by Jill Myles
"Gee, if my memory serves me correctly, someone on this team's been sucking at challenges and it wasn't me." I tapped my finger on my chin as if mockingly contemplating things. "Who sucked at oil wrestling? Who sucked at eating mukluk? Actually, I should be asking you if you were throwing challenges - you're the one that started fighting at the oil wrestling and made us lose six hours!"
The look on his face could have iced a glacier. "I attacked your brother because I didn't like the way he treated you. I see now I was misguided and it was all just to fuck with my head. I'm sorry I bothered."
My jaw worked silently. I could think of nothing to say. The hurt spiraling through me - and the anger - was too intense. "You're wrong about me."
"Yeah? Prove it, then."
"How?" I snapped at him. "No matter what I do, you think I'm helping my brother out."
"Don't fuck us in the challenges in this last leg. If we win, I'll know you weren't lying. If you throw the challenge just to let your brother get ahead? I'll know where things really stand."
"Fine."
"Fine, then."
"All right."
He glared at me, then shook his head, getting to his feet. "I'm not staying in here tonight. I'll find someplace else to crash."
"Whatever," I yelled after his back.
He slammed the door and I was left alone in the hotel room. I flopped back on the bed, utterly furious.
Throwing challenges? Working with my brother behind his back?
I'd have been utterly furious…except that the more I thought about it, the less innocent my part in things seemed to be. How was it that I'd had the best intentions and still gotten screwed in this?
And how was it that I'd had the attention of a guy that seemed utterly perfect for me…and managed to somehow mess that up?
Abby was right - this wasn't reality, and it was messing with my head. I was ready for this race to be over so I could go back to my real life. At least there, I knew how things stood. There, rock stars with delicious tattoos and sexy piercings didn't romance me and drag me into bed, or trace tiny circles on my arms as I leaned against him. No one was so attuned to being with me that he had to touch me all the time.
That was reality.
This? This was just a dream that had turned into a nightmare.
CHAPTER TEN
"Everything's all wrong. All wrong, and I don't know how to fix it. All I know is that I don't know if I can trust Katy, and that makes me so goddamn miserable I can't stand it. I'm in love with her and I don't know if I'm being played for a fool." — Liam Brogan, Final Leg of The World Races
Liam didn't return to our room that night. I didn't see him again until it was nearly time for us to depart, and he met me on the mat, thin-lipped and frowning in my direction.
"Hi," I said softly as I took my place on the mat next to him. "Where'd you sleep?"
He shrugged. "Didn't sleep. Just needed to get my thoughts together."
"Oh." I studied him. He looked more than tired, he looked…done. Like all the fun had gone out of this and he wanted to be anywhere but standing next to me. Which hurt. "You know, Liam—"
"Let's just race, okay, Katy? I don't feel like talking right now."
I forced myself to put on a carefree smile. "Sure. Whatever."
An assistant ran up, tapping her watch. "Time to go." She handed us our clue and we watched the cameraman approach. When he gestured for us to begin, I offered the clue to Liam. Normally I was the one that read them, but that was back when we were a happy little team.
Not when I was Katy, Scheming Sister From Hell.
He nodded at me. "You go ahead."
"Gee, thanks." I flipped The World Races disk and peered at the writing. It was dark out, the middle of the night. "Make your way to Betsy Ross's House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is the last leg of the race. You have one hundred dollars." I pulled the money out and brightened, smiling at Liam. "This might be the first place we've gone where we didn't have to exchange anything."
"Let's just head to the airport," he said, putting his hands on his backpack straps and walking forward.
My face fell. Was he going to be like this for the rest of the trip?
If so, this was going to quite possibly be the longest leg ever.
~~ * * * ~~
It definitely felt like the longest flight ever, I thought to myself as we sprinted off the plane some thirty hours later. Two layovers and more hours in an uncomfortable airline seat than I could imagine, but we had landed at our final destination. All three teams were on the same flight - Summer and Polly had been at the very back of the plane, and Tesla and Brodie had been toward the front. Liam and I got the last two seats and had spent every leg of the flight separated.
I'm sure that made him happy.
It was awkward, though. We'd gone from awkward, unhappy team to fun, happy couple, right back to awkward, unhappy team. Liam didn't talk to me during layovers, even though we sat next to each other. He just put his earbuds in and began to tap a beat out on his bag, lost in music and looking everywhere but at me.
I tried not to let it bother me too much. The others had given us a few curious looks, but no one came over to chat except for Brodie, and I'd chased him off. The last thing I wanted was to sit down and have a long pow-wow with the brother I was supposedly in cahoots with.
At least we'd finally landed. I was the first racer out of the plane, and had to stand around and wait for my partner. Brodie and Tesla raced past with a smirk, but Liam wasn't too far behind.
"Let's get a cab," was all he said to me.
"Fine."
Cabs were easy to find at the airport, at least, and we ran to one just as Brodie and Tesla's cab pulled out ahead of us. "Do you know the way to the Betsy Ross House?" Liam asked the cab driver, tossing his bag into the trunk. I shrugged out of my pack and moved to set it in the trunk next to his, but to my surprise, Liam took it from my hands and placed it next to his. At least his chivalry remained in place.
"Yep," the cab driver said easily, then eyed the cameras. "You guys in some kind of race?"
"Yes," I told him, sliding into the back seat. "Can you drive fast?"
"Lady, you ain't seen fast," he told us as he moved back to the front seat. He got in and adjusted the rearview mirror as Liam sat next to me and closed the door to the cab. "You look familiar."
"I get that a lot," Liam said, but didn't offer an explanation.
"Buckle in," the cab driver told us. And then we peeled out of the airport. The lurch of the car flung me, headfirst, into Liam's lap - I hadn't finished buckling myself in. And my chin went right into his crotch.
Warm hands helped me upright. "Careful," Liam murmured. His grip seemed to linger on me for a moment longer than necessary, and then his hands went to the belt. "Like he said, buckle in."
"Getting there," I whispered, feeling a bit breathless and hot at Liam's touch. Maybe all wasn't lost between us. Maybe he'd had a chance to stew on his doubts and realized that I wasn't leading him on.
But Liam didn't say anything else, and I sighed and buckled myself in.
A short time later, we pulled up to the Betsy Ross House just in time to see Brodie and Tesla disappear inside. We were right on their heels.
"Wait here," Liam told the cab driver as he grabbed my hand and we raced after the yellow team. The Betsy Ross house was a quaint little woodsy courtyard in the middle of the city, an old-fashioned flag fluttering on one wall. There was a large tree in the front and several small cafe tables, but no World Races mat. It had to be inside.
We made our way inside, and sure enough, at the front door stood a woman dressed in a white cap and old fashioned clothing. She smiled at us, disk in hand. The disk was labeled clearly with "Individual Challenge."
I looked at Liam. "You or me?"
"I'll do it," he said, and stepped onto the mat.
"You sure?"
"Can't think that Betsy Ross was famous for eating disgusting things," he murmured, and
cast a sideways look at me. "We'll be fine."
I nodded, but felt a little easier. Liam didn't seem to be as angry. Guarded, yes. Angry, no.
"Betsy Ross was the creator of the original American flag," Liam read aloud. "Outside of this building, you passed by a replica of the original flag. In the next room, there are two hundred and thirty seven incorrect replicas and three correct. Find a correct flag and return it to the judge for your next clue." He turned and looked at me. "Wish me luck."
"Good luck," I told him softly.
He opened the door to the room and stepped inside, and I caught a glimpse of hundreds of flags, a cacophony of red, white and blue stripes. I winced in sympathy. The flag might be easy to identify if you knew what you were looking for, but digging through all of those? They'd start to look the same after a while.
"You can go to that room and wait," the judge told me, gesturing at a door at the far end of the small room.
I nodded and stepped through the doorway. There was a small side room with three chairs lined perfectly in a row.
And sitting in the middle one? My brother.
That meant that Liam was against Tesla in this task. That also meant that I'd be against Brodie in the next one.
And if I didn't outperform my brother? Liam was going to think I threw the challenge.
I groaned at the sight of my smiling blond brother. I was totally hosed.
"Nice to see you, too," he told me.
"You screwed me in this game, you know," I told him as I thumped to the seat next to him.
"How so?"
Did he really not know? I gave him an incredulous look. "The Ace."
"Oh." He shrugged. "You didn't have to give it to me."
"You blackmailed me! You deliberately withheld information and then blackmailed me to get it after you'd promised you'd work with me. What was I supposed to do?"
Brodie grinned and leaned over to noogie my head. "Don't be mad, Katy. I'll buy you some cool stuff with my prize money when I win the two hundred and fifty thou. It's the least I can do to say thank you."
"I don't want you to promise me money," I sputtered. "My partner already thinks we're in cahoots. He's furious."
"Is he, now?" Brodie seemed really interested in that. "Good. So does this mean you're going to throw the next challenge?"
"No! Are you kidding me?"
"Come on. He's already mad. And I'll make it worth your while after I win, I promise."
"Just shut up, Brodie. It's not even up for discussion."
"Suit yourself." But he wouldn't stop smiling, which infuriated me more.
I crossed my arms over my chest and slouched in my chair, irritated as hell at him. "I hope Liam blows Tesla away in this challenge and you have to eat our dust for a change."
"Won't happen," Brodie said smugly.
Ten minutes later, the door opened. Both Brodie and I sat up, alert and waiting for our partners to return. I gave a whoop of delight when I saw it was Liam, and nearly launched myself into his arms. "So fast? You did awesome!"
He grinned at me and displayed the next task disk that he'd won. "Guess I have a better memory than I thought."
I took the disk from him, and noticed Brodie's interest. I shoved it under my shirt so Brodie couldn't sneak a peek at the writing on the backside. "Let's get out of here," I told Liam.
He nodded, and his hand went to the small of my back, instinctively moving closer to me.
"Don't forget what we agreed, Katy," Brodie called after me.
I gasped. That lying sack of shit. I turned and confronted him. "Nice try. I didn't agree to anything with you."
"Uh huh," he said, and winked exaggeratedly.
"Bullshit," I told him, and turned back to Liam. "He's full of it."
But Liam only gave me a speculative look. "Let's just get in the cab. We don't want to lose our lead."
Damn it. Why was I even trying? Liam wasn't going to believe me, no matter what.
~~ * * * ~~
I stood outside of the small storefront and read the sign to make sure that I was at the right place, then read the clue-disk again. "Go to the Pretzel Factory. Inside, you will find trays of dough waiting for you. You must twist 200 pretzels Philly-style and then hand them to the baker. The baker will then hand you a large box of finished pretzels that you must deliver to a nearby office. There, you will receive your next task." I turned and looked at Liam. "Wish me luck."
"Luck," he said softly.
I didn't know what to think of that response. He didn't touch me, and his voice was flat. I stared at him a long moment, then shrugged and headed inside. I couldn't read him, and it was bothering me. He'd shut down completely and it hurt me more than I cared to admit.
"Hi," I said as I walked in. There was a judge there, waiting on the mat. It was a woman with blonde hair, a chef hat, a green apron, and way too much lipstick. "I'm here for the challenge."
She gestured at one of the nearby tables and a cameraman scooted out of the way as I approached it. There were three massive tables laid out in the kitchen, all three covered with big bowls of dough and trays. I was the first one there, and I eyed the tableau, sizing it up.
The judge hurried to my side. "Let me show you how this works." She took one of the bowls and fed the dough into a strange looking machine. As I watched, it pushed out a long tube of dough, and she picked it up and began to weave it into the pretzel shape. She moved fast - so fast I was dazed watching her - and immediately picked up the next length of dough, then began to braid it, too. I watched her do three of them before she turned the machine off, gave me a thumbs up, and then returned to the mat.
All right, I guess that was all the demonstration that I was going to get. I flicked the machine back on again and waited for the first tube of dough, then snatched it when it came up. Immediately, it squished and lost its shape, and I yelped, trying to push it back into a semblance of shape. By the time I'd wrangled my dough into a mangled figure eight, looked nothing like hers, and the machine kept spitting out tubes of dough. I groaned and slapped my ugly pretzel down on a nearby tray. I'd save that pile for rejects.
It took me sixteen pretzels before I figured out what I was doing, and sixteen more before I started to get any sort of speed with it. My shoulders cramped because I was concentrating so hard that every muscle in my body was tense. But my pretzels weren't looking like rejected limp doodles, so that was a win. I filled the first tray, exhausted, and counted.
Thirty two out of two hundred. Dear god, it felt like I'd been here forever.
To my annoyance, Brodie strolled in a moment later, breathless. Damn it! He'd caught up. I had lost whatever advantage Liam had gotten us. And unless I sped things up on this challenge, Liam was going to think I blew it on purpose. Frustrated, I wiped my brow, ignoring the flour I got on my face, and continued to work on my pretzels.
Brodie strolled past my table, eying my handiwork. He looked at my tray, grinned, and then moved to a table across from mine. The judge hurried over and started the pretzel-dough machine for Brodie, demonstrating three pretzels to him.
I paused for a moment, watching him as the machine began to spit out dough, and couldn't help but grin when he confidently grabbed the first tube of dough…and it fell apart in his hands.
I smirked and returned to my pretzels, twisting the next one slowly into shape.
The room grew quiet, nothing but the sound of the machines whirring. I twisted a few more, noticing that I was getting better at this, if not faster. I sneaked a peek over at Brodie, since he was being so quiet. My brother stood over his tray, but his gaze was on my hands as I twisted my pretzel, and I could see that he was clearly trying to copy my much slower movements.
That jerk. He was going to profit off of my hard work? Again? Not likely. I tossed down my pretzel and grabbed a few of the big metal trays, propping them up so they formed a shield.
"Hey, not fair," Brodie told me, a whiny protest in his voice.
"Neither's cheating off of
me," I retorted. "You've screwed me enough in this game, thanks."
"Katy, I'm supposed to win, remember? That was our deal."
"No," I hissed. "You think I agreed to that, but I didn't. We were supposed to be a team, remember? Except you threw me away for the hot rock chick and didn't give a shit. And ever since then you've been trying to sabotage me."
"I have not!"
"No? Remember that whole Ace thing?" I twisted the next pretzel viciously and noticed that it actually looked closer to the demonstration pretzel. Huh. Maybe angry pretzeling was the way to do it. "Or maybe the whole 'gee, Katy, don't forget what we talked about' thing?" I mocked his deeper voice.
"Oh, come on. I was just having fun."
"Yeah?" I slapped another pretzel down on the tray, noticing viciously that his pretzels looked like shit. "It's not fun for me, Brodie. You don't seem to care about my feelings at all."
He snorted. "I didn't realize you were going to be such a baby about it."
"Liam's pissed at me, Brodie!" I twisted hard, then laid the new pretzel next to its brothers before scooping the next long tube of dough off of the machine. I was almost keeping up with it now. "You think I'm going to be happy about that? I happen to really like the guy."
"He doesn't need to win," Brodie countered. "He's rich."
"So's your partner. You're still trying to win."
"You know I want to win!"
"Yeah, well, I want Liam," I yelled at him. "And you fucking ruined that for me, so thanks a lot."
"Language," one of the cameramen hissed at me. "We're still filming."
I sighed and yanked another piece of dough in my direction, pleased to see that Brodie was still trying to watch me, but my table was shielded. Good. And he was still on his first tray. Double good.
"He's a rock star, Katy," Brodie said, and I recognized the tone of voice. That was his whole 'big brother knows all' voice. The patient, almost too-knowing, too-smug tone of voice that I normally tuned out. Today? It got on my damn nerves. "You know just as well as I do that we won't see him or Tesla again after this race."
