7. #2
“Her name is Ursula!” Ziggy caught the reference to the children’s movie immediately and started laughing before he handed the phone back. “She’s a menace, but I love her.”
“You’re a menace, but I’m sure plenty of people love you.”
“There are lots of them.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Which ones?”
“I’ve already heard about Parker, Max, and Ricky Bobby . . .”
“Don’t call him that,” I growled.
Ziggy grinned. “Tell me about the rest of your family.” He held up a hand. “Wait a second. I met at least two thousand people while we were in Rojo, and from what I understand, they’re all related somehow. Let’s just stick to your parents and siblings for now.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yeah. That should narrow the numbers to a manageable level so I might be able to keep track of the names.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
◆◆◆
ZIGGY
“Wait a minute. You’re saying your sister is so much older than you that you’ve got nephews who are your age?”
Jewel sounded defensive when she argued, “The situation isn’t that uncommon, Nip.”
I ignored the hated nickname, which wasn’t bothering me nearly as much as it had at first, and asked, “Okay, so you’ve got two sisters and a brother who are almost old enough to be your parents.
That means you have nephews and nieces almost the same age as your siblings.
How many years are between you and your oldest nephew? ”
“Almost seven years.”
“Which means there are only two years between your younger sister and your oldest nephew.”
“Oh, look! Nip can math! Woohoo!” When I glared at her, she smiled. But the second my hands stilled, her grin vanished, and she wiggled her foot. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“True, but I’ll try to hold in the sarcasm, at least until you’re finished.”
This evening wasn’t going the way I’d imagined, and every turn of the conversation only left me aching for more.
When I first learned that Jewel would be accompanying Ms. Conner to New York City for the Brooklyn Bangers meeting–a franchise hopefully soon to be rebranded the Rojo Royals, assuming Dal could charm Ms. Conner after my abrupt exit–I had devised a petty, vengeful plan.
My original plan was to sit across the table from Jewel Parker trading barbed insults until we couldn’t take it anymore and either ripped each other’s throats out or each other’s clothes off.
Yet here I was, sitting in her suite with an old movie playing on the television and her feet in my lap after some of the most enlightening dinner conversation I’d ever had with a woman.
And now, instead of going through with my plan to hit it and quit the way she’d done to me, I wanted to sit here and listen to her talk about her family while we relaxed together as if we were old friends catching up after too long apart.
Or like a couple comfortable enough in each other’s company enough to let down their guard, relaxing together after a long day before making love and falling asleep in each other’s arms.
“What are you thinking about right now?” Jewel asked.
I wasn’t about to tell her the truth, so I touched the scar near her ankle. “How did you get this?”
“My weld didn’t hold. The box I made to contain the bomb my sister and I built came apart during a test explosion and cut my leg.” I stared at her in shock until she shrugged. “I was new to welding, but that definitely made me practice more before I did anything like that again.”
“Bomb? Welding? What?” I stammered.
As if it were perfectly normal, Jewel simplified the story and added a few more important details.
“When I was eleven and my sister was eight, we started a competition with Spruce and Terran to build the perfect bomb. It needed to be small enough to hide, have a big enough impact to do major damage, and be controlled remotely.” I stared at her, trying to figure out why she’d spin such a wild lie about a simple scar, when she wiggled her foot again.
“Don’t stop rubbing just because you’re shocked I can weld. ”
“You think welding is the biggest issue with that whopper?”
“Whopper? You think I’m lying?”
“Eleven-year-old children might be able to weld, though probably not safely, but they’re not building bombs in competition with their brothers.”
“That’s exactly what the competition was about! One of my brothers ran his mouth and insisted that girls weren’t as mechanically minded as boys, so Petra and I set out to prove them wrong.”
“What did your parents say about that?”
“My mom said my brothers should know better than to be sexist assholes, and our father said if we blew up anything else the feds wouldn’t give us back again.”
“Again?”
Jewel waved her hand as if it were nothing.
“They’re so uptight about things, even when they happen on private property.
Government overreach is out of control. I swear, if I had a dollar for every time a government agency got their panties in a twist about something we did, I would have already retired. ”
“You’re serious.”
“I am. They’re everywhere, especially now with cameras and drones. A person can’t go about their everyday life without . . .”
“I mean about the bomb, Kitten.”
“Oh, yeah. Totally serious.”
“Bullshit. You can’t make a bomb.”
Jewel’s eyebrows rose, and she gave me a challenging look. “What are you willing to bet I can flip that metal cloche with an explosion, without even triggering the smoke alarm?”
“You’re serious.”
Just like my comment, hers was a statement rather than a question. “You don’t believe me.”
I scoffed. “No, I don’t. Let’s make it ten thousand.”
“That’s not enough. I want sixteen percent of the team dispersed evenly among me, Spruce, Terran, and Petra, over and above the ten percent Brooklyn should get.”
“You want to bet your stake in a lucrative business arrangement–and your friend’s–on something virtually impossible using only what’s in this hotel room right now?”
“Put up or shut up,” Jewel taunted.
“Fuck it. Go on then.”
Jewel’s laugh was downright wicked as she hopped off the couch.
She went into the kitchenette, rummaged through a few cabinets, and pulled out a container to read the label.
Giggling, she grabbed the spare bottle of wine from the room service cart and flashed me a blinding smile on her way to the table.
I leaned to the side to watch, but could only see her hands moving as she rolled something into a tight ball.
Confusion set in as she placed a spoon in the middle of the table, lifted the metal cloche, slipped the item underneath, and covered it again. Before I could get up, she walked back over with the wine. As she reached out and slowly touched her fingertip to my lips, I froze.
“Don’t ever doubt me, Nip. I live to prove people wrong.”
I was about to respond with a sarcastic retort when there was a loud pop. The cloche shot into the air, bounced across the table, and crashed to the floor.
As I stared at the overturned cloche in shock, the door to the adjoining room flew open, and Brooklyn stormed in. “Stop blowing shit up, Jewel! This fucking room is in my name!”
“I just won a bet, and now you own ten percent of the Rojo Royals rugby team.”
“What?” Brooklyn shouted.
“You’re welcome.”
“Is she serious right now?” Brooklyn asked. When I could only nod, Brooklyn raised her hand, high-fived her friend, snatched the bottle of wine from her hand, and skipped out of the room. Just before the door slammed shut, she yelled, “You kids have fun!”
Instead of lying back down so I could continue her foot rub, Jewel straddled my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck. She smiled down at my shocked expression. “Another thing you should know about me is that I really get off on winning. It gives me quite a high.”
I cleared my throat as all of the blood in my body rushed to my cock, finally choking out, “Is that so?”
“That is so. It’s almost orgasmic.”
“Almost?” I asked.
“The rest is up to you.”