Page 1 of Auctioned to the Billionaire Stalker

Prologue

Jack

I looked at the clock. It was almost 11:30. She would be here soon. My hands started to sweat and shake. I took a deep breath that was supposed to calm me down but did nothing.Nothing. It never did anymore. My obsession with Daisy Tiller was too great, too big to overcome. It was better if I just happened upon her. Then I had less time to think about how I’d be close to her soon. I’d have less time to get nervous. But that occurred less and less often now.

Mainly because I was stalking her. I knew where she’d be at all times. I’d bought a house near hers. I knew her class schedule at West Bay University. I knew the sidewalks she jogged on, the times she’d exercise, the smoothie shop she frequented, the foods she hated, the people she talked to, all the men she’d ever dated. I knew everything about her.Everything.

How did I become a stalker? Well, I blamed tomato soup and an ill-timed golf tournament.

Before Daisy, I’d never believed in stalkers. I hadn’t understood them. Every now and then I’d hear about one doing some horrible thing in the name of love and being arrested. Then I’d wonder what in the world had led that person to become so captivated by someone that they’d do anything to get their attention. I had thought it was pathetic.

How could anyone be obsessed with someone to the point of having to know every detail about them? Following them? Tracking them?

No. That hadn’t even been in the realm of possibilities for me.

I’d never even had a crush on anyone. Women threw themselves at me, I fucked them if I wanted to, then I moved on. End of story. It had been that way since I was in my late teens and had discovered that I really enjoyed fucking. I’d never understood the concept of romantic love, though. It had seemedludicrous to me, and I suspected people were making it up. That it was one big conspiracy dreamed up by the wedding industry. Or the Valentine’s Day card marketers.

I’d been oblivious about love.

Until the day Daisy Tiller crashed into me and spilled my tomato soup all over the pair of us. I had looked at her, irate, ready to cuss her out or demand she be fired from her deli delivery job. But something happened when my eyes met hers. It was as if I could see her soul, her very essence. And then she’d smiled at me.

And my entire world had turned upside down.

CHAPTER ONE

Jack

My day was not going according to plan, and it was driving me crazy.

I sat at my state-of-the-art desk in my darkened office, still a little sweaty from my walk back to the office under the blazing summer sun. I was in a bad mood. Well, most people would say I was always in a bad mood. But this one was extra bad. I’d had to give up part of my workday to play in a charity golf tournament. I hated that kind of shit. Not charities. I gave to charity all the time.

No, I hated golf. And having to do anything even remotely related to public relations. Normally, my brother handled all of that for me. But he was out of town with his wife. He hadn’t known that the Salazar family would have to move the dates of their annual charity golf tournament to avoid a summer storm.

Storms in the South were no joke, and West Bay, Georgia, had its fair share of tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and even the occasional hurricane. We hadn’t gotten a direct hit from a hurricane in more than two centuries since we were sheltered in a cove-like area above Savannah and below Hilton Head, South Carolina. We often got the outer bands of storms that hit Florida or moved up the coast a little and hit North Carolina, but we rarely had to evacuate.

But this storm was scheduled to hit the next weekend, and there was a slight possibility of hurricane-force winds. So, the Salazars had moved the golf tournament that my brother would have been back in time for if it had been played at itsoriginally scheduled time. Normally, I would have just bowed out of the tournament and sent a big check.

But that wouldn’t fly in this town. The Salazars ran West Bay, and everyone knew it. They would’ve considered it a slight for me not to show up, especially since I was partnered with Nico, one of the Salazar sons. He was trying to recruit my brothers and me to become members of his ultra-exclusive string of members-only nightclubs that were a highlight of downtown West Bay.

That was how I’d found myself doing two things I desperately hated this morning—playing golf and making small talk. Just as I’d thought, Nico had spent the entire time trying to talk me into joining the clubs. Most people feared Nico, who stood at least six feet, five inches tall, was muscular, covered in tattoos, and very intense. I wasn’t scared, though. I was big myself. I was maybe an inch shorter than him, just as muscular because I worked out all the time to help manage my anxiety and obsessive thoughts, and I wasn’t exactly known for being an easy-going guy. In a contest over who was grumpier, more intense, or scarier, it would be a toss-up between the two of us. Well, his tattoos might give him the edge. But there was no way in hell I’d ever get any tattoos. First off, it would hurt. I wasn’t a big fan of needles. And second, the thought of all that ink living just under my skin creeped me out.

Still, I wasn’t intimidated or scared of Nico. But my lord. The man would not quit talking about his damn clubs. I’d finally agreed to a tour just to get him to shut the hell up. But there was no way I would let him drive me back to the office at the end of the tournament. I had taken an Uber to the golf course because I knew parking would be scarce, and the thought of that stressed me out.

I had been so desperate to get away from Nico Salazar that when he’d offered me a ride home, I’d opted to walk to the office instead. A mile. In the hot Southern sun. In the middle of summer. I hadn’t even paused to order another Uber. I was so over the small talk, I had been desperate to escape. He hadlooked at me like I was crazy when I started jogging down the busy street in front of the West Bay Downtown Country Club. That was fine with me. Maybe he’d leave me alone about joining his goddamn club if he thought I was insane.

I doubted it, though. He liked having famous people join his club. And I was at least moderately famous.

I had publishedCaveSphere, one of the most successful video games of all time, when I was just twenty. I’d skipped several grades of school and ended up with college degrees in both computer science and graphic design at nineteen. I’d worked onCaveSpheresince I’d been about twelve.

I’d been caught by surprise by the almost instant success of the game. My entire family had pitched in to help me. My two older brothers had quit their respective jobs and taken over the business side of things, thank goodness, and allowed me to just focus on game development. My father handled social media. My older sister was in charge of public relations. My mother managed human resources for Lancaster Games, which I’d had to start in order to handle the massive amounts of coding and design that went into each game. Tallon, my best friend from school, was in charge of IT for the entire building, which stood proud and beautiful among a few other high rises that were beginning to dot the emerging skyline of downtown West Bay. And, of course, my grandma Cynthia was my secretary.

That might have been the hardest job of all, but she of all people could handle my demands, which, by this time in my life, I knew were considered to be odd. Grandma was my best friend in the world. I think it was because she understood me. She and I both had extremely high IQs. She’d balked when my parents had me evaluated for autism when I was young. She’d insisted I was just highly intelligent, which came with its own challenges. She would know. She’d been a literal rocket scientist with NASA before she’d retired to become my secretary after the success ofCaveSphere. It was a franchise now, with two sequels published to great fanfareand success.

My celebrity status as a young, successful video game designer had made everyone in town want to get to know me. It was the reason Nico Salazar wanted me to join his club. It would be a major coup for him and probably bring in even more members. Not that he needed any. Word had it that his waiting list was a mile long, but he’d made it clear I would bypass that list completely. That’s how much he wanted me as a member.

All the attention wouldn’t bother me quite so much if I was famous only for the success of my video games. But that wasn’t the case. I was famous because of the video game’s successandthe fact that I was insanely handsome. I wasn’t conceited, just honest. My whole family was gorgeous. But I was the best-looking one out of everybody. I’d even been featured inPeoplemagazine’s “Most Beautiful People” edition. Twice. I hated the attention. I’d even tried to tone down my attractiveness. I wore glasses instead of contacts. I wore jeans and old, soft T-shirts most of the time. I didn’t care where I got my hair cut. I often wore backwards baseball caps to cover my messy hair.

But it didn’t matter. In fact, a lot of women seemed to think those things made me hotter. I couldn’t win. I was just going to be someone people wanted to get to know, even though I was a grumpy, strange bastard.