Page 25 of Arranged To Be Mine

“Except this way it would help hungry children.” He shrugged. “But we can keep looking.”

We moved down the line of auction items. I tried to focus on the task at hand, but my mind kept drifting back to his question. Why was it so hard to do something nice for myself? I had money. More than enough. And this was for a good cause. Every dollar spent here went to feeding kids. There was literally no downside.

And yet I couldn’t pick up a pen and write down a bid.

I stopped in front of a small display table. Sitting on a black velvet cloth was a wooden sculpture of a fox. It was maybe six inches tall, carved from what looked like a dark walnut.

It was beautiful. Simple and elegant and completely impractical.

I loved it.

I stood there staring at it, not saying anything. My fingers itched to pick it up, but something held me back. Some voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like my own telling me I didn’t need it. It was frivolous.

I could afford it ten times over without blinking. And again, charity. Good cause. Hungry children.

Why did it feel so hard to just say I wanted something?

I caught myself hesitating and felt a flash of irritation. This was stupid. I was a grown woman.

“What about that one?” I said, pointing at the sculpture before I could talk myself out of it.

Beau looked at where I was pointing. “The fox?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, if you want it.”

“I don’t need it.”

“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “You absolutely do need it. I’ll get it for you if you don’t get it for yourself.” He glanced around the room. “Let me go ask my mom how much it would cost to just buy it straight up. I’ll be right back.”

He walked off before I could protest, leaving me standing there alone with the fox.

I stared at the little sculpture, wondering what it was about this particular piece that had caught my attention. Maybe it was that foxes had always fascinated me. Clever creatures. Survivors. The kind of animal that thrived by being smarter than everything around it.

I could relate.

“Darcy Corwin?”

I turned to find three women approaching me, phones already out and pointed in my direction. They were young, probably mid-twenties, dressed in cocktail dresses that showed a lot of skin. Influencers, I thought immediately. The kind of people who made a living by documenting every moment of their lives for strangers on the internet.

Great.

“You look great tonight,” one of them said, her phone angled to capture both of us in the frame. “Nothing like the ice queen everyone’s been talking about.”

The others giggled like she’d said something clever.

Mean girls. I had only encountered them in the wild back in high school. I forgot how vicious they could be.

Where the hell was Beau? It was like these jackals had waited for him to walk away before they pounced.

“What do you think about that nickname?” another one asked, leaning in with her phone. “Ice queen. Does it bother you?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to shut this down. To not give them anything. I needed to walk away before they could twist my words into another viral moment. Don’t feed the trolls. Pretty trolls, but trolls, nonetheless.

I could hear Beau’s voice in my head telling me to loosen up, to show people I was human. Smile and make small talk. Dad basically said the same thing.

“It doesn’t bother me,” I said, trying to be blase. “People are going to talk, right? Nature of the beast when you put yourself out there.”