“I didn’t. Brit made the bid on you.” I froze, once again wishing I could shove the words back into my mouth. “I mean, she made the bid on the weekend, not on you. Afterward, when I asked her how Trevor would feel about her going away with you for the weekend, she told me that she wouldn’t be coming and that they were giving it to me instead. It being the weekend. Not you.”
Light brown eyebrows sweeping up, he chuckled and that darn dimple appeared again. “Seriously, Larisa, you need to relax. Let’s face the facts, shall we? I was up for auction that night. Sure, it was for a weekend away with me, but it was me up there on that stage being bid on. You don’t need to keep correcting yourself. We both know the score.”
“Yeah, I know, I just don’t want you to think that I…” I trailed off, wondering how the hell to have this conversation without just calling a spade a spade. As he racked up the balls, I decided to just rip off the band-aid already. At least he didn’t seem to be easily offended, so that was something.
“Okay, I don’t really know how to say this without just saying it, so here goes. Even though Brit and Trevor paid for you for the weekend and gave it to me, I don’t expect you to do anything you don’t want to do. What do people do on weekends away like these, anyway? Did they tell you before you agreed to do the auction?”
He just stared at me for a beat, then burst out laughing. “No, they didn’t tell me, but Jeremiah, who organized the auction, isn’t my pimp. I don’t think the idea behind the auction was anything like that. I don’t know what people usually do, but I’m pretty sure you can relax about it. I never do anything I don’t want to do, anyway.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, well, I’m glad we got that out of the way. I didn’t really think the idea was to pay for sex with a rich guy, but between the emcee’s joke about the paddles and the fact that this has got to be one of the most romantic places on earth, I just wanted you to know that I don’t expect anything.”
Tanner lifted the triangle once the balls were all in place, then turned to grin at me. “Why don’t you break?”
He stepped away from the table to make space for me to move around it, watching as I took my place. “While we’re on the subject of the auction, tell me something. Have you really spent the last couple of weeks worrying about this? I know you didn’t ask about it, because Jer would’ve told me, but if you were that worried, why didn’t you cancel?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek before bending over to place my cue on my fingers. “I wasn’t that worried about it. I figured that a guy who’s that well known wouldn’t have organized an auction that amounted to solicitation, but I just wanted to be clear with you that you don’t have to do anything, especially since everything I’ve been saying has come out wrong.”
He chuckled. “Okay, then. I’m glad we got it out of the way because now you can stop worrying about me thinking that I have to do something. Let’s just try to have some fun, okay?”
“Okay.” Feeling like a giant weight had been lifted off my chest, I hoped that I’d stop jamming my foot in my mouth now that I knew I could relax. “You just called Jeremiah Williams, ‘Jer.’ Is he a friend of yours?”
“Sure is,” he replied easily. “You got roped into this by your friend and I got roped into it by mine. Jeremiah has some great plans for the charity, though. He’s going to be donating some of the land his company owns for the new development, but when he told me everything he had in mind, I wanted to be a part of it, so I agreed.”
“It’s a great cause,” I said, feeling the earlier tension and awkwardness bleed away while we talked. He seemed nice and genuine, and this was feeling more and more like just chatting to someone I’d known for years instead of someone I’d just met. “I actually asked Brit if she knew what he was planning, but she didn’t. I’d love to know, though. I’ve also been wondering if they did well enough with the event to make it all happen or if they were going to have to keep raising funds in the future.”
While we played, Tanner told me everything he knew about Jeremiah’s plans. It turned out that the girl who’d won him at the auction was his girlfriend, like I’d suspected, and the two of them had big dreams for the development.
By the time our game was done, we’d finished our coffee and had a drink, and I was feeling way more comfortable with him than I’d have thought I could after such a short period of time. We laughed a lot, and it turned out that our senses of humor were very similar.
I thought we might play another round, but he set his cue against the wall and turned to me. “What do you say we order dinner in and go up to catch the sunset?”
“I think it sounds like you’ve been reading my mind,” I said honestly. “I didn’t want to ask since we were having fun down here, but I really don’t want to miss it. The pictures made the view from the deck look like something I’ve only ever seen in pictures or paintings.”
“Let’s go then.” He motioned for me to precede him. “And Larisa?”
Turning with my foot already on the bottom step, I found him standing only a few inches behind me. We were eye to eye, and I couldn’t help but notice the darker blue rings around his irises from this close. “Yes?”
“Don’t be afraid to ask me for anything from now on, okay? If you want to watch the sunset, we’ll watch the sunset. I’m easy. All you need to do is let me know, and I’ll make it happen.”
He said it with a smile, and since we’d already ironed out my lack of expectations for the weekend, I didn’t read anything into it other than what he’d said. He wanted us to have a good time, and now that I knew him a little better, I could definitely see that happening.
So I returned his smile and nodded. “Yeah. Sure. Okay. I can do that. Let’s go watch the sunset. Do you think they have any good Thai places around here?”