Crazy Love (Emerald Lake Billionaires 3) (9 page)

Harry started the opening bid at two thousand dollars. No one in the room looked shocked. If anything, they were delighted to see the painting surpass its presale estimate. But that was only the beginning. Hands were raised and the price soon escalated beyond anyone’s expectations.

Holly looked at Mia. At one point, when the bidding had reached four thousand dollars, Mia’s mouth dropped open. When Harry used the gavel for the last time, her painting sold for more than five thousand dollars.

Holly rushed to Mia’s side with a glass of water. “Are you okay?”

“I think so. But five thousand dollars? Who pays that kind of money for an unknown artist’s work?”

“Someone who knows quality when they see it. Do you want to sit down for a minute?”

Mia shook her head. “If I sit down, I won’t be able to get up.” She looked across the room. “Granddad is grinning from ear to ear.”

Holly glanced at Nick. He looked very proud. He was also sitting beside Daniel and Blake. “Oh, no.”

“What’s wrong?” Mia asked as the auction for the next painting started.

“Nick’s sitting with Daniel. I tried to keep them apart. What if Nick says something about my painting?”

“Granddad wouldn’t say anything unless you’d told him it was okay.” Mia looked at her grandfather and tilted her head to the side. “Do granddad and Daniel look kind of comfortable together?”

Holly pushed her panic aside and focused on Nick and Daniel. They were leaning toward each other, speaking quietly while the auction carried on around them.

Daniel’s blue gaze connected with hers and she looked away. “They definitely look as though they’ve met before. But how could that have happened? Daniel doesn’t seem the type of person who’d be interested in art.”

Mia laughed. “And what do people who are interested in art look like?”

“I don’t know, but not like Daniel. He seems too…”

“Charming, handsome, intelligent...have I missed anything?”

“Focused on his career,” Holly added. “He owns an IT business and spends his spare time working on computer programs.”

Mia looked confused. “What does that matter?”

Harry banged his gavel.

Holly and Mia looked at the winning bid on the screen beside him.

Mia clapped with everyone else in the room. A watercolor of Fairy Lake had sold for a price that made the artist jump in the air and high-five everyone around her.

“I’d say Jenny is pretty happy at the moment,” Holly said. “I can almost smell a chocolate cake baking in the oven.” She loved the way Jenny always brought a chocolate cake to their meetings when something good happened. Luckily for them, Jenny had a lot of good things happening in her life.

“And I’ll bring the champagne,” Mia whispered. “Do you think Harry would like a drink of water? It must be hard work with all the bidding that’s going on.”

Holly opened her catalog and counted through the paintings that had been sold. “There’s only another three canvases left before we have a break. I think he’ll be fine until then.”

When the last painting in the first grouping was sold, Holly and Mia made a quick exit toward their makeshift kitchen. The caterers were running between the exhibition space and the kitchen, making sure there was hot coffee, wine, and juice available for the guests. The tables had been restocked with sweet treats for everyone.

“The mini-muffins look great,” Holly said. “Did Kate make them?”

Mia nodded. “It was fun taste-testing everything. If I ever get tired of teaching, I’m going to ask Kate if she’s got a job in her catering company for me.”

“By the time you finish painting your landscape series you might not have to worry about another job.”

“I’d love to be a full-time painter,” Mia said wistfully.

Holly hugged her friend’s shoulders. “It will happen. Do you think I should circulate with glasses of wine?”

Mia poked her head around the edge of the kitchen door. “There’s plenty of wine on the tables, but it wouldn’t hurt. Do you want me to give you a hand?”

“I’ll be okay. If you want to do something for me, you could go and see your granddad and ask him how he knows Daniel.”

“That sounds like internal espionage.”

“More like research,” Holly said with a grin. She took some clean glasses out of a box and filled them with white wine. “I’ll see you at the front of the room when Harry’s ready to restart the auction.”

Holly left Mia munching a mini-muffin. It didn’t take long for most of the glasses on her tray to be taken. As she was circling back to the kitchen, she saw Daniel and Blake. They had their backs to her, deep in conversation.

They didn’t have a cup of coffee in their hands so she decided to see if they’d like a glass of wine. She was about to tap Daniel on the shoulder when she heard Blake say, “You need to hurry up with date number two.”

The urgency in his voice was unmistakable. Something was going on and Holly hoped it had nothing to do with her.

“I can’t make her go out with me if she doesn’t want to,” Daniel replied. “We’ve got nothing in common.”

“If you asked her for the questionnaire you worked on I’d be a lot happier. At least that way we’d know where the program went wrong.”

“What do you expect me to do? Break into her house and steal it?”

Blake laughed. “There are more subtle ways to get the information we need.”

Holly’s hand dropped to her side. The glasses on the tray wobbled. She took a step backward, hoping that Daniel and Blake didn’t realize she was behind them.

“Holly, let me introduce you to my good friend, Daniel Sullivan,” Nick said. “He came here tonight to see one painting in particular.”

Daniel and Blake turned slowly around.

Holly met Daniel’s horrified gaze. The look on his face would have been amusing if she hadn’t been the person they were talking about.

“Holly?” Daniel’s voice was weary. “How much of that did you hear?”

She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out.

“You know each other?” Nick asked. He looked between Holly and Daniel. “
This
is the Daniel you were telling me about?”

Holly nodded. “We had coffee yesterday.” Daniel had used her. She didn’t know why he’d gone out with her in the first place unless it was to fill out the stupid questionnaire. She felt like a fool. A big fool who’d started to think that he might be different from other men.

She passed the tray to Nick. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.” And before Daniel could say another word, she turned and left the building.

***

“Holly, wait!” Daniel zigzagged around some guests and followed Holly outside. She’d overheard his conversation with Blake at the worst possible moment. He regretted not telling her the reason he was on the trial. But if he had, she wouldn’t have agreed to meet him again.

He sprinted through the large wooden doors and looked around the parking lot.

Holly hadn’t made it as far as her car. She was leaning against the side of the building with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

He walked toward her and took off his jacket. “It’s cold. Take my jacket.”

She turned her head toward him.

The security lights showed him just how upset she was.

“You lied to me.”

“I didn’t mean to. I thought it would be easier if you thought I’d joined the trial because I wanted to meet someone. I was going to tell you the truth, but it wasn’t the right time.” He held out his jacket. “You’ll hate me even more if you get sick.”

Holly rubbed her arms. “I don’t plan on staying outside for much longer. We’re only halfway through the auction and I need to be there until the end.”

Daniel folded his jacket over his arm. “My friend Blake is the person who designed the Crazy Love app. He’s invested a lot of time and money into its development. With my background in computer programming, he thought I could give him a better insight into how it works. He added my name to the trial a couple of weeks ago.”

“So you don’t want to meet someone special?”

“No. Even after Blake asked me to help him I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do it.”

“You should have stuck with your first instinct. You’re lucky I don’t want to meet someone special, either. What if you’d met a woman who was there for all the right reasons. Don’t you think that would have been unethical?”

Daniel looked at the ground. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”

“No kidding.” Holly wrapped her arms more firmly around her waist.

“At least take my jacket. Look on the bright side—maybe I’ll get sick and you can tell me I deserved it.”

Holly looked at his jacket, then into his eyes. “Just tell me one thing. Did the program match us or did your friend throw us together to see what would happen?”

“The program matched us.”

“I’d say you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you, then. If your program doesn’t know we’re completely wrong for each other, you’re in trouble.” She stepped away from the wall. “Good luck with the app. I just hope my friends have better luck with the people they’ve been matched with.”

“I’m really sorry, Holly.”

She started walking toward the entrance of the warehouse and stopped. “I should be thankful I overheard you. At least now I know the truth.”

Daniel watched her disappear inside. He wasn’t sure that even he knew what the truth was anymore.

CHAPTER FOUR

By the end of the evening, Holly was exhausted. The auction had raised more than fifty-five thousand dollars for the Adams family. They’d been overwhelmed by the support from the community and from art collectors around the country.

Hannah threw a tablecloth in the laundry bag. “That was some night. I still can’t believe your painting sold for twenty thousand dollars.”

“I was surprised, too.” Holly looked around the warehouse. Nick was still helping them. “I’ll take over from Nick. Once we’ve finished sweeping the floors, we can go home.”

Mia and Claire were flipping the tables onto their sides and collapsing the legs into each other. The rest of their volunteers had removed the fairy lights from the rafters and dismantled the fabric that had been draped around the room. The red-brick walls were now bare, ready for the construction crew.

Holly made a detour to their makeshift kitchen and made a cup of coffee. She walked over to Nick and stood beside him. “I brought you some coffee. Let me finish off here.”

“My dear, I have cleaned up after myself for more years than you’ve been alive. Another few minutes won’t make any difference.”

“But it might make a difference to how hot your coffee is.” She held the mug out to him. “Don’t be so stubborn. I’m trying to look after you.”

Mia walked past carrying a bag of trash. “I’ve already told granddad to sit down. He’s almost as stubborn as you are.”

“I’m not stubborn,” Holly said. “I just know what I want. And right now, I want to sweep the floor.”

Hannah carried a chair across to Nick. “Does anyone know what happened to Blake and Daniel? I thought they were going to stay for the entire auction.”

Four pairs of eyes swiveled toward Holly.

“They must have gone somewhere else. Did Kate remember to take all of the serving plates with her?”

Mia put her hands on her hips. “I smell a rat. What happened to Daniel?”

“He left early. I overheard him talking to Blake. I thought he’d put his name down for the trial because he wanted to date someone. The only reason he signed up was to fix any bugs in the system. Guess who his guinea pig was?”

Hannah frowned. “Why didn’t he tell you that’s what he was on the trial for? Does he know that we registered you?”

Holly nodded. “I even took a copy of the questionnaire to Angel Wings Café. We filled it out with the answers I would have given.”

Nick sat forward in his chair. “This does not sound like the Daniel I know. He is an honorable man.”

“He said he was sorry, so I guess that’s something. It’s just as well he’s the complete opposite of who I want to spend time with.”

Mia’s eyes widened. “The two of you were a good match. I’m with granddad. I think there’s more to why he didn’t tell you the truth. Are you going to see him again?”

Holly didn’t have to think carefully about her answer. “No, definitely not. I’m a man-free zone now. I’ve asked Blake to take me off his database.”

Hannah gave Holly a hug. “I’m sorry we filled out your registration form without asking you first. You deserve someone who treats you better than Daniel did.”

Nick didn’t look happy. “Next time I see Daniel I will ask him what this is all about.”

“No you won’t,” Holly said. “I appreciate what you want to do, but I’m not seeing him again. There’s no point in going over what happened.”

Mia glanced at her watch. “I hate to be a party humbug, but it’s nearly eleven o’clock. If I don’t get granddad home soon he’s going to turn into a pumpkin.”