laying Games (Games #2)(13)
Author: Jessica Clare

"You’d guess right. You ditched me, and you’ve been ignoring me to play tonsil hockey with the rock star. Like I’m supposed to be grateful that you’re paying attention to me now?" I shifted, moving a little closer to Liam. "You made it quite clear that you’re not in this for family, and that’s just fine with me."

"Look, I said I was sorry, Katy."

"Actually, you didn’t—"

"How was I supposed to know the Ace would split us up?"

"Why did you use it to save another team anyhow?" I looked over at Liam. "Sorry. No offense."

"It’s okay," he told me, but his face was tight with dislike as he watched my brother.

"Cause it was Tesla Spooner," Brodie told me. "Fucking hottest rock chick ever."

"So you sold me out because you wanted to make out with a rock chick?"

"Well, yeah." And he grinned boyishly.

I wanted to kick him in the nuts. "You suck, Brodie."

"I’m sorry you’re still mad, Katy. I just wanted to see if you two wanted to work with me and Tesla for the rest of the race. We can still make it to the end with both of our teams, you know. I think it’d be a good thing."

I stared at my brother. "Are you serious? You ditched me and now you want my help? Our help?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Makes sense to me. Now instead of just me and you, it’s two teams. We can work off of each other and push to the end." His gaze moved to our guidebook. "And we can share information."

"Or," I said in a sarcastic voice, "we could share our information and you could use it to hose me again. Nice try, Brodie."

"Fine. If you’re going to hold a grudge, I can’t stop you." Brodie gave me a sad look that I didn’t buy for a minute. "Can we borrow your guidebook for a few, at least?"

"No," Liam said. "Get your own."

"We didn’t have the money on the last leg," Brodie said, talking to me and ignoring Liam. "It’d be really helpful if you could let us just see it for a few minutes—"

"No," I said this time. "There’s plenty of time before seven am. Go get your own guidebook."

"But you’ve got one right here—"

"And we said no," Liam reminded him. "You’ve been a dick to your sister the whole time. You shouldn’t be surprised that she doesn’t want to help you."

"Fine. You don’t want to help me?" Brodie reached over and plucked the guidebook out of Liam’s hands, getting to his feet. "Then I’ll just take it—"

Instantly, Liam was on his feet, going after Brodie, and grasped the guidebook. “That’s not yours.”

Brodie put a hand on Liam’s jaw, planting it and trying to shove him aside to keep the guide from him. The two men began to scuffle, and I screamed as they started to get a bit violent. What the hell was happening? "Stop it, Brodie," I yelled, leaping to my feet.

"Liam, quit it," Tesla bellowed off to the side.

"Hey, buzz off," I called at her, even as the men’s struggles got more aggressive.

A ripping sound cut through the air.

Suddenly, Chip was there, pulling Brodie off, and Dean stepped in, blocking Liam. "What’s going on here?" The host asked. Cameras hovered all around, catching every humiliating moment for TV.

"This a**hole stole what wasn’t his," Liam said, waving what was now one half of a tourism guide to Italy. "And I’m tired of him walking all over my partner. Katy’s been nothing but nice about this whole shit deal and her brother thinks he can just do whatever he wants."

My jaw dropped a little to hear Liam defend me like that – against my own brother. It was…really nice.

Chip frowned at the two men. He looked at Brodie. "Is it true that you stole from this team?"

Brodie gave a sigh of disgust and tossed the ripped half of the stolen guide onto the ground. "I didn’t realize they were going to be such pussies about it."

"I’m sorry, but stealing is against the rules. Yellow team, you will have to take a two-hour penalty for rules violation at seven am, when the facilities open."

The look Brodie shot my way was withering. "Seriously?"

"I’m afraid so."

"Too bad," Liam said in a bland voice, then scooped up the discarded half of the guide.

"Careful," Chip said. "I can give you a penalty too."

Liam returned to my side and said nothing else. I could practically feel the tension vibrating off of him. I put an arm around his waist and steered him away from the tense little group. "Come on. Let’s just go sit down."

The crowd dispersed, and a cameraman came to our side, filming as Liam and I sat down off to the side again. I barely noticed that another team came up to the mat, looking confused as everyone scattered. Summer and Polly. I looked at Liam, noticing that his lip was swollen on one side. My fingers brushed over it. "You okay?"

He ran his tongue over his lip, and it slid against my fingertips, which just made my entire body flare up. "Yeah. Your brother elbowed me in the face."

My eyes narrowed. "He’s such an ass. You want me to say something?"

"Nah. They’ll kick him from the game."

“And you don’t want that?”

“Not if it’ll make Tesla run screaming to the label about what I did.” After a moment, he grinned. "Pretty sure I elbowed him in the gut, though."

I smiled back, and let my hand drop back into my lap.

To my surprise, he picked up my hand and kissed my fingertips, right where his tongue had brushed against them. "He doesn’t know what he missed out on when he lost you as a partner."

Warmth flooded through me. I tried to think of what to say, but my gaze was fascinated by his mouth on my fingertips.

A large hand clapped me on the back, startling me. "You guys ok?" Dean leaned over us. "That was some messy shit, huh?"

I nodded and pulled my hand back toward me, hoping Dean and the others hadn’t noticed that electric moment between Liam and I. "We’re fine. Thanks, Dean."

He nodded. "You let me and Abby know if you need anything."

As Dean left, I squeezed in next to Liam and tucked my legs close. Like at the airport, I pulled my body close to his and snuggled in as we waited for dawn. Neither one of us spoke, and it seemed like a bad move to pull our guide out right away again.

"I’m sorry," I whispered to Liam.

His fingers reached out and brushed along my jawline in a tender caress. "I’m not."

Wendi and Rick, the mother and son team, were the last to arrive in Pompeii. They showed up some time around four in the morning, while I was trying to sleep, and the sounds of Wendi’s high pitched bawling woke me up. We were a little sad to see them go because they were genuinely nice, but teams had to leave. That was just how the game worked. As long as it wasn’t us, I didn’t much care.

When six am rolled around, the remaining teams started to head back to the entrance designated for the competition. Liam and I waited a bit, then consulted our guide again.

Two major temples inside Pompeii – Jupiter and Apollo. We studied the floor plans, then decided that we’d head to the Temple of Jupiter, despite it being just a bit further into the city than the Temple of Apollo, since everyone would probably head to Apollo first. Then, we joined the others.

At seven, the teams flooded into Pompeii. The ruins were magnificent – from the cobbled streets to the graffiti-covered and frescoed buildings around us. I wanted to stop and look at the fascinating city, but we didn’t have time. It was a race, after all.

The first temple we passed was the temple of Apollo, and we could see the challenge areas set up. Immediately, four teams broke off and headed for it. Abby and Dean hesitated and looked at us, and we headed on to the next temple. They followed us, since we’d agreed to work together on this leg of the race as well.

Each station was set up with dozens of white broken pieces, all supposed to resemble marble but felt like plastic. Our goal was to create a replica of each temple as it stood once upon a time, and a judge would swing by with our next clue. Except we had a mountain of pieces, and they all looked the same.

More puzzles. Ugh. I picked up one block, studied it, and gave Liam a helpless look. "I don’t even know where to begin."

He took the piece from me, studied it, and then handed it back. "I wonder if the other temple’s any easier."

I flipped to my diagram of the Temple of Apollo. The Temple of Jupiter had one single row of columns. The Temple of Apollo had many, many rows of various sized columns. "Not according to this."

"Nothing to do but get started, then," Liam said, and sighed.

I echoed the sentiment and gave a heavy sigh of my own.

By the time the Italy leg was over, I never wanted to see anything Roman ever again. It was easily the longest day of my life. We’d ran around on only hours of sleep, and as the day wore on, the weather became oppressively muggy and too warm.

The temple build took hours to do. Abby and Dean and Liam and I worked together, consulting the chart in our guidebook, the current ruins, and good old fashioned hunches. We tried, failed, tried again, and failed once more. When Abby and Dean finished theirs, Abby immediately ran over to me and whispered what was wrong with our model. We fixed it minutes later and received our clue, just as Brodie and Tesla ran up, their penalty completed.

For once, the penalty would end up being in their favor, because all they had to do was look at our models and pattern theirs after ours. Damn it. I felt the strongest urge to kick mine over, but I didn’t know if that would make us have to restart.

The next clue was for an individual task. “I’ll take this one,” I told Liam. “You did all the heavy lifting of the temple pieces. Sit down and rest a few.”

He nodded and collapsed in the shade of one of the buildings. His brow was beaded with sweat and he pulled out a bottle of water, looking rather winded. I didn’t blame him – he and Dean had worked like animals on the last challenge while Abby and I stood around and pointed out directions.

My task was a simple one – theoretically. It was a visual scavenger hunt. I had to go to one villa, pick up a scroll, go to the next villa, pick up a feather pen, and the next villa had a shopping list of ‘items’ I had to find in the paintings and frescoes. Then, I needed to visit sixteen different marked villas in the ruins and note where each object was found. Then, I had to run to a judge and show him my list. If I had everything marked correctly, we could move on to the next task.

It seemed almost too easy. Of course, I hadn’t realized why the producers had wanted to do this particular challenge until I arrived at the first villa and saw the cameraman set up in front of the mural, ready to film reactions.

The murals in Pompeii? Were dirty. Hugely dirty. There were murals of a woman receiving oral in a bathhouse, murals of a threesome, murals of gods with penises longer than an arm. You name it? The Pompeiians had made a beautiful mural of it. I giggled and blushed my way through each one, ran into Abby about halfway through, and we compared notes.

She pointed at the house with the mural of the well-hung god. "I called that one ‘Dean.’"

I died laughing. I almost joked that I hadn’t found one to call Liam, but my mind flashed back to the mural of the woman in the bathhouse receiving oral from the guy kneeling in front of her, and my face flamed bright red.