Playing Games (13 page)

Frowning, I slid off the bed and grabbed my
own backpack, heading to the shower.

~~ * * * ~~

The shower did a lot to restore my mood. By
the time I emerged from it, fresh scrubbed and in a clean set of
clothes, I felt almost human again.

Liam sat up when I emerged from the bathroom,
my wet hair twisted into a sleek knot on top of my head. "Shall we
go out to dinner?"

I smiled, still feeling a little out of sorts
after our kiss. "I guess we can't visit Italy and not eat some food
before we go, right?"

"Exactly right."

We left our backpacks in the room but kept
our necessities - money, passports, room key - with us. I was
disappointed to see there was a cameraman waiting in the hall when
we left our room, but I supposed that was his job. I ignored it and
headed down the hall with Liam, both of us trying to act like we
weren't being tailed.

We exchanged a bit more of our money and then
walked the city streets, trying to find a place to eat that
wouldn't be too pricey. One place smelled absolutely heavenly, but
the prices on the street chalkboard were more than I'd wanted to
spend.

Liam stopped in front of the restaurant, as
if reading my mind. "We could split the food and only spend half
the money."

"Now you're talking," I told him, and we
headed inside.

As we sat down at one of the tables, I smiled
over at Liam and put my napkin in my lap…and froze. This was…

He noticed the weird look on my face and
laughed. "This feels like a date, doesn't it?"

I nodded. "You feel it, too?"

"Can't help it," he told me as the waiter
approached. He glanced over his shoulder, where the cameraman
hovered, still filming. "That kind of kills the mood, though."

That it did.

Our waiter didn't speak a lick of English,
but between him and a helpful person at another table, we managed
to communicate that we wanted to order one plate and share it. We
didn't know what to order, so the waiter suggested in rapid-fire
Italian that we get the special of the day. And it wasn't Italian
food without wine, so our helper at the next table ordered us two
glasses, despite our protests. We looked like a nice young couple,
he told us, which made me giggle nervously.

Liam just reached out and took my hand from
across the table.

My eyes widened. "What are you doing?"

"He's buying us wine," Liam told me with a
grin. "The least we can do is look like a happy couple." When I
began to protest, he lifted my hand to his mouth, kissed the back,
and murmured, "Good TV, remember?"

"Blackmailer," I said, but I laughed.

He winked at me, and then rubbed his thumb
across my knuckles.

A prickle of awareness moved over my skin and
I pulled my hand away just as the waiter brought us our wine. I
sipped it, then made an exclamation of surprise. "Wow, this is
really good."

Liam tasted his, and then agreed. "Doesn't
taste a bit like that stuff I stomped earlier today."

I laughed again. "At least you didn't have to
stare at giant penises."

He snorted. "I am sure I could have handled
that challenge just fine."

I tilted my head. "You're used to handling
giant penises?"

He wagged his eyebrows at me, that piercing
moving back and forth. "I handle one in particular every day."

"I…walked right into that one, didn't I?"

"You did."

I chuckled and shook my head. "I take full
responsibility, then."

"You did well today," he said, his voice
growing serious. "Extremely well. I think Brodie messed up in
switching partners."

A glow of pleasure spread through me.
"Oh?"

He nodded. "Tesla's aggressive, but she also
high maintenance. If she gets tired, he's going to hear about it.
If she's hungry, she needs fine dining. I was tired of her on day
one." His mouth curled into one of those secretive smiles. "But I
can't say that to her or she'll complain to the label."

"Well, Brodie seems to like her just fine," I
said. "He was quick to ditch his little sister as soon as a hot
rock star showed up."

"He's an idiot," Liam said. "You're one of
the reasons we've been doing so well on our challenges. You're
smart and you work hard and you never complain. Like I said, I
think I lucked out."

His praise was making me glow. "You're just
saying that because you kissed me earlier."

"Actually," he said slowly, drawing the word
out. "If you want to get technical, you kissed me. Twice now."

I stared at him. Oh. I guess I had. Twice
now. "Um." I had no idea what to say to that.

"I'm just teasing you, Katy," he said. "I
wasn't exactly fighting to get away either time."

"No, you weren't, were you?" I regained a bit
of my confidence at that. "Nor were you fighting to get away when I
woke up and you were sprawled all over me."

He just grinned. "Can I help it if you were
hogging the only bed in the room?" He shrugged his big shoulders.
"Besides, you were so small and cuddly looking, I couldn't help
myself."

I felt myself get warm again, and knew I was
blushing. I sipped my wine, thankful that the waiter arrived with a
large plate of pasta and set it down in front of Liam. It smelled
delicious.

He raised an eyebrow at me. "I guess this is
all mine."

"Screw that," I told him, and pulled my chair
to the side of the table so I could better access the plate.
"You're sharing or I’m throwing the next challenge and we’re
through."

"Well, I don't want that," Liam murmured, and
the look he gave me was hot with need. It was the same look he'd
given me when we were curled around each other on the bed, and my
pulse fluttered wildly in response.

We had two sets of forks, but the food was so
pretty that I didn't know where to start. I hovered my fork
uncertainly. It looked like an angel hair pasta covered with some
sort of chunky, vegetable red sauce, and fresh mussels lined the
bowl, artfully cracked open.

Liam got a wicked look in his eyes as he saw
me hesitate. He inclined his head at the cameraman hovering in the
distance, ever filming. "Want to make some good TV?"

"I'm not sure I like that look in your eyes,"
I teased. Did I want to make good TV? Did I ever.

He stabbed his fork into the food, and began
to swirl it in the rich noodles and sauce. Then, when he'd crafted
a forkful, he held it out to me to eat.

He was going to feed me.

"You sneak," I whispered, and leaned in,
mouth open and lips parted. I watched his gaze drop there, and felt
my body flush with his attention again. Then, he pushed the fork
into my mouth carefully.

I pulled away, chewing as the flavors burst
on my tongue. It was delicious, and I gave a little moan of
delight. The forkful had been messy, though, and a bit of sauce
lingered on my cheek. I reached up with my napkin, and Liam stopped
me. Instead, he leaned in and lightly ran his tongue over my cheek,
tasting the sauce.

"Delicious," he told me a second later in
that husky voice.

And every note in my body sang.

"Turnabout's fair play," I told him, and
tugged the plate toward me. I swirled a few noodles onto my fork
and then lifted it for him to take. And when Liam leaned in to eat
off of my fork? I had to admit that it was pretty erotic.

After the initial sharing, our hunger took
over and we ate like normal people. Liam refused to eat the
mussels, and I knew he was thinking of mukluk. I laughed and ate
them all, since I had a cast-iron stomach. They were delicious,
too, fresh from the Mediterranean. All of the food was incredible,
and so was the wine. We even splurged on a dessert, because how
could we not?

Eventually, though, our meal was done, our
wine drank. My eyes were beginning to droop with exhaustion, and
Liam glanced at a clock. "If we head back to the hotel soon, we can
probably get another six hours of sleep before we have to head out
to the starting line."

I gave him a sleepy smile. "That sounds good
to me."

His gaze focused on my face. "I can sleep on
the floor, if it really does make you uncomfortable to share the
bed with me."

I shook my head. "I wouldn't do that to you,
Liam. You know that." After a moment, I added, "And it doesn't make
me uncomfortable. I kind of like it."

He smiled.

We paid for the food and headed back out into
the warm night. When Liam reached for my hand, I automatically took
his and we strolled, hand in hand, back to the hotel. By the time
we got back to our room, we were so tired that we didn't do more
than take our shoes off and crawl under the covers. He pulled me
against him and we spooned again, but this time, all we did was
sleep.

There'd be time enough for more flirting in
the morning. For now? We needed to rest up so we could be on our A
game.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"You know, when the label made me come on
this race, I didn't think beyond the fact that I was going to have
to cater to Tesla for the next few weeks. I didn't expect to get
partners flipped, and I didn't expect to meet anyone like Katy.
She's, well, she's pretty incredible. I'm fascinated by her and I
find myself wanting to spend every waking moment just watching her.
How she moves, how she thinks. I've got it bad, don't I? I’m going
on like a freaking sap."
— Liam Brogan, Egypt Leg of
The
World Races

Somewhere around three in the morning, Italy
time, we woke up and headed back out to the flag site in front of
Pompeii. A man in a white toga waited for us, and when we arrived
at the starting line, he promptly handed us our next disk.

I took it, flipped it over, and began to
read. "Make your way to the Pyramids at Giza in Egypt and look for
the next flag station. You have one hundred dollars for this leg of
the race." I looked at Liam. "We're rich."

He laughed, rubbing his eyes. We were both
still worn out from our interrupted sleep, but trying desperately
to wake up. "We are. A hundred dollars might buy us another hotel
room for the next stop."

"Nice," I said, tucking the disk under my arm
and trying not to blush too much. "It'll be good to get a real
night's sleep."

Yeah, because I was totally not thinking
about sleep at the moment. I was thinking about how it'd felt to
wake up that morning with Liam curled around me again, both of us
under the covers and fully dressed. His arm had been around me
again, and my legs had been tangled with his. Instead of facing
away from him, though, I'd woken up and found my head was on his
chest as if he were my pillow.

And it had been awesome.

There hadn't been time to kiss or make out
this morning, though. It had been all race, all the time. A little
disappointing, but we needed to keep our heads in the game if we
wanted to beat Brodie and Tesla.

We headed away from the starting line, and as
we did, Liam spoke. "We can head straight to the airport, or we can
see if there's a nearby travel agency and book tickets ahead of
time. Grab some breakfast, too."

"That sounds good," I said with a yawn. "I
could use some coffee."

The race had called taxis for us, and we
instructed ours to head to the nearest travel agency. We found an
all-night one and headed in. At the sight of a computer in the main
area, Liam glanced over at me. "Why don't I order tickets and you
look up information online? See what we can find out about the
pyramids. Visiting hours and stuff like that."

"Sure." I headed over to the computer. There
was a placard in front of it that said "
Uso Gratuito
" and
"Free Use" underneath in English, and a smaller sentence underneath
in Italian that I couldn't make out, but was probably "No porn" or
something. I sat down and began to web search for the Great
Pyramids and travel. There were a million links, of course, so I
clicked on the first one and began to read.

As I did, I peeked over the computer monitor
and looked at Liam. His back was facing me, his shaggy black hair
messier than usual, given that we'd just woken up. I felt warm just
watching him, and knew I was harboring a serious crush at the
moment. We were just making good TV, after all, so there was no
need for me to get all crazy obsessed over him, but I was heading
in that direction.

He was just so freaking cute. Cute with a
hint of dangerous. I was an idiot to get all goofy over a rock boy,
but I couldn’t help myself.

I had an idea and opened another web browser,
and did a search for
Finding Threnody
. A jillion web hits
came up, and I pulled up their Wikipedia page. Tesla's picture was
splashed everywhere, and she stood in the forefront of every photo
while the three dark-haired guys stood in the background. Liam was
there, but it wasn't a good picture. I frowned and scanned the text
instead. There was a list of hits, and three platinum albums
mentioned. They had sold six point five million albums to date,
which was really impressive in the digital age, and over nine
million downloads of their biggest hit,
Worm in the
Apple
.

I headed to their webpage next, and sure
enough, Tesla's picture was sprawled all over the page with Liam
and two other guys standing in the background. Jeez. Camera hog
much? For some reason, I was irritated on his behalf. Didn't he
deserve the limelight just as much as Tesla did? I clicked on
'bios' next. Tesla's was half a page long. Under 'Liam Brogan'
there was only a small paragraph.

Liam Brogan started to play guitar at the age
of seven. He joined his first metal band at the advanced age of
twelve. When he was seventeen, he dropped out of high school to
focus on music full time and lied about his age to audition for
lead guitar for Finding Threnody. His dedication impressed the
band, especially Tesla Spooner, and he was invited to join. He and
Tesla dated for a short time, but broke up when they realized it
was going to come between them and the ability to make great music.
They remain friends and their breakup inspired the song Dark
Stars.