Page 27

A polite round of applause sounded throughout the room as Tommy pushed back from the table and climbed the stairs up to the stage.

The auctioneer handed the microphone off to him and he turned to address the crowd, giving everyone the full force of his charm that made up the fame he was still running from.

“I wanted to take a few seconds to thank all of you for supporting an organization like the Boys & Girls Club. They are making a difference every day in the lives of the youth in this city. The money raised here today could go toward our next great thinker, our next great artist, our next great inventor, or the next great athlete. We’re thankful for your dedication to the next generations. Now let’s get this auction started.”

A roar took over the crowd as they applauded Tommy’s speech.

Maggie tried to inconspicuously dab at the corners of her eyes as she watched him walk back to our table.

She stood up to give him a hug and my heart squeezed as I watched two of the most important people in my life share a tender moment, despite the pang in my chest at the uncertainty of Harper’s response.

As soon as Tommy sat down, servers swarmed to deliver our meal and to give the auctioneer a moment to prepare. The first item to be auctioned off was one of Tommy’s World Series badged jerseys. The starting bid was five-thousand dollars and quickly went up from there.

Item after item was ushered across the stage until my own World Series badged jersey was presented.

“The bidding will also start at five thousand dollars,” the auctioneer told the crowd. “We don’t want to show any favoritism here.”

The crowd chuckled as Tommy and I shared a smile. Someone in the back opened the bid before others joined in, raising the price faster than Tommy’s.

“I’m looking for ten thousand dollars,” the auctioneer pointed out at the crowd as he waited for the next bidder to raise their hand.

“Ten thousand.” My body froze as I realized that voice had come from right next to me. I slowly turned my head to see Harper with her hand in the air.

“We have ten thousand dollars down in the front, do we have twelve?”

As soon as the sound of my blood rushing left my ears, I reached out to stop her hand from raising again as another bidder jumped in after her. “What are you doing, Harper?”

She dropped her head as she released a breath and gave me a small shrug. “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking that far. I’ve just been sitting here thinking about how badly I screwed up by not saying anything earlier and I wanted to do something to make it up .?.?.”

“You were going to go into debt to get my attention?” I asked her, ignoring the way Tommy and Maggie were watching us.

“I also wanted your jersey.” Harper gave me a sheepish smile, as she avoided looking at those around us giving curious glances.

“I have five other ones. You could have just said something, I’d give it to you for a lot less than ten thousand dollars.” I was the first one to laugh at the ridiculousness of what she’d just done before Harper was joining in.

Tommy and Maggie were looking at us like we’d lost our minds completely and maybe we had. Between Harper bidding for a jersey that was worth an absurd amount of money and the way her green dress was sending all the blood away from my head, our cognitive thinking skills were nowhere to be found.

As the laughter subsided, Harper’s eyes met mine. “I was trying to do one of those grand gestures people always talk about.”

“Why?” I asked as the auctioneer sold my jersey for nearly fifty thousand dollars in the background.

“Because I froze earlier!” Harper exclaimed. “When you told me you meant what you said to Tommy earlier, I froze.”

I reached out to take her hand in mine, admiring the way they looked together—her delicate fingers against my callused ones.

“I hadn’t really planned for you to hear what I said to Tommy, so I can’t expect you to have a response for it yet.

It’s okay that you froze, Harper. We haven’t had this discussion and I’m putting you on the spot.

That’s not fair to you. I want you to feel comfortable and ready for a conversation like that. ”

Harper nodded her head and turned her hand over in mine, so we were palm to palm. “Let’s talk about it then.”

I glanced toward the stage where the last item I’d donated was being auctioned off—a signed glove. Tommy and Maggie had attempted to turn their attention away from us, but I caught Maggie glancing over every few seconds. She gave me a guilty smile when she realized she’d been caught snooping.

“Right now?” I asked Harper.

“That’s the last item.” She pointed toward the exclusive vacation in Italy that was showcased on the screens around the room. The bidding had started to slow down, and the auctioneer was getting ready to slam his gavel down and declare the winning bid. “Maybe we can get some air?”

I caught Tommy’s eye, who had gone back to staring at us like a nosy neighbor. He tilted his head toward three sets of doors just behind us that led out onto a patio.

“Okay, let’s step outside.”

We stood up as soon as the last bid was declared. I waited for Harper to go in front of me so I could stick close to her back as we moved through the crowd, eyes still following us as we walked past.

We walked through the open doors leading out onto the patio and the chatter of conversation drifted away. It was our own personal oasis, surrounded by tall bushes and flowering shrubbery. A fountain bubbled in the middle with curved stone benches on either side.

Harper moved to take a seat first and I sat down in the open space next to her. A breeze drifted through the air that sent a shiver down Harper’s spine.

“Here,” I told her as I shrugged out of my tuxedo jacket and moved to drape it over her shoulders. She looked so small with the jacket swallowing her slender frame.

“Thanks,” Harper gave me a grateful smile as she snuggled into the fabric.

There was only the sound of the fountain and the leaves rustling in the shrubbery around us until Harper turned to look at me with those beautiful brown eyes shining through the night.

“I think we both should have realized this conversation was going to come eventually with everything we’ve been doing.” Harper twirled one of my cuff links around as she avoided looking back up at me.

I laughed at the obviousness of it all. After flirting with her for nearly a month and sleeping with her again, the only place this was heading was this very moment.

“I guess so,” I told her, waiting for her to take the lead. I’d already unintentionally made my feelings clear, there was no need to remind her.

“That first night back in Florida, I had no intention of anything that happened between us extending beyond another day.” I tried to ignore the way my heart clenched at her honesty as I remembered the way my excitement had been extinguished when I’d woken up to an empty bed that next morning.

“But when I got the news I’d be covering the Cougars, the first thing I thought about was that I’d see you again.

Maybe I should have known then that there was more between us than just using one another to escape reality. ”

“I was wondering if the universe was bringing you back into my life after how hard these last few months had been,” I told her, desperately wanting to wrap her hands in mine again, but I kept them curled into fists, so I didn’t push this further than she wanted it to go.

“I was calling it serendipity.”

“I like that .?.?. serendipity,” I mused as I rubbed my jaw and looked up at the moon in the sky, nearly full and illuminating the night.

Harper finally let go of my cuff link and reached for my hands. “I’d hoped to keep my distance and remain professional or at the very least friendly, but you were quite insistent.”

I leaned against the edge of the fountain so I could tilt my head back further to take in the stars twinkling down at us.

“If there’s one thing you should have learned by now it’s that I’m relentless in my pursuit of something I want.

And yes, I would like to date you, Harper.

But if you want to wait and keep seeing each other the way things are now, that’s fine, too.

Because the last thing I want is to not have you around. ”

Everything in me desperately wanted to hear her say she wanted me, too.

Harper’s stare was heavy as she studied my side profile.

She sucked in a breath like she was preparing to tell me what I wanted to hear—that she didn’t want things to stay the same.

My heart dropped when she decided against it and followed my gaze up to the nearly full moon in the sky. “It sure is beautiful tonight.”

I turned my head to look over at her, my eyes tracing the curve of her jaw and the slope of her nose.

Every time I looked at her, I was taken by her beauty, and in awe of the luck I’d struck that she wanted to spend her time with me.

Her hair spilled over her shoulders as she tilted her head back and basked in the moon’s glow.

“Yes, it is.” Harper startled as she looked over at me to see me staring right at her. “You both are.”