Unwrapping Her Perfect Match: A London Legends Christmas Novella (2 page)

John Sheldon smiled. “Our sponsor’s sister.
Very
nice to meet you, then.” He gestured toward the number
on her back. “And you’re bidding on her boyfriend—why?”

That won a little laugh from Gwen. “She’s
making me, actually.”

“Making you?”

“She doesn’t want anyone else to have him.
Said she has big plans for him.” Gwen raised both hands and
grimaced. “At that point, I stopped asking questions. But since
she’s the auctioneer, she said it wouldn’t look right if she bid on
him herself. So she gave me some money and asked me to do it for
her.”

John’s brows shot up. “And you’re going to be
a good girl and do as she says?”

“Well, of course. It
is
her money.
Otherwise—”

“Otherwise…?”

“Otherwise I wouldn’t be here at all. This
isn’t really my scene.”

“No? Why not?”

Too many virile men.
Her blush
deepened as she recognized the corner she’d painted her into. “My
dad and sister watched a lot of rugby when we were growing up—”

“Wait—I’ve
met
your dad. Your sister’s
brought him to some of our events. Blonde bloke. Scruffy beard.
Short.”

Gwen laughed. Her dad was six-foot six. Only
this
guy could consider him short. “Yep. Short and hairy. At
home, we call him Ewok.”

John had the misfortune to be taking a sip of
whisky at that moment. He made a horrible choking sound, bending
over and covering his mouth and nose as Gwen patted his back. His
broad, strong, warm back. God, she could feel every single muscle.
She could outline them with her finger and name them for him, if he
let her.

Grabbing a serviette from the table next to
him, he wiped his mouth and hand, and stared at her with amused,
watery eyes. “You’re having me on.”

“Yeah, we don’t call him Ewok. Mostly we call
him The Doctor because, well, he’s a professor of history, so if he
could time travel he would.”

“Like Doctor Who.”

“Got it in one,” she said. “Anyway, I never
watched rugby with him and Tess. I’m more—”

He waited a few seconds, but when she
couldn’t find a less pathetic way of saying
a cake-decorating
enthusiast
he had mercy on her. “More…of a doer rather than a
watcher?”

She blinked. “Um, are you asking if I play
rugby?”

He wouldn’t be the first.

He grimaced. “Actually, I was trying to
flirt. Didn’t come out right.”

Flirt? With
me
?
She caught
herself before she said it but blurted out instead, “Are you taking
the piss out of me?”

He reared back. “What? No! Why?”

Because he also wouldn’t be the first to do
that. When she was sixteen, a boy from the school swim team had bet
his teammates he could get a blowjob from her. She’d given him a
hell of a lot more than that before finding out he’d won a hundred
quid in addition to the dubious prize of her virginity. Her sister
had got revenge by distributing a humiliating picture of him
getting out of the pool with an unimpressive erection, but the
wound he’d inflicted had never truly healed. Every attractive man
who flirted with her in the decade since then had paid for that
boy’s sins.

John looked so horrified by the question that
she immediately felt awful about doubting him, for both their
sakes. “I’m sorry. Ignore me.”

“I don’t want to do that, Gwen.”

The sound of her name in his deep, throaty
voice gave her shivers. A waiter passed by with a tray of full
champagne flutes. John grabbed one and handed it to her. “Let me
try again with the flirting,” he said. “Imagine you bid that money
on someone other than my skipper. What would you want him to
do?”

“Someone other than Liam?” She took a long
sip of the champagne, trying to wet her suddenly parched
throat.

“Me, for example.” His eyes sparkled with
mischief. “Imagine you bid on me. What would you have me do?”

“I’d get you for a whole day?”

“Mmm hmm. A whole day. All yours.” His voice
caressed her as seductively as a physical touch. The seed of
temptation he’d planted sprouted. If he were hers, what would she
have him do?
Ruck me
, she wanted to joke, but she kept quiet
for fear that she might see a flash of revulsion on his face before
he was able to cover it.

A gavel tapped a piece of wood three times,
and everyone turned their attention to the front of the room, where
her sister’s boyfriend Liam leaned over a podium to speak into a
microphone. “All right, everyone, we’re ready to get started. Could
I have all Legends front and center?”

One of John’s hands skimmed the sensitive
skin inside her elbow. He leaned down—what a novelty—and nudged the
shell of her ear with his nose. His voice sent shivers of longing
through her as he whispered, “All day, Gwen. All yours. Whatever
you’d like. Anything at all.”

Oggie went for seven-hundred quid. As he
strutted off the stage to the lady who’d bought him, he tossed a
smirk over his shoulder that had John imagining all the ways the
cocky arsehole could get hurt during their next training session.
Not seriously injured, of course. Just bruised enough to need that
whisky he was inevitably going to win off John.

The most John had ever raised in this auction
was four-hundred pounds. Beating seven hundred? Seriously doubtful
when most of the bidders seemed to be waiting for players who
hadn’t come up for auction yet.

“Next up is the big man himself,” said Tess
Chambers, who worked for the eco-travel company that sponsored the
team. “Don’t let his size fool you, ladies and gents. He may make a
living out of knocking grown men off their feet, but he’s a
gentleman down to his massive tippy-toes. And he’d be perfect for
any of you who have a ceiling that needs painting.”

The crowd chuckled as John stepped forward
and stood next to Tess. She was tiny and dark, the complete
opposite of her sister. He found Gwen near the back of the crowd,
too far away for him to read her. Lights glinted off her hair,
creating a halo effect that did funny things to his gut, making it
flutter the way it often did before a match. Had he convinced her
to spend a little of her own money on him?

Jesus, please don’t let me go for less
than a hundred quid.
His hands squeezed into fists as he waited
for the humiliation to begin.

“Can I have an opening bid of two hundred?
Two hundred?” Tess called out.

Silence.

“One hundred?” The pitch of her voice went
up, making it obvious she sensed the embarrassment he was about to
suffer.

Okay, I’ll settle for fifty. Don’t let me
go for less than fifty.
Maybe he should’ve taken a page from
Tess’s book and given her sister some money to bid on him.

The room was so quiet he could practically
hear the snowflakes landing on the pitch outside.

“How about eighty?”

Blood rushed to John’s cheeks as the crowd
shifted nervously. Never in the history of this auction had a
player gone unsold.

“Fif—”

“Five thousand!”

A collective gasp sucked the air from the
room. John’s breath fled from his lungs as his gaze shot to Gwen.
She had to be kidding. Had to. That was the kind of money players
like Callaghan drew in, not John.

Tess seemed just as shocked, staring
open-mouthed at her sister. That was when it hit him. Gwen had just
bid her sister’s money on him instead of Callaghan.

He pressed his lips together to contain the
laugh threatening to bust out. Color swept across Tess’s face as
she leaned into the mic. “No…you can’t.”

Gwen made her way through the guests to the
front of the room, her hand still raised to bid. “Five thousand for
number five,” she repeated, stronger this time.

Tess shot him a pleading look and he
shrugged, totally failing to keep from grinning now. “You heard the
lady. She obviously knows quality when she sees it.”

The crowd laughed. Tess’s brows drew together
as she glanced at her boyfriend. Callaghan had covered his face
with one hand, his head swinging back and forth like he couldn’t
believe what had just happened. Seeming resigned to his fate of
being bought by someone else, he dropped his hand and nodded at
Tess.

“Sold,” she muttered, and the crowd broke out
in a cheer, clapping and whistling.

As Tess announced a brief break in the
auction, John jumped from the stage and covered the ground between
him and Gwen in two strides. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he
lifted and swung her in a circle. Jesus, she felt
amazing
.
Soft and substantial and real. She’d saved him from abject
humiliation in front of men who never would have let him forget it.
She’d made him look like a god instead.
Feel
like a god. And
now she clung to his biceps, laughing as he swung her around. When
he set her down, her bright blue eyes sparkled, and his breath was
stolen all over again. He let go of her, but her hands still rested
on his arms, burning him like a brand.

“I’d better go pay,” she said, “and then I’ll
need to leave so Tess doesn’t kill me before I convince her that
this is my Christmas gift.”

“Too late.” Tess’s voice vibrated with
annoyance behind Gwen, who winced and slowly turned to face her
sister. Tess stood with her hands perched on her hips, lips pursed
and brows in a flat, pissed-off line.

John would almost have laughed at how
intimidated he was by a woman half his size—except she’d
singlehandedly humiliated London’s financial services industry, so
he knew the power she packed.

“I’ll pay you back,” Gwen promised.

“You’d better. But not in cash.”

Gwen rubbed the corner of her lips. “Uh, any
check I write you will bounce harder than a rubber ball.”

“Pay me back by going out and having fun.”
Tess gave him a quick wink, relieving some of the tension from his
shoulders. He wasn’t going to die today after all. “Make sure you
show my sister a good time.”

“I promise.” Thank God—something he and Tess
could agree on. He could hardly wait to get Gwen alone. “I was just
about to ask if she’s free one night this week.”

“Any night but Tuesday,” Gwen said. “Tess and
I have plans that night.”

Tess made an oh-shite face. “Tuesday. That
was
this
Tuesday?”

“Yeah. Why?” Now it was Gwen’s turn to perch
her hands on her hips. “You didn’t.”

“I did. I’m really sorry.”

“Did what?” John asked. The two sisters
seemed to have a private communication system he wasn’t privy
to.

“I double booked myself. I’m so sorry,
Gwenny.”

“Can’t you cancel your other thing? I paid
for our tickets already.”

Tess bit her bottom lip, her voice reluctant.
“I
could
cancel—”

“Buuut?”

“But that was the night I was going to do my
surprise thing for Liam, and it’s the only night this week he can
get away from his team commitments.”

Inspiration struck John. “I’m free Tuesday
night.”

Tess wrinkled her nose. “No offense, but I’m
not doing my special thing for you.”

“No offense, but I’d stop you even if you
tried.” He turned to Gwen and grazed her elbow with his fingertips.
“If you’ve got a spare ticket for something Tuesday night, I’d love
to go with you.”

She and Tess exchanged a quick look. “I
really don’t think—”

“That sounds perfect!” Tess said in a rush.
“Cheers, John.”

“Tess—”

Tess cocked her brow, and a slow smile spread
across Gwen’s lips. She straightened her shoulders, and he tried to
ignore how the movement made her big breasts look perky. “Okay. It
might be kind of fun. How about meeting me at Angel Tube around six
thirty?”

“It’s a date.” She may have bought him, but
suddenly he felt like
he
had won the greatest prize.

It only occurred to John much later, after
Gwen had gone home and he’d gone out with the lads, that he had no
idea what he’d committed himself to.

Whatever it was, he’d be spending the evening
with a beautiful woman, so it couldn’t be
that
bad.

Right?

Nervous energy zipped through Gwen as her
Tube train screeched its way into Angel. She hated,
hated
being late, but a bus accident had kept her rushing around at work
far later than she’d planned. She’d barely had time to change her
clothes, throwing on her best woolen skirt and a jumper before
running out of the hospital. ’Twas the season of heavy layers and
too many people on the Tube, making her sweat just as much as the
anticipation of seeing John again.

How could one big man make her this
jumpy?

When the train’s doors opened, she and a
hundred other Londoners poured onto the Underground platform and
boarded the steep escalator to freedom. A blast of cold air hit her
hot cheeks as she crested the top.

And there he was, looking massive and
intimidating in a thick winter coat, leaning against the exit with
his wooly cap pulled low over his forehead—and a bouquet of roses
in his hands.

Her tummy tightened. The last time someone
had given her flowers…

He’s not Adam
.

She took a deep breath and walked toward him.
He seemed to notice her straightaway, a broad smile transforming
his face. “You made it.”

“I’m so sorry I’m late. There was a bus
accident—”

He blanched and clasped her arm. “Jesus. Are
you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I forgot you didn’t know.
I’m a nurse.”

His body practically wilted. “Oh. Thank God.
I mean…was anyone badly hurt?”

“Everyone was stable by the time I left.”

“Good. That must be a tough job.”

“It’s challenging, but I like it. And I make
sure I do plenty of fun things to keep me balanced. Like tonight’s
plan, for example.”