by Pippa Grant
I yank on one shoe, the rest of my pants, and the other shoe before he’s moved. When I stand, I’m suddenly dangling.
Hanging by the back of my shirt.
“Put me down, you—”
“Shut the fuck up, Fireball. Women and children first.”
I take a swing and miss by a country mile. Him and his fucking ape arms.
And no matter how much I swing and fight, he doesn’t let go.
He doesn’t even break a sweat.
And as soon as he deposits me in Gracie’s care outside the hotel, he disappears.
Which is probably for the best.
For both of us.
9
Zeus
My life has always consisted of three basic truths.
One: Ares will always have my back, and I will always have his.
Two: cheeseburgers, pizza, and pineapple tater tot casserole are second only to sex. Yeah, pineapple tater tot casserole. Go on. Mock it. You don’t know what you’re missing. More for me. Punk.
Three: Sex is no-strings. Women don’t fuck me for my brain, my personality, or my moves. They fuck me for my muscles, my fame, and my dick.
Which means having my brother silently telegraphing that I’m in over my head with a woman I want to share a cheeseburger with and bang all fucking night long because she’s playing hard to get means my entire life is off-kilter.
If she likes pineapple tater tot casserole, I’m done for.
Not that I’ll ever find out. Fireball’s a one-and-done kind of girl. And I’ve fucked it up twice. Not the good kind of fuck either.
You want a one-night stand?
Yeah, I did too. And this is the most fucked-up one-night stand I’ve ever participated in.
We got the all-clear to go back into the hotel forty minutes ago, but we’ve been hanging back, signing a few autographs, mocking Chase for a phone call he took with Ambrosia, and talking shit with Manning over the pudding pie he’s making love to on the street corner. Yeah, I mean pudding pie, because Fireball took possession of Gracie the minute I put her on the ground.
And because none of us are as dumb as we act—usually—we all got out of the blast zone before she blew.
Lady didn’t like being carried out of the hotel.
Me?
Ain’t often I get to play hero. And I saved her ass good from that false alarm.
Probably good that I’m never gonna see this chick again.
Chase hangs up with my sister, Ares finishes his tattoo peep show for the three lingering women, and Manning rubs his tongue all over the last of the pudding in of his takeout container.
“Need to work on your form,” I tell him. “No wonder Gracie left you for her sister.”
“As a gentleman, I decline to comment on her level of satisfaction with my form.” There’s that damn cheerful grin again. “But it’s worth noting which sister was smiling when we parted.”
I hate that the fucker has a point.
This close. I was this close to Fireball coming apart at the seams when that fucking alarm went off. I can still taste her. Still feel her plump flesh on my tongue and her strong, silky legs in my palms. I want to finish what I started.
When we walk into the lobby, three things hit me at once.
First, the place smells like fresh chocolate chip cookies, which are my second favorite food in the entire planet right behind a thick, juicy steak the size of my head.
Second, this is the squeakiest-ass floor I’ve ever walked on. We sound like a herd of elephants stepping on chew toys.
And third, Fireball and Gracie are in the hotel bar. Fireball’s throwing darts and fucking hitting a bull’s-eye with every last one.
That good-for-nothing demigod in my jockey shorts stands up.
I tell the fucker to sit down and keep out of it, because he’s still in the penalty box.
Ares cuts a look at me. He sees her too.
Chase is watching her with an expression I don’t like. He’s dating my sister. If he’s getting fucking ideas about trading her in for a flying model, he’ll find out what the sharp end of my skates can do to a man’s jugular.
“You realize I’m far more terrified of your sister than I am of you,” he says without taking his eyes off Fireball.
“Being a little smart doesn’t make you all smart.”
“Mead and cookies, gentlemen?” Manning says.
I take one last look at Fireball. Fuck, I don’t even know her real name. After today, feels like I should know everything from her birthday to why she has that scar to if she gets a little orgasm every time she sneezes.
Fuck, that’d be such an awesome superpower.
She suddenly turns and looks at the four of us. Her gaze passes easily over Chase and Ares. The volcano shooting out her eyeballs, nostrils, and ears when she pauses to give Manning a good glare—the don’t even fucking think of asking to try my sister’s pudding glare—suggests her nickname is well-earned.
He blows her a kiss. Ballsy fucker. Told you I liked him.
Her nostrils flare, and her attention shifts to me.
And that’s not a glare.
It’s not soft, but it’s not hard. Not accepting, but not judgmental.
It’s somewhere between. Something elemental. Her dark gaze simultaneously tells me that I might not be the puck-up my first performance suggests I am, and also that I’ve still had my two strikes—fucking fire alarm—and I’m ejected from the game for arguing with the ref over that last call.
I never go down without a fight. I don’t walk away from a challenge. I’ve never met a woman I couldn’t satisfy one way or another, and when you’re as big as I am, you get plenty of practice with another.
But this woman?
She’s different. Stronger. Smarter. Harder.
She’s got something inside her, something driving her, that I want to touch. Want to see and feel. Understand.
I want to dig until I find her soft spots, because I know they’re there.
Fuck, I have soft spots too. Not that anybody cares.
Or that I’ll ever let them.
Training camp starts in three weeks. Last year on contract—I’m a free agent at the end of the season. This year has to be spectacular to make up for—just for, okay? Fuckers on SportsCenter are already tossing around the R-word. I might be heading into old-man land, but I’m not done yet.
So I’m walking away from Fireball.
Let a woman in my headspace once. Long time ago. She fucked me up good. Almost ruined my best junior season. Almost cost me being drafted.
I’m not gonna let another one fuck up the most important season still to come in my life.
I nod to Fireball. Nice knowing you, princess.
One corner of her mouth twitches north. Barely. Same, Zeusette.
Can’t help but appreciate a woman who makes you earn it.
I give my companions the let’s get out of here head jerk. “What the fuck’s mead?” I say to Manning. “Favorite girly drink of the Eskimos?”
“Thousand bucks says it knocks you on your ass before midnight,” he replies cheerfully.
“You’re on, dumbass,” I reply.
Newsflash for him: I’ve already been knocked on my ass today.
And the woman who did it still has a keycard to my room.
Not often even I’m impressed by my own stupidity, but today’s been that kind of day.
10
Joey
He fucking gave up.
He fucking gave up.
Of course he did. I shouldn’t have expected anything different. And I shouldn’t care.
I don’t care, I tell myself as I run deeper into the heart of Copper Valley the next morning. I’m simply pissed that I didn’t sleep well because I had indigestion from inhaling all the obnoxious, rich-ass fumes at that reception last night.
I snort softly to myself.
Fine. I’m lying.
I care.
And I’m pissed that it’s my own faul
t. I don’t know how to be nice to men who show interest. Smiling and petting their big muscles and stroking their egos isn’t in my nature. I’m multilingual—straight-talk, Southern, and sarcasm—but flirting is so foreign it might as well be alien.
I run a flight adventure company. Next stop is the moon. After that—after that, I damn well need to know alien.
I can be nice. I know my fucking manners. Gracie, Peach, or one of my crew needs something, you’re damn right I’ll make sure they get it.
Even if it’s an inexplicable desire to spend time with me.
I grunt and hang a left on Memorial Parkway to cut through Reynolds Park, which is bursting at the seams with trees, bushes, and flowers all seemingly happy to be representing Copper Valley.
This little Virginia town isn’t what I call a city. Yes, it has a population big enough to support professional football, hockey, and baseball teams. A mass transit system, skyscrapers in downtown, multiple universities, Lyft drivers available twenty-four seven, and restaurants featuring food from every ethnicity on the planet, but with the Blue Ridge Mountains in all their blue hazy glory hovering in the distance, it feels more rural than it is.
Plus there’s that unmistakable Southern charm that comes from being barely a stone’s throw from North Carolina.
I like it.
See? I like things.
Just not Zeus Berger this morning.
Because he gave up on me last night.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want a relationship. I just want…something. Growing a private aerospace business takes commitment, sweat, and balls. Even I can’t play hard-ass day in and day out without needing a break now and then.
And knowing Peach is sitting in a hospital, waiting for Meemaw to go into hip surgery, isn’t helping.
I don’t like it when the people I love are hurting.
Or in danger of getting hurt.
Or leaving.
Fuck, I hate when they leave.
I haven’t worked out all my frustration on the run yet, but I head back to the hotel anyway. I promised Peach I’d swing through breakfast to see if there were any moneybags worth talking to, and since I can’t exactly fly home to watch over Meemaw’s surgeons—the flying part, yes, but getting into the operating room, no—I’ll do what I can to not let my business partner down.
And all my plans immediately get flushed down the toilet when I find Gracie laughing over grits and sausage with His Royal Better-Keep-His-Fucking-Hands-Off-My-Sisterness.
Prince Manning executes a quick leap-twist-grab that has a third chair magically appearing at their table while he offers me his seat.
Like I should be honored to sit in his butt warmth.
“Ms. Fireball,” he says like he’s already had six cups of coffee this morning. “You’re looking fresh as a daisy and twice as lovely this morning.”
Gracie winces. “He means you’re looking strong and determined and capable.”
I take his grits, add two pats of butter, a swig of syrup, all three of his sausage patties, and make myself breakfast stew. “Why are you talking to my sister?” I ask.
“To piss you off.”
“Three points for bravery. Which won’t save your nut sack. Do you actually fuck sheep, or do you just tell the ladies that so they’ll think you can get them good wool coats?”
“I’m beginning to see why Zeus is so taken with you.”
I haven’t started a food fight since I was twenty-six, but I’m sorely tempted to fling some grit soup at him.
Gracie heaves a heavy sigh. “Joey, I love you. Go away, or I’ll tell Peach you castrated a potential customer, and you know she has too much on her mind to deal with that too right now.”
I eyeball the prince.
He’s maybe six-two. Probably a respectable two-ten, maybe two-twenty when he’s suited up for a hockey game. Has a glint of red in his brown hair and beard and a twinkle in his smoky eyes that suggests it’s all fun and games.
Period.
Which almost definitely means it’s not, because no one is that simple.
“You’re a gambling man.”
“Joey…” Gracie starts again.
Manning stretches back in his seat and studies me. “I do love to squander my family’s money for no good reason.”
I can sniff out a lie at forty paces, and this prince has dirty rotten liar written all over him.
Which is interesting.
He’s either mastered sarcasm at a decibel level I can’t clearly detect, or he wants the world to think he’s a useless lout.
I hate rich fuckers who play this game. They tend to have little appreciation for how hard the rest of the world works. “I have a little nest egg that says I can make you toss your cookies on my airplane.”
“I have the stomach of a goat and the inner ear balance of a shark. That would be a completely unfair bet, and I refuse to take your money.”
“You’d take that bet if I were a man.”
“On the contrary. There’s no fun in a bet if it’s a sure thing. Any pilot losing that bet to me is a sure thing. Now, if we were to put a wager on the better score today, I’d happily sign up. Because I intend to kick your arse on the golf course, though given your reputation, I suspect it will actually present a pleasant challenge.”
A man pauses beside our table and pulls up a chair uninvited. “Getting your ass kicked so early in the morning?” Chase Jett asks the prince.
“She’s all bark,” he replies.
Probably to rankle me.
Which it does.
Only partly because he’s right. Although, there was that one time in flight training that a classmate learned the hard way why you wait for permission to touch another person. Especially on a breast or between her legs.
He didn’t graduate.
In case you were wondering.
“I was expecting your partner,” Jett tells me.
“Wouldn’t that have been lovely for all of us.” I bite my tongue to keep from adding that he’s a brave man for coming down without his bodyguards, because I don’t want to know where Zeus Berger is, or even imply that I care.
I don’t care. I don’t care that he exists at all.
I need my plane here. Familiar ground. Or air, as the case may be.
“You and Ms. Maloney don’t get out much. Why sponsor this tournament?”
“It was this or sponsoring the Bitches Get Shit Done celebrity golf tournament, but it turned out bitches had better things to do than plan a golf tournament. Your turn.”
“Zeus threatened to pull my arms out of my shoulder sockets and use me like one of those screaming flying monkey toys if I didn’t.”
I fucking love those flying monkeys. Used to fling them at Peach all the time, until we got too busy. I don’t fucking love how my nipples sit up straighter at Zeus’s name. “Seems a good use for you.”
Jett grins, and the light catches—is that glitter in his chin dimple? I don’t want to know. “She’s a handful, isn’t she?” he says to Gracie.
“You have no idea.”
“He voluntarily associates with the Berger twins,” Prince Happy says. “He might have a vague clue.”
“Peach signed up to sponsor this because I went undiagnosed with dyslexia as a kid and Joey threatened to break her kneecaps if she decided to put their sponsorship dollars anywhere else once that cute little kid reading the prayer to her dog went viral this spring,” Gracie announces.
“Who doesn’t love a kid who prays to her dog?” I say. Gracie’s dyslexia is none of any of these fuckers’ business. Even if it bothers me more than it bothers her.
Our daddy didn’t know what dyslexia was. Neither did I, but I knew she was smarter than her report cards said, and I knew it was my responsibility to make sure she grew up able to take care of herself.
But she’s right.
I did threaten to break Peach’s kneecaps if she picked another cause to put our name on. Aubrey Alexander, the seven-year-old who went viral on
social media earlier this year when some celebrity re-posted a video of her prayer to understand letters and brought more public attention to how far we still have to go in making sure all dyslexic kids get the help they need, reminded me so much of Gracie my heart ached.
And my heart aches even less than my vagina does.
At least, I wish it did. Fuck.
“What do you do, Gracie?” Jett asks.
“I bake the best damn cookies you’ll ever taste south of the Mason-Dixon line. If you’re half as smart as I hear your girlfriend is, you might ask me what I’ve been doing with organic and gluten-free ingredients. I’m a bargain right now, but I won’t be for long.”
Delivered complete with the Gracie Diamonte dimple and eye twinkle that once led to me making an emergency trip home to beat her prospective prom dates off the front porch with a broom.
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” I growl at Jett, who’s studying Gracie as though he’s trying to decide how good her cookies might be.
“That’s not how you seal a business deal,” Gracie says primly to me.
“That’s how I seal a business deal.”
Gracie slaps a business card on the table and shoves it across to the billionaire. “In case you want to talk without the threat of bodily harm.”
“Haven’t done all your research on his girlfriend,” Prince Cheer muses. He takes Gracie’s hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles. “Lovely dining with you this morning, Miss Diamonte. I must be off. Early tee time.”
She blushes.
With her natural olive skin, dark curly hair, and that light glowing in her brown eyes, she’s a smiling, dimpled rose of beauty, grace, and elegance.
Like a fucking princess
Beauty to my beast.
The prince smiles warmly at me. “We’ll compare scorecards over dinner, Miss Fireball. And if I win, I want a ride on that plane of yours.”
“Forget winning,” Jett says. “I’m paying for a ride on that plane.”
I hand him my own business card—with the number to our office, of course, because dog knows no one wants me answering our phones—and shrug as though I don’t give two fucks what he wants. “You can call and see if there’s room on the flight tomorrow. But we’re usually booked at least three months in advance.”