Slow Hands

the ice before any private, um…meetings.”
    Assignations was more like it.
    Addressing the check, Maddy merely smiled politely, not replying. Then, giving the woman her payment and taking a tax receipt in return, she deliberately swung around and walked in the opposite direction.
    She’d done her job. Now she needed to get out of here. She’d come in late—having been tipped off by Tabitha that her target would be auctioned off second to last. She hadn’t seen anyone she knew, other than her stepmother and the woman’s friends. Hopefully, she could escape without any further public exposure of her foray into the flesh trade.
    She almost made it. She was mere feet from the closest ballroom exit when she was stopped by a movable wall disguised as a tuxedo shirt.
    Her heart leaped in her chest, thudding in excitement, even as she mentally cursed the bad luck. Because Number Nineteen had tracked her down.
    “Hello,” the wall murmured. “I’m Jake Wallace.”
    Maddy growled a little, annoyed at herself for feeling an immediate tingle at the warmth emanating off the solid man now blocking her path. And for leaning forward the tiniest bit and breathing a bit deeper to catch a better whiff of his warm, spicy scent.
    “I know we’re supposed to be meeting in the reception room,” he added, “but I’d rather head to the hotel bar, too, if that’s where you were going. I don’t think I could stand another hour with that crowd.”
    Funny that he already knew, somehow, that Maddy was not of “that crowd.” Oh, she fit in financially, and she had the family connections and pedigree to mix with the best of Chicago society. But she didn’t like them, didn’t feel comfortable with them, preferring to listen to Tabitha’s cutting first-person reports rather than experience the flighty world of the rich-and-shameless personally. Her social interactions usually centered around business—fund-raisers, executive dinners. Certainly not hot-body auctions.
    “That is where you were going, right? You weren’t trying to ditch me.” It wasn’t a question and his tone held a hint of laughter. She didn’t think his amusement was caused by conceit, but rather the incongruity of a woman paying twenty-five thousand dollars to spend an evening with a man and then walking out the door without ever meeting him.
    It was kind of crazy.
    “I, uh…the ladies’ room,” she mumbled, hating herself for letting the inane excuse cross her lips the very moment she uttered it. Ladies’ room indeed. Deborah, her socially impeccable—if potentially adulterous—stepmother, would be flaring her nostrils in mortification. If she wasn’t cowering somewhere, wondering if Maddy was going to rat her out for trying to buy her way into this man’s arms.
    He cleared his throat. “It’s that way.”
    His arm moved, the hand gesturing back the way Maddy had just come. That hand was darkly tanned, strong, with neat blunt fingernails and not a hint of kept-man elegance. They looked like a worker’s hands. And suddenly several parts of Maddy’s body went a little spastic at the thought of being worked by them.
    Not being the tallest woman in the world, Maddy had been able to keep her attention squarely focused straight ahead, as if minutely interested in the design of the buttons on his shirt. Since she’d been sucked in by his hands, though, she figured she might as well muster up the courage to confront the rest of him.
    She could do it. She was woman. Hear her roar.
    All she could manage as she lifted her gaze, however, was a helpless whimper.
    The chest was, as she already knew, huge and strong. The throat tanned, the neck corded with muscle. His strong jaw jutted in classic male determination. His face was freshly shaved, she’d imagined, for tonight’s event, but already displayed a hint of swarthiness that would provide the tiniest frisson of roughness if their cheeks met.
    They won’t .
    Even if she acknowledged how physically attractive he was, she still would never again take up with a man who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. She’d been down that road before.
    Still…he was handsome. His thick hair was cut short, and had looked lighter when he was up on stage, being paraded around like a prime bit of horseflesh for sale. Now, up close, she realized it was a dark brown, but shot with hints of gold here and there that said he likely spent a lot of time outside. Probably sailing around in yachts owned by rich women,