Playing Games
Page 21

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.
My partner and I hadn't done much more than hold hands. I couldn't be thinking such dirty things about him.
Unfortunately, I thought them anyhow.
We snickered our way through the last house and then ran back to the judge with our answers, laughing the entire time.
Once we had the next clue, it was our turn to rest and the boys took over. Abby and I sat in the shade of a building and drank bottles of now-warm water as the boys performed a grape stomping challenge that would somehow end up as wine. By that time, Brodie and Tesla had caught back up with us, and Brodie climbed in to his grape bucket next to Liam.
I was thrilled for Abby when she and Dean finished first with the grapes and received their clue token. She gave me an excited look, then they ran off to find the pit stop. I tried not to feel impatient as Liam stomped grapes in a slow, methodical motion even as Brodie was stomping so fast and so hard that he looked like he was dancing a jig. He was determined to beat us to the next task. My brother wanted this so bad he could taste it. So bad that he was willing to fight with my partner over a guidebook that might give an advantage.
Guilt flickered through me. Was it such a terrible thing if Brodie wanted this badly enough to play dirty? Was I a bad sister for not helping him out? He'd never pretended that he didn't want anything except to be a star.
And me, I was playing at a fake relationship with my partner to get more TV time. It made me feel a little dirty just to think about. I mean, here I was fantasizing about Liam and he was just making sure we were interesting on TV. That seemed wrong.
"Done," Liam shouted, holding up his wine amphora, now full of foot-stomped grape juice. The judge nodded and handed him a disk, and I jerked to my feet. I hauled our backpacks even as Liam hopped on one foot, trying to shove a sock back onto his grape-stained foot. "Read it," he breathed to me as he worked on putting on his shoes.
I read it silently, noticing Tesla hovering a bit too close nearby.
Make your way to the finish line for this leg of the race. Chip's waiting where you met him.
I hugged the disk to my chest and grinned at Liam. Finally, a freaking break. A finish line meant a twelve hour rest period between this leg of the race and the next one, and I couldn't wait to sleep and take a hot shower. Preferably both.
Ten minutes later, we crossed the finish line, hand in hand, and stopped in front of Chip Brubaker.
He gave us a brilliant white smile, his face heavily caked with makeup that was looking streaky thanks to the sweat on his brow. "Katy and Liam, you are the second team to arrive. Congratulations!"
I gave a weak cheer and flung my arms around Liam's waist, too tired and hot to do more than that.
"You have twelve hours between now and the next task. I suggest you find a place to get some rest," Chip told us.
We nodded and walked off the mat, away from the cameras. As soon as we did, all the tension seemed to leave my body, and I felt exhausted. I wiped at my own sweaty brow, wishing that my backpack wasn't quite so heavy.
As if reading my mind, Liam tugged at my backpack and pulled it off my shoulders. "Let me get that for you."
"You don't have to," I protested. "We don't need to be anywhere fast."
"Yeah, but you're small and you look wiped."
I was small - barely five foot. But it wasn't fair to him. I protested again.
He shook his head. "You and Abby had to run all over the city for your task. Did you see how tired she was? I wouldn't be surprised if she and Dean left to find a private hotel room."
"Can we do that? Do we have the money?"
"Won't hurt to check, will it?" He slung my backpack over his shoulder. "Come on."
He took my hand and we headed into the city around the ruins.
It didn't take long to find a few hotels. The first two we tried were pricier than we wanted to spend, but the third one had a room for about the right price - eighty dollars for a night. We decided we could give up that much money, paid, and headed up the stairs to our room.
I blinked at the sight of the small, clean hotel bedroom. It was nice enough. There was a large window overlooking the city, a nightstand, a bathroom…and a single bed.
Again.
Liam didn't notice my hesitation. He set down the bags, moved over to the air conditioner, and turned it on. Then, he sat down on the edge of the bed and began to pull off his shoes, grimacing at his purple-stained feet. "Okay with you if I use the shower first?"