Intimate Surrender

It was too early to sleep, only about eight-thirty or so. She was tired enough, certainly—she was always tired these days—but even if she could manage to close her eyes, she had no doubt her mind would continue its wild race. She had a whole assortment of books to read, but none of them grabbed her interest. Why bother when she knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on it anyway?

Surrendering to the inevitable, she pulled the quilt up to her chin and gazed into the flames and let her mind replay the night of the Children’s Connection bachelor auction, one small slice of time that had altered the course of her life forever.

Stand up straight and smile. If you feel beautiful, the world will see you that way. Her best friend Carrie’s advice rang in her ears as Katie stood outside the ballroom at the Portland Hilton.

Trouble was, she didn’t feel beautiful. The borrowed dress was gorgeous and she liked the wispy supershort new haircut Carrie’s stylist had given her, but she couldn’t help feeling like a fraud.

This was a crazy idea, thinking a new look would change who she was inside, would somehow instantly transform her into someone glamorous and desirable.

Inside she still felt fat and dowdy and shy.

She would have been content to stay forever in the background. But then she received an e-mail from Stacy Cartier, an old friend at boarding school, who happened to mention she’d heard through the grapevine that another of their classmates Angelina Larson had come back to Portland for a visit and would be attending with her husband, Steve—who just happened to be Katie’s ex-fiancé.

She hadn’t seen Steve in years, not since she threw his ring at his head after she overheard him at a party laughing and joking with one of his friends about the little cash cow he was marrying.

She had been forty pounds overweight but she thought he loved her despite the extra weight and her propensity to feel most comfortable with her nose in a book. The realization that he was marrying her only for her family’s money and connections had been a bitter betrayal she wasn’t sure she had ever recovered from.

Though she never wanted to see him again, she was committed to attend this benefit auction. She had to be there but she suddenly couldn’t bear to have Steve—or his wife, Angelina, who had tormented her mercilessly through their childhood—think she hadn’t changed at all in the six years since she’d broken off the engagement. Hence the makeover, the haircut, the borrowed designer gown.

You look good, she reminded herself. Better than you’ve ever looked in your life. Pretend you’re beautiful and the world will see you that way.

With one more deep breath for courage, Katie walked into the ballroom, festooned with magical twinkling lights and holiday greenery.

Maybe this was all for nothing, she thought. In this press of people, she likely wouldn’t even run into Steve and Angelina. For a moment she stood there feeling lost, then she caught sight of her brother Trent talking to a group of people she didn’t know.

She approached him, grabbing another flute of champagne from a passing waiter as she moved through the crowd. She stood behind him for a moment until he finished speaking, then tapped him on the shoulder when the group started to break up.

“What time do they start the bidding?” she asked. Trent was one of the bachelors up for bid; she had agreed to come in the first place only to give him moral support.

He turned at her words, a ready smile on his handsome features that slid away when he saw her. If she hadn’t been so nervous about his reaction she would have laughed at the way his eyes widened and his jaw dropped.

“Katie?” he exclaimed. “What have you done to yourself? Where did you get that dress?”

The momentary delight she had taken at his stunned expression gave way to a flicker of annoyance. She hadn’t expected him to put on his overprotective big brother act. Usually he reserved that for Ivy, since Katie seldom gave him any reason to worry.

“Carrie Summers. She has a whole closet full of designer clothes from her modeling days. Why? What’s wrong with it?” she asked, when he continued to stare.

“Nothing, other than there isn’t nearly enough of it.” He cocked his head and took in all the changes she had made in the last few days. “You look incredible! You cut off all your hair. And where are your glasses? After all the years of Sheila’s nagging, I can’t believe you finally broke down and went for contacts.”

Here’s where things might get a little tricky, she thought. “I, um, had laser correction surgery earlier in the week. That’s why I haven’t been into the office. It was my Christmas present to myself.”

Just as she feared, his commanding features tightened. “Surgery? You had surgery and you didn’t bother to tell me? Why not? If you’d told me, I could have checked out the doctors and the facility, even researched the procedure. Hell, at the very least, I would have at least come with you to hold your hand.”

That was exactly why she hadn’t told him. He would take over like he always did and she would let him. She knew she relied too much on Trent. All of them did. Trent had basically raised all the Crosby children while Sheila was busy with her affairs and her position in society and Jack was busy building a business and carrying on plenty of affairs of his own.

She loved Trent deeply but after Ivy married a few months earlier, Katie realized perhaps she relied on him too much. She needed to stand on her own as Ivy had done, to find her own strength. The surgery was something she’d been thinking about for a long time and she wanted to do it alone. She didn’t regret it for a second; she could see better now than she ever dreamed possible.

“I didn’t want to bother you since I know how busy you’ve been with the super-router project.”

He opened his mouth to argue—probably something about how he was never too busy for his little sister—but before he could utter a word, his name came over the loudspeaker.

“Will Mr. Trent Crosby approach the podium, please? Trent Crosby.”

Katie turned and saw a woman she knew casually, Jenny Hall, giving the announcement.

Trent made a face. “Maybe I’ll luck out and they’re going to tell me they don’t need to put me on the auction block after all.”

She laughed. “You volunteered, buster. I think you’re stuck.”

He studied her for a moment. “You look good, Katie. If you can manage to fight off all the men who are going to be clamoring around you, save me a dance, okay?”

“Of course. Good luck.”

She watched him go to the dais, then scanned the room looking for someone else she knew. The panic that had abated somewhat in Trent’s presence bubbled back. This had to be the craziest idea she’d ever had, she thought again, nabbing her second—or was it third?—glass of champagne off a tray.

Whatever possessed her to think a little window dressing would cover her basic inadequacies? Her shyness, her social fumbling? She was one of those people who faded into the background and usually that was just the way she liked it.

It hadn’t taken therapy for her to figure out it was a learned behavior, developed early when she discovered that if she could manage to avoid attention, Sheila’s mercurial moods and sudden rages would rarely be aimed in her direction.

Trent wanted her here but she wished for once she could have said no to him. As much as she loved him, sometimes her older brother could be as forceful in his way as their father. She should have told him she couldn’t come and stayed home in her little condo in Lake Oswego, where she was comfortable and boring and safe.

She should leave, she thought. Really, her obligation here was done. Trent needed moral support and she had given it. This whole idea was ridiculous. Childish. Even if she saw Steve Larson, he probably wouldn’t care about any of this—the vision surgery, the blond highlights in her hair, the designer dress. He had the beautiful, though poisonous, Angelina on his arm.

She was about to set her glass on yet another tray carried by one of the ubiquitous waiters and make her escape when a tall man in an elegant black tuxedo approached her.

She recognized him instantly. Of course she knew who he was, since his younger self had starred in most of her adolescent fantasies—Peter Logan, oldest son of Terrence and Leslie Logan, and CEO of Crosby Systems’s biggest competitor, Logan Corporation.

She waited for a spark of recognition, then the inevitable cold disdain once he realized she was one of the despised Crosbys. But all she could see in his eyes was frank male appreciation.

For her! Peter Logan was looking at shy, dowdy, plump Katie Crosby like he wanted to devour her from top to bottom.

No, not plump anymore, she reminded herself. After the debacle of her short-lived engagement, she had worked fiendishly hard to whip herself into shape. Instead of the comfort foods she had survived on since her lonely boarding school days, she began to eat a healthier diet and to exercise obsessively.

It took her three years of hard work but she hadn’t been Steve Larson’s cash cow for a long time, even if she still preferred dressing in baggy clothes and hiding behind thick glasses and long hair.

He smiled at her, then, before she realized what was happening, he gripped her arm and maneuvered her onto the dance floor. Despite her shock at his high-handedness, she couldn’t help laughing. “Smooth. Very smooth. I see your reputation is not unfounded, Mr. Logan.”