Page 97 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
My stomach tightened painfully. I ignored it. “Good for them.”
“You’re going to sit here while some random woman wins a date with him?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yup.” I let a few seconds pass. “Besides, any extra money I have is currently tied up in the shop.”
Adele tilted her head. “So if you did have the money …”
“That isnotwhat I said.”
I looked back at the stage. Marc had reappeared holding Chaos against his chest with one arm, the goat’s legs hanging at slightly different angles, both of them looking like they had a frank conversation backstage and had reached an uneasy truce.
They were, objectively, stupidly cute together.
I hated that.
“Let’s discuss the qualities of our final bachelor,” Glamma said, “now that he and his precocious goat have rejoined us. He’s intelligent, dependable, and has delivered more puppies and kittens than anyone in this room.”
The crowd laughed.
Marc shook his head slightly, somewhere between embarrassed and resigned, which was a look I was intimately familiar with and had spent a considerable amount of energy trying not to think about.
“And the winning bidder,” Glamma added, with the particular smile of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing, “gets a private dinner. Cooked by our bachelor himself. At his home. Tomorrow.”
A murmur started within the crowd.
Marc tensed and his eyes narrowed as he turned to stare at his grandmother.
Clearly, that point had not been discussed.
“Starting at fifty dollars.”
The bidding was slower than Wyatt’s—steadier, more deliberate. Chaos surveyed the room from the crook of Marc’s elbow with what appeared to be genuine skepticism. He craned his neck to eat Marc’s cuff. Marc adjusted his grip without looking down.
A small unwilling sound moved through me that I didn’t acknowledge.
Then Janine raised her paddle. “Three hundred dollars.”
The satisfaction on her face was immediate and proprietary, like she was already planning the menu.
Marc’s jaw tightened. He was good at controlling his emotions, but I’d known him long enough to catch the microexpressions. He hated everything about this. Being on display, being bid on, being scrutinized like a line item or a piece of meat. He adjusted Chaos’s weight against his chest, the tux jacket pulled across his shoulders, and I examined my program as if there was a code I needed to find within its text.
He’s not a bad guy.
The thought arrived uninvited and made itself comfortable in my psyche. I resented the hell out of it.
He’s not a bad guy,that same voice said,and he would have a terrible time with the awful golddigger.
Glamma raised her eyebrows. “Three hundred dollars. Do we have three-fifty?”
Adele elbowed me, but I didn’t move.
Janine’s smug smile settled into something permanent.
Adele elbowed me harder. I was going to have a bruise.
