Page 62 of Theirs for the Holidays

My heart pounds in my chest and my hands are suddenly clammy. All eyes are on me as I walk up to the stage to stand next to the mayor. I have to swallow back the surge of anxiety,and before I can even think of trying to say this was a mistake, he starts the bidding at a hundred dollars.

At first, the room is silent, and my heart sinks. It’s all my worst fears realized, in a room full of everyone in town. They’ll talk about this for years to come, how no one bid on my offering and I had to leave in shame.

But then a man in the back raises his hand, and I relax a little.

“Thank you, man in the back with the hat,” the auctioneer says. “Do I have $150?”

To my shock, Lennox raises his hand. “$200,” he calls.

“Thank you, two hundred. Do I hear three?”

“Three hundred,” says the man in the back, raising his hand again.

The auctioneer calls for four hundred, and this time Sawyer outbids him, raising it to five hundred.

I just keep staring at all of them, feeling like I’m watching a tennis match, going back and forth. The man in the back bids $550, and Rhett ups it to seven hundred dollars. The man they’re bidding against ups his bid to a thousand dollars, and my eyes bug out of my head.

“Two thousand,” Lennox says easily.

“Five,” counters Sawyer.

The auctioneer can’t even keep up with them as they escalate the price, and he just watches along with me and everyone else as the Sullivan brothers have their own private bidding war.

Their rival goes up to six thousand before he has to drop out, and there’s a look of relief on his face that I don’t blame him for. That’s a lot of money. But the brothers aren’t done yet.

“Eight,” from Rhett.

“Twelve,” from Lennox.

Sawyer ups the ante to twenty, and everyone gasps.

From there, it’s like they’re just throwing numbers around. Twenty-five, thirty, forty thousand dollars. By the time they’vedone another round, the bid is up to seventy-five thousand, and everyone is speechless. This is the kind of money that Sweetwater Lake has never seen before at something like this.

I know this kind of money means nothing to them, with how rich they are, but it’s still makes my head spin to see them rushing to spend it on me like this. Well, for charity, but still. They’re bidding on me. Before my contribution was announced, none of them had shown any interest in anything else.

“The bid stands at seventy-five thousand dollars,” the auctioneer says, pausing to clear his throat. “Seventy-five going once, going twice?—”

“Hold on,” Sawyer says, putting a hand up. He gestures for his brothers to move in closer. All of them put their heads together for a moment and then Sawyer grins. “Mr. Mayor, would you accept a combined bid from the three of us?”

The mayor blinks, startled. “Of course. What’s your bid?”

“Two hundred thousand dollars,” he says.

There’s a gasp from the crowd because that’sa lotof money for a town like this. Probably more than was raised in the last two festivals combined.

“Two hundred thousand dollars is the bid,” the auctioneer says, sounding like he can’t quite believe it. “Two hundred thousand going once, going twice… Sold!” He bangs his gavel and that’s that. “The winners are these three very generous gentlemen here.”

“Thank you so much for your contribution,” the mayor says.

I’m just standing there, stunned at what just happened. If it wasn’t for the fact that the mayor and the auctioneer both look just as shocked, I would have thought I hallucinated the whole thing. But they do, and Sawyer has his checkbook out, so clearly it was all real.

All three of them stride forward, and Lennox scoops me up off the stage.

“What are you doing?” I ask, laughing a little as some of the shock starts to fade.

“Collecting our prize, Heartbreaker,” he murmurs back. “What does it look like?” I can feel a little of the tremor in his injured side, but he carries me with confidence even with that.

Sawyer and Rhett are close behind, and the crowd of people all but parts as we walk through. I can hear people whispering, and practically everyone is staring at us. If my parents are still here, I can only imagine how my mom is going to react to what just happened. Nothing says upstaging Isabelle like three men spending almost a quarter of a million dollars to get a baking lesson from me. Now we might actually be accused of causing a scene.