The Bookstore on the Beach - Brenda Novak Page 0,99
the heels of his parents. Freshly shaven, his thick hair still damp, he was dressed up, too, but he hadn’t yet tied his tie. It dangled around his neck while he carried his jacket over one arm.
“I’m sorry that this event is so hard for you and your parents,” she said.
“We’ll get through it.” After casting a quick glance at the table where Mike was helping Beth sit down, he indicated all the decorations and the tables she and her committee members had set up. They’d been at the clubhouse since early this morning. Even Taylor and Caden had helped, although they were home now, getting ready. “Thanks for doing this. I would’ve been here earlier, but I was busy with the food prep at the restaurant, trying to make sure the staff we left to cover it doesn’t run into a problem. With most people here, I don’t expect them to have a large crowd, but you never know.”
“I’m glad you took care of it. We had this.”
He looked as though he wanted to say something more personal, but Lynn Hill walked up. “Will you come take a look at the silent auction? Make sure I have the items arranged the way you want?”
“Sure.”
“And I can’t find enough pens for the bid sheets,” Lynn said. “I bought a pack but can’t remember where I put them.”
“I saw them over by my bag,” Autumn told her and tossed Quinn an apologetic smile as she walked away. She told herself to forget about what she was feeling and do the job she’d committed to doing, but whenever she looked up and saw him, she felt the longing she’d been trying to deny. The way he watched her, she could tell he knew something had changed, that she’d shut him out again. She felt bad about that, because she could tell he was disappointed. But he didn’t know what it was like to have children, the sacrifices that being a parent sometimes required.
It wasn’t until after her speech and the silent auction were over, and poor Mr. Salls was bumbling his way through the live auction—which was turning out to be a success in spite of the fact that he was every bit as terrible at auctioneering as he’d tried to tell them he would be—that Autumn began to relax. The bulk of the fundraiser was over and had gone surprisingly well, given how little time she’d had to plan it.
She was standing at the back, watching various people raise their paddles for a seven-day vacation in Hawaii, when Caden, Sierra and Taylor approached.
“Can we go home and change?” Caden asked. “It’ll be a lot easier to help clean up if we can throw on some comfortable clothes.”
Relieved to see that her son and daughter were friends again, she nodded, and they hurried for the door.
“We’re raising even more than we anticipated.”
Autumn turned to find Mary standing slightly behind her. Her mother and Laurie had been busy working in the kitchen all night, helping with the spaghetti, garlic bread and green salad dinner, so she was a little startled to hear her mother’s voice. “It seems like it, doesn’t it? I can’t wait to see how much.”
“It’ll be at least fifty thousand.”
“That’s five months of medicine.”
“Doesn’t sound like a lot when you put it that way. But it’s better than leaving the Vanderbilts fifty thousand deeper in debt.”
“True.”
Mary seemed distracted for a brief moment. Then she said, “Don’t look now, but Quinn can’t take his eyes off you.”
Autumn had been having a hard time not staring at him, too. “He’s grateful for all the work I’ve put into this,” she mumbled.
Her mother wasn’t that easily fooled. “That isn’t all,” she said with a chuckle. “Things must be going well between you two.”
“No, they’re not going well. There’s nothing between us.”
Mary sobered. “Seriously? Why not?”
“Because my children come first.” The auction had just ended, and Mr. Salls, drenched in flop sweat, was looking at her with a “Hallelujah!” expression. She started toward the staff table so she could get the tally from Barbara Stamper, who’d agreed to keep track of the money so she could announce the total raised before the end of the evening.
Autumn didn’t want to talk about Quinn. Her emotions were too jumbled. But her mother caught her wrist before she could get more than a few steps away.
“Your happiness and their happiness don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” she said and returned to the kitchen.