She smiled and a feeling of warmth spread through her chest. Maybe coming home wasn’t such a bad thing after all. “Sounds like a plan. And…would it really be okay, Gareth?” she asked cautiously. “If we share the team? Even though I haven’t been in the picture for the last few years?”
Her brother furrowed his brow. “Of course, it would be okay. I don’t want to do this crap alone. Besides, that was always our plan! That was why you studied business first before getting your stupid bachelor’s degree in anthropology and mathematics. And you plan to stay, right?”
A lump formed in her throat. Stay? Forever? Less than an hour away from her parents?
Yes, since her father had given up banking to focus full-time on the Hawks, it had always been their plan to lead the team together. However, that was…then. “Let’s just see what Dad has to say first,” she suggested.
“Okay.” He nodded. “As long as we form a united front, nothing bad can happen, right?”
You’d think so. Somehow, though, her parents always managed to surprise her. “Of course not. Now, could you…” She pointed to the door. “I want to finally wash the airplane smell off my skin.” Even if it meant that she had to wash Jack’s smell off too. And as soon as Jack walked out the door, he would never stick to her again.
The thought was more depressing than it should be.
“Oh, sure, I…” Gareth stopped abruptly, his gaze fixed on a certain spot on the floor.
“What?” she asked as she followed his gaze and froze. Oh, crap. There, along the wall in the hallway was a pair of shoes. Two huge shoes that no hippie would wear because they were simply too black and too masculine.
Gareth’s gaze slid slowly from the floor to her face. “Penny,” he said in a relaxed manner, “are we, perhaps, not alone?”
Heat rushed to her face, turning her cheeks the color of an electric burner on high. “Uh,” elegantly escaped her lips.
He widened his in disbelief. “Shit, you have a man here!”
Groaning, she squeezed her eyes shut and put a hand on her forehead. “Possibly.”
“Who?”
“Some guy. It doesn’t matter.” She nervously pushed her hair behind her ears. “Absolutely unimportant. Weren’t you just about to leave?”
“You only arrived last night!” he replied, ignoring her words, shocked.
“One night is enough to pick someone up,” she informed him sagely.
Her brother made a disgusted face. “Fine. I don’t even want to know. Although, he must be a real wimp if he lets you hide him!” He purposefully said the last words loudly so that her guest could hear.
“Just go, okay?” she said, in total agony, and pushed him by the shoulders toward the door. “See you this evening.”
“Okay,” he said, although his curious gaze kept wandering to the locked bathroom door. “If you wear denim shorts and a crop top to dinner, I’ll give you twenty dollars.”
“You want to send Mom to an early grave, don’t you?” she said, clicking her tongue disapprovingly.
“Oh, she’s too stubborn to die. See you tonight.” He leaned toward her and said, “You can bring your conquest with you. God, I hope he’s a poet, a failed screenwriter, or a street artist like the last loser you dated. That’ll finish Mom off.”
“Go, Gareth!”
“Yeah, yeah, fine.”
The next second, he was out of the apartment and Penny breathed a sigh of relief. That was stressful. And she hadn’t even seen her parents yet.
The second door of the house slammed shut…then the bathroom door opened.
“So, you have a weakness for unsuccessful street artists,” Jack said with interest, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his shoulder against the doorframe. Unfortunately, at that moment, a single ray of sunlight fell through the window, making his skin glow over his taut muscles.
Oh God. Did he have to look so good? Did the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden have to shine so promisingly?
“Are you thinking about if we should do it again just to be safe, so that we don’t get a sudden urge when we see each other at the arena?”
She looked at him gloomily. He was an idiot — and she needed to get her lascivious expression under control. “Do you know how bad the statistics are for accidental deaths in your own home?”
