Falling For The Rancher. Roxanne Rustand
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there.”
Emma looked up from nibbling the edge of her cookie and yawned. “Then can we go home?”
“In a little while. Once it gets started, the auction shouldn’t take long.” She strode toward the crowd as Pastor Mark yielded the microphone to Lewis Thomas, a short, spare man with thinning hair and a booming voice, who encouraged vigorous bidding for the sake of the youth group, then began describing the terms of the auction.
He abruptly launched into a rapid-fire auctioneer’s patter, and one after another, the handyman volunteers were auctioned off. Fifty dollars. A hundred. Several went for one fifty.
A woman with a gleam in her eye shouted, “One seventy-five! That one’s my husband, and now he’ll have to take care of my honey-do list!”
The audience erupted in laughter.
“Hey, Kaycee,” Darcy called out as she edged through the people pressing forward toward the podium and made her way to Kaycee’s side. “I’m dying to know what Dr. Maxwell said—and how you convinced him to volunteer. Will he be here tonight?”
A faint blush bloomed on Kaycee’s cheeks. “I’m really sorry, Doc. I never saw him at the clinic. I left two messages on his cell, but he never called back.”
Darcy felt the blood drain from her face. “B-but he’s on the program.”
The younger woman’s eyes widened. “Maybe he talked to someone else?”
“He wouldn’t have known anyone else on the committee.” Darcy bit her lower lip. “I’ll find Beth or Janet. No worries.”
“If he’s listed and his work commitment is auctioned, he’s got to follow through, it’s like a contract,” Kaycee said darkly.
“Surely not if the listing is a mistake,” Darcy retorted. “Try calling him right now. Find out if he knew about this and get him over here right away. He doesn’t need any more bad press in town. I’ll try to find Janet and get his name removed.”
But as she turned to scan the crowd, her gaze landed on Emma. The little girl was still dutifully sitting in her chair a dozen feet away, the cookie barely touched, and tears were trailing down her cheeks. Darcy’s heart lurched as she hurried over, slipped into the chair next to Emma’s and gave her a hug. “I’m so sorry, honey—but you did see where I was, right?”
Emma gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“And did you see your Sunday school teacher just over there? And you know Beth, and Sophie—” Darcy glanced around. “I even see Hannah in the next row. You were safe, I promise.”
Emma nodded tearfully, her lower lip trembling.
“Stay right with me while I find someone, all right?” Darcy scooped the child up into her arms, and Emma sagged against her shoulder, too tired to answer.
Darcy tried to make her way through the crowd, but now everyone was out of their chairs, craning their necks to see who was up next as another five handyman volunteers were auctioned in quick succession.
“Dr. Logan Maxwell,” the auctioneer shouted above the hubbub. “New guy in town, and already helping the community. Gotta give the guy credit. Doesn’t say what kind of work he can do, but let’s go. Starting at two hundred, folks—who is ready to go?”
Darcy froze in horror as the auctioneer’s voice slipped into an almost indecipherable sales patter and the crowd fell silent.
People exchanged glances.
A few snickered.
A stage whisper filtered through the room.
“Who’d want to bid for the likes of him? My poor cousin works at the clinic and said she’d soon be out on her ear...”
Time seemed to stop as more whispers spread through the room. Then the room fell silent once again when the auctioneer dropped the starting bid to a hundred seventy-five. A hundred fifty. “C’mon folks...he’s a real bargain at that. You’ll be helping the kids, and maybe he can even spay your cat.”
Uneasy laughter rippled through the audience. “How ’bout a hundred twenty-five, then...”
Darcy desperately scanned the crowd. Surely someone would be glad to grab such a bargain...or maybe just have mercy on him. Right now he was like an outcast, a pariah who would be the talk around town for a long, long time. And from the hard expressions she saw, that wasn’t going to change. Please, Lord, encourage someone to bid.
Kaycee appeared at Darcy’s side. “This is awful. But on the other hand, he’s mean and he kinda deserves it.”
“No one ever deserves ridicule, and that’s what will happen,” Darcy said quietly. “He’ll be the only guy who failed to receive a single bid. Ever.”
“He’s still mean,” Kaycee retorted.
“To him, the clinic is business, not personal. He’s not changing things out of spite.”
“He doesn’t know any of us, really,” Kaycee said with a stubborn pout. “And he doesn’t care. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it. The rules say no one can win more than one handyman each year. You want Edgar and I have an apartment, so I don’t need a handyman at all.”
Darcy needed Edgar desperately. It might take all of what little she had in savings to win him—and even that might not be enough.
Potentially losing her job and trying to move away two months from now would be hard enough. Without his skills, it might be impossible to fix up the cottage enough to sell it in a few months.
But now empathy for Logan burned through her, taking a hard, painful hold of her heart. Could she stand by and let him become the humiliated laughingstock of the auction if no one bid even a few dollars?
She elbowed Kaycee sharply. “Bid,” she whispered. “Now.”
Startled, Kaycee stared at her. “What? I don’t have the money.”
“I’ll pay. Bid against me just to bring it up to a decent amount so it isn’t embarrassing for him, and then I’ll take over. Seventy-five dollars max.”
“Isn’t this dishonest?”
“We’ll be increasing the youth fund profits, not trying to get a deal,” Darcy whispered back. “And I’ll certainly honor my bid if I do win.”
Kaycee weakly raised a hand to bid.
“We’ve got fifty, folks,” the auctioneer cried out jubilantly. “Now, do we have seventy-five...”
Darcy nodded.
From across the room, she saw Gladys Rexworth eye her speculatively, and her heart sank.
“Eighty,” the older woman barked. Her mouth twisted into a malevolent, superior smirk, and now Darcy realized this was personal.
Darcy closed her eyes briefly, remembering the run-ins she’d had with the woman in the past.
She hadn’t wanted Logan to lose face in front of the community. But now this—this would be even worse. Gladys was a wealthy, spiteful woman who seemed to take pleasure in causing others grief with her wicked tongue.
Darcy didn’t even want to imagine how Gladys might enjoy having the new vet under her thumb, and then spread her vicious comments after setting impossible standards for his work.
Darcy held Emma a little tighter and swallowed hard. “Eighty-five.”
Gladys lifted her chin triumphantly. “Two hundred.”
Please, God, tell me what to do here. Edgar stood next to the podium, awaiting his turn. The man who could swiftly, expertly deal with the most serious projects at the cottage...
Her shoulders sagged. “Two twenty-five.”
Gladys’s eyes widened and