wakened him before she’d left. She hadn’t left a note. She hadn’t done anything but hurry away before he could wake up and see that she was not at all like the woman who had eventually pulled off his sweater, unzipped his jeans and played out her little fantasy of feeling totally unrestrained.
Embarrassed to death by what had happened, she hadn’t returned the call he’d made to her office the next day, either.
“Tell you what,” he said, “you see it through and I’ll make it a hundred thousand.”
Low gasps went up around the room. Regatta Week in Richmond drew the movers and shakers, old money and new, and anyone who was anybody spent with abandon. Yet, even that rather exclusive crowd seemed impressed by the sum. Or, maybe, what impressed them was Matt’s nerve.
Determined not to lose hers, she glanced around the room. Her expression as good-natured as her tone, her stomach in knots, she asked, “Are there any other bids?”
A smattering of laughter drifted through the room as guests craned their necks to see who might want to top him.
It seemed no one wanted to steal his thunder. Either that, or they’d maxed out on their charitable spending for the night.
With all the other items, she had rapped her small gavel against its block when the item had been won. It was a fair sign of how rattled Matt had her that she forgot the gavel now. “Then, one hundred thousand it is.”
Matt’s golden head dipped in a deferential nod.
The flash of a camera caught her as the crowd burst into enthusiastic applause for the unprecedented bid. The goal of raising a quarter of a million dollars to build adequate housing for the working poor had not only been met. It had just been quite handsomely exceeded.
Ashley barely heard the ovation that was for her as much as the man someone had just handed a glass of champagne. She was far more aware of Matt as he lifted the glass to her in a subtle but clearly triumphant toast.
Conscious of the press, her peers and her parents, she nodded back, smiling when smiling was the last thing she felt like doing. She didn’t trust what Matt had just done.
She wasn’t even sure why he was there. His name hadn’t appeared on the guest list.
She knew Cord hadn’t brought him. Her second brother never did “the charity bit,” as he called it. She doubted Cord even knew about the event, involved in his own world as he was. She wouldn’t have thought Matt interested in mingling with the local glitterati, either.
The thought that he had shown up just to get back at her somehow added more color to the subtle blush accenting her cheekbones. The fact that he’d chosen to do so in front of her friends, her parents’ friends and several hundred total strangers only increased the discomfort she was desperately trying to hide.
Hoping that anyone who noticed would only think her excited by the size of his donation, she stepped aside so the gray-haired and bespectacled president of the Shelter Project could take the podium. As the distinguished-looking gentleman thanked Matt, thanked her and thanked them all for their generosity, she quietly slipped off the stage.
Hiding was not an option. Since it was also doubtful that a hole would conveniently open up and swallow her, or that a comet would strike and end the world as she knew it, it seemed she had no other option but to face Matt and be as gracious as possible with so many others around. She did not, however, have to do it until it was absolutely necessary.
Buying herself time, she headed toward her table and tried not to look anxious while she accepted congratulations for a job well done from guests who stopped her on the way. At any moment, she expected the society reporter from the newspaper to pounce, photographer in tow. Her acceptance of the check from the man everyone was now talking about would be a photo op no self-respecting journalist would pass up.
Ashley had to concede that the passing of the check would also be excellent publicity for the charity—and raising funds for the Shelter Project had been the entire evening’s goal.
Her goal now was to prepare herself for the moment she would turn and find Matt behind her. The effort, however, was wasted.
The reporter appeared as predicted to obtain a quote about how delighted Ashley was for the opportunity to actively participate in the building of a Shelter home. Ashley also told the woman that she did, indeed, know the gentleman who had put her up for bid. His name was Matt Callaway, and he was a friend of her brother Cord.
Looking as if that association alone was enough to explain the man’s clearly unpredicted—and unprecedented—actions, the reporter then directed her photographer to get a shot of Ashley and her committee and went off in search of Matt.
Matt, however, had disappeared.
She was one hundred thousand dollars short.
Ashley sat in her modest office with its art prints on the walls, blinds tilted to mask the less than impressive view of a rooftop from the tenth floor of the Kendrick Building, and frowned at the neat columns of figures on the sheet in front of her. Every single item that had been donated for the auction had been purchased and paid for. Season tickets to the opera, to the symphony, to Washington Redskins games. An original oil painting. Baskets of gourmet foods. Cooking lessons. Dinners at some of the areas finest restaurants. Massages. A facial peel. Golf clubs. A spa membership.
The list went on.
The totals added up.
Everything was accounted for. Everything other than the last item of the evening, which one of her committee members had written on the recap sheet as Ashley K.-$100,000!
Ashley would have smiled at the exclamation point had the bid come from anyone but Matt. And had she not dreaded having to go after him to collect it.
She reached for the coffee cooling by her neatly aligned in-box, stapler and mouse pad of Monet’s water lilies. She would send a letter first. If that didn’t work, she would send her no-nonsense, very married assistant Elisa Jenkins to ask for it, since Elisa could sweet-talk her way into or out of just about anything. She just didn’t want to have to talk to him herself. She was too embarrassed, too confused by what she had done, and somewhere between baffled and furious about what he had done in return. Being painfully honest with herself, however, she had to admit she was far more upset with herself than she was with him.
She had spent years going out of her way to avoid any situation that could embarrass herself or her family. For most of her life, she had lived in fear of proving that she would never be as refined as her mother, as capable as her younger sister, or that she would make a mistake that will wind up all over the press the way it so often had with Cord. Like her oldest brother Gabe, a senator now running for governor, she understood her duty to her family and its reputation, and had learned long ago to suppress every rebellious instinct she’d ever had.
Or so she’d thought before last Tuesday night.
She set the blue mug with its bright sunflowers back down, rubbing her forehead as if the motion could somehow erase the memory. It seemed to be one of those annoying paradoxes that the more a person tried to forget something, the more she thought about it. And thinking about her behavior with Matt piled guilt on top of regret and a whole host of other emotions she knew she didn’t deserve to escape. She’d never in her life had a one-night stand. Never even considered it.
Until Matt.
She’d always been afraid she was susceptible to him. She’d just had no idea how susceptible she truly was. It seemed he’d barely touched her and she’d not only thrown caution to the wind, she’d flat-out forgotten caution existed.
A movement across the room rudely interrupted her self-flagellation.
Dropping her hand, she felt her heart jerk against her ribs.
It seemed she wouldn’t have to go after Matt after all. He filled her doorway, a six-foot, two-inch wall of raw male tension civilized by a beautifully tailored navy-blue suit.
His steel-gray eyes