Their Summer Heat Read Online Free PDF Page A

over here instead of mingling?”
    “I don’t mingle too well. Why are you runnin’ from the ladies?”
    “Who said I was?”
    “Well, there’re three over there, wonderin’ what in the hell you’re doin’ over here with a no-pedigree like me.”
    He had the good grace to blush a bit as he glanced over his shoulder. “I hoped your cubbyhole was big enough for two of us.”
    An announcement came over the speaker, requesting the women who were being auctioned tonight to head backstage.
    “You’re in luck. This cubbyhole is all yours.” Summer didn’t give him time to respond; she scooted by him and melted into the crowd.
    Backstage was so chaotic, she wanted to snatch another glass of bubbly. Last year, the men had been auctioned to raise money for cancer research, and they’d been simple to contain. Just give them a stiff drink and shove them onto the stage when their name was called.
    But working with women was like herding cats. Nothing was right; the lighting was bad; does anybody have any hairspray; I chipped a nail; blah, blah, blah. If Summer hadn’t experienced it with her own eyes, she would have never suspected that the social elite of New York could be supremely needy bitches.
    By the time seventeen ladies—a term she used loosely to describe these women—were auctioned off for a dinner with a lucky bidder, the cancer society had raked in close to $72,000. Summer herded the cats back out onto the stage for an encore and even clapped herself.
    Whoohoo. Time for a drink.
    “Will Miss Summer Heat come to the stage, please?”
    Summer looked at the other volunteer backstage hand. Cathy, with her black-rimmed reading glasses perched on her nose, shrugged. Summer looked around her friend and waved her hands at the Gary, the emcee, to let him know she wasn’t a front-and-center kind of girl, but he motioned for her to come forward. Summer tugged down her dress, swallowed hard and stepped out into the bright lights.
    “Miss Heat, we have an unusual request.”
    “That must be why I have a bad feelin’ about this.”
    The audience laughed, but Summer was serious. Her gut tightened as her heart revved.
    “We have one more dinner at the Strip House Steak House in Greenwich Village for tomorrow night at eight, and you, Miss Summer, have been asked to participate in the auction.”
    “Um, ah, no…I’m not…” A bimbo, socialite, bitch. “Auction material.”
    One of the ladies behind her said, “You’ve got that right, bitch.”
    Summer didn’t have to turn around to know who had spoken. Margo Swenson was the queen bitch in this herd, and Summer and the rest of the ladies had to put up with the woman’s blaring gushiness about getting the highest bid of $22,000. Really, listening to that bitch over dinner wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel. Summer had no clue who this Logan dude was she kept complaining about, but he didn’t bid on the Queen B and he was now on the Queen B’s shit list and everybody had to hear about that too.
    “Come on, it’s for charity,” coaxed Gary.
    The crowd clapped, and Summer couldn’t find a way out of the situation, unless she happened to drop dead from a myocardial infarction—which she prayed for. She did want to know whose idea this was, because she was sure it had something to do with the trial, and if she was right, she would rip someone a new asshole.
    She plastered on a smile, reminded herself that this was for charity and croaked, “Okay.”
    The whispers behind her caught her attention. She could focus on these bitches instead of focusing on what she couldn’t see because of the lights burning out her retinas.
    “She’s going to be humiliated.”
    Margo’s voice reminded Summer of fingernails on a chalkboard. She wanted to turn around and tell the bitch she’d been humiliated by the best today; one more humiliation wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference.
    “Ten thousand dollars,” a deep voice sounded from the back.
    “Twenty thousand,”