What would you do for three million dollars?
A Christmas Auction, a Marriage Auction novella from New York Times bestselling author Audrey Carlan & 1001 Dark Nights is now live!
“’Tis the Season,” some people say, as if the month of December could somehow magically make the world a better place. Fat chance of that happening in Sin City.
In my world, nothing is merry and bright. More like dark and dank. In fact, deck the halls should be deck the slobbering drunk who waited for me to get off work and followed me to my car with only one thing in mind.
He didn’t expect a smart girl with a handy-dandy taser, ready to light the star on his tree.
Unfortunately, I didn’t expect there to be two of them.
While my attacker was on the ground, twitching and convulsing, his face as red and puffed up as ole St. Nick, I was grabbed from behind by Santa’s helper.
As luck would have it, a limo rolled through the parking lot just in time. A pair of men exited the vehicle and dispatched my attackers as if by magic.
A sleek, elegant, and expensively dressed woman alighted from her shiny sleigh, took one look at me, and offered me a Christmas miracle…
Three million dollars for three years of my life.
And that’s how I met my savior, Madam Alana, the owner of The Marriage Auction.
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Keep reading for a look inside A Christmas Auction!
I paced the halls of the hospital, waiting to hear something about the blonde stranger we happened upon on our way to the hotel from the private airstrip. I didn’t even know how Alana Toussaint, otherwise known as Madam Alana, had conned me into this gig. Security management for the very private, very sought after Christmas Auction she held once a year was not my typical contract. If it wasn’t for my cousin, Joel, demanding I accept the job on behalf of the Castellanos’ good name, I’d be somewhere in the Maldives, hunting down an art thief that had stolen a priceless artifact from another one of my clients.
How a person could put themselves up for a marriage auction to the highest bidder for a period of three years was outrageous to me. Even more shocking was the price tag these candidates went for. No less than three mil a bid, with most of these individuals going for far higher. Hell, even my cousin Joel found his beloved wife, Faith, through this process. And what a shitshow that was. Kidnappings, mafia, a gunfight, exploding planes, not to mention the dozens of lives lost in that battle was not a situation I wanted to relive.
Whatever happened to meeting someone the old-fashioned way? See a cute girl from across the room, buy said girl a drink, and voila, you’ve got the start of something. Then again, if that worked, I’d be married a dozen times already. Yet, I wasn’t the target audience for marriage. I never planned on getting married. It wasn’t that I was opposed to a forever type of love, it’s just that particular concept didn’t fit in with my lifestyle. Commitment was not my thing. Which is why I hadn’t been in a “relationship” with a woman other than the occasional bar hookup, in a solid decade. And at thirty-four, my options of changing that weren’t looking any brighter.
I loved my work more than the idea of love. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t ever been in love. The type of woman I could truly fall for would have to be one in a billion. She’d have to be self-sufficient and prefer to spend more time on her own than with her partner. The work I did often took me all over the world for extended periods of time. It wasn’t conducive to what society considered a marriage between lovers.
My company was a hundred-million-dollar elite security service that wasn’t for the faint of heart or people with slim pocketbooks. Contracting with my outfit was designed for individuals that carried around shiny black Amex cards with no limits. Not to mention the high-risk environment I often found myself in. For example, the last job I was on had me working with the Latin Mafia to take down a Russian mobster who’d killed several innocents connected to friends of mine.
What woman could handle the type of man who had a job that often required the skills needed by an ex-military special operative?
Not a single woman I’d ever met.
“She’s waking up,” Alana called out, waving me over.
🌹Review🌹
Holly has always dreamed of owning her own bar but while she works towards that goal she has been managing a bar. When she finds herself in a dangerous situation it Madam Alana and Bruno, her security detail who come to her rescue and offers her an opportunity she can’t turn down.
Bruno is not only attracted to Holly but feels protective of her as well. When he finds himself tasked with her security leading up to the marriage auction that Holly has agreed to participate in he never expected that the biggest challenge would be letting her go.
The interactions between them were humorous and hot as Holly and Bruno find the gift they never knew they wanted in each other.
For more information about Audrey Carlan, visit:
https://audreycarlan.com/
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**Every 1001 Dark Nights novella is a standalone story. For new readers, it’s an introduction to an author’s world. And for fans, it’s a bonus book in the author’s series. We hope you’ll enjoy each one as much as we do.**
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