What a Bachelor Needs (Bachelor Auction Book 4)(2)
Hitching her smile a little higher, Mardie slid a freshly loaded tray of drinks onto her hand and sashayed back out onto the floor. Tiredness came with single motherhood, hard work, and a monster home loan. Tiredness came with the life she’d chosen to live, and she wouldn’t trade any of it.
She weaved her way through the crowd to the table where Sawyer, Ella Grace, and four others had squeezed into a booth. Her smile grew more genuine as she began to set drinks down in front of people. Ella Grace Emerson had been three years behind her at school but these days Mardie counted her as one of those true friends who stuck around, even when the going got ugly.
“You look tired,” Ella offered, her blue eyes assessing.
“No, I look fit, healthy, and flush with the joys of hard work and home ownership. I have a new hot water system,” she finished smugly. Last time they’d spoken, Mardie’s hot water tank had just died and Ella had been there to witness both the panic and the cursing. “Paul Harris hooked it up for me yesterday. And before you ask, I also had him install a heating system in Claire’s room.”
“What about your room?”
“He half-fixed the one in mine. Said it’d go for weeks.”
“’Cause that’s useful, a half-fixed heater in the middle of winter.”
“I can always sleep in Claire’s room. Patience, my friend. Patience and tips. Are you bidding?”
“I am. On behalf of Emerson’s Holdings, I am here to bid big.” Ella was a cattle dynasty princess, albeit one who worked just as hard as any of her father’s ranch hands. But spend money she could, and regularly did. “Which one’s the pick?”
“Depends.” Mardie spared a glance for Marietta’s finest bachelors, currently ranging between the end of the bar and the stairs that led to an off limits storage area. Tonight that storage area was doing double duty as a bachelor’s dressing and resting room. Half the bachelors were currently leaning over the railing looking cocky, aloof, amused, or just plain black-eyed grim. It was all very burlesque. Only newcomer to town, bad girl and former stripper, Lily Taylor, could have come up with an idea like this and made it stick. Lily could persuade most anyone to do anything. “Have you seen the bachelor menu for the evening?” Mardie gestured towards the flyer on the table. “What do you need?”
“Not a damn thing.” Ella slid Sawyer a thoroughly contented smile, and so she should, because Sawyer was one of the good ones. “Hence my need for a recommendation. I need your help here. Which one’s your pick?”
“Why do I have to choose? He’s your bachelor.”
“What about Casey? Remember him from school?”
“I’d say no, but you’d know I was lying.” Sawyer looked puzzled, and Mardie cut him a break and offered up a thumbnail sketch of Jett Casey as a teenager. “Heart throb, daredevil, impossible dream – every school has one. He was one year ahead of me, and I’m not sure how Ella even scrapes into remembering him.”
Ella grinned. “My first high school year was his last. It was still memorable.”
“Better buy him, then. He’s offering up a backcountry ski trip for a party of up to four people. You’d love it.” Mardie glanced towards the bar, only to find the man in question deep in conversation with Lily. Lily looked uncommonly harried, while Jett looked…amused. He also looked impossibly handsome in his tailored suit and white shirt that showed off the column of his throat and just a hint of muscled chest. He had inky black hair, olive skin, melting brown eyes and as for the body beneath the clothes… yes. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, strong thighs… oh, hell yes.
“Wonder why he’s never hooked up with anyone?” Ella mused.
“Probably too busy chasing World Championships.” Mardie grimaced because that sounded petty and she didn’t want to be. “He’s good people,” she offered reluctantly, and then because it was Ella, “He helped me out once.”
“Helped you out how?”
But Mardie had already made her exit. No time to chat, long story, and not one she was any way interested in telling.
“Will he remember you?” Ella called after her, and this time Mardie looked back and shrugged.
Maybe.
Probably.
No matter how much she wished for a spell to make him forget.
*
It was her. He was sure of it. Jett Casey stood at the bar and watched as Mardie Griffin – or was it Mardie Prescott – wrangled customers with the ease of long familiarity. Same elfin features and tawny-colored eyes, same smile that had haunted his dreams… and not in a good way. They’d gone to the same high school but they hadn’t mixed in the same circles. She’d had the body of a ballerina, all long lines and mesmerizing angles, and she’d been good at track, he remembered that, but she’d been more interested in pool halls than sport. Her daddy had been a snooker champion who’d taught her everything he knew. And then, rumor had it, he’d refused to let her play competitively because pool halls were no place for women.
With that kind of male influence, maybe it had been inevitable she’d take up with Boyd Prescott. Another one who, in Jett’s opinion, had treated women with far less respect than they deserved.
The last time he’d seen her, Mardie’s mouth had been a bloodied and swollen bee-sting in a too pale face. One of her eyes had been hammered shut while the other had tracked his approach with all the terror of a cornered deer.