The Bachelor Auction(11)

He’d died the next day.

Lung cancer.

Cancer had stolen both of her parents.

Jane stood and started clearing their plates while her sisters chattered endlessly about work.

It was hard to believe that they were both successful lawyers. On the other hand, maybe that was why they were so good at arguing with her, wearing her down, making her feel small.

The front door slammed and Jane looked up.

Would it kill her sisters to say good-bye?

With a sigh, she ate the leftover eggs in three bites, dumped the dishes into the sink, and ran back up the stairs to her room to put on her uniform.

Torn jeans and a white T-shirt.

She never deterred from it. She’d ruined way too many of her favorite shirts because of multiple bleach accidents.

Humming, she opened the curtains to her small room and smiled. Today would be a good one. She wouldn’t let the rocky start ruin the rest of the day.

After all, last night had started out terrible. But it had ended on a good note. She touched her lips. Brock hadn’t kissed her, but she could imagine what his kiss would feel like all the same. Brock was so out of her league it was laughable, but he’d treated her like an equal, something she wasn’t used to even in her own family.

Pushing that depressing thought away she turned away from the window to grab her tennis shoes, only to stumble over a pair of heels that cost more than she made in a week.

They were even prettier in the daylight.

The soft leather glistened.

A small smile formed as she picked up one of the shoes and examined it. These were the kind of shoes that made her feel like she could click the heels together and she’d end up with a different life.

A life where her boyfriend didn’t dump her because she was too boring.

A life where her sisters respected her.

A life where she didn’t live with the constant nagging guilt of keeping the family together.

A life where men like Brock asked women like her on a date.

She slipped her right foot into the pump and stood on one leg, then slid her left foot in the remaining shoe.

Immediately she was reminded of his smile, his hard muscled body as it pressed against hers.

Jane clicked her heels together and whispered, “I wish…” Her eyes filled with tears. “I want…” She stumbled out of the shoes and stared down at her naked feet.

“I just want more than this,” she finished, looking around the room she’d been forced into since both of her sisters had claimed the bigger rooms in the house.

And then her gaze fell on her own reflection in the mirror.

Straightening her shoulders she stared herself down. There were people worse off than she was. She was just being emotional.

Tears blurred her vision—this reaction was so unlike her.

Maybe it was the fact that right above the shoes was a pile of bills that she knew she’d have to pay. Bills that her sisters didn’t feel it was their responsibility to help out with.

She kicked one of the heels and crossed her arms—actually, her reaction made perfect sense. Because for one fleeting moment she’d been something more than the Jane who cleaned office buildings and bailed her sisters out of shopping debt.

She’d felt beautiful.

Powerful.

How pathetic, that all it took was a well-dressed man with a gorgeous smile and a pair of shoes, to completely disarm her.

And make her want things that girls like her would never get.

Those shoes were a catalyst.

Those shoes were temptation.

Those shoes were the devil.





Chapter Seven



Brock woke up with a pounding headache and a shoe in bed with him.

A woman’s shoe.

Someone grunted from across the room.

He wasn’t alone.

Pasting on a carefully blank expression, he looked around. Shit, had he slept with Cinderella?

God, that smile.

Those hips.

Those legs.

He squeezed the shoe tighter between his hands as lust hit him hard and fast; even with the hangover from hell, he could still see a clear picture of Jane in his head.

“Uhhhhh.” The groaning was coming from the bathroom. Slowly, so as not to puke all over the pristine wood floor, he threw the white duvet off his legs and walked to the tune of a jackhammer between his temples…all the way to the bathroom.

A foot poked out through the half-open door.

Definitely not a size eight and a half.

Nor feminine.

He kicked at the limb to get the door fully open and the groan turned into cursing. Pushing at the door, he saw Bentley hugging the toilet like a new best friend.

“Rough night?” Brock smirked like the complete bastard he was as Bentley lifted a middle finger in the air and kept it there. He’d tire out, eventually.

Another grunt sounded from somewhere else in the large master bathroom.

Brock stepped around the corner. Brant was sprawled in the bathtub, holding a fluffy white towel close to his chest.