"The coast is clear," Liam murmured. "You can wake up now."
I could. But I was suddenly exhausted and Liam was so good to lean against. I yawned again and turned my face into his neck. "Do I have to?"
I felt his laugh more than I heard it. "Nah," he said. "Take a nap. We can plot our race domination on the plane." His fingers continued to play with my ponytail, almost idly. "I'll stay awake."
And even though it wasn't fair and I should have stayed up to keep him company, he was warm and snuggly and I was so incredibly tired. Liam smelled wonderful, his neck barely brushing against my nose. I drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER SIX
"Can I put in a request that we have more legs like the Paris one? More partner on partner action?" — Liam Brogan, Paris Leg of The World Races
When we arrived at the airport in Naples, it was late at night. We took a cab out to Pompeii, and even though it was dark, we bought tiny flashlights at one of the airport stores with the last of our money and hunted up and down along the roped off tourist areas until we found The World Races mat.
To my surprise, it wasn't a local waiting for us, but Chip Brubaker and a camera crew. Brodie and Tesla were already there, sitting off to one side, and so were Dean and Abby. Liam and I arrived in third place, and we were promptly handed our next clue.
The clue indicated that our team task would start once Pompeii opened at seven in the morning. Until then, there was nothing to do but wait.
The nice thing about this leg, though, was that we were given two hundred dollars, which we carefully pocketed. We'd been almost broke up to this point, every dollar carefully spent on food and taxis. Two hundred dollars would be a total luxury.
With nothing else to do and hours to go before daylight, we sat down with the teams to wait for the others to arrive. There was an open spot between Dean/Abby and Brodie/Tesla, but Liam's hand tugged mine, indicating we should sit a short distance away, and so we did. We kept a flashlight out, pulled out our guide book, and began to plot.
"It's a team challenge," I told Liam as we re-read the clue. We could choose 'Apollo' or 'Jupiter' according to the clue, which didn't tell us too much. "The guidebook mentions a Temple of Apollo, and a Temple of Jupiter. That has to be it."
"Maybe we have to visit one of the temples?" Liam suggested.
Made sense. "I think there's a floor plan in this thing. We could figure out which one is simpler and go to that one—"
A shoe scuffed to my side, and then Brodie was squatting next to me. "Hey, sis."
Liam leaned in front of me protectively, glaring at my brother. “Buzz off.”
I closed the guidebook and gave Brodie a suspicious look. "I see you remembered that I exist?"
"Nice to see you too." Brodie smirked. "So I guess you're still mad at me?"
"You'd guess right. You ditched me, and you've been ignoring me to play tonsil hockey with the rock star. Like I'm supposed to be grateful that you're paying attention to me now?" I shifted, moving a little closer to Liam. "You made it quite clear that you're not in this for family, and that's just fine with me."
"Look, I said I was sorry, Katy."
"Actually, you didn't—"
"How was I supposed to know the Ace would split us up?"
"Why did you use it to save another team anyhow?" I looked over at Liam. "Sorry. No offense."
"It's okay," he told me, but his face was tight with dislike as he watched my brother.
"Cause it was Tesla Spooner," Brodie told me. "Fucking hottest rock chick ever."
"So you sold me out because you wanted to make out with a rock chick?"
"Well, yeah." And he grinned boyishly.
I wanted to kick him in the nuts. "You suck, Brodie."
"I'm sorry you're still mad, Katy. I just wanted to see if you two wanted to work with me and Tesla for the rest of the race. We can still make it to the end with both of our teams, you know. I think it'd be a good thing."
I stared at my brother. "Are you serious? You ditched me and now you want my help? Our help?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Makes sense to me. Now instead of just me and you, it's two teams. We can work off of each other and push to the end." His gaze moved to our guidebook. "And we can share information."
"Or," I said in a sarcastic voice, "we could share our information and you could use it to hose me again. Nice try, Brodie."
"Fine. If you're going to hold a grudge, I can't stop you." Brodie gave me a sad look that I didn't buy for a minute. "Can we borrow your guidebook for a few, at least?"