Playing Games
Page 24

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.
I stared at that small paragraph in horror. Liam had dated Tesla. Shit. Why had I ever thought he'd be interested in me? Silly little Katy Short, with her cutesy blonde pigtails and dorky cupcake business. I was nothing compared to the kinds of girls he was interested in, if he'd dated wild, exotic Tesla with her tattoos and stripey-colored hair. Feeling sick to my stomach, I clicked over to 'videos' and began to play the first one, turning the speakers down so no one could hear but me.
The entire thing was ridiculously dramatic, done in black and white. The only thing in color, of course, was Tesla, with her vivid hair and bright red lips. She clutched the microphone as if she was dying and sang soulfully, her eyelashes fluttering with each word. Every so often, it would cut back to the band, and then just as quickly flash away again, which drove me absolutely nuts. It was like they didn't even count, and Tesla was the only one they were interested in.
At least, until the guitar solo. Suddenly, Liam was front and center in the video, blasting into color. He held the guitar low against his hips, braced there, and his fingers danced along the strings in a familiar movement that I recognized - when his hands were moving along the backpack, he wasn't drumming. He was strumming a song. I watched in fascination as the video Liam closed his eyes as if in ecstasy, fingers moving along the neck of the guitar at a rapid pace I couldn't even fathom, as the wild notes of the song climbed higher and higher. He looked so incredibly in to the music that it felt intimate just to be watching him—