Publication date: September 7th, 2020
Synopsis:
Kaylee Heart would rather run through a roaring fire than endure even a minute of public speaking. Put in an eighty-hour work week? No problem. Shut down her grandfather's gold-digging girlfriend? Easy peasy. Stand in front of an auction crowd and call for bids? Show her the exit.
So she has no idea how Gerald, the golden-voiced auctioneer she's been crushing on at the local auction house, can find the courage to stand on stage every week, with all those eyes on him. But as cruel fate would have it, she is about to find out.
Her family antique shop, the Vintage at Heart, has tripped over one financial hurdle too many and Kay is propelled, full speed, into her biggest phobia--the spotlight.
With terror chasing her, she'll have to fight to keep the family business from closing forever. Even if the battle takes place in front of a live crowd.
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Excerpt
"You know," Gerald spoke up from the auction block, entering the conversation but looking directly at Kay, "you can always talk to the backup bidder. Maybe she'll buy it off you. Nothing illegal about that."
His words ripped through her. She felt every eye in the room fall onto her face. Kay's vision narrowed and the heat that already filled her cheeks rushed down her neck to her collarbones. Bumpy, itchy blotches swelled under her skin.
She nodded, unable to force any words out into the same air with the smothering stares of the other attendees.
"Next lot," one of the floor runners called up to Gerald, lifting a black amethyst glass head into the air. It was the kind old department stores used to display hats on before everything became plastic and disposable. Kay shoved her bidder paddle deeper into her lap. She wanted the retro hat display--it was her second favorite piece in the sale--but having been too aggressive in her door bidding, she let it pass unchallenged.
She wasn't going to let the last lot pass unchallenged.
It, or more precisely "they," sat at the end of the line of incoming items, destined to be the final lot of the sale--a pair of ancient wood lodge chairs from a long defunct fraternal order. They stood tall, five feet at least, but lopsided on weak and worn frames. The glue had dried over the past century, leaving brittle joints and crooked lines. The dark oak showed patches of white stains from decades of damp storage. Deeply carved geometric symbols covered every bit of exposed wood, stopping only at the dry-rot leather seats.
But there was potential hiding under the years of neglect. Some wood glue to tighten the joints, a splash of ivory-colored milk paint, a brush-wash of dark wax to heighten the details, and new leather seat covers would turn the pair into wedding chairs to die for.
Until they made it to the front of the room, Kay let herself be trapped in the magic spell of Gerald's bid calling, mesmerized by his animated hands as he worked. His long sleeves were rolled back and cuffed above muscled forearms. The gavel slowly spun around like a wizard's want, pointing back and forth across the crowd as he tracked the bidders. Good hands, solid looking and tan. He wasn't afraid of physical labor.
His voice seemed stronger still. It warred with the magical sight of him in the broken-rainbow glow of the stained glass behind him.
Kay smacked the wooden bidder paddle into her palm. Now was not the time to be distracted. Not at all. She had too many bills to pay, a nearly bankrupt family store to save, and a wicked witch to melt off her grandfather's arm.
Jordan Riley Swan is a wild word hunter living in the far and dangerous reaches of rural Ohio. He spends his nights tracking down big-game stories, capturing them in paper cages, and training them to be better tales.
The Heart's Bidding was the first novel he'd dared to use the key of his typewriter to release back into the wild.
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