Chapter 18
18
F or about ten minutes, Carter and I stayed frozen inside the rapidly heating sauna waiting to be caught by whoever was out there. Sweat started to drip down my spine and I became acutely aware of how heavy my gown and gloves were with the rising temperature.
“I don’t think they’re coming in here,” Carter whispered, his ear pressed to the door. “Maybe they hit the switch by accident. Sounds like they’re wasted.”
“If they could accidentally turn it off, that’d be ideal,” I whispered back, peeling my gloves off in an attempt to cool down. “I thought saunas usually take like an hour to heat up?”
Carter gave a slight shrug, the motion barely visible in the weak light of his phone. “Rich people get shit to work better than others.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course. “What are they doing out there?”
“Do you really want to know?” He shifted his ear off the door and shrugged out of his jacket. “Because honestly it sounds like we might be in here for a while.”
I gave a quiet groan, then tried not to watch as Carter tugged his red silk cravat off and started on his shirt buttons. “What…are you doing?”
“Avoiding heatstroke. You should do the same.” He finished unbuttoning his shirt, then took it off entirely.
I inhaled sharply enough that I choked on my own breath and tried to cover it up by coughing as quietly as possible. “Um, I’m good. Feels all too much like a Nate-style setup.”
“Suit yourself,” he murmured, carefully folding his clothes into a neat pile.
I wet my lips, far too aware of how fucking hot I was. I didn’t love saunas on the best of days, let alone in full makeup in a floor length satin evening gown with a corset waist. Hopefully we could escape soon…or at least crack the door for airflow.
“Okay, um, what’s the plan for the ducks?” Distraction was what I needed. Yeah, that’d help.
Carter slouched back against the bench seat, elbows braced behind him. “You’re going to faint, Spark. At least sit down if you’re not willing to take the dress off.”
My jaw tightened with stubborn defiance…but he had a point. With a short sigh, I sat on the lowest bench as far away from him as I could. Which wasn’t particularly far since the sauna was only designed for two.
“Happy?” I muttered.
“Not often,” he replied in a quietly serious voice. “Don’t worry about the ducks, I’ve got that handled.”
I frowned. “So why am I here? I thought you needed my help to win?”
A breathy laugh escaped him. “I do. You’re doing exactly that. My friends are the only real competition in this and right now they’re all too absorbed with thinking about you and me to put their effort into the challenge. You’re a distraction, Spark. A pretty one too.”
“Oh.” I was somewhat taken back by that. “Is that all?”
“Don’t underestimate the power of distraction.”
I didn’t love that. Heath, sure I could see how he possibly wasn’t focusing on the challenge. Nate too. He was pissed to see me arrive with Carter. But Royce? Not so much. He was far too busy fucking Nate’s girlfriend.
“Okay, but I get two ducks to place, right?”
Carter sighed. “No, I get four ducks, and you get a twenty-thousand-dollar designer dress.” Fuck that. I stood up and took a step toward the door before Carter surged to his feet to block me. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving,” I replied, matter of fact. “I don’t care for designer dresses and if you’re not letting me have any ducks, there’s no need for me to stay.”
A frustrated growl rumbled through his chest. “Fine. You can have a duck.”
“ Two ducks,” I corrected, silently noting this was the stupidest argument I’d possibly ever engaged in. “And I will make sure they’re winning ducks.”
“They’d better be,” he muttered, placing a hand on my sweaty shoulder. “Turn around.”
“Why?” I asked, even as he pushed me to do as he said.
He sighed, his fingers making quick work of unlacing my corset back. “Stopping you from passing out. Old friend out there told his lady that he wants to make her come three times before she’s allowed to go to bed and I don’t have a huge amount of faith in his skills so…we could be here awhile.”
With the touch of his fingers on my back and the insane amount of sweat building on my skin, I couldn’t even protest.
“Thank fuck I wore underwear,” I mumbled, sighing with relief as the heavy dress fell to the floor.
Carter hummed, his fingers trailing down my damp spine. “Yes. What a relief.”
Pretending I wasn’t sitting in a sweltering sauna, in the dark, with a shirtless Carter Bassington, I redirected our whispered conversation to focus on where to place the ducks. Because as offended as I was to be nothing more than a pretty distraction , I still wanted to beat Nate. Badly.
It took a good half an hour—by which point I was lying on the floor with my head pounding and Carter had stripped down to his boxer-briefs—but the bathroom door finally slammed and silence followed.
“Are they gone?” I whispered, not moving from my squashed lizard position.
Carter pressed his ear back to the door. He listened for a moment, then ever so carefully peered out of the tiny window. “I think so.”
Ever so slowly, he opened the door a crack and I nearly gasped with the cool breeze it allowed inside. Then maybe I moaned a little because shit it felt good on my burning hot face.
“Shhhh,” Carter scolded with a touch of amusement as he opened the door wider to let more cool air in. “They’re probably in the bedroom.”
He had a point, but I was just about ready to quit the challenge if it meant I had to stay in the sauna any longer. “I fucking hate saunas,” I grumbled, climbing to my feet and pausing while my head swirled.
Carter reached out to steady me, one hand on my elbow and the other on my waist. “You okay, Spark?”
I licked my lips, my mouth dry. “Yep. Just dizzy.”
He nodded, then kept his hand on my waist as we moved out of the sauna and into the much, much cooler bathroom. On the floor lay a pile of clothes and several condom wrappers. Had there been more than one dude? Kinky.
I desperately wanted to splash some cold water on my face, but wasn’t sure if running water would alert anyone to our hiding place so I settled for trickling cold water directly onto a washcloth then pressing that to my face. It was heavenly.
“Here,” Carter whispered, handing me a silver satin robe.
I took it, then gave him a sidelong glance. “Is my underwear too distracting, Bassington?”
He scoffed quietly. “Yes.” He tugged his suit pants and shoes back on but didn’t bother with his shirt or coat. Talk about distracting now that the cover of darkness had lifted.
We waited in the bathroom for only a few more minutes before Carter decided it was safe to exit. He still moved cautiously, cracking the door and pausing to listen before easing it open further.
From the bedroom, deep snores echoed through and it gave us the confidence to quickly, quietly, not even daring to breathe, tip toe out into the hallway.
Even once we were clear of the bedroom, Carter put a finger to his lips to indicate silence and led the way further along the hallway, opening a door to the right with confidence.
“What are we looking for?” I whispered as he closed the door softly behind us both. We were inside an office, full of rich mahogany and leather-bound books. From what Carly had told me while we were getting ready, this house—mansion—belonged to some old oil tycoon who basically just lived for his much younger trophy wife and throwing huge parties.
Certainly the office looked rarely used, and there wasn’t even a computer on the desk. Old-school or staged. One of the two.
“Ashley, sweetheart, I didn’t come into this challenge without a plan,” Carter muttered. “But since you’ve taken two ducks, I have to go with my best.” He rifled through the desk drawers with a pinched expression, hunting for something.
“Okay…so let me help.” I circled around the desk and pulled open the other set of drawers.
Carter huffed a short sigh. “Keys. My informant tells me old man Lintan keeps the key to his safe in one of his desk drawers.”
I let out a low, quiet whistle. “Very secure,” I muttered, but went to work searching for keys.
After a few minutes of hunting—and finding nothing—I decided to pull the drawers out entirely and crawl under the desk to see if it was stuck to the tabletop.
“Give me a light,” I ordered Carter, holding my hand out for his phone. I hadn’t brought mine, since it didn’t exactly fit with my evening gown. He obliged, and I used the flashlight to search for—“Ah-hah! It’s not a key, dumbass. It’s a combination.”
“What?” he exclaimed, dropping to his knees and attempting to see what I was looking at. Except there was nowhere near enough space for both of us and I shoved him back out again.
“Quit it,” I snapped. “I’ll read the numbers out.”
An angry sound rumbled through him, but his legs moved out of my line of sight nonetheless. A moment later the electronic beep of the safe—I assumed—seemed to shriek through the room.
“Okay, go,” he whispered.
I carefully, slowly, read the combination out and a second later the safe gave a happy double beep and its mechanical lock flicked open as I climbed out from under the desk.
Carter, grinning like a maniac, placed a duck on top of the huge stack of cash and snapped a photo.
“How do they know who placed which duck?” I asked, watching. “Could someone else find our awesome duck and claim it as their own?”
Carter shook his head, pocketing the picture then taking another on his phone. Backup, I had to guess, since there was a good chance the sauna had fucked our Polaroid film.
“Ducks are color coded and marked.” He pointed to the little flame symbol on our duck’s chest. “That’s us.”
I nodded, thinking. “Okay but say Nate found this duck…couldn’t he just remove ours and place his in the same spot?”
“For one, it’s against the rules. For two, I took a digital photo so it would be time stamped just in case . Anyone who doesn’t do that deserves to be fucked over. Come on, let’s keep going.”
Again, Carter held me back while he checked if the coast was clear before ducking out into the hallway. He started down the hall to the right, but I had an idea of where I wanted to place my first duck so I grabbed his hand and pulled him the other way.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a confused whisper.
“Shh,” I replied, placing a finger on my lips as we approached the bedroom we’d only so recently escaped. The one with two sleeping occupants.
Carter’s eyes widened as I reached for the door handle, and he swiftly grabbed my wrist before I could open the door. “Spark,” he hissed. “You’re going to get us caught.”
I rolled my eyes. “Only if you keep talking. Don’t you trust me?”
His lips twitched with a shocked smile. “Not for a fucking second.”
Fair. I shrugged. “Well…take a leap, I have a great idea.”
In truth I expected him to drag me away, not willing to risk disqualification by getting caught. But he gave a short sigh and released my wrist. “Fine,” he muttered. “Don’t make me regret it.”
Grinning, I carefully pushed the door open a crack and listened for the snoring before slipping back inside the room. Carter followed but waited by the door while I tiptoed across to the bed with my duck in hand.
The woman slept peacefully on her side, silk eye mask firmly in place and sheets pulled up to her shoulders. The man, though, snored like a chainsaw as he slumbered face down with one leg hanging off the bed and his bare ass exposed.
Perfect.
Barely daring to breathe, I crouched down and delicately balanced my duck on one of the man’s hairy butt cheeks, then indicated for Carter to hand me the camera.
He shifted closer, handing me the Polaroid camera and taking a quick evidence shot on his phone. I lined up the duck in the viewfinder, making sure it was abundantly clear where it was placed, then pressed the shutter button.
The flash popped off, filling the room with light ever so briefly and panic swept through me.
Carter’s strong hand grabbed the back of my neck, practically jerking me to my feet in his hurry to escape. I didn’t argue, practically tripping over myself in my haste, but we paused outside the bedroom to listen.
Nothing.
Then…
Snoring.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, a huge grin curving my lips.
Carter just shook his head, staring at me with an unreadable expression. “You’re insane, Spark.”
He might be right. But it felt so damn good.