Sexual Games [The Heroes of Silver Springs 8] (Siren Publishing Classic) (7 page)

“You’re a pompous ass, Jack.” She slid off the desk and straightened her skirt, her movements jerky.

Yes, I am.
Calling on that part of him was the only thing that kept his head straight around her. “It’s been a long night, Mal. Are you going to give me a ride home or do I need to call a cab?”

“Kick you out at the curb is what I should do.” Her heels clacked angrily on the tiled floor as she headed for the door.

“At least I’ll be that much closer to home.”

“We’ve officially lost our minds.” Thaddeus’s gaze climbed the five-story tower where the firefighter challenge would take place for the next three days, and his gut did a funky little dance. He remembered watching the firefighter challenge as a kid, the intense longing that had overcome him to be out there, to be a part of it. It had taken him twenty years to get here, but tomorrow that dream would come true.

“Aw, come on.” Terri gave his shoulder a playful slap. “You’re not intimidated, are you?”

Thaddeus slid her a look. She’d dressed in a pair of short denim shorts, tennis shoes, and a pink and black polka-dot blouse. With her short bob of blonde ringlets, she looked like a sixteen-year-old school girl rather than a twenty-eight-year-old kick-ass firefighter/EMT.

“And you aren’t?” He watched as her attention did the same slow climb up the tower his had done seconds before.

She pursed her lips when her gaze reached the top and slowly nodded. “Yeah, okay, maybe a little. Good thing neither of us is afraid of heights.”

“Nah, can’t say it wouldn’t be more fun to jump from the top, though. You know, as long as there’s a safety net waiting on the ground to catch us.”

Terri barked a laugh. “You can be such an adrenaline junky sometimes.”

Thaddeus lifted a brow. “Aren’t most firefighters?”

“Well, yeah.” She stabbed a finger into his bicep. “What you have to remember, Road Runner, is to hit each and every step on your way back down that thing.”

“Details, details.” Thaddeus grinned, but he knew she was right. The tower consisted of six sets of stairs, each with ten steps. The rules stated he could take those steps two at a time while carrying the forty-two pound, one-hundred feet of coiled hose on the way up, but he had to hit each tread while holding onto both handrails on either side on his way down or he would be penalized. During practice, he’d often gotten ahead of himself, especially when he neared the bottom. The instinct to jump over the final few steps to the ground took over without thought.

That simply meant he had to think.
Okay, no biggie there.

“Details that will cause us to lose precious seconds, Vegister.”

Thaddeus saw her gaze move over the rest of the course. The Firefighter Combat Challenge course had been set up on the grounds of the Waterston Coliseum, cordoned off from the spectator stands on either side. Food and memorabilia booths were scattered about the perimeter, waiting to serve the crowd.

“We’ve trained for this, all of it. We’re awesome. You know we’re ready. We’ve got this licked, my fruity partner.”

Her confidence was inspiring. Thaddeus would give her that. She was right, too. They had trained for it. They’d worked their asses off for close to four months preparing for the rigorous challenges they would face tomorrow and Sunday. And they were awesome. They’d registered for the challenge individually and as a coed tandem team. They would both compete in the individual divisions the next day. Sunday, when they competed as a tandem team, he would start off the course, knocking out the first half consisting of the high-rise pack-carry, hose-hoist, and forcible-entry events. Terri would complete the course with the hose advance and victim rescue.

“My time is still off. The record to beat is a minute and nineteen seconds.” He puffed out a hard breath. “The best I’ve done so far is a minute thirty.”

“You’re just saving the speed for when it matters.”

“If that’s the case, then you should skunk the female record.” He’d timed Terri and watched her complete the course seconds below the current minute-and-forty-eight time for the female division.

“Let’s hope so.”

“The current coed tandem team record is a minute and twenty-six seconds.” He knew he didn’t need to tell her that. They had studied the challenge’s website, as well as the course layout they’d been provided upon their online registrations. They had talked about strategies and carefully decided which of them would be best at completing each of the five events. Despite their differences in gender, they were pretty evenly matched in strength and endurance.

“We did it in Billings in a minute twenty,” Terri reminded him.

“Once.” Thaddeus turned and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his cargo pants.

“In an enclosed stairwell,” Terri pointed out. “Climbing that tower will be different. It’s open, brighter, wider.”

“And exposed to all the elements. The building we used for practice in Billings was also only four stories, not five.”

Terri shrugged and pushed a blonde ringlet out of her eyes. “So you have five seconds to make the extra flight. Look at it this way, if we don’t win, at least we tried. That’s the whole point, right?”

“Absolutely.” Winning wasn’t the only goal on his mind. Sure, he wanted them to come out on top in all three divisions. He had no doubt they’d come damn close, too. But as far as he was concerned, he’d know the sweet taste of victory the moment he stepped onto the course tomorrow.

“Will your parents be here? Have you talked to them yet, let them know you’re in town?”

Thaddeus nodded. “They’ll be here, them and any other member of the Carter clan they can round up. I talked to them this morning. Mom is still giving me shit because I didn’t want to stay at the estate instead of bunking with Jackson.”

“We could have, you know? Stayed with them, I mean. I wouldn’t have minded.”

Thaddeus would have. Spending close to a week in the family home with his parents and Terri would have been a bad,
bad
idea. He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’m thinking it’s time to find some lunch. What about you?”

“I’m game. I could go for a big, thick, juicy cheeseburger right about now.”

“Uh uh, you got pizza last night. Today we eat healthy.”

Terri wrinkled her nose and feigned a pout. The combination of the expression sent him into a fit of laughter.

“I talked to Jackson before he dashed out of the apartment this morning. There’s a place called the High Noon Café a few streets over from here. I’ve never been there. He said it opened a few months ago. He recommended it highly, said it has fantastic blue plate specials every day.”

Terri groaned dramatically. “Something tells me I don’t want to know what a blue plate special is.”

“Well, I do. Besides, the last thing you need is to tank up on carbs before you tackle that thing tomorrow.” He tossed a look behind him at the challenge course and started walking.

“You know, Vegister. You really have your priorities screwed up. Carbs are supposed to be good for active people.”

“Carbs loaded with nutrients, yes. The stuff you shovel into your body, no.” He shot her a grin as he reached the car. “And vegetables have carbs. Some just have less than others.”

“Does Jackson eat at this place a lot?”

“It sounded like he does from the way he talked. Why?”

“Just curious.”

Thaddeus narrowed his eyes. Terri Vega was rarely
just curious
about anything. “Spill it.” He waited a beat and a thought formed in his mind that had him spinning in front of the car to look at her. “Interested?” He knew he didn’t need to say more. Sure enough, her eyes widened and she stammered so fast he couldn’t help but grin.

“In Jackson Graham? Are you kidding! He’s hot, yeah. I’ll admit that. Hell, I already knew
that
. I mean, Jason’s hot and we’ve worked with him for years. Kind of hard not to notice. And Jackson
is
his identical twin, so it stands to reason that…”

Her babbling trailed off as Thaddeus let his grin spread. She puffed a hard breath up her face, causing her ringlets to flutter wildly.

“No. I’m not the least bit interested in him. He’s too…straight-laced. Yeah, that’s the perfect description for him, straight-laced and stuffy. Too serious, too.”

“You got all of that from talking with him for all of ten minutes last night when he finally made it home?”

“And how much did you get out of your less-than-five-minute conversation with Cameron Stone last night in the hallway, my fruity friend?”

Hell, walked right into that one, didn’t I?

“Let’s not go there.” He rounded the front of the car, opened the driver door, and slid in behind the wheel.

“Touchy, touchy.” Terri got in the passenger seat beside him and fastened her seatbelt. “I asked if Jackson ate at this place he told you about a lot because I figured if he does, well, he and Cameron are close friends.”

“And you figured we might run into them there.” Thaddeus stabbed the keys in the ignition and started the car with a jerk of his wrist.

“It’s a possibility.”

Yeah, it is.
A good enough possibility that Thaddeus almost considered letting her have that cheeseburger she wanted instead of taking the chance.

She turned slightly in her seat so she could look at him. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“Yeah, I’m going to eat lunch, let my food settle, then hit that gym in Jackson’s apartment building he mentioned to me this morning.” He didn’t need to look at Terri to know she rolled her eyes at that. The low-throated growl she made always came complete with an eye roll.

“I meant about Cameron, numbskull.”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“But…but—”

“We were exhausted last night.” He cut her off as he pulled the car away from the sidewalk. “He was friendly. Friendly does not equal gay. I was probably wrong about the whole thing, including him being the guy Adrien is hung up on. And if I wasn’t, that is not a situation I need to be mixed up in.”

He was messed up enough already. Pining for a guy who couldn’t make up his mind, instantly attracted to another man who probably wasn’t even gay. He didn’t need a calculator to know that equaled supremely fucked up.

The memory of Cameron’s sea-blue eyes surfaced in his mind, the heat he’d felt from the other man’s gaze, his quietly spoken words laden with the promise Thaddeus would see him again. In the blink of his eyes, the image transformed, taking on the shape of Adrien’s too-handsome face.

Terrible thing about it was he
wanted
to be mixed up in that situation, really,
really
bad.

* * * *

“That’s the car.” Jackson put his hand on the back of Cameron’s chair and leaned over the man’s shoulder, tapping the television screen as the blue Impala came into view. He watched as the car drove past several open parking spots and disappeared from the screen.

“She knew exactly where to park to stay off camera,” Cameron commented as he let the footage play. “And apparently what time you usually get home.”

Yeah, Jackson already noted that. The clock in the lower right corner of the screen showed the time to be six forty-seven p.m., less than fifteen minutes before he had arrived.

Cameron sped up the footage and slowed it to normal speed when Jackson’s car pulled into the garage.

“Of all the nights for you to play the considerate agent,” Cameron muttered as Jackson’s car moved off the screen.

“That’s something else she apparently knew.” Jackson watched the time pass. One minute, two, five, then two shadows fell on the pavement at the top of the screen.

“Can’t tell a damn thing from those shadows.” Cameron shot a glance up at him and lifted a questioning brow. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you to walk a little more to your left?”

Jackson kept his attention locked on the screen. “She told me to stay close to the wall. She knew the layout of that garage as well as I do, knew the camera’s blind areas.”

“Which means she must be a tenant or a close friend of one,” Cameron deduced.

That had been the initial assumption of everyone on the team, and the most obvious conclusion. Except, Jackson would bet a year’s salary over half of the people who lived in his building didn’t know jack about the security. Sure, they knew it was there, but they didn’t know how it worked, what areas were really caught on tape and which weren’t.

“Not necessarily.” He had thought about it through the night and come to a conclusion that didn’t make their job of identifying his good-Samaritan kidnapper any easier. “It could’ve been maintenance personnel, past or present. There was a major overhaul done on the building less than a year ago when the new owner bought the place. All sorts of contractors were brought in to do the work. Any of them could’ve spotted the security cameras and figured out their range. Hell, it could’ve been someone connected to the previous owner.”

On the screen, the Impala returned to view as it exited the garage.

“The lighting sucks ass. Can’t see a thing beyond shadows and silhouettes even through the windshield.” Cameron rewound the footage, stopped it when the Impala first entered the garage, then replayed it in slow motion. “That could be friggin’ Santa Claus in that driver seat from all we can tell here.”