Page 78 of Ruthless Edge

"Laura," I say, just as pleasantly, "I don't think you're in a position to worry about anyone else's auction tonight."

She blinks.

"But it's very sweet that you're thinking of me." I smile at her with every tooth I have and turn back to the curtain.

There's silence behind me.

Then Laura's name is called, and she goes out, and I watch through the curtain gap.

The room does not respond the way it's been responding all night.

There's a beat that stretches just long enough to be uncomfortable. Dr. Neely reads the description Laura wrote describing herself for the crowd, warm and professional, and opens the floor, and the silence continues. I scan the tables. The hockey players, Knox, Jace, Declan, and more than a dozen others, are there, but they’re all looking at their programs or their drinks or somewhere else entirely, but it’s awkwardly deliberate. Knox has his arms crossed and is looking at the centerpiece.

Not a single hand goes up.

Dr. Neely, who has been doing this long enough to know how to bridge an awkward moment, holds the pause just a second before a man at one of the donor tables near the back raises his hand. He's older, silver-haired, at the event because of his connection to the program rather than to the women in it, and he bids one hundred dollars.

Nobody follows.

The gavel comes down.

Laura's smile, when she comes back through the curtain, is replaced by a scowl. She walks past me without looking at me and picks up her clutch from the chair and goes to meet the silver-haired man, and the set of her shoulders says everything about her mood.

I don't feel as good about that as I expected to.

I feel something more complicated, which is the knowledge that Laura Prescott just walked out in front of hundreds of people and nobody raised their hand, and that being treated that way hurts. I don't like her. I haven't liked her for a long time. But I know how it hurts to have nobody want you.

Then my name is called.

Everything in my body goes still.

Rory touches my arm briefly. Paige, from across the room, gives me the look that tells me it’s going to be okay. I smooth the front of the red dress and look at the curtain and walk through it.

The room is brighter than I expected from the stage side, the lights warmer and more direct, and hundreds of faces turn toward me, and I walk to the mark on the floor where Dr. Neely indicated and I stand there.

Dr. Neely reads the description I’d written about myself. Event director, academic details, the things I've done for the program this semester. Her voice is warm and she means every word and I hear it from a very long distance because my blood is loud in my ears.

"Opening bid at two hundred dollars," Dr. Neely says. "Who wants to start?"

Knox's hand goes up.

Before the word is fully out of Dr. Neely's mouth, Knox's hand is up, and something in the room shifts, because half the hockey table saw it and there's a ripple of recognition, and then a second hand goes up from somewhere in the middle of the room and the bidding starts properly.

I don't look at Knox. I stand on the mark and I look at the middle distance and I listen to the numbers climb.

Three hundred. Four-fifty. Six hundred. There's laughter at one of the tables and Dr. Neely encourages it and the number jumps to eight. Knox counters immediately every time, and whoever's bidding against him seems to find this increasingly worth the battle, and the room is watching his engagement with more than a little humor. Nine hundred. Eleven. Twelve hundred and fifty.

"Fifteen hundred," Knox says.

His voice carries. I look at him.

He's looking straight at me. Not at Dr. Neely, not at the bidder across the room. At me. His arms are no longer crossed. His elbows are on the table and his eyes are on mine and he looks like a man who would walk through fire to win this bid.

Another bid from across the room. Sixteen.

"Seventeen fifty," Knox says.

"Eighteen," the other bidder says, and there's a low appreciative sound from the tables nearby.