Bachelor at Her Bidding (Bachelor Auction Book 2)(7)

They all hugged her.

“All right, honey. You win. Go see the chef and sort out the details,” Susie directed.

*

“I thought Hannah Phillips bought my dinner?” Ryan asked.

“Seems we had a conglomerate,” Lily said. “Hannah, Susie, Lexy, Dayna and Lizzy. They bought you for Rachel Cassidy.”

“Uh-huh.”

Obviously he looked blank, because Lily said, “The new family doc who’s working with Dr. Majors and going to take over from him later in the year when he retires.”

Ryan was still no wiser, but he was definitely warier. A doctor. One who worked with his grandmother’s family physician, to boot. Was this anything to do with people trying to help Phyllis? People in Marietta looked after their own, he knew, but he had this covered. He didn’t need help. He definitely didn’t need a doctor interfering – especially one he couldn’t place, which meant she probably didn’t know his grandmother’s history and would tell him to forget about looking after her at home and send her to a residential nursing home in Bozeman where she knew nobody.

No. Just no.

“You were in the same year at school as her sister, Susie. Rachel was a couple of years below you,” Lily continued.

He still couldn’t place her.

“And you’re her birthday present.”

“Dinner is her birthday present,” he corrected. His food was on offer. He wasn’t.

Lily just smiled at him and introduced them swiftly before moving on to deal with questions from someone else.

Rachel Cassidy. He definitely didn’t remember her from school, and he was fairly sure he would’ve noticed her around Marietta.

Noticed, but not acted on that noticing, because life was already too complicated. And he didn’t need to add her into the mix. What made it worse was that physically Rachel was exactly the kind of woman he was usually attracted to – petite and slender, with long dark hair and a fine bone structure. She was absolutely gorgeous; but at the same time she didn’t seem to know it. There was no preening and wiggling her backside or tossing back her hair in a “look-at-me” gesture.

Ah, crap.

He didn’t have time for any kind of relationship.

He really, really didn’t want to be attracted to her. He’d just have to stifle these crazy thoughts. Not let himself wonder how soft her skin was, or how her mouth would feel against his.

She looked nervous. And right at that moment Ryan didn’t know what to say to her. At all. He could schmooze even the most difficult clients in a restaurant – but right now Rachel Cassidy wasn’t a client, he wasn’t in a restaurant, and he felt utterly clueless. The only thing he could do was to fall back on the facts.

“Lily tells me that your friends bought me for your birthday.”

Rachel winced. “That sounds bad.”

Yeah, it did. Ryan wished the words back. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound judgmental or anything.”

“I, um…” She bit her lip, and Ryan had to suppress the wave of heat that rolled through him as he wondered what her mouth would taste like. “This is awkward.”

She could say that again. And if she had any idea what was going through his head right now, she’d run a mile.

“So I was wondering… if I covered the extra costs, maybe you could cook dinner for all six of us instead?”

It was the perfect get-out. Brilliant. Why hadn’t he thought of it first and suggested it, saying that he’d cover the costs himself? He opened his mouth to say, “Great idea.”

But his mouth clearly wasn’t with the program, because instead he found himself saying, “Sorry. The deal is me cooking dinner for the two of us, as a date. I can’t change the rules now.”

Where the hell had that come from? Had he gone nuts? He didn’t want to date Rachel. He didn’t want to date anyone. Especially a woman with wide eyes as blue as a spring Montana sky, and a shy, self-deprecating smile that made his gut twist. A woman he suspected could easily get under his skin.

He didn’t need this.

He didn’t have time for this.

But, before he could backtrack, she said, “I guess not. Because it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else who bid.”

He was stuck with it now. “No. So I guess we need to sort out where and when we do it.”

Her eyes widened.

Oh, hell. His mouth was getting him in so much trouble tonight. He needed to stick to the facts. “Dinner,” he clarified. He hadn’t meant sex.

And oh, he wished he hadn’t thought of the word. Because now he really was thinking of sex. Thinking of what Rachel Cassidy would look like in his bed, with her hair spread over his pillow and that lush mouth pouting at him. Thinking of how it would feel to ease into her body and lose himself in making love with her.

He shook himself. No no and absolutely no. Sex wasn’t on the menu. This was dinner. “It sounds as if your friends wanted to give you a birthday dinner with a difference. When’s the actual day?”

“Two weeks today.”

“Would that be a good day for you to have dinner?”

“I guess. My parents are out of town on a belated Valentine’s, and as Susie and the girls bid for you they won’t mind if we do something together on the Sunday instead.”

“Two weeks today it is, then,” he said. “I’ll need to cook at your place, if you don’t mind.”