He wagged his eyebrows at me, that piercing moving back and forth. "I handle one in particular every day."
"I…walked right into that one, didn't I?"
"You did."
I chuckled and shook my head. "I take full responsibility, then."
"You did well today," he said, his voice growing serious. "Extremely well. I think Brodie messed up in switching partners."
A glow of pleasure spread through me. "Oh?"
He nodded. "Tesla's aggressive, but she also high maintenance. If she gets tired, he's going to hear about it. If she's hungry, she needs fine dining. I was tired of her on day one." His mouth curled into one of those secretive smiles. "But I can't say that to her or she'll complain to the label."
"Well, Brodie seems to like her just fine," I said. "He was quick to ditch his little sister as soon as a hot rock star showed up."
"He's an idiot," Liam said. "You're one of the reasons we've been doing so well on our challenges. You're smart and you work hard and you never complain. Like I said, I think I lucked out."
His praise was making me glow. "You're just saying that because you kissed me earlier."
"Actually," he said slowly, drawing the word out. "If you want to get technical, you kissed me. Twice now."
I stared at him. Oh. I guess I had. Twice now. "Um." I had no idea what to say to that.
"I'm just teasing you, Katy," he said. "I wasn't exactly fighting to get away either time."
"No, you weren't, were you?" I regained a bit of my confidence at that. "Nor were you fighting to get away when I woke up and you were sprawled all over me."
He just grinned. "Can I help it if you were hogging the only bed in the room?" He shrugged his big shoulders. "Besides, you were so small and cuddly looking, I couldn't help myself."
I felt myself get warm again, and knew I was blushing. I sipped my wine, thankful that the waiter arrived with a large plate of pasta and set it down in front of Liam. It smelled delicious.
He raised an eyebrow at me. "I guess this is all mine."
"Screw that," I told him, and pulled my chair to the side of the table so I could better access the plate. "You're sharing or I’m throwing the next challenge and we’re through."
"Well, I don't want that," Liam murmured, and the look he gave me was hot with need. It was the same look he'd given me when we were curled around each other on the bed, and my pulse fluttered wildly in response.
We had two sets of forks, but the food was so pretty that I didn't know where to start. I hovered my fork uncertainly. It looked like an angel hair pasta covered with some sort of chunky, vegetable red sauce, and fresh mussels lined the bowl, artfully cracked open.
Liam got a wicked look in his eyes as he saw me hesitate. He inclined his head at the cameraman hovering in the distance, ever filming. "Want to make some good TV?"
"I'm not sure I like that look in your eyes," I teased. Did I want to make good TV? Did I ever.
He stabbed his fork into the food, and began to swirl it in the rich noodles and sauce. Then, when he'd crafted a forkful, he held it out to me to eat.
He was going to feed me.
"You sneak," I whispered, and leaned in, mouth open and lips parted. I watched his gaze drop there, and felt my body flush with his attention again. Then, he pushed the fork into my mouth carefully.
I pulled away, chewing as the flavors burst on my tongue. It was delicious, and I gave a little moan of delight. The forkful had been messy, though, and a bit of sauce lingered on my cheek. I reached up with my napkin, and Liam stopped me. Instead, he leaned in and lightly ran his tongue over my cheek, tasting the sauce.
"Delicious," he told me a second later in that husky voice.
And every note in my body sang.
"Turnabout's fair play," I told him, and tugged the plate toward me. I swirled a few noodles onto my fork and then lifted it for him to take. And when Liam leaned in to eat off of my fork? I had to admit that it was pretty erotic.
After the initial sharing, our hunger took over and we ate like normal people. Liam refused to eat the mussels, and I knew he was thinking of mukluk. I laughed and ate them all, since I had a cast-iron stomach. They were delicious, too, fresh from the Mediterranean. All of the food was incredible, and so was the wine. We even splurged on a dessert, because how could we not?
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 sai
d "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—
"That doesn't look like the Great Pyramid." Liam's amused voice interrupted my train of thought.
Horrified at being caught, I quickly clicked off of the webpage, only to expose the web browser search I'd done for Finding Threnody. I clicked off of that too, face burning, and returned to the Pyramids of Giza page. "I, uh, was just looking at…stuff."
"Uh huh," he said, but he sounded amused.
I was going to die of embarrassment right about now. I stared at the computer screen, unable to look my partner in the face.
Liam pushed a piece of paper in front of my nose. "Travel itinerary. We have a flight in about two and a half hours, which leaves us just enough time to get to the airport. And we should get there tonight."
"Tonight?" I took the itinerary from him and studied it, glad that it gave me the chance to avoid eye contact. "Wow, long flight."
"Yeah. Plenty of time to catch up on sleep." He paused for a moment, then added, "Or watch more Finding Threnody videos."
My face burned. "You suck."
"Apparently you don't think so." There was affection in his voice, and it made my stomach feel all quivery all over again.
As we got back into the taxi, I wondered what Liam thought of me. Had I gone from partner to fangirl in the blink of an eye? That was distressing to think about, but I couldn't take it back. The only thing I could do was continue on and act like nothing was wrong.
Meanwhile, it was starting to feel like everything was out of control.
~~ * * * ~~
Egypt
"I want to quit," I proclaimed loudly into the darkness. "I'm serious. I can't do this."
"Looks like we finally found something that Katy can't do," Liam murmured into my ear, but his hand squeezed mine. "You'll be okay."
"I'm not so sure about that," I said, dropping to a low crouch and trying not to hyperventilate.
When we'd first heard that we were heading to the Pyramids at Giza, I was excited. Really excited. If I could think of places in the world that would be exciting to visit? The pyramids were high on the list. It'd be such a fun experience to go inside and see what it was like. When we'd seen the outside of the pyramids, I'd been ridiculously stoked, practically dancing up to The World Races flag where a man gave us our next clue.
Visit each of the burial chambers in the three pyramids and find a clue. String all the clues together to determine your next task.
Simple enough. And not only were we going to visit the interior of one pyramid, we were going to visit all three. Fun!
Or so I'd thought.
We'd lucked into first place somehow - our stop at the travel agency had put us on a flight ahead of the others. We'd somehow managed to score the last seats on the plane. We'd arrived in Cairo late at night and even though the cab driver had insisted that the pyramids would be closed for tourists for the evening, we headed out anyhow.
Sure enough, the flag had been there, and the task. The World Races had made special arrangements with the tourism board and the pyramids were open just for us. Which meant we could go ahead and start the next task.
Except it was really, really dark. And I hadn't counted on claustrophobia. Nor had I counted on the fact that when we entered the Great Pyramid, the first passageway was narrow and steep. We'd had to bend over - even at my short height - to go up the steep steps. All around us were tons and tons of rock, and the inside of the pyramid was oppressively hot, and dark despite the anchor lights along the halls.
Then it hit me. I was fine for the first few steps, following behind Liam. But when I looked up into the darkness and saw nothing but the continually rising, narrow shaft? My breathing became shallow and I began to sweat, hard.
Just when I couldn't stand it any longer, the interior passage opened up, and I breathed a sigh of relief. We continued on into the King's Chamber, and studied the walls. We found a small group of tiny figurines in the center of the sarcophagus with a word marked on them – 'the.'
"This must be the clue," I told Liam, and counted the figurines. "There's five others left, which means someone got eliminated last round."
"Great. We can head back out and go to the next chamber." Liam didn't look bothered at all. Meanwhile, I was all sweaty and flustered and breathing hard as if I’d ra
n miles instead of simply walked up a passageway.
Heading back down the passageway was hard, but not as hard when I knew we were almost out. The queen's chamber wasn't as bad, but I was still grateful when we found the next clue. Another figurine, this one labeled with the word "Take."
"At least we're done here," I panted. "I hate this pyramid."
"Just one more chamber, actually," Liam corrected. He looked at a brochure he'd gotten in the city. "There's a third chamber heading down. The subterranean chamber. We should probably check it just to be sure."
"It said burial chambers," I protested. "Not all chambers."
"Yeah, but if we miss a clue, we'll have to come back, and we're already here. Come on."
We'd arrived at the subterranean chamber stairway, and that was when I had my meltdown. It descended into the darkness at a steep angle, and as I watched Liam fold himself in half to try and get his tall body down there, I took a few steps into the shaft, and then began to tremble. The walls felt like they were closing in on me. It was hot, and dark, and cramped, and…I freaked out. I sat down in the tunnel, unable to go further. Panic was hammering through me, making my pulse pound and my heart race. I couldn’t breathe.
"I can't do this," I told him, and to my horror, I felt tears prick behind my eyes. Oh jeez, I was going to start crying like a baby.
"Yes, you can, Katy. It's not so bad. I'll go in front of you, see?"
I shook my head. "I want to quit. I'm serious. I can't do this."
He grasped my hand in his. "Looks like we finally found something Katy can't do. You'll be okay."
I took huge gulps of too-warm air, my eyes squeezed shut as I tried to calm myself. I clung to his hand and we sat there in the middle of that cramped passage as I had my freak-out.
Liam didn't push me, though. He just sat and held my hand, waiting for me to get better.
"I'm sorry," I said, and hated when that it came out so incredibly wimpy.
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