silk the color of ripening wheat, her eyes the color of Texas bluebells. Her face was a perfect oval, with those incredible blue eyes darkly lashed and wide-set under slender, arched brows. She had a proud, straight nose, a sexy indentation above her mouth…
Oh, that mouth. The full upper lip. The softly curved lower one.
It was a mouth made for kissing.
His gaze dropped lower, to the tanned shoulders left bare by a halter-necked dress the color of garnets, to the generous lift of her breasts, the slender waist and rounded hips. Her skirt ended at midthigh, revealing a long length of shapely leg.
His blood hummed in his ears.
He wanted her. Wanted her with a primal need and desire that surpassed anything he’d ever known. He wanted to kiss that mouth, caress that body…and melt the coldness that clung to her like an invisible sheath of ice. He could see it in her posture. In the way she didn’t so much as blink when his eyes met hers again. In the defiant lift of her chin.
He knew she could see the frank, sexual appraisal in his gaze—and that it didn’t matter a damn to her.
Look all you like, she seemed to say, but don’t be foolish enough to think you can have what you see.
Travis felt his body tighten. The sounds of the cheering women, the drone of the auctioneer, faded to a dull roar.
He imagined himself coming down off that stage. Going to her. Taking her in his arms. No words. No niceties. Just taking her in his arms, carrying her out of the ballroom to a place where they’d be alone, ripping that piece of dark red silk from her body and burying himself deep inside her while she wrapped her arms and legs around him…
Oh, hell.
He was standing in front of hundreds of people, thinking things that could only bring a man public humiliation. Stop it, he told himself fiercely, and he tore his gaze from her, thought about cold showers and forced himself to focus on the delighted faces of the crowd.
“I have five thousand,” the auctioneer shouted. “Do I hear six?”
“Six,” the lady in the front yelled.
Travis fixed his attention on her. He flashed a sexy smile. She squealed. He turned his back to the audience, looked over his shoulder and pretended he was going to slip his jacket off.
The crowd whooped and cheered.
“Six-five,” a brunette shouted. Travis turned and blew her a kiss.
He didn’t need the blonde Ice Princess. He had a trio of women in a frenzied bidding war over him. What more could a guy ask?
“Seven,” a stunning redhead said.
“Hey,” he shouted, “I’m worth a lot more than that!”
The crowd stamped its well-shod feet in approval. The brunette laughed, and another redhead shot to her feet. “Seven-five,” she called, and everybody cheered and applauded.
Travis grinned. The guy from Hannan and Murphy had gone for five.
“I’m worth more than that, too,” he yelled.
The crowd loved it.
“Eight,” the lady in the front said.
“Eight-five,” the brunette shouted.
“Nine!”
Travis laughed. The evening he’d dreaded was turning out to be fun. One more glance at the blonde, that was all, before the gavel swung down. Not that it mattered. He’d probably overestimated her looks. If she’d walked farther into the room so that she was closer to the stage, he’d have seen her flaws.
What flaws?
She had come closer, while the bidding was raging. She was almost at the stage and Lord, she wasn’t beautiful, she was spectacular.
And she was looking at him. Her expression was difficult to read. Interested, yes, but it seemed…
Speculative. As if she were appraising him. And finding him wanting.
Travis’s hands knotted at his sides as the woman turned swiftly and started back up the aisle.
Who did this babe think she was, to check him out and then walk away? Turn around, he thought furiously, turn around!
The woman’s pace increased.
Travis took a step forward. To hell with the auction!
“Nine thousand,” the auctioneer shouted, and the crowd roared. “Nine thousand once. Nine thousand twice…”
“Ten,” the brunette screamed.
The blonde woman stopped. That’s it, baby, Travis thought. Turn around. Look at me.
And she did. Her eyes met his. Their gazes locked, and held. For one breathless moment, there was no one else in the room, no one else in the universe. It was only them. Travis, and the woman.
She knew it, too.
He saw her acknowledge it as her eyes widened, saw the impact of the understanding in the sudden, rapid rise and fall of her breasts. The tip of her tongue—a pale, silken pink—slipped over her soft-looking mouth.
Travis’s eyes bored into hers. Do it, he thought. Do it, do it…
“Going once,” the auctioneer said, “to the lady at table three, for ten thousand dollars. Going twice. Going—”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
The crowd gasped. Every head swiveled toward the woman with the blond hair. Even the auctioneer leaned forward.
“Would you repeat your bid, please, madam?”
The woman took a deep breath. Travis thought he saw her tremble but he knew he must have been mistaken, because when she spoke again, her voice was cool, controlled, and touched with something that bordered on amusement.
“I said, I bid twenty thousand dollars.”
Bang went the gavel. “Sold,” the auctioneer said, triumphantly, “to the lady in red.”
And the crowd in the ballroom of the Hotel Paradise went wild.
CHAPTER TWO
THE bang of the gavel echoed through the ballroom, but it wasn’t as loud as the sudden thump of Alexandra Thorpe’s heart.
“Sold,” the auctioneer shouted. “Sold to the lady in red.”
The lady in red, she thought numbly…
Alex thought, for an instant, her legs would buckle. She bowed her head and gripped the chair in front of her. She’d come here to buy a man, and she had. A man named Travis Baron.
A stud named Travis Baron,
