He Auctioned Our Week to My Best Friend, So I Took the Helm novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gold Paddle
At the Larkin gala Samantha's husband gives away the seven days he promised her on her father's boat, and her best friend buys them with a gold paddle; Samantha steps out and the auctioneer tells her the boat is hers.
The week my husband promised me sold for twenty-five thousand dollars, and my best friend bought it.
I was sitting at table nine in a hotel ballroom, in a green dress, with a positive pregnancy test in my clutch.
Tobias didn't know about the test.
I had planned to tell him after the gala, over leftover cake in our kitchen, the way we had always said we would.
We had been trying for four years.
Brynn would be the second person to know.
She had filled my fertility pills at her pharmacy every month for those four years, as a favor.
This summer my sister made me see a new doctor, and I filled the new prescription myself, across town.
I hadn't told Brynn yet.
Up on the stage, the auctioneer stood behind a glass podium with a green sash across his tuxedo.
He ran the charity that threw the gala, a foundation for babies born too early, and tonight he sold things in a warm, easy voice.
"Lot three-seventeen," he said, reading from a card. "Seven days aboard the sailing yacht Marigold, out of Rockport, Maine, hosted by Tobias Kemper."
My stomach dropped.
The Marigold was my father's boat.
He built her by hand in a rented shed, and when he died he left her to me.
Tobias had promised me seven days alone on her for our seventh anniversary, back in March.
He had put it off three times since.
I turned to my husband.
He was looking at his plate.
"That's our week," I whispered.
"It's for the children's wing, Sam," Tobias said, still not looking up. "Relax. It's a joke. Somebody pays twenty grand, we go another time."
"You didn't ask me."
"I'm asking you to trust me."
The auctioneer opened the bidding at five thousand.
A man at table three went to eight, then ten.
Then a gold paddle shot up at table two, and a voice I'd known since I was eighteen called across the ballroom.
"Twenty-five thousand!"
Brynn Stanwood was on her feet with the paddle over her head and her other hand at her throat, laughing at herself.
The room laughed and clapped.
Her blonde hair was pinned up and she was glowing, and she mouthed a single word at me over the candles:
"Sorry."
I didn't understand what she was sorry for.
His gavel stayed up.
"Twenty-five thousand, from the gold paddle," he said. "Going once."
He was looking straight at me.
I pulled my own paddle off the tablecloth, number forty-one, and got it as high as my shoulder.
Tobias's hand closed around my wrist and pressed it back down against the table.
"Don't," he said, very low, and he was smiling at the room. "People are filming."
I looked around.
Phones were up at every table.
The foundation had a camera on a tripod near the stage, with a red light on it, and a banner that said LIVE.
"Going twice," the auctioneer said.
"Tobias, let go of my arm."
"Sit still, Samantha. Please. Don't turn this into a scene over a boat."
"Sold," he said, and the gavel came down. "To the gold paddle. Thank you, Miss Stanwood."
Brynn was out of her chair before the applause finished.
She crossed the floor in her gold dress and put both arms around my neck, and she smelled like her usual vanilla.
"Sam, don't look like that," she said in my ear. "It's for the babies. I'll give you the week back, I swear on my life. We'll sort it out tonight."
She kissed Tobias on the cheek and went back to her table, waving at people.
Tobias let go of my wrist.
"See?" he said. "She's on our side. Everyone is. Drink some water."
His phone lay face up beside his glass.
It lit with a reminder from an airline.
Kemper, Tobias. Stanwood, Brynn. Boston to Portland, September 14. Booked August 16.
I read it twice.
The gala was on September 6, and he had booked two seats three weeks before he gave my boat away.
Tobias saw me looking and put his hand over the phone.
"Samantha."
I picked up my clutch.
The test was inside it, and the two pink lines had not changed.
"Where are you going?" he said.
I didn't answer him.
So I stepped out.
Behind me the ballroom started up again with lot three-eighteen, and a stand-in at the podium said something about a weekend in Napa.
I was at the cloakroom counter, handing over my ticket with a shaking hand, when a man in a green sash stopped beside me.
The auctioneer had left the stage in the middle of a lot.
"Mrs. Kemper," he said quietly. "Finnegan Lyle, I run the foundation. "Before you go. The Marigold is registered to you, not to your husband."
"I know it is."
"Then he donated a boat he doesn't own." He looked at the camera light at the end of the hall. "Without your signature, lot three-seventeen isn't sold."
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