I? Settled Jessica and Matt? Not that I’m expecting miracles, you understand, but if Ryan were just to get off his duff, get out more, I’m sure he’d soon find someone suitable. Even better, he might find someone unsuitable. That’s really who he needs, you know. Someone to get him out of his rut.”
Maddy was still looking at the ticket, still shaking her head. “Maximum security prison will get him out of his rut, Allie. Because he is going to kill you.”
“No.”
“Yes, Ryan,” Allie countered evenly as Ryan stood up from behind his desk and began to pace.
A tall man, taller than the average, he reminded her so much of her late husband that sometimes her heart ached just looking at him. Hair as black as coal, with a tendency to wave, and with the chance of tumbling onto his forehead if only he’d let it grow past a near military shortness. His grandfather’s same brilliant green eyes, sparkling with intelligence but, alas, rarely with mischief. Already thirty-three, Ryan was heading toward a settled, boring middle age.
At least he would be, if Allie left him alone, which she wasn’t about to do.
He still held the ticket, and stabbed at it with the index finger of his other hand. “This—this is ridiculous. Auctioning off bachelors to giggly women? How much money could anything like this raise, anyway?”
“Thirty-six thousand dollars last year, I understand, with only fifty bachelors. They outfitted a whole new playroom for the in-patient children. This year there will be at least sixty, including you, darling,” Allie slid in reasonably. “I believe now they want to be able to hire a full-time play activities director for the unit. It’s for the children, Ryan. You can’t say no.”
“I can’t say no because you’ve already signed me up!” He mashed the ticket into a ball and threw it into the wastebasket. Thanks to his high school basketball days, he had a pretty good shot, and rarely missed what he aimed at. “Okay, so I’ll send a donation instead. It’s a good project. But that’s it. Who do I call? Who’s in charge?”
“Marcia Hyatt,” Allie mumbled, speaking into her own chest as she bowed her head. It was either that or laugh out loud, which probably would get her in trouble with her only grandson.
“Who? Marcia? Did you say Marcia?” If Ryan had something else to throw, he’d have whipped it hard against the wall. “Of all the people…”
“That was years ago, Ryan, and you were never suited for each other. I certainly knew that. Besides, it would take a pretty big ego to think that she’s still pining for you all these years later. And I don’t think Marcia Hyatt is the pining type. Barracudas don’t pine. They attack. Oh, dear. That would be unfortunate, wouldn’t it? Are you sure you want to back out, darling? It might be dangerous.”
Ryan bent his head, used both hands to rub at the back of his neck. “I can’t call her. She’d know I was backing out over some personal reason and, knowing her, think I was backing out in case she’d bid on me. Damn it, Allie, I’m stuck, and you know I’m stuck.”
Allie delicately coughed into her hand, covering her near purr of satisfaction. “Anyone would think I was hiring you out for hard labor in some coal mine. It’s a date, darling. Wine and dine some woman for a single day, for a good cause. What could go wrong?”
Everything was going wrong.
From the moment Ryan showed up at Allen Country Club the night of the auction, everything had gone from bad, to worse, to damn near miserable.
Marcia had met him at the door, kissing both his cheeks as she stuck a paper badge to his tuxedo jacket touting him to be Hunk Number 22, and told him to “Circulate, darling, circulate, and whip the ladies into a bidding frenzy. Too bad that tux doesn’t show your butt. Charlie Armstrong, also on the tux list, went against the rules and wore jeans to show his, and a sorrier choice of attire I’ve never seen. Bruce Springsteen he isn’t! We’ll be lucky to get two hundred dollars for that idiot. But you,” she said, patting his cheek, “well, we’re expecting some big money for you. You look so…so James Bond. I knew you would, when I added your name to the tuxedo list.”
Ryan knew he must have responded to Marcia’s near monologue, but he would never be quite sure what he said as he smiled and moved away from the foyer, into the large ballroom already crowded with “Hunks” and their prospective bidders.
The country club had huge facilities, but the auction had been limited to the barnlike addition to the clubhouse, a huge, parquet-floored ballroom with dark, open-beamed ceilings and a stone fireplace you could roast two pigs in at the same time, with room left over for a small cow.
The chandeliers that hung from the rafters had been dimmed considerably, throwing the corners of the room into shadow and creating a more intimate atmosphere. If you were into atmosphere and, at least for tonight, Ryan most certainly was not. He was too busy reminding himself of the location of all the exits.
There were other tuxedos sprinkled throughout the crowd, he saw, as well as men dressed in casual khakis and golf shirts, some even with cardigans draped over their shoulders, the sleeves tied across their chests—a “look” Ryan had always considered too studied to be really “casual.” There were men in jeans and cowboy shirts, a few in tennis whites and carrying rackets.
He even saw one guy walk by in nothing but swim trunks and thongs, a towel draped around his shoulders—and looking about as “casual” as the too deliberately casual khaki men. He also looked as if the self-adhesive paper badge pressed to his bare chest proclaiming him as Hunk Number 47 was playing hell with his few chest hairs. Which served him right, in Ryan’s opinion.
Some of the men looked embarrassed. But the majority, Lord help them, seemed to be enjoying themselves very much.
Pitiful. Absolutely pitiful. He was ashamed of his own gender.
Within moments Ryan began feeling like a side of beef, as giggling women circled him, writing down his number, and then moving on. His mouth having suddenly gone as dry as a desert, he snagged a glass of wine from a passing waiter and drank it down in one gulp, then looked for a place to hide the glass, and himself, until his number was called.
As he smiled and excused himself through the crowd, he saw the temporary construction at one end of the ballroom and his knees nearly crumpled. A runway. For God’s sake—a runway.
He couldn’t believe it. He was going to have to walk down that runway? Probably while Marcia Hyatt read some drivel from a card about how rich and eligible he was.
How did Miss America contestants stand it?
“Hi. You’re one of the bachelors, aren’t you? I think this is where I’m supposed to say hubba-hubba, and act like some brainless twit or sex-starved career woman on the prowl for fresh meat. You won’t mind if I ask you where you got that glass of wine instead, would you? I think my tongue is soon going to be stuck to the roof of my mouth.”
And not a moment too soon, Ryan thought, sighing, as the near-mocking female voice finally came to a halt. Then he turned to look at the woman who’d spoken to him, surprised to see that she was taller than most women of his acquaintance, a good five feet nine in her stocking feet, he decided.
But that wasn’t the only thing she didn’t have in common with the women he knew, the women he occasionally dated, less frequently bedded.
For one thing, she didn’t seem to have a clue as to who he was—or care, for that matter. That in itself was unusual.
And then there was the matter of her clothes. He guessed they were clothes. Either that, or she had grabbed a tablecloth off a restaurant table and wrapped it around her as a skirt on her way over here. Combined with a lemon-color ribbed sweater, her wildly flowered skirt wrapped around her like a sarong, and hung nearly to the tops of her shoes…which were brown boots. Hiking boots, it looked like. Maybe combat boots. No. That couldn’t be. Combat boots? Boots, he finally noticed, which sort of matched the brown knapsack hung over one shoulder.
Her