Layne looked at his sons. Jasper was wearing a pair of chinos and a blue shirt under the leather jacket his Mom bought him last Christmas and Tripp was wearing the same except his shirt was maroon and he had a navy sweater pulled over it. Layne was wearing another suit and shirt that he’d never worn before that Melody had given him.
“Um…” Rocky mumbled and Josie waved her hand between them and kept talking.
“You can share your secrets without an audience and with a bottle of wine,” she stated. “And also when we sit down and talk about the bachelor auction. I had a gab with her and Heidi’s in. Did you talk to Feb and Vi?”
“Bachelor auction?” Layne asked.
Rocky ignored him and answered Josie, “I had a word with Vi yesterday, she’s in and she said she’d talk with Feb, Cheryl and Jackie.”
“Bachelor auction?” Layne repeated.
“This is going to be so fun!” Josie exclaimed. “I love it!”
Layne claimed Rocky with an arm around her shoulders again, turned her into his side, dipped his head and asked yet again, “Sweetcheeks, bachelor auction?”
“We’re doing a bachelor auction for Meghan Reilly,” Josie answered before Rocky could and Layne looked at her. “Gettin’ all the single boys at the police department and fire station to volunteer. Havin’ a fancy dinner, a band, a casino and sellin’ stuff in silent auctions. Rocky called me yesterday, it was her idea and it’ll be a hoot.”
“Cool!” Tripp entered the conversation.
“You should invite kids. I could talk to some of the football team, they’d go up for auction,” Jasper put in.
Josie swung to him and clapped her hands. “What a great idea! The more the merrier.”
“What’s this?” Vera asked and Layne looked to his mother.
“Meghan Reilly, she’s sick and can’t afford her medication,” Josie answered. “Things are not good, she’s gettin’ behind and Rocky does charity gigs, usually it’s for hospitals and clinics and stuff but this time she’s doin’ it just for Meghan.”
Vera’s eyes hit Rocky but before she could say more, Tripp butted in.
“You go up for auction, Jas, you better get Keira to save up her allowance,” Tripp advised Jasper.
“My woman’ll take care of me, Tripp-o-matic,” Jasper returned arrogantly and Layne’s eyes rolled to the ceiling.
“You could go up for sale too, Dad,” Tripp went on and Layne’s eyes rolled back to his boy. “You’d get top dollar.”
“Think I’m off the market, Pal,” Layne said quietly and felt Rocky’s body go tight before it relaxed against his side just as Josie’s eyes shot to him and a huge smile spread on her face.
“Yeah, Dad, but you aren’t actually off the market and Roc’s loaded. I reckon she’d pay a whack for you,” Tripp went on and every pair of eyes in their huddle turned to him, including Rocky’s.
Fuck, but he was not going up for auction. Firstly, because Rocky wasn’t loaded, she had a nest egg but she didn’t need to be depleting it bidding on him and secondly, because he was not going up for auction.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he muttered, Josie giggled softly, Vera gave him a stare and Rocky looked down at her shoes, that fall of hair that wasn’t tied back in the ponytail at the nape of her neck not succeeding in hiding her smile.
Vera saved him by announcing, “We should probably find a pew.”
“Good idea,” Rocky murmured and looked at Josie. “Sit with us?”
“You bet,” Josie replied and they all moved into the sanctuary.
They were there approximately thirty seconds when Rocky and Layne spied him at the same time.
He was at the front of the church, wearing about the same outfit as Jasper except he had dark blue pants. Even so, it was plain to see it wasn’t the same quality. Both Layne’s boys cared about their appearance and their clothes, it was essential to the high school experience and Jasper, mostly, but Tripp also, had a role amongst their peers to lead the pack of high school cool. Layne knew exactly how expensive their clothes were since he’d paid for them.
The man at the front of the church’s clothes were of lower quality but that was a deception, something Rutledge had not yet learned. Layne knew this was a deception because the man at the front of the church had more shit in his hair than Tripp and a haircut that he didn’t get at a barber. He also had a tan that wasn’t from the sun or from an olive skin tone. It was October in Indiana and unless someone was fresh from vacation, no one had a tan.
And he was extremely good-looking, out of a magazine good-looking and he had an easy, very white smile that he was shining on the flock of girls surrounding him.
Bleached teeth, carefully crafted tanning bed tan and a fifty dollar haircut.
Definitely not a Youth Minister.
“Excuse me,” Rocky murmured and slid away from him before he could catch her.
She wasn’t three strutting strides away before Layne ordered a simple, “Tripp.”
“On it,” Tripp muttered and moved to follow Rocky.
Rocky strutted naturally but Layne watched and learned something new about his woman. When she meant business, her strut changed, it became subtly more suggestive and a f**kuva lot more watchable. She captured TJ Gaines’s attention ten pews from the front and she kept it. He had teenaged girls hanging on his every word and practically hanging off his every limb, but, for Gaines, they’d vanished. Gaines was watching Rocky and even standing at the front of a church, his look was openly carnal.
Nope, definitely not a Youth Minister.
Rocky rounded the front, h*ps swaying, ass swinging, and didn’t even glance at him but smiled brightly at someone in the second pew back. She stopped and greeted an old woman Layne didn’t know, going so far as to put a knee to the vacant front pew to lean in, take the old woman’s hand and have a chat. This also meant that tight skirt, which Layne had noticed had a slit up the back, stretched across her hips, thighs and an ass which was now pointed straight out.
Gaines’s eyes locked on her ass and his look kept the carnal but added hungry.
Fuck.
Rocky just hit his radar with a big, f**king ping.
“Shit, Dad, she’s good,” Jasper muttered from beside him.
Layne felt his jaw tighten and he held himself back as Rocky’s attention was caught by a couple of the girls, as she knew it would be, she squeezed the old lady’s hand and turned to the girls and Gaines. He saw her head move around as she greeted Gaines’s entourage and then, even though her back was to Layne, he knew the second her eyes met Gaines’s because he arranged his features to hide the hunger but they didn’t change to kindly Youth Minister. Instead, they changed to blatant interest, an interest she was meant to see, read and, Gaines hoped, act on.