The Bachelor Auction, part VII

Except that he wasn’t the Calvin I remembered. This Calvin had morphed into some sort of exotic alien being—half Vulcan, and half . . . something. As his expression of surprise turned to one of naked lust, I nearly choked on my own spit.

“C-Calvin?” I stammered. “I didn’t—”

“Recognize me?” he said. “I thought not. After all, you’ve never given me the time of day.” His deep blue eyes were as hot as molten steel as they swept my body up and down. Funny how I’d never noticed them before. Must have been the tantalizing Vulcan eyebrows. Yeah, that was it. It was the eyebrows . . . and the ears—or maybe the cape. Calvin had certainly never affected me this way! I felt the searing heat from his eyes burn me down to ash.

“Don’t be silly!” I said, my voice suddenly high-pitched and girlish. “We’ve always been . . . friends.” I felt like an absolute idiot. This was Calvin Seersucker, for heaven’s sake! Nerdy little Calvin, who would have been much more at home at a Star Trek convention than at a bachelor auction.

“Yes,” he said. Even his voice sounded different—deeper, more masculine and seductive. “We’ve always been friends.” The emphasis he put on the word friends made it sound like an obscenity, which is probably the way most men feel about it when a woman they lust after says they just want to be “friends.”

Wait a minute. Lust after? Impossible! Calvin didn’t feel lust! Not for anyone. Well, maybe for a Romulan princess, but not me—oh, surely not me!

Candy made some sort of noise—which, if I’d been a more catty woman, I’d have said was a snort.