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Natalia rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Stephen happened before I became famous.” She added air quotes with her French-manicured hands.
“Well, don’t you have that effect on people,” said Amelia. “I’ve been producing you for a while now and you do have a way with leading men on for your own entertainment.”
“Speaking of leading men on,” Natalia said, blatantly averting the subject, “I may have told you I was taking a nap, but how did things turn out for you and Nate?”
As if a needle scratched an album off a record player, Amelia’s thoughts screeched to a halt. She cocked her head to the side as her heart slammed against her chest and the image of the one-night-stand hottie filtered through her head. Quickly, visions of the night she’d met Nate began to play like a movie on a screen. The ending became all too clear now. The only reason she’d gone down to the bar instead of hanging out with the film crew was because she’d given everyone the night off since Natalia had said she was going to bed. Amelia had gone downstairs to get a well-earned drink.
After years of following Natalia around, Amelia knew when the girl blurted out more than she wanted, especially when she pressed her glossy lips together as if to stop further words. To make things more obvious, Natalia clamped her hands over her mouth.
“I never said anything about who I was with.” Amelia raised a brow and crossed her legs in preparation of an interrogation. The gold flowers on her flip-flops caught the lighting in the room.
“Okay, fine,” Natalia huffed. “Nate Reyes met you on purpose. He knew I needed to speak with Stephen alone. I knew it would be impossible because of the crew but he helped me out.”
A sickening feel gurgled in the pit of Amelia’s stomach. The room became hot. The five-bulb vanity-mirror lights began to heat her face. “It was a setup?”
“No!” Natalia said, apparently panicking. “I mean. He was just distracting you for a minute.”
He’d ended up with a lot more than conversation over a drink. Amelia swallowed past the bile in the back of her throat. Nate used her. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Always around the glamorous Natalia, she might come off a bit of a plain Jane, but when Nate had picked her up in the bar, she’d felt like the star. Everyone in the bar, men and women alike, had stood taller at the sight of him. And now to learn he’d distracted her on purpose? The whole thing had been engineered. Because of him, she’d been suspended from her job. He needed to pay.
“So he’s from Villa San Juan, you say?”
Now Natalia cocked her head to the side as she spoke. “Actually, it’s kind of funny you mentioned your hometown. I swear he mentioned living in a Southwood but he never described it as drab as you have. Must be a different one.”
“Georgia?” Her mind recalled Nate asking her about her Southern upbringing and how he liked farms. Turned him on, didn’t he say?
“Yeah, but don’t take it too seriously if he flirted with you and bought you a drink,” said Natalia.
“Of course not,” Amelia mused. Her mind calculated how far her family’s farmhouse was from the downtown Southwood. Not far at all, she thought. Perhaps while taking care of Grandmamma, she’d pay him a visit.
“This is going to bug me. Let me find my emails.” Natalia reached for her phone in her pocket and began swiping across the screen, mumbling as she searched her listings. “Nate is a big ol’ flirt. He didn’t mean any harm, but as a matter of fact, I think his playboy ways are about to catch up with the green-eyed god. Oh, look! Southwood is saved in my searches. This is your hometown, right?”
Amelia leaned forward to read the location: Southwood, Georgia, population six thousand. She nodded.
“Cool,” said Natalia. “Look, he’s up for a bachelor auction. Karma is going to catch up with him because I am sure he’s got a handful of women down there. All his women are going to try and cash in.”
Seemed like the visit would be sooner than expected. For once Amelia couldn’t wait to get back to Southwood—population six thousand, or about to be five-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine.
* * *
Despite wearing a black tailored suit, a green Oxford shirt and argyle tie with various blends of green, Nate had never felt more naked than on the night of the bachelor auction. Women groped his pecs, his biceps, and he swore one of the church ladies pinched his butt.
The nightlife at the usual watering hole in Southwood had come out with a roaring blast. The community seemed to have pulled together for this charity event and crawled out of the woodworks at Southern Charm.
Who would purposely come up with the idea of a bachelor auction? If Nate didn’t know any better, he’d swear his brother had, just to piss him off. Some of the bachelors he met backstage were already set to be purchased by their wives. Briefly, Nate wondered if the wives did it just to ensure the tasks around their homes would be taken care of. Another part of Nate wondered if the women he’d spent time with in the last few months had gotten together to test his rule of No complications. With Southwood being such a small town, Nate understood gossip happened, but he always made sure he never gave the wrong impression. Maybe some of the women felt forty hours of time together could dissuade him. Thank God Pastor Rivers warned everyone about the sin of premarital sex. Nate wasn’t usually a religious man, but it was good to know his boundaries.
“Remember, this is for a good cause,” Lexi whispered, nudging her shoulder against Nate’s as he waited at the bar for the bartender to return with his longneck bottle of beer.
“I keep telling myself the same thing,” he said with a sigh.
The DJ in the elevated booth next to the stage put on a new song, which drafted a lot of ladies to the dance floor. Tonight’s event had brought out the old and the young alike. Four-top tables draped in white linen and centered around a single candle circled the dance floor and the second level. A dozen or so silver catering trays showed off some of the traditional hot hors d’oeuvres. He’d peeked earlier and found sweet corn cupcakes, fried green tomatoes, pimento cheese sandwiches and a few trays of deviled eggs sprinkled with smoked paprika. Nate had grown up on traditional Puerto Rican cuisine, which meant a lot of sofrito, pork, rice and beans. He enjoyed Southern meals—perhaps a little too much. Thank God for Southwood’s gym.
He looked around. He was at a bar filled with women and yet not one appealed to him. Ever since the night he’d met that beauty from Atlanta he’d found no woman who could compare to her. He figured he must be going crazy, because prior to the Atlanta trip, drinking and morally loose ladies were his thing.
His eyes scanned the room for a glimpse of his brother, who’d nominated him for the auction. The bastard hadn’t shown up yet.
“Stephen’s finishing up some work in his office,” Lexi said, reading his mind.
Nate half nodded. “Have you taken a look at the work I did on yours?”
Lexi beamed. “I have! You’re fantastic!”
“And cheap labor, too,” he joked. For the past few weeks he’d been helping Lexi extend her dress shop. Guilt stemming from the way his brother had treated her when the two of them first met had swayed Nate’s decision to help. Thanks to Stephen’s spiteful impulse buy, Grits and Glam Gowns and Reyes Realty and Contracting were next-door neighbors. Lexi had been making a pitch for expansion the day Stephen barged into her office.
“I am going to pay you,” Lexi said.
“Whatever. I am having fun. Since Stephen decided to move down here, he’s contracted many plantation-style homes in southern Georgia to all of Hollywood. And, of course, the kids are getting ready to go back to school. Like my brother said the other day, business is slow. I have nothing but free time on my hands.”
The bartender appeared with a longneck bottle of beer and a tumbler of cognac. Nate’s eyes darted downward. “I didn’t order this.”
“The lady at the end of the bar did.”
Nate craned his neck, hoping excitedly for some crazy reason to find Amelia Marlow standing there. He grabbed the top of the bottle with two fingers and sipped while glancing down the end of the bar. He prayed he masked his disappointment well. Brittany Foley offered him a wide, toothy grin, swinging her shoulders suggestively to the techno music pounding away. Through each white laser beam flashing through the air, Brittany winked and licked her lips. The tongue. Nate willed his body to respond to her nonverbal invitation. When the hell did he need to will himself? Brittany’s body rivaled all the covers of every swimsuit magazine out there, but in order to keep her job she needed to wear dowdy drab sweaters and long pants and quite often wore her hair up. Away from school, she was a complete knockout. The other men standing around her saw her for the siren she aimed to be.
“You have an admirer.” Lexi nudged his shoulder again.
“Don’t remind me.”
“I thought you two were getting along great at the end of the summer?” Lexi said, casting a glance at the end of the bar. “Philly says you two went out on a few dates.”
Nate half grinned. “Yeah, well, Philly is five years old.”
“Five going on eighteen,” mumbled Lexi. “So what’s the deal with you two?”
“No deal.” Nate shrugged.
“Will you bring her to the Keaton wedding?”
“Hell no!” Nate all but shrieked. At Lexi’s bemused smirk he explained, “She’s in a different place than I am.”
“Meaning she wants you in her bedroom?”
“Meaning,” Nate said with a sigh, trying to come up with what he meant, “she wants things I’m not sure I can provide.”
The word bedroom only conjured up the image of Amelia Marlow. In retrospect, he did have her phone number and knew how to take the first step. Beside him Lexi pretended to sway. Her fruity pink drink sloshed onto the bar top.
“Nathaniel Reyes does not have the right stuff to give a woman?”
The other women lingering around the two of them began gawking at him with their brows raised. “Keep your voice down.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said teasing, “we don’t want the bidding ladies to think the merchandise is broken.”
Nate fought against the impulse to cover his groin as all eyes went toward his lower half. “Will you keep your voice down?”
“Oh, trust me, I don’t think anything will stop a bidding war. As a matter of fact, I heard some of the ladies in the church choir comment on how they’ve pooled their money together and are going to divide up your weeklong stay amongst them.”
“What did your future fiancé get me into?”
“A sleazy way to do a good cause,” Lexi joked.
Nate turned to her and grabbed her arm. “You’ve got to do me a favor. Lexi, I need you to bid on me.”
“I didn’t bring any cash.” Lexi stretched her eyes wide with such surprise, Nate believed her.
“I will give you everything in my wallet.” Nate reached for his back pocket but a heavy hand patted his arm down. He turned in time to see his smug big brother grinning.
“You’re not trying to get my lady to buy you?” Stephen asked, siding up to Lexi with a protective arm around her waist. “You wouldn’t want to start any rumors, would you?”
Tight-lipped, Nate shook his head back and forth. Lexi had spent most of her life dealing with rumors about herself, her family and her brother-in-law. Being born a blonde to a family of brunettes was enough to get the townspeople talking. The former beauty queen had had to deal with vicious lies about relationships and of course the clincher—when she left the pageant world and her parents turned their backs on her. Nate admired Lexi. “Funny, considering you’re the one who—”
“Another round for my brother!” Stephen interjected himself verbally and physically. He tapped the top of the bar for attention, probably to avoid Nate bringing up the unfortunate topic of how he’d met Lexi. “What are you drinking? Beer or cognac?”
“He ordered a beer,” Lexi said, saddling up to Stephen, “but Philly’s teacher down there sent this drink over.”
Kill me now, Nate thought.
Amused, Stephen saluted Brittany down at the other end of the bar. “A potential buyer? Nate, dance with the woman so she can see what she might be getting.”
“Man, in a minute I’m leaving this place.”
“You can’t go now,” Lexi wailed. “Think of the children.”
“I’m rich, Lexi,” Nate countered with a cocky smile. “I will write a check for a sizable amount.”
Another hand snaked around his free arm. Nate turned to the side and flashed a grin at Donna Jean, secretary of the First Baptist Church. She took notes for the pastor and all the board meetings, but in the bedroom, she loved to give dictation. He bent close to give her a side hug.
“You’re not thinking about backing out?” Donna said with a wicked grin. Her long nails slipped under his jacket and drew circles down the center of his back. “I emptied my savings account.”
“Donna Jean!” Lexi gasped.
“What? I know what I’m getting and I’m not about to let this one slip through my fingers.” Donna Jean’s note-taking fingers slipped down to pinch his bottom.
Nate tried not to make an obvious gesture to get out of the way. He chuckled and drained his beer. “Well, if you all will excuse me, I think I’ll go check out my competition.”
Never before had he felt so much like a piece of meat. As he made his way toward the stage, women reached out to whisper in his ears how much money they were willing to spend in order to buy him. If only he had someone he trusted to make the purchase. Too bad a majority of the women in attendance tonight had already sampled a bit of him. It appeared as if every woman he’d told about his no-commitment rule was willing to accept forty hours of his time.
As if to make matters worse, Stephen slapped him on the tail before Nate entered the lionesses’ den and shouted, “No competition here, little brother.”
Chapter 3 (#ulink_a963ac08-892b-595f-8e51-ca8fd25a62aa)
Amelia Marlow smoothed her fingers across the white cloth of her table. The siren-red nail polish matched the body-hugging dress she wore for tonight’s activities. Earlier today she had driven east of Four Points to Black Wolf Creek to get a quick mani-pedi before heading off to the bachelor auction. Natalia had offered to make things up to her by getting her pampered for the day, but Amelia did not want to overdo her appearance for her return to the South. Not too many folks would be happy to see her.
Thanks to a high school exposé on peach farmers, Amelia had accidentally, yet singlehandedly, destroyed the town’s income. Her intentions came from a good place. She’d wanted to show how her town, and other parts of Four Points, were all connected. Most of the townsmen in Four Points were migrant workers from Southwood, Peachville, Black Wolf Creek and Samaritan. They all worked on the farms for cheap wages, being illegal migrants. Amelia had ended up uncovering a deeper secret about the most of the farmers’ tax evasions. Workers were deported and without their help farms had struggled to harvest their crops, then family businesses had perished. Her exposé had had a trickle-down effect, and everyone in Southwood with a peach orchard farm had suffered. Because she felt so horrible for her part in the demise of the town, Amelia never wanted to come back. Instead of wallowing in her guilt, she avoided reunions like the plague and let her love of exposés propel her into studying journalism in college.
The salon in Black Wolf Creek had done an excellent job styling her shoulder-length hair. Her dark tresses flipped off her shoulders, bared in her red strapless body-hugging dress. In her four-inch heels, she was like a panther out on the prowl. Her eyes scanned the tops of the heads of the patrons at tonight’s bachelor auction. Her elevated view gave her the ideal spot to prey on the man of the hour. As expected, a crowd of women followed him wherever he went. The corners of her lips tugged downward, as she realized she, too, was part of the admiring crowd. The man certainly knew how to fill out a suit. A close-cropped black beard covered the square jaw she’d stroked during their lovemaking. The palms of her fingers tingled with desire to touch its texture.
The tall single white candle in the center of their table flickered when Amelia’s cousin as well as best friend, Cayla Marlow-Beaumont, bumped the table with her hip when she returned with two glasses of red wine. Amelia took her eyes off the bar where Nate stood as the center of attention.
“Thank you,” Amelia said, circling her finger around the rim of her glass. “I didn’t want to risk being seen.”
“Is the dating world this hard?” asked Cayla.
Amelia pressed her lips together and frowned. “This is not about dating. This is about revenge. Nate Reyes used me.”
“From what you told me, you used him, too,” Cay reminded her. “You left without giving him your information.”
Why did she always tell her cousin everything? Cay lived vicariously through Amelia and in return acted as Amelia’s conscience. “Information he clearly had since he stalked me at the bar and seduced me in order to distract me from my job.”
Across the table Cay rolled her eyes. “You’re really going to go through with this?”
“I kid you not. Angels sang when Pastor Rivers announced the charity event.”
Cay squinted her hazel eyes. “Somehow I do not think you understand what the word charity means.”
Amelia’s eyes widened with surprise. “Are you kidding me? I donate all the time.”
“So you’ll donate your time and services for next month’s Hardware Hottie Bachelorette Auction?”
“What?” Amelia frowned.
“Kind of like this, but women are auctioning their time. Greg is threatening to nominate me,” Cay said with a giggle. “I might need to do some sexy lingerie shopping. Pastor Rivers’s guilt speech does not apply to husbands and wives.”
Giving her cousin the side-eye, Amelia shook her head. Tonight’s event offered forty hours of service from these handymen. The time put in could mean a couple hours of community service here and there. Amelia planned on cashing in her winnings this week. Once she got her grandmamma settled, she was out of here. So any sort of volunteering of her time was out of the question—especially not in this area.
“No, thanks.” Amelia’s frown deepened. “Besides, I am dropping enough cash tonight that all the schools in four counties should name a gym after me.” As she spoke, her cousin shook her head, not convinced of Amelia’s pledge. “What?”
“You can afford to hire someone else to fix Grandmamma’s place.”
“Principle, Cayla, principle.” Amelia cut her eyes back down to the bar where one woman blatantly ran her hands underneath the hem of his jacket. If everything went according to plan tonight, she’d prefer to not have him manhandled and cluttered with cheap perfume. He actually had the nerve to stand at the bar and pretended to push off one woman’s hand. “Nate Reyes used his wealth and connections to influence my job and get me suspended.”
“Did he make you turn your cell phone off?”
“It wasn’t off,” Amelia confessed before biting the corner of her lip to withhold the wanton grin spreading across her face. “More like underneath a pile of clothes.” Under the techno lights, she felt her face warm with the memory of her behavior. With each bright beam striking across her face, she feared her blush would be exposed.
“See,” Cay said, her frown turning up into a grin, “this is the point where I am going to change the subject.” Her eyes wandered around the open floor space while Amelia cut her eyes toward her cousin’s no-nonsense black slacks, white collared shirt and Great-Grandma Marlow’s pearls. Far be it for Amelia to judge. Standing next to the Ruiz family she screamed frumpy, but her cousin—six months older than Amelia—took the cake tonight. Cay’s idea of dressing to kill meant something completely different; her attempt to dress sexy tonight could not have gone more wrong, if Amelia said so herself. When Amelia had arrived at her house, Cayla had met her on the porch before her three children realized Auntie Amelia was in town. With no children of her own or nieces or nephews, Amelia looked at Cay’s kids as hers, which went along with the right to spoil them.
“I can’t believe we’re here again,” Amelia said, looking around once they found their table at the club. Southern Charm had been around for years. As a rebellious child, she and her high school friends had snuck into the bar with fake ID’s and drank warm beer. The establishment back in the day barely ID’d kids, as long as you were with someone you knew or you slipped the bouncers a few bucks. One of the first shows Amelia pitched was called Faking It. The show hadn’t taken off because every audience targeted had thought she meant something else, like sexual struggles some women faced in the bedroom.
Nowadays, security was tight and the entry fee to get in was astounding, though tonight’s auction didn’t make things better. To drag her cousin away from her boring couch with the husband she’d married directly after high school had cost Amelia an extra hundred bucks just to come to tonight’s event. She could have possibly shown her credentials from the network, if William hadn’t insisted on Amelia leaving them in the Orlando office. A badge from MET was like having a golden key to every event. Everyone wanted to be on television. All Amelia needed was to suggest her new ideas for reality shows and the floodgates opened. Family members told lifelong secrets and the most interesting part of her job was capturing people’s behavior when a camera was on them.
