“Uh, sorta.”
“Any scouts around?”
“Two. The same as usual.”
“They look at Brooke?”
“Uh . . .”
He swings around, his eyebrows furrowing. “They fucking look at Brooke?”
Pete looks at me, then at him. “They came over to talk. Brooke flipped them the finger. I told them to go. Josephine came over. I pulled Brooke aside.”
Remy looks at me, and now his brows are raised high. “You flipped them the finger?”
I bristle. “Would you rather I’d kicked them in the nuts?”
His disbelief shifts to Pete. Ever so slowly, he drags a hand through his hair in frustration, down to the back of his neck, then he shakes his head and grabs my nape as he steers me toward our hall. “We’ll discuss it in our room,” he grumbles at me.
“Good night, guys,” Pete says.
Remington stops and swings around. “No sign of Brooke’s sister?”
“None,” Pete says, and the emotion in his face almost breaks me. He and Remington engage in some silent form of man-to-man communication, and then that’s it, and we head in different directions.
As soon as Remy ferrets us into our bedroom, I’m pressed back against the door and I find his nose buried in my cleavage as he smells me again.
My pussy clenches as he growls, “Why’d you flip off those assholes?” He jerks his head back and gives me the full force of his blue-eyed stare. “What did they say to you?”
“They were just in our faces, and I hate to say this, but Pete’s like a loaded gun without a trigger.”
“Is he now?”
“It was actually a good thing that he could keep his cool tonight, because I couldn’t. I’m crazed just thinking Nora is out there with those men. What are you going to do?”
He shakes his head and heads for the shower. “You’re to stay out of it.”
I start after him. “Won’t you at least tell me?”
He opens the shower stall door, and levels his most somber stare to date on me. “For us, Brooke,” he sternly whispers, stroking his hand all along the curve of my abdomen. “For the three of us. I’ll have your promise you’ll stay out of it. And if you break your promise to me, so help me god . . .”
“No! So help me god, if you put yourself in danger because of her . . . because of me . . . I’m going to . . .”
“What?” He cocks an amused brow, then pats my ass with a smirk. “I like it when you punch me, and I like you angry too.”
“But I’ll be very fucking mad—like you’ve never seen me!” I glare menacingly at his chest as he starts stripping his boxing gear. “Don’t, Remy.” Reaching out before he enters the shower, I grab his jaw and force him to look at me. “Promise me.”
Amusement twinkles in his gaze as he runs the back of one finger down my temple. “What am I going to do with you, firecracker?”
“Promise me,” I urge.
“I promise you,” he tells me, “that your sister will be back with you very soon, and I’m crushing that insect this year.” He chucks my chin and goes into the shower, and I can’t explain the relief I feel. He’s never lied to me. His words aren’t so bountiful, but they carry such weight. He is winning this year, and whatever he’s negotiating, Nora will be free soon. Marginally relieved, I go pull out my oils. It takes him exactly four minutes to soap up, wash his hair, and step out with a towel around his waist while he uses another to dry his chest.
“Get over here and let me rub you down,” I tell him, and as he follows me to the bench that we usually find at the foot of most of our hotel beds, he pulls me into his arms and kisses the hollow of my ear.
“Who do you belong to?” he asks softly.
Melting.
“Some lucky guy.” I urge him down to sit, fighting the urge to kiss every inch of him just yet.
“Tell me his name,” he commands as he drops down so that I can rub his muscles. He watches me kneel before him and set all my materials nearby, and he wears a devastatingly sexy tilt to his lips that is frankly irresistible.
“Why? Do you like the way his name sounds in my voice?” I ask as I unscrew the lid of my arnica oil.
“I fucking love it. Tell me his name now.” Hot blue eyes watch me as I pour the oil into my palms and rub my hands together to warm the liquid before sliding it slickly along his chest and shoulders.
“But . . . he’s . . . complicated,” I whisper, curling my fingers around his collarbone and throat. “I know him very well, and yet . . .” I pause and rub the arnica oil all down the solid length of one muscled arm. “And at the same time, he’s always still a mystery.” Sliding back up his arm and to stroke the oil across his trapezoids, I whisper in his ear, “He goes by Riptide sometimes, but I call him Remy. And I’m crazy about him.”
His chest rumbles with a chuckle, and I see the little stars of delight dancing inside his eyes as he looks into my face and tweaks my nose. “You’re good for my ego, Brooke my-pregnant-beauty Dumas.”
“But don’t let that ego get even bigger,” I warn him, now rubbing the warm oil along his pecs as I drop my voice and tell him, “You’re mine.”
Smiling, I slide my fingers down his forearm, I stroke down to his palm, then I impulsively lift his hand and kiss his knuckles, looking into his blue eyes, which shine with tenderness as he watches me. “This is mine, too?” I ask uncertainly.
He lowers his voice to a playful rasp as he runs the back of a finger along my cheek. “Depends, little firecracker. Do you want it?”
“I want it.”
“Then it’s yours, baby girl.”
Taking his other hand, I repeat what I did with the first one and kiss his knuckles. “And this one?”
“Do you want it?” He raises his eyebrows and happily jerks his head in the direction of the door. “All those ladies out there wanted it.”
“But I want it,” I protest.
He smiles indulgently and runs the back of a finger down my jaw again. “Then it’s yours.”
My voice thickens when I jerk down his towel so I can slick the oil into his calves and powerful thighs. I admire his sexy smile, those dimples and that rumpled hair. I ask, “What about you? All of you?” As I slick my oily hands up his eight-pack, I lift my head to search for his lips. He groans when I lick the seam of his mouth. Softly. I continue massaging his flesh as I start moving my lips over his. He’s a fighting machine and he’s mine, and my eyes briefly slide shut as I tend to him and breathe, “What about you, Remington? Are you mine?”
His thick rasp makes my nipples bead. “Do you want me?”
God. My adorable big man of a boy. A boy with the strength of a thousand men. Playful and possessive. I am dying from need and love as I whisper, “I want you,” in his ear. “All of you. Black and blue and any other shade you come in.”
Groaning, he draws my head down to his lips and kisses me, hard and deeply. “I’ll answer that to you in bed.” He grabs my hand as if ready for the bed part, but I laugh and pull back.
“Five more minutes!”
He shakes his head. “Two.”
“Four.”
“Three, now take it or I’ll toss you up on the bed right over there, right this second.”
“Done.”
“Done, I toss you up on the bed?” he prods.
“Done, three more minutes!” I cry laughingly, speeding up my hands as I rub them along his hard pecs. My laugh fades when my thoughts drift back to the Scorpion’s men. “She used to slip into my bed at night when she had nightmares. She had such a vivid imagination, she’d see things, good and bad, where there weren’t any.”
“What are you talking about?” he asks huskily.
“Nora,” I say, unable to hide the sadness in my voice. “I just want you to know why I . . . I don’t know. Why I’ve always protected her. She seemed to need me, and we fell into those roles. She’s always needed protecting. But now I wonder if I don’t let her solve her own problems, will she ever learn a lesson? I’ve always wanted to protect her but now nothing will ever make me risk the baby and you, not even her.”
His expression is so gentle and understanding, a little knot of emotion winds in my chest. “Shh. Relax,” he says, stroking a hand down my hair. “He’s not getting the championship, or the prize, or your sister. He’s not winning. I. Get. It all. Do you hear me? I get the gold, the championship, the sister’s freedom . . . And I get to protect, and please, and love my girl.”
SEVENTEEN
AUSTIN IS A WHIRL
A group of deer leap across the greenbelt area behind the sprawling gardens of the Austin rental home. I point at them and say, “Look!” but Remy just grunts; he’s a little busy flipping a gigantic tractor tire over, again and again.
It’s so hot here in Texas, sweat trickles down my neck and dips into my cleavage.
Squinting in the afternoon sun, I ask Remy and Coach if they want anything from inside, and Coach shakes his head, while Remy grunts and starts turning the tire in the opposite direction.
“We’re almost done,” Coach lets me know. I nod and raise two fingers—meaning it’ll take me two minutes to go make my fifth trip into the house for lemonade.
Inside the house, I spot Riley at the edge of the living room, and he’s so motionless I almost don’t see him. His hands are jammed in his suit pockets, and he’s staring at the front door with a huge frown. My body kicks straight into high-alert mode, and a cold little kernel settles deep inside my tummy.
“His parents,” I say in disgust.
His parents. Two specimens of people who did not deserve a penis and ovaries, much less be permitted to reproduce something as magnificent as Remington! Raise him? Oh, no. Those assholes just grabbed their boy, checked him into a mental institute, and never came back.
Tight-lipped, Riley gives me an affirmative gesture. “Pete’s handling it.”
Curling my arms around my stomach by pure protective instinct, my gaze falls on the front door along with his. “Why do they keep bothering him? Do they want to make amends?”
“Brooke!” Riley almost chokes on my name, his laugh one of the most humorless, sad laughs I’ve ever heard anyone give. “They’re assholes. We’ve gone through this dozens of times and they know Remington will make them go away with a damn check.”
A potent anger overtakes me as I think of the way Remy gets restless every time we even get near his hometown. Last season, his parents looked him up again and found themselves on the receiving end of a check with his signature.
“They don’t deserve anything from him. Anything,” I whisper.
Before I know it, I’m charging across the living room.
“B! Just let Pete make them scat,” Riley proposes to me.
But instead I swing the door open and there they are, on the porch, pretty as you please. The man . . . he’s big as a mountain, beautifully aged. I swear it almost hurts to see the resemblance to Remy in him. Eyes the same electric-blue shade as Remy’s instantly train on me, but the expression in these eyes is completely different. The life and vitality, the drive and strength I see in Remington’s eyes are completely lacking in his father’s.