LITMIR.BIZ

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know he was a doctor. Apparently she’d looked over his bio. “Acute temporary emesis. Induced by vertigo.”

      “Otherwise known as…?”

      “Spinning on the tire swing until he puked. He’ll be fine. Have him sit in the shade for thirty minutes or so.”

      “Are you going to bill me for this?”

      He grinned. “Only if I don’t win the blanket.”

      “Quilt. It’s a quilt. The pattern is called Log Cabin.”

      “We’d better get going, Rob,” said the guy with the ponytail.

      It took Rob a few seconds to recognize him as another former Lost Springs resident. “Hey, Stan. Good to see you here.”

      A wail of electronic feedback obscured Stanley Fish’s remark. Rob shaded his eyes in the direction of the arena. “They’re ready to start.”

      “I think you’re right.”

      He felt a sudden, idiotic jolt of nerves. How had he let Lauren and her old school pal Lindsay talk him into this? He made himself look nonchalant as he nodded to Twyla. “See you around,” he said. “Brian, don’t get on any more spinning tire swings, okay?”

      As he and Stan walked away from the table under the spreading oak tree, he said, “So you’re here for the meat market, too, right?”

      “Nope, I came to cover the event.”

      “Cover—”

      “I work for Clue Magazine.”

      “Great. You mean this is going to show up in a national magazine?”

      “Hey, why not? It’s human interest. People live for stories like this. Mystery dates. Lost boys making good. Women getting into bidding wars over men.”

      “Then do me a favor. If you quote me, call me an ‘unnamed source’.”

      Stan scribbled something in a pocket notepad. “You wish.”

      A young woman draped in camera equipment and wearing a vest with rows of pockets joined them. “Hey, guys.”

      “Rob, this is Betta, my photographer.”

      Rob greeted her. “So what do you think of a bachelor auction?”

      “Sounds like a hell of a good time to me,” she said, pulling down the bill of her baseball cap to shield her eyes from the sun. “I always did like shopping.”

      “Rob, I’m going to put you down as the reluctant bachelor. Hey, that’s got a nice ring to it.” Stan scratched in his notebook. “So why’re you here?”

      “Because the place was home to me for eleven years.” Rob didn’t elaborate. But whatever love and esteem he’d gotten in those years, he’d gotten right here. And as much as that was, it had never been enough. “I came back as a favor to a friend of a…friend.” No point in dragging Lauren’s name into this. The press knew who she was because of her family.

      “So, you looking forward to being sold off as a dream date?”

      “Like a root canal, pal. Like a root canal.” He went toward the arena where the auction would take place. Rex and Lindsay ran around with clipboards like a couple of soccer coaches. Lindsay’s uncle, Sam Duncan, a retired coach and counselor, waved his cowboy hat in an attempt to round up the bachelors. A huge crowd filled the open-air risers—mostly women. Some of the guys were already present, seated in folding chairs around the auctioneer’s podium. They laughed and joked and punched one another in the shoulder, remembering old anecdotes from their days here. Rob took a seat by Cody Davis. He looked out at the busy, babbling audience and leaned over to say, “Are you as freaked out by this as I am?”

      “Oh, yeah.” Cody hooked his cowboy boots around the legs of his chair and balanced it on its hind legs. “Where’d all these females come from, anyway?”

      “All over, I’m told.” From behind his shades, Rob scanned the rows of bleachers. “Damn, that’s a lot of women.” They came in all shapes and sizes, all ages and persuasions. There were women in skin-tight western-cut jeans, some of them whistling and hooting good-naturedly as a couple of the guys postured for the audience, flexing their muscles and goofing around. A tall blond woman in jeans and a denim work shirt looked as if she had just stopped in and wasn’t certain she wanted to stay. Another sat with two small children, pointing at the risers and appearing to have a serious conference with the kids. A pregnant woman clutching the bachelor auction brochure to her chest sat alone—now there was a scary prospect.

      Four women had planted themselves in the center of the front row. The two older ones wore spangled jogging suits and shiny sneakers. Another had golden hair teased high and was smoking a cigarette, and the petite Asian woman next to her looked completely enthralled with the entire situation.

      Rob leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “You know,” he observed, “there really is no such thing as an ugly woman.”

      Davis nodded readily. “That’s a fact. That is a fact.”

      In a trained, booming voice, the auctioneer greeted everyone and laid out the rules of the event. Rob barely listened. There was a sense of absurdity about the whole thing that made it feel not quite real, as if this were a world set apart from everywhere else.

      In a way, Lost Springs had always been that. A group of homeless boys whose families had failed them. This was the place where they had come together, where they had fought and cried and raged and laughed and learned. The ranch stood for hope and healing. Letting it close was not an option. That was why he was here. That was why he had agreed to go through with this lunacy. This was a place worth saving, because without it, boys like the boy he had been would have nowhere to go.

      Lauren was adamant about doing charitable works. She belonged to a family so wealthy that fifty years ago they’d created a foundation for their charity. The DeVane Foundation employed a dozen staff members, and Lost Springs had been on their list for years. Rob had met Lauren at another Lost Springs fund-raiser, that one a fairly tame charity ball. The DeVanes were acquainted with the Fremonts of Lightning Creek, and Lauren had gone to boarding school with Kitty Fremont and Lindsay Duncan.

      It constantly amazed him that they wound up together, for they couldn’t be more different. The heiress and the orphan. Oliver Twist and Princess Grace. Every once in a while, Rob felt an unbidden twinge of discomfort with Lauren. It was hard to define, but the feeling was there, tangible yet hidden, like a pebble in his shoe. She had always been proud of his success and his prospects. But he suspected that deep down she wished he’d been born with real class.

      He dismissed the feeling. Sure, they came from different worlds, but they were smart enough to minimize their differences. She was exactly what he had envisioned, when the organizers had made him specify the ideal woman for the auction brochure: an “educated city girl with a high-powered, socially responsible career.”

      Spying an upswept crown of blond hair in the audience, he felt his heart give a momentary lurch. No, it wasn’t Lauren, but a part of him would have been ridiculously pleased to discover she couldn’t stand for him to be auctioned off to a stranger and had come rushing up here to buy him for herself.

      That would have been pure fantasy and so completely unlike Lauren that it was ludicrous.

      “So who do you want to bid on you?” Davis asked. “Got any preferences?”

      Before he realized what he was doing, Rob looked directly at the back field, where a tall spreading oak tree nodded in the summer breeze. Twyla McCabe stood by the breeze-stirred raffle quilt, hands on her hips, watching the proceedings with mild bemusement. Then he caught himself and focused on the bleachers. “No preference. Like I said, all women are beautiful. It’s for charity, anyway.”

      “…do this in alphabetical order, I guess,” the auctioneer was saying. “So, ladies, put your hands together for our first bachelor, Dr. Robert Carter.”

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