Just Before Sunrise Read Free Page A

bid for five hundred dollars. Did anyone want to bid higher? His tone suggested he expected no one would.
    Jerked out of her stupor, Annie jumped forward in her seat. A sealed bid? From whom? Someone else was bidding on the painting? She whipped around, searching for the culprit. The serious buyers, she'd already figured out, stood at the edges of the ballroom and slipped to the back when something came up that interested them. But she hadn't expected any competition.
    Did someone else know about Sarah? To Annie's eye, her talent was apparent in the portrait up on the easel, but it was only a spark, a hint of the explosive work the artist might eventually produce.
    "Five hundred. Do I have a bid for five hundred and fifty?"
    Annie thrust her hand high up into the air. She didn't care if that wasn't how the professional buyers did it. She wanted to make sure the auctioneer saw her.
    "Five hundred and fifty," he said in acknowledgment of her bid. "Do I have six hundred?"
    In a half second, he said he did. Annie still had no idea who in the crowd was bidding against her. She raised her hand for six fifty. Sarah had anticipated that Annie would be the only bidder and would get the painting for a few hundred dollars, but, unwilling to chance missing this opportunity, she'd insisted on making the ten thousand dollars available. Annie had dismissed the gesture as overly dramatic.
    It was a long way from six hundred fifty to ten thousand, she thought, calming herself. She wouldn't run out of money. She wouldn't fail. "Bid the entire ten thousand if you must. I don't care," Sarah, the mysterious artist, had told her. Annie desperately wanted to succeed, more so than she would willingly admit. Sarah's work was so incredible—Annie knew it was—that it could be the catalyst she needed for her struggling new life.
    The auctioneer looked at her. The bidding was up to eight hundred. Annie pulled her lower lip in between her teeth and nodded.
    A murmur of excitement ran through the crowd. Even the bland auctioneer seemed to get his blood up. Annie followed his gaze to the back of the ballroom as he asked for nine hundred.
    Before she could pick out who he was looking at, he said he had nine hundred and turned his attention back to her. He asked for a thousand. He was going up by hundreds now. Annie hadn't noticed any of the fifteen or twenty well-dressed men and women standing in back make a move. She could feel her stomach churning. Relax, it's not your money. They wouldn't go higher than ten thousand. That would be lunacy. The artist was an unknown, the girl was an unknown. There was no point. Later, when Sarah was introduced to the art world and acknowledged as a major new talent, maybe there would be. But not now.
    Annie nodded at the auctioneer.
    Her opponent immediately went up to eleven hundred.
    She whipped around and glared, and her eyes made contact with a man in a dark suit. And she knew. This was her opponent. This was the man who wanted the painting of the red-haired girl.
    Her mouth went dry. His eyes bored into her. Annie inhaled sharply, certain she wasn't sparring with a dealer. There was nothing sporting about his expression, nothing of the dealer who took competition and defeat in stride. He wanted the painting, and he had expected to get it for five hundred dollars.
    He hadn't, it seemed, expected Annie Payne.
    The auctioneer called for twelve hundred. With her gaze still pinned on her opponent, Annie nodded. She wasn't going to back down. She wasn't going to let him unnerve her. She didn't care who he was or why he wanted the painting.
    His expression remained grim and determined, giving no indication he was having any fun at all. He had angular, riveting features and very dark hair, but for some reason she couldn't even imagine, Annie guessed his eyes were lighter: gray or green or even blue. She tried to picture him somewhere besides a tense auction room. Where might he smile? Where might he not look so humorless and