Some Like It Hot by Susan Andersen Read Free Book Online Page A

silent auction. That can be as elaborate or as simple as you want, but you have a captive audience in the people who come to eat, and everyone loves the idea of getting something at a bargain price.”
    Pushing against the foot planted on the ground, he straightened. “Is it hard to do?”
    “Not really. It can be time-consuming, but that’s where volunteers like me come in. You use us to solicit donations from local businesses and set up a table or two to accommodate the acquisitions. We can also help with things like deciding on a price to start the bidding for each item and at what increments to increase and make individual sheets for them—”
    “Wait, wait. Explain what you mean. And pretend I don’t have a clue.”
    She laughed. “Because you don’t?”
    “Yeah.” His own mouth crooked up in a smile. “I’m a cop—and before that a marine. Stuff like this is way outside my experience.”
    “Okay.” She scooted to the edge of her submerged seat. “Say Wendy at Wacka Do donates a haircut and she usually charges thirty-eight dollars. You’d make a sheet that says Haircut at Wacka Do’s, value thirty-eight dollars. And since it’s a service and not, say, a pretty gift basket that visually pops to catch a potential bidder’s attention, you might want to add a photo of Wendy doing a haircut, or a styled wig on a wig stand. You with me so far?”
    “Yep.”
    She took another sip of her pop. “Regardless of the visual, the sheet needs a starting bid, so say three-fifty or around ten percent of its value, with fifty-cent or one-dollar increases. Now, if your brother were to donate one of his photographs, on the other hand, you’d have a much higher value amount because he’s well known in his field. That would make both the starting bid and the increments higher. See?”
    “Yeah, I do.” And he liked the idea. No one else in town was doing anything like it. “So you just flop the stuff down on a table and you’re good to go?”
    “God.” Her mouth quirked up. “You’re such a guy. The idea is to try to make the presentations as striking as possible to capture as much bidder interest as you can. You also need to give people enough time to both look at what’s offered and to bid again if someone trumps them. And have a clear end time. Then you’d need someone responsible to collect the money, but that’s pretty straightforward. The winner simply brings the sheet to the cashier and pays the final bid amount on it. And since it’s for a charity, you don’t have to deal with collecting sales tax—although I’d double-check that one in case Washington state differs in that respect.”
    “That’s so cool. What else you got?”
    She blinked those olive-green eyes at him. “’Scuse me?”
    “You said ‘for starters.’ Does that mean you have even more ideas?”
    “Oh, honey.” Stretching her arms out along the tub’s rim, she tipped her head back and let her torso float up to the surface again. Smooth skin stretched over toned thigh muscles and all that beautiful cleavage as her various curved parts cleared the roiling water. Raising her head again, she caught him dead to rights checking out the entire kick-ass package and sank back beneath the water. “I’ve got a million of ’em.”
    “Excellent.” He grinned and settled in, feeling truly comfortable with her for perhaps the first time since they’d met. Hell, she had pointed it out herself; he was a guy. When guys were presented with tits and gorgeous legs, they looked. They sure as hell didn’t apologize for it. “Let’s hear ’em.”
    “Was the community center space donated?”
    “Yeah. We had to put down a damage deposit, but we got it all back. Well, except for the cost of replacing some broken glasses.”
    She grinned at him. “Yes, I was having my tray refilled when that happened. Did you solicit the food and the paper goods?”
    “Huh?” That straightened him up. “No. We got a rebate from the pancake manufacturer