by Pippa Grant
“What do you do with it?”
“I fly it.”
“Like you’re the pilot?”
Again, I incline my head.
“That’s badass.”
“Thank you.”
“Chase would puke his guts out first.”
“You three are adorable.”
“Damn fucking right. Wanna get out of here with me?”
A surprised laugh flies out of my mouth before I can stop it. “No.”
“Don’t worry. Just warming you up to the idea.” He’s an absolute goon, complete with a sparkle in his blue eyes that suggests he’s playing me.
Like he knows I’m going to say no. And he’s going to ask again, in even more outlandish ways, and he’ll relish the hell out of being shot down over and over, all night long.
It’s disconcerting, to say the least.
And intriguing. Can’t help wondering how far he’ll go.
I’m not unfamiliar with being hit on. I’m a woman in a man’s world, I eat right, exercise, and take care of myself, and I can throw down at the bar. I’m not unfamiliar with arrogance—see again woman in a man’s world—but Zeus Berger’s style of arrogance doesn’t fit in a normal box.
He’s cocky, yes, but he either truly, delusionally believes that he can convince me to leave with him—while he’s dressed like a woman, no less—or he gets his rocks off just by playing the game.
He gives his girls a tug, thrusts them out, and yanks his skirt down.
“Chase. Order six pizzas. Ares is hungry.”
“Order your own damn pizzas,” Chase says affably.
“You got to ogle my ass while I was getting into this girdle. You order the pizza. And a karaoke machine.” He winks at me. “Later, Fireball. We got more chaos to cause. Don’t leave without saying bye. A woman like me needs all the girlfriends she can get.”
The three of them amble away. The pink Lycra does some fantastic things to Zeus Berger’s ass. There’s some surprisingly nice curve to it. He’s so…well, big, that you wouldn’t expect him to have shape. And I don’t think the lack of jiggle has anything to do with being squished into the dress.
Not judging by the definition in his thighs.
That man is a powerful force to be reckoned with.
If Gracie weren’t here, I’d consider his proposition.
Because that low pull in my belly isn’t hunger, and it’s not indigestion, and it’s not excitement over a round of charity golf with billionaires, athletes, rock stars, and actors.
It’s interest.
I shake my head.
Zeus Berger is an arrogant hockey player who’s been trained in all the right things to say to compensate for his bone-headed ability to make the news for doing stupid shit like talking his teammates into doing a mooning flash-mob to the tune of “Jingle Bells” at the Mall of America.
And I don’t know if I’m more mad that he got away with it, or that I never hang out with the kind of people who would invite me along for fun like that.
3
Zeus
I don’t chase women. Never need to. During hockey season, they’re always there, waiting. Off-season, if I want to pick up a chick, I hit a bar or a club.
When you’re the size of a house and so loaded you could buy the whole fucking bar, with more muscles in my left bicep than most men have in their entire bodies and the whole package topped off by these pretty baby blues, there’s no try.
It’s all fucking do, and it’s do now, because the world bows to Zeus Berger.
Picking a tough target and following through—this is new. Even if it’s only been an hour.
Been a long time since I’ve had a challenge off the ice.
“Bit of a monster when he doesn’t get his way, isn’t he?” Manning says cheerfully to Chase with a nod at me while we hunker down with a stack of pizzas at a table so small I could squish it with one ass cheek.
“Suck it, your royal dickiness,” I reply. “Night is young, and it’s all about the game.”
Ares grunts.
Translation: You make me look like a brain surgeon.
“Ready to give it up?” Manning says.
“Ain’t over till the hockey player sings, and Ares isn’t even humming yet,” I retort.
My brother’s straddling a chair that was built for a pinky-up, champagne-drinking, leg-crossing man a third of his size. He looks at me pointedly and whistles Darth Vader’s Death March while the chair legs creak.
Things might not look good, but fuck if I’m calling it just yet.
Also, I sent my agent a shot of me in this dress, and he thinks we’ve got a chance at a sponsorship from Spanx. Always gotta look at the bigger picture.
Especially since I’m getting up there in hockey years. Fucking thirty. And no, I don’t want to talk about what happened in the play-offs. Who asked you?
Fireball’s six feet away with her sister, silhouetted against the sunset through the windows and standing like she’s lined up for inspection in the military or something—minus the salute—while some fucker who was nothing more than a villain’s lackey in one of those superhero movies yammers her ear off. I’m getting parts of the conversation—long days on set, makeup melting under the lights, dickhead director—and I’m wondering how she’s keeping from yawning.
Even Gracie’s eyes are starting to glaze over, and that chick’s been getting her rocks off gawking at the famous dudes in this room all night long. She practically wet herself over the ventriloquist.
If that’s all it takes, you know this actor’s boring as shit.
“Hey, Mullins,” I yell at the actor dude. No fewer than a dozen stuffy golf pricks here to mingle with the rich and famous give me the nasty eyeball of why hasn’t security escorted the loud-mouthed cross-dresser out of the building?, and Mullins himself—what’s his first name? Dan? Josh? Chris? They’re all Chris, right?—doesn’t use any of his smooth acting moves to pretend he’s any less of a stuffy goat hole.
“What, ho?” he replies with a haughty smirk instead.
“Ain’t tapping that, and you ain’t tapping this either.” I grab my coconuts and heft them. Fireball looks at me, and she’s got those dark eyes that don’t give anything away, but I swear on my left nut, she just cracked a smile. Little. Microscopic. Like Mullins’s dick. But it was there. “Personality counts.”
“You can’t even spell personality.”
“P-E-R-Y-O-U-R-U-G-L-Y.”
Manning chokes on whatever he’s been guzzling out of that flask.
“Dammit, Zeus, do we need to have the your-you’re discussion again?” Chase says.
“His dick’s the size of an apostrophe. Didn’t think he wanted the reminder.”
Mullins turns to face us. Greg. That’s his first name. Greg. Like dregs, except with a G and without the S. He’s got Hollywood biceps, a nose with less personality than my belly button, and I swear he’s wearing makeup.
Fireball’s still playing it cool, watching like she’s a bored robot with boobs. Her sister’s visibly sucking her cheeks in while shooting looks at the royal puckhead across from me.
“I’ll be happy to kick your ass on the course tomorrow,” Mullins says.
“Categorically speaking?” I know the word’s metaphorically, even if I don’t know if it’s really the word I want—maybe I mean figuratively? Oh, who the fuck cares?
I just want to see if I can make Mullins twitch enough that he’ll get his nose high enough to drown if someone pulls the fire alarm and makes the sprinklers go off in here.
Not that I’m considering such a childish prank.
Bet you a thousand bucks Ares is thinking it too, though. And he knows how to get away with that shit. He’d probably point at Fireball’s sister in that skirt, with her dark hair all wavy and her eyes the same exotic brown, say Smokin’ hot, blow on his fingers like they’re candles, and have everyone patting his head and telling him he’s a good boy for watching out for fire.
“Zeus here’s
had too many hits to the head,” Mullins says with a smirk to Fireball.
She doesn’t answer him.
Nope, the lady steps away from him, pulls a chair from the next table, swings it around so the back’s against the table, straddles it, and grabs a slice of my pizza. “Why are you baiting him?” she asks with her mouth full of a massive bite.
The demigod in my skirt roars to life, because I dig a chick who clearly likes to eat as much as I do. “You defending him?”
“He just doesn’t seem like your type. Like he’s clearly not capable of shoving you against a wall and banging you until your nuts fall off.” Her nose wrinkles, and she looks down at the pizza. “Sausage? Just sausage? Where’s the pepperoni? And the jalapenos?”
Ares shudders. Even Chase—who works with some weird-ass organic food shit—looks like he just bit into shoe leather disguised as chocolate cake.
“Ain’t having anything interfere with the taste of my sausage,” I tell her. Yeah, I know. I got smooth moves. Why other dudes hate me.
Also not confessing to the spice in pepperoni making my eyes water, and don’t even say the j-word around me. Shut up. I’m from Minnesota. Ketchup’s fucking spicy, okay?
“In other words, your pizza is compensating for your genitals,” she muses.
“Be nice,” Gracie hisses.
“That was nice.”
Ares grins. Chase better not, because he’s dating my sister, and I’ll knock his lights out if he makes moon-eyes at random chicks with spunk. Manning leaps to his feet and offers his chair to Gracie, which makes Fireball’s eyelid twitch. Pretty sure she’s castrating him in her mind.
“He’s not interested,” I tell her. “Has a girlfriend back home. She’s a sheep.”
Manning nods as he pulls another chair to the table and settles next to Gracie. “I usually offer to share her. She turned Zeusette here down flat, though, so don’t underestimate her taste.”
Fucker’s got game. Like that about him.
“I’m sure she wasn’t the first,” Fireball says.
Ares and Chase are both snickering now. Gracie sighs. “Do you have sisters?” she asks Manning.
“My family is biologically incapable of siring female children.” He flexes a bicep. Might as well fluff his feathers and strut around like a fucking peacock too. “Seven generations. All uncles and brothers.”
“You know what? You probably do understand my childhood.”
“If you look at my sister’s breasts one more time, I’ll happily remove your eyeballs for you,” Fireball says around another mouthful of pizza.
I’ve said the same thing to various dudes for my own sister, but fuck, when Fireball says it, the stick in my skirt strains harder. It wants some playtime with the badass pilot chick.
“You’re a betting woman,” she says to me.
“Fuck, yeah.”
She pulls out a pocket knife, expertly snaps it open, and slices a triangle of cardboard off the pizza box. “Bet you I can flick this into that dude’s toupee without him noticing.”
“And here we go,” Gracie sighs.
Manning offers her his flask. She takes a hit, shudders, and hands it back.
Fireball flicks her cardboard and hits the royal flirtypants right in the center of the forehead. Surprise registers, and three wallets smack down on the table.
“Fifty bucks says you can’t do that again,” Chase says.
Ares grunts, digs into his wallet, throws a handful of bills on the table, and points to the wall of fame, featuring rows and rows of pictures of white dudes holding golf clubs like baseball bats while their teeth try to blind us all. “Freaky grandpa,” he says.
We all look at the center picture, where an old geezer with silver hair sprouting out his ears is grinning like a drunk monkey with a club stuck up its ass.
“Fairly certain a cardboard triangle won’t solve that one,” Manning muses. Whatever’s in that flask is giving him a permanent case of cheerfulness. If the prince thing doesn’t work out, he could be a morning news lady. “Two hundred to whoever can plunk a sausage into the punch bowl.”
I don’t whip out my wallet, because I would’ve popped a seam if I tried to squish one more thing in this dress and keeping track of a purse all night would’ve been a bitch and a half. Instead, I give Ms. Fireball the trademark Zeus Berger you come on over here and pucker up for me, baby head bob. “You hit Mullins between the eyes, I’ll take you back to my room and we can giggle about boys and smear green shit all over our faces.”
“You hit Mullins between the eyes, and I’ll let your friend here leave with both his kneecaps intact. Hands on the table, your royal grabbiness.”
“Don’t like him that much,” I say.
“Afraid I’m going to kick your arse in the rink this year, you mean.” Cheery McCheeryPants stretches back and pulls a teenage movie theater move, arm going behind Gracie like Fireball isn’t ripping into that pizza box with too much relish even for my tastes.
That pocketknife is wicked. Kind that’d leave a mark and then some.
The force of her glare alone is gonna leave a mark. She’s so fucking hot.
A dark-eyed angel of doom.
“You got any brothers?” I ask her.
“No.”
“Damn. Was hoping for a date.” Don’t ever let it be said Zeus Berger can’t play the role of a damsel in a fucking Spandex dress.
“I have a brother,” Gracie offers with a pointed look at Fireball.
“What you have is the good fortune to be related to me,” Fireball replies as if she didn’t just flinch.
It was a small thing. Like the size of a sugar granule. You don’t make it in the NHL if you don’t watch for the little things, and I saw that flinch.
“You break the princess’s kneecaps, we can’t binge watch Gilmore Girls,” I say to Fireball.
She turns the full force of her no-nonsense gaze on me. Her eyes are the color of a dark Irish stout, her lashes thick enough that a Minnesota horsefly would get lost in them, and if I’d had half the control of my stick that she has of her facial muscles, we would’ve won the Stanley Cup last year.
That demigod in my skirt ain’t playing anymore. He wants this chick, and he wants her now. My rocks are so tight they make my girdle feel like a loose blanket, and my entire brain is narrowing to focus on one thing, and one thing only.
Shoot.
Score.
I set my elbow on the table, hand up in the air, palm open, pushing the pizza boxes out of the way while she’s still sawing. Yeah. Sawing pizza boxes while she stares me down.
I wiggle my fingers at her, an invitation to arm wrestle. “Bet you a naked trip to the lake you can’t last two seconds with Poseidon here.”
She snorts. “Like you’d last two seconds in the lake.”
“I can last for three fucking hours.”
She grabs the first cardboard triangle, lines it up, and aims at the chunky old golf dude with the toupee. A quick flick of her fingers, and boom.
That thing sails through the air and plunks right on top of his head.
“Who are you?” Chase says.
“Just a simple country girl who likes to fly airplanes.”
Gracie sighs.
Fireball sends the second cardboard triangle soaring straight to bop the creepy grandpa golf dude on the nose.
At least four men in the room gasp like she beaned Baby Jesus and set his manger on fire.
“Ms. Berger,” that twat-waffle of a manager says at my back.
Fireball stands and takes a wide-legged stance. “That was me. You want a fight, pick on someone your own size and leave the women alone.”
Half of Gracie’s face is twitching. “Make sure you grab your nuts too, Fireball,” she says on a sigh. “That’ll show him.”
“I’m suddenly terrified we’re secretly related,” Manning deadpans to her with that grin. Dude’s cheeks are either made of steel, or he’s been somehow surgically altered so he’s always smiling. Start
ing to get freaky here. “You’ve never had a DNA test, have you?”
“Oh, I have. After what she pulled at my best friend’s wedding last year, I was hoping I could prove I was adopted.”
“Ms… Your name, please?” The manager is glowering at Fireball like he thinks he can actually take her out. Fuck, I’m not so sure she wouldn’t have beat me at arm wrestling.
“Fireball.”
“Your real name.”
“You discriminating based on names now?”
Chase grins. Ares grins. Manning—oh, fuck. Manning’s sneaking out the back door with Fireball’s sister.
I imagine what she’s gonna do to his nuts, and I grin.
“Madam—if I may call you that—we have certain standards here, and—”
“And you have a rock star in the corner sucking helium and challenging your cronies to a biggest nut sack competition, four football players trying to steal your Bud Light sign, and I don’t know what that woman in the green dress is shoving into her cleavage, but I assume if Ms. Berger and I were yanking on our penises instead of being strapped into bras, we could probably moon your eighteenth hole without anyone batting an eye.”
I stand, because why the fuck didn’t I think of mooning the eighteenth hole first. “Butt cheeks to the glass,” I tell Ares.
Lame, he telegraphs. Let’s put our Willy Winkers in the beer.
He might be quiet, but don’t let him fool you. Dude has ideas.
“How much is your club making from hosting this fundraiser?” Chase asks. He’s the only one still at the table, leaning back in his chair like he fucking owns the place.
Fireball looks for her sister, and there’s that flinch again.
Her dark gaze slides to me.
Like it’s my fault.
“You know what?” she says to the manager. “Never mind. We’re leaving.”
Without so much as a how-you-doin’, she grabs me by the back of my dress, pockets her knife, and tugs me toward the door.
Ares lifts his phone and snaps a picture. Chase barely catches himself before he topples backwards, jaw flapping like he’s a fucking trout.
Heh.
Fucker didn’t think I could do it.
