Page 54

"I think you're not as mysterious as you think you are. You're just scared."

Jesus fucking Christ, this woman. "I'm not scared."

"Sure you're not. That's why you're white-knuckling your way through a charity dinner like it's a hostage situation."

"I'm not—" I stopped. Looked at my hands gripping my napkin. Consciously relaxed them. "This isn't fear. It's preference. I prefer more intimate gatherings."

"You prefer control. There's a difference."

Before I could respond, before I could figure out what to say to someone who saw through every defense I had, Isla stood up, her voice cutting through the ambient conversation.

"Everyone should check out the silent auction before it closes! Only thirty minutes left to get your bids in."

Harper stood immediately. "Finally. An activity besides psychoanalyzing athletes."

I followed, because the alternative was staying at the table alone, and at least near the auction tables I could maintain the illusion of purpose while avoiding further character dissection.

The silent auction spread across three long tables positioned near the ballroom's entrance. Weekend getaways, restaurant gift certificates, signed sports memorabilia, spa packages—various experiences that people with excess money could spend that money on while feeling virtuous about supporting children's hospitals.

Harper stopped in front of a wine tasting weekend in Napa Valley. Two nights at a luxury hotel, private tastings at four vineyards, dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant whose name I vaguely recognized from some food magazine in a doctor's office.

Current bid: four hundred dollars.

She picked up the pen, wrote down five hundred with confident strokes.

I watched her neat handwriting, the deliberate way she signed her name with a flourish at the end. Watched her set down the pen and move to the next item like she hadn't just bid five hundred dollars on an experience she might not even want.

Competition sparked in my chest, and I found myself picking up the pen. I wrote down six hundred.

Harper turned, saw what I'd done, and narrowed her eyes in a way that promised retribution. "Really? Are we doing this?"

"It's for charity."

"It's for your ego, Captain Miserable.”

"I don't have an ego about wine."

"You have an ego about everything. It's part of your whole—" She gestured at all of me. "—deal."

"What deal?"

"Your competitive, can't-let-anyone-else-win, must-establish-dominance deal. Very alpha. Very predictable."

"I'm not predictable."

"You're incredibly predictable. I could write an algorithm for your behavior." She grabbed the pen from my hand, our fingers brushing, sending electricity up my arm. "Watch this."

She wrote down eight hundred.

"Eight hundred dollars for wine you don't even care about," I observed.

"How would you know what I care about?"

"You drank vodka sodas at game night. Straight vodka after the soda ran out. That's not the drinking pattern of someone who appreciates wine subtleties."

"That's called adaptability. Making do with available resources. Very survival-oriented."

"It's called poor planning."