Top Shelf (Five for Fighting #4) Read online

  Amber Lynn

  Copyright © 2016 Amber Lynn

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Dedication

  For this book I’d like to again thank all the wonderful people who have given the Five for Fighting series a chance. I’ve always known my writing isn’t for everyone, but I’ve had so many positive connections with people who have enjoyed these storylines that it makes the doubts that sometimes roll around in my head all worth it.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  “How in the world did I let her talk me into this?” John Klinger looked around a dimly lit dining hall while he shook his head.

  The “her” he spoke of sat three tables away with her extended family. Casey Jones was the reason everyone at John’s table was dressed up and waiting for the bachelor auction taking place on the large stage at the front of the room to get over. Not that everyone at the table was involved with the auction. They just made it clear they wanted it to be over so they didn’t have to hear John complain about it.

  He was the only single person at the table, which included three of his teammates and their spouses. If he had a choice, he wouldn’t have arrived by himself, but since Casey had roped him into the auction, he decided it wasn’t a good idea to show up with a date.

  “Did she really have to convince you?” John’s best friend, Doug, asked as he nudged him with his elbow. “You’ve had more girlfriends in the last month than I’ve had my whole life.”

  John thought about the numbers for a second and ended up shrugging. Doug didn’t date much before getting married, but he had to have had more than six girlfriends. John didn’t classify all six women as girlfriends, even if the women involved liked to claim the relationships were more than what they were.

  “There’s a difference between picking someone up at a bar and being auctioned off as a date to the highest bidder. It’s twenty degrees outside and Casey made me pack a silly picnic basket for the date. Like we’re actually going to find a park somewhere to have lunch.”

  The men around the table shared a laugh at John’s expense. The women were kind enough to hold their laughter in, but not one of them would meet his eyes. Along with Doug and his wife, Lizzie, there was Nelson and Annie Palmer and Luke and Michelle King. Doug was a goaltender for their hockey team, while Nels and Luke were defensemen.

  Most of the rest of their teammates were littered around the other tables in the room, along with just about anyone in the city who had a big checkbook. The team wasn’t always around for the Holcombs’ annual cancer fundraiser, but when they had the night off, it was hard to turn down the invitation. Casey’s dad was the team owner and Casey ran the marketing department. The night celebrated the life of her mother, who’d lost her battle with breast cancer when Casey was a toddler.

  That probably explained why John had an issue telling her no when she’d asked him to be one of the bachelors up for auction. It was for a good cause, even if he had to repeat those words over and over in his head to make sure he didn’t run for the doors.

  “I don’t know what you’re worried about. You have it all worked out that Doug’s going to buy the date, so you don’t have to be bored to death by some doctor.” Lizzie rolled her green eyes in disgust as she played with the food on the plate in front of her.

  Before she basically turned into the team’s daycare provider, Lizzie had been a nurse, so she had her own opinions of doctors. Knowing her most recent experience with them, John was a little surprised she didn’t understand why he’d like to stay away from anyone who put the word doctor in front of their name. John was pretty sure not one of her former coworkers was allowed to practice medicine.

  Not that John didn’t respect doctors. He spent plenty of time with them because of various injuries over the years. He just had a certain type of woman he spent time with, and none of the doctors he’d met made the cut.

  “It’d look better if one of the women at the table would be willing to place the bid, but I don’t mind sharing my picnic basket with Doug. I was craving strawberries, so I bought a few pounds and a bag of sugar.”

  Annie threw a napkin in John’s direction, which he caught and tossed back. She was sitting two seats away from him on the left, and judging by the squinting, hostile look in her eyes, she didn’t like his plan to get out of the auction date any more than Lizzie did.

  “One of these days, you’re going to need to grow up, Klinger. I’m sure there’s more than one woman here tonight that’s interested in you, and I’m talking about more than just interested in the color of your sheets.”

  Nelson interrupted Annie before she could go on with her scolding. “I don’t know about that. He does have a bit of a reputation. I’m pretty sure anyone bidding on him tonight has one thing in mind. As a person who’s had to deal with women expecting that, I can understand why he doesn’t want to prostitute himself to the highest bidder.”

  John had only had one meaningful relationship in his life, when he was seventeen, but that didn’t mean he was stupid when it came to relationships. He was smart enough to know you didn’t remind your wife of the days women used to throw themselves at you, which meant Annie’s response didn’t come as a surprise.

  “Having problems with waitresses giving you their numbers again? There’s a way to fix that problem, you know. Just get the ‘property of Annie Palmer’ tattoo I’ve been telling you to get across your forehead.”

  Nelson whispered a response to Annie so the rest of the table couldn’t hear. Whatever he said made her blush, bringing a quiet sigh across John’s lips. His dining companions all looked like toppers on wedding cakes, and it didn’t help that they were all so happy. It made a guy have to question his thoughts when it came to his bachelor lifestyle.

  They all had kids too, so it wasn’t like they were in the early first-love stages of their relationships. John didn’t know about all the work that went into Luke and Michelle’s romance, but his best friend had almost been killed in a car accident during his journey to prove to Lizzie he loved her. John didn’t mind finding someone to spend a little more time getting to know, but he didn’t have any plans of dying for them.

  Thankfully, before the women of the table could admonish him further, the woman on the stage called John’s name. He’d been introduced to Casey’s aunt before. She seemed like a nice enough person, but since she was in charge of auctioning him off, she became John’s worst enemy.

  “Get on up here, John,” she said when he didn’t immediately jump out of his chair. “We’ve raised a lot of money already tonight, but I’m hoping you’ve kept your checkbooks ready for
this last bachelor.”

  Anne, the woman calling out to him, smiled so brightly that the dim lighting in the room seemed to ping off the white of her teeth and shine back into the room. John was probably the only one grim enough to notice any change in lighting.

  Doug gave John’s shoulder a commiserating pat and pushed him to get to his feet. His friend had agreed to make sure he didn’t end up with a date he’d regret, but even Doug didn’t know the true reason for John’s request. It should’ve been fairly obvious. A guy could only sit back and watch the people around him fall in love for so long without wondering if there was someone out there for him.

  John smiled and nodded to the various catcalls he heard on his way to the stage. It was his own fault that people thought there was only one thing on his mind, because for the most part, when he wasn’t thinking about playing hockey, he was thinking with another part of his body. That part liked attention and it wasn’t hard for him to find it.

  That didn’t mean there wasn’t desire on his part for something more. As his teammates caught the love bug, he feared it was just a matter of time before he did, and his feelings about that were up in the air.

  “Now, don’t be shy, John. I’ve heard from at least a half dozen women tonight that they can’t wait to win a date with you. Do you have anything you’d like to share with the group before we get the bidding started?”

  Somehow John didn’t manage to disappear during his slow walk to the stage, no matter how hard he wished for it. There wasn’t a group of screaming women lining the front of the stage, but he’d felt arms reach out to test his biceps along the way. The other eleven guys who’d gone before him seemed to enjoy the attention, but the crowd only watched in anticipation as they made it to the stage. Evidently something about the way John lived his life made it okay to touch.

  A microphone was thrust at him as he tried to keep the smile on his face. He’d been in front of bigger crowds, much bigger, and there was a chance half of those crowds were trying to picture him naked, so it wasn’t like he lacked experience pandering to a large group of people. There just came a time when all the pandering got a little tiring.

  It seemed strange to stare at Doug in the crowd, so he turned to Lizzie to keep eye contact with while he came up with something to say. As much as John was sure he didn’t feel the need to die for a woman, he had to admit Lizzie was probably worth it, at least for Doug. He’d seen the changes the cute blond had brought about in his best friend, and he could only imagine what would happen when their daughter was born.

  It’d been a little over a year since Lizzie’s ex-husband had tried to kill Doug, so he could take back his wife and son. Doug was just getting back to his playing form, and not surprisingly Lizzie’s belly had started to take on a round shape during the latter months of rehab. When you were in a room with the two of them, it was obvious they had trouble keeping their hands off each other.

  Doug hadn’t shared all the details about Lizzie’s past, but knowing her ex ended up going down in a blaze of bullets from the police made John think there were a few roadblocks in Doug’s path to love beside the near-death experience. Through it all, Doug never questioned the love he felt for Lizzie or her son, who as far as the world was concerned was just as much Doug’s as Lizzie’s.

  Reliving his friend’s journey to love wasn’t going to get him off the stage any faster, and since he’d spent about twenty minutes thinking about his teammates’ love lives, he needed to man up and get the night over with. When he was home alone, relaxing on his silk sheets, he could think about where he wanted his life to go.

  As dim as the room seemed from the audience, the white lights shining on him were blinding and he could feel the sweat start to bead up on his neck. John took a second to clear his throat before he started speaking.

  “I’m not really sure what to say. You’ve already introduced me, Anne, and it seems like more than a few of the lovely ladies doing the bidding already know who I am. For those who don’t, you can come down and watch the Tigers play a game tomorrow night and there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’ll see me in what I like to call my office.”

  John fidgeted by curling his fingers up into fists and then slowly releasing them. He wanted to look over at Casey, to make sure she picked up the subtle signs that he hated what she’d talked him into, but he was afraid he’d have trouble keeping a scowl off his face. Focusing on a grinning Lizzie continued to seem like the best option.

  “I’m sure everyone here knows the Tigers are a hockey team and John is one of the goaltenders for the team, but just in case you don’t follow the team closely, he was the league’s most valuable player and the top goaltender last year after leading the team to the championship.”

  Anne was laying it on thick. John wanted to come off as less desirable, but spouting off his awards didn’t help that cause. He wouldn’t have won anything if Doug hadn’t been injured, so the awards left him feeling a bit conflicted. They changed the backup and starter dynamic Doug and he’d had for years, which worried John. He didn’t think their friendship would take a ding because of it, but there were talks that other teams were shopping goaltenders and neither one of them had long-term contracts that would hinder negotiation talks.

  “I’ll bid three thousand dollars,” a woman shouted from the audience.

  John looked in the direction the voice came from and tried to pick out the owner. For the previous bachelors, Anne had started bidding at a thousand and most of them went for around five thousand. The bidding hadn’t officially started and John was already calculating the hit on his pocket book.

  “Four thousand,” a woman from the other side of the room announced.

  The lights shining in his eyes made it hard to make anyone out, so he listened to the back and forth that started between four women. Each new bid caused him to cringe as he used his eyes to implore Lizzie to get her husband to stop the craziness and make a high enough bid that the torture would be over.

  She only smiled back at him and covered her mouth as she started giggling. Doug leaned in and whispered something to her. As soon as he finished, she nodded and moved to stand up. Before she could do or say whatever she had planned, a forceful voice echoed through the room.

  “Two hundred thousand.”

  The quiet noises from conversations going on during the bidding came to an abrupt halt as everyone turned to try to see who made the bid. The dollar amount had only been up to twenty thousand, and John had considered he’d have to shell out fifty to make sure he went home alone, but jumping into the three digits wasn’t something he’d planned for.

  Like the rest of the crowd, he tried to make out who’d decided he was worth big bucks. The lights made it impossible for him to see behind the first couple rows of tables directly in front of the stage, so no matter how he strained his eyes, he couldn’t see anything. As soon as the whispers in the crowd started back up, he got the sense the bidder was well-known, so he looked back to Lizzie, who was sitting down, staring off to the right of the room behind her.

  Glancing over to Doug, he saw his friend’s eyes were focused on him and his head shook back and forth. He mouthed some words, but John couldn’t make them out. Before John could ask him to repeat the words, Anne found her voice.

  “Well now, that is a generous bid. Do we have anyone who’d like to top it?”

  John didn’t bother trying to tell Doug to up the bid, and no one else in the room seemed willing to part with that amount of money. John couldn’t blame them, because he’d been surprised how much the bidding had gotten up to naturally.

  “I guess that does it then. Jasmine Truedel, you’ve won yourself a date with John Klinger. If you’d head over to the table on the right side of the room, we’ll make sure your date is brought over in just a second.”

  John about swallowed his tongue when he heard the name. Cleary the dread of being in the auction had clouded his perusal of the crowd. He hadn’t noticed the award-winning actress was in attendance, and
from what he’d seen in the movies, it was hard not to notice her.

  Standing motionless on the stage, John wasn’t sure whether to be happy or sad that his original plan hadn’t worked out. Jasmine had a reputation almost as bad as his and was known for ripping guys’ hearts out. Since he was tired of the endless cycle of hook-ups and break-ups he’d been going through, being with someone who wasn’t looking for a relationship could actually help get him out of the funk of wanting to settle down.

  “Now that dinner and our fun up here is over, we’ll get the band started up so you guys can hit the dancefloor. Thanks again for coming tonight and all that you do every year to help keep my sister’s memory alive.” Anne handed the microphone off to a man who’d appeared to take it before she turned to talk to John. “I heard rumors you were going to have one of your friends bid on you to get out of any dates, but I’m guessing by the shocked look on your face that Jasmine isn’t one of those friends.”

  John was fine standing there looking stupid, but Anne put one of her hands on his arm and started guiding him off the stage. Somehow he managed to make his legs work without tripping down the four stairs. They’d exited the opposite side he’d gone up, which brought them directly to the table where Jasmine was waiting for them.

  If Anne thought he looked shocked, he could only imagine what look she’d describe on his face when he took in the gorgeous actress. Her black hair had soft waves in it that floated down to her ample breasts, which were really the only thing John could see as they tried to pop out the top of her skintight black sheath. As much as he wanted to act like a gentleman and figure out why in the world she’d spent so much money on him, those luscious mounds were calling to him and he knew he was in trouble.

  Chapter Two

  It never failed. Jasmine dealt with the stares everywhere she went, but she’d hoped someone with the reputation of John Klinger wouldn’t get the hungry wide-eyed look as soon as he saw her breasts. If the rumors were true, he’d seen hundreds of women naked, so another pair of boobs should’ve been just a chance for him to turn on the charm.