Dirty Deal (A Perfectly Matched Novel) (Entangled Brazen) Read Free

record. In the weeks since he’d been home, she’d contacted him half a dozen times, begging him to endorse her company. It was weird, and not a little unsettling. No doubt if she won the auction he’d be forced to sit through five courses listening to why it was best for everyone that he “be the face of Love Will Find a Way matchmaking services.”
    There wasn’t much time to think on it too hard, because the bids were flying like bullets across the room, with each woman whipping out her paddle before the other had finished speaking. All the while, he could spot Piper whispering something out the side of her mouth. Knowing Piper, it could’ve been anything. Voodoo curses at her competitor. Wiccan love spells. Crazed threats. There was no telling which, but he was damned sure that she wasn’t above any of it.
    And the bids kept climbing. Two women, locked in a battle that he was sure to lose. Eighteen hundred. Nineteen hundred, with no sign of either of them slowing down. He’d stopped working the catwalk and stood stock-still, just wanting it to be over so he could mentally prepare for whatever fresh hell awaited him, when a statuesque platinum blonde he’d been too traumatized to notice sitting beside Grace snatched the paddle from her.
    She mumbled something he couldn’t hear, first to her companion and then to Piper. With a sinking heart, he thought for a moment that she had taken Grace’s paddle from her altogether to stop her from spending too much money, but on Piper’s next bid, the blonde countered her with a cool confidence. Then, she turned to face the stage and met his gaze head on.
    She was impossibly gorgeous, with blue eyes so bright he could see them from twenty yards away, and he found himself wishing for a bigger fig leaf.
    Okay, so maybe tonight wouldn’t be a total bust after all.
    …
    “Watch and learn, you nancy.” Serena grabbed her friend’s paddle and set it in her lap, waiting for the viper sitting opposite them to strike again.
    Grace had been putting up bids like they were going out of style and all for one guy at a bachelor’s auction? Yes, Love Will Find a Way could use the endorsement, but surely there were other attractive, eligible doctors around who could do it. If Grace didn’t have a hunk of a man at home, Serena would’ve wondered if maybe her friend didn’t have a little crush on this Bryan Metcalf.
    And if Grace’s behavior wasn’t weird enough, the other woman was taking the bidding just as seriously. Okay, so the guy was cute in a nice-guy way, and his body was lean and muscular, right up her alley, but this was a little much.
    As soon as Grace raised her paddle, the woman had come at her with a barrage of put-downs that had been getting progressively more vicious, starting with, “You’re not really his type, sweetie,” and ending somewhere near, “You could probably stand to go without a five-course meal.”
    Grace was too sweet and dignified to respond to the woman’s taunting, but Serena?
    Oh, hell no. She wouldn’t abide anybody talking to her best friend that way.
    Serena leaned across Grace to get close enough for the little bully to hear her. “Blanche from Golden Girls called. She wants that dress back,” she hissed, sneering at the woman’s three-seasons-out-of-date polka-dot frock before throwing her paddle in the air.
    “Fuck you, Twiggy,” the woman snarled before calling out, “Three thousand!”
    Damn. This bitch had balls of steel and a major lady boner for Dr. Bryan Metcalf.
    Serena sized her up, looking for a weak spot to exploit, when Grace tapped her wrist and directed her attention to the auction again.
    Right. They needed to win this or Grace was going to pitch a fit. Apparently only “hometown hero” Bryan Metcalf would do, so Serena threw the paddle in the air again. Now it was on .
    “I still don’t think I get what your plan is here, by the way.” She shouldered Grace, grabbing her attention away from the woman beside