oh.” Several emotions crossed her face then she looked back up at him, leaned up on tiptoe and said quietly in his ear. “I have to tell you something about me, Jake.”

His heart sank. She was too good to be true. He should have listened to his misgivings earlier. No one could be so perfect for him. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

Pressing closer to him so that she could whisper it, Jake could hardly concentrate on her next words.

“I’m a widow. Recently.”

The pain of it filled her eyes and pierced him like the pain belonged to him, like it had happened to him. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“How do you know?”

“Word gets around. We’re all pretty close around here.” Jake leaned toward her ear. “Are you not ready to go out on a date? Is it too soon?”

Her blue eyes, the color of sapphires, turned confused, as if she hadn’t considered the question before. “I don’t know.” Her gaze dropped from his eyes to his lips, causing a streak of white-hot desire to run through his body. Before he knew what he was doing, he leaned in and brushed his lips against her soft lips. It wasn’t long, slow and soft and sweet, but it made his heart pound in his ears and she looked like she’d been bulldozed—dazed and bewildered. It was the most endearing look he’d ever seen. When he leaned toward her to kiss her again she pulled back.

“Wait, there’s something else.”

Something else? His excitement plummeted.

“I have a son. A two-and-a-half-year-old son that matters more to me than anything in the world.”

Jake hadn’t heard that. But his head was swimming with the touch and feel of her, and even though he normally wouldn’t consider dating a woman with a child, he heard himself say, “I like kids.”

He didn’t really know if that was true or not. And he’d never had to sell himself, practically beg for a date. The music stopped. He took a bracing breath trying to concentrate on the decorations and ignoring Maddie for a moment to regain control of his spinning brain.

Maddie stepped back. “Thanks for the dance, Jake, and the lovely evening. I just don’t know if I’m ready.”

She turned and fled, disappeared really, leaving him feeling suddenly, inexplicably, empty and alone.

CHAPTER TEN

T
he auction began on time. Jake saw Maddie in the front, helping to direct the auctioneer and occasionally holding something up for the audience to get a better view of it for bidding. She had a bright smile pasted on her face—that smile he was coming to recognize, the same smile she’d worn during the dance number at halftime. It was her “nervous but not going to show it” smile. How he knew that about her already, he wasn’t sure. He rarely felt like he had figured out the women he dated. This was new. It really felt like they knew each other on some other level that he couldn’t really grasp. It was just there.

As the auction continued, Maddie looked more and more nervous. Jake did some quick calculations in his head and thought he knew why. It didn’t look like they were going to make their goal of beating last year’s numbers. Jake knew something about the pressure to always be better, do better, perform better. He was used to it by now, knew how to use it to his advantage instead of letting it become crippling. But Maddie didn’t have the experience and looked ready to crumble. As the last item sold, Jake watched Maddie turn in a slow circle on the stage, her face shocked to see that everything was gone. Jake found himself on his feet, walking up to the stage and whispering to the auctioneer. He shrugged mentally. She was going to be really mad at him, but there just wasn’t anything else he wanted to bid on.

~~~~~~

Maddie watched as Jake spoke to the auctioneer with a deep sense of unease spiraling within her. What was he doing? The crowd was getting restless, looking expectantly at her and then curiously at Jake. She’d been trying to ignore him, block out all the feelings he was making her feel. She wasn’t ready for this. What if she dated a man who wouldn’t or couldn’t love her child? How could she replace a boy’s father with a stranger?

What if she fell in love again?

And that kiss…Brandon had never kissed her like that, had he? She couldn’t ever remember wanting to dissolve into the floor with Brandon, she’d melted, but not like this, never like this. It was wrong. She couldn’t trust it.

The auctioneer was smiling at her and motioning her to come over to him. When she arrived at his side, he turned her toward the crowd and announced in a booming voice. “We saved the best for last, folks. A date with Madeline Goode, our lovely program director.”

Maddie’s jaw dropped open. Her head jerked from the grinning, sweaty auctioneer to Jake, horror in her eyes. What had he done? He was making a fool out of her!

She would lose her job for this! Dizziness buzzed through her head and nausea rose to her throat. She swayed. Oh no, she was going to faint. But she didn’t faint. She never could when she really needed to, blast it. Instead, she just stood there, staring out into the sea of upturned faces, some of the men looking interested, the women’s faces reflecting everything from envy to disgust.
God, please. Just this once?
She breathed quickly in and out, trying to hyperventilate. No such luck.

The auctioneer opened the bidding at five hundred dollars. No bidders.

This couldn’t be happening. Heat rose to her face as she stared out at the silent, watching crowd. She would drop through the floor at any moment.

Marcus raised his hand and yelled with gusto. “Five hundred!” Maddie let out a breath with a moment’s relief. At least there had been one bid and Marcus was a nice guy. Maybe Sasha could go with them.

“Six hundred dollars! Can I get six, can I get six hundred for the beautiful angel we have here?” The auctioneer started his babbling.

Why couldn’t people tell she was a fairy, she wondered with a hysterical hiccup coming from her chest.

A nice-looking doctor, older but single—a widow too, if Maddie remembered correctly—raised his hand, smiling kindly at her.

Maddie smiled back. Whew, maybe he would win and she could get off this stage and go and torture Jake with the pepper spray in her purse.

The seven hundred-dollar mark flew by with Greg Foreman from college jumping in, looking determined.

Not him! She might have to refuse. She didn’t trust that man. Jake was really going to get it for this. She imagined putting a tube of sore muscle ointment in his shorts before the next game. She almost smiled, thinking about it, feeling a little better. She shot a shy, hopeful glance back toward the doctor.

Sure enough, he countered with eight hundred, Greg came back with nine hundred and then the doctor countered again with a whopping one thousand dollars. The nervousness returned. A thousand dollars? What would they expect on this date for a thousand dollars? This was a nightmare.

A hush fell over the crowd, all eyes on Greg as he stared at Maddie, measuring her worth.

Suddenly Jake’s low voice boomed throughout the room. “Twenty thousand dollars.” He said it with a small smile and those smoldering gray-green eyes glued on Maddie alone.

The crowd gasped. Several people started to clap and radiate good cheer on the now valuable woman on the stage. From some distant place, like a dream echo, Maddie could hear Sasha’s familiar cheering and two-fingered whistle. Maddie could only blink at Jake. Twenty thousand dollars? Twenty thousand dollars! It was more than any other item of the evening. If she’d known he had wanted a date that bad, she would have given in. All he really had to do was give her some time.

But it was for the charity, she reminded herself. He was donating to charity and had probably realized they weren’t going to reach their goal and wanted to help. After all, twenty thousand dollars was enough to top it and beat it by about five thousand—very close to her personal goal.

The auctioneer proclaimed Jake Hart the winner at twenty thousand dollars and Maddie found the crowd regarding her with a new kind of respect. She shook more hands and received more smiling congratulations for the success of the auction than she’d had on her wedding day.

Suddenly Jake was beside her, easily countering the ribbing he was receiving for paying so much for a date.

“She’s worth every penny,” Maddie heard him remark to one older woman, who patted his arm and smiled at him with twinkling eyes. “I think you’ve been caught, young man, good luck to you.”

And then to the men he said such things as, “She wouldn’t have me. What else was I to do?”

Finally, he turned to talk to her. “You made your goal?”

Maddie nodded. “I was going to torture you with the pepper spray in my purse at first, but now I’m…in your debt. Thank you, Jake.”

Jake started to say something when a tall, beautiful woman glided up to them in a full-length, red-sequined evening gown and grasped his arm. “Jake, I can’t believe I didn’t realize you were here until just now. How generous of you to date for charity.”

“Tiffany…” Jake’s face registered surprise and his gaze dropped from her perfect face to her low-cut gown and then quickly back up.

The woman turned to Maddie with a bright smile. “You will have a wonderful time with him, Ms. Goode. I can assure you that Jake Hart certainly knows how to show a woman a good time.” She smiled again, but this time her eyes were laced with malice.

“I’m so relieved to hear it.” Maddie turned to Jake. “Won’t you introduce me?”

“Oh…of course.” Jake straightened, still seeming rattled. “Maddie, this is Tiffany Daniels. You might remember her family from the guest list, the owners of Daniels Homes.”

Maddie nodded. She did remember three names under Daniels; very wealthy homebuilders in the Midwest. Putting on her most professional demeanor, she held out her hand. “Of course. So nice to put a face with the name. Did you enjoy the evening, Miss Daniels?”

Tiffany’s eyes narrowed in the face of Maddie’s confidence. “It’s been a little slow, my dear, but now that I’ve found Jake, I’m sure my evening will…pick up.”

Maddie glanced at Jake, expecting some joking, confident response or rebuttal to the woman’s arrogance, but found instead the man looking tongue-tied.

Was she an ex-girlfriend? Or worse. Maybe he was still seeing Tiffany and was just playing the field, taking out any woman he wanted. He was Jake Hart—famous millionaire basketball star. What was wrong with her, thinking they might have something special?

She was surprised by the degree of the disappointment. It made her heart feel leaden, like she couldn’t quite breathe. She realized that she had hoped to spend the last moments of the party with him before the long tear-down began. She wanted to hear why he had done it. Was it only for the charity?

She also realized that she wanted to be with him entirely too much for her own good. She had a son and a good job and she didn’t want to jeopardize her responsibilities. She didn’t have room for such relationships in her life.

Jake finally spoke as Tiffany grasped his arm to lead him away. “I’ll call you to set up our date.” He didn’t even sound excited anymore.

Maddie’s heart sank further despite her internal lecturing. “I hope it meets with your expectations.” It was a soft-spoken thrust and it stung, she could see it on his face, making her feel at once guilty and ready to flee, find a place to allow the tears to fall that were threatening to escape. She turned and hurried away. He might buy her time, but as wonderful as he could be, it was going to take a lot more than twenty thousand dollars to win her heart.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

M
addie poured the cereal into Max’s plastic bowl, sloshed in some milk and handed him the matching plastic spoon. Groaning, she sat beside his chair and dropped her head into one hand, clutching a cup of steaming coffee with the other. “Eat your breakfast, sweetie,” she managed before dropping her head all way to her arm that lay across the table. Wow, had she ever felt this awful?