CHAPTER SIX
Appealing to a man’s humanity was a delicate task, especially when the man was one who’d seen you in naked and possibly had a score to settle. Jeremiah Tarantino’s grudge was sorely misdirected if it included Waverly. She would make him see that. Tenacious, persistent, relentless. Those qualities were waiting to be unleashed, and tonight she was ready to approach the complicated situation with Jeremiah from whatever angle necessary to convince him to keep what happened privately between them private.
Dressed for the occasion in a black tiered dress, haute stockings, and boa stilettos—plus the one thing she felt naked leaving the house without: confidence—she set the Taccia fountain pen on the bid sheet for the one-carat musgravite sheltered in a lighted display case, cast a final look at the gemstone with every intention of circling back as the silent auction drew to a close and moved outside to observe the guests roaming the JW Marriott’s Valencia Terrace.
No sign of Jeremiah. She’d kept watch for him in the ballroom while viewing the high-ticket merchandise and services that had been donated to the Young Minds, Bright Futures scholarship ceremony and charity fund-raiser. Surely he would be here to at least congratulate the highest bidder of the pair of tour passes to Villains Stadium, which included tickets to the bidder’s choice of any one home game. Good seats, too, on the fifty. Likely the donation had been promised to the fund-raiser before the Greers had acquired the team, and Waverly appreciated that it hadn’t been retracted.
But Jeremiah was absent from the room that was flooded with children and teens of varying ages—some withdrawn and overwhelmed by the linen-and-golden-light splendor that was all in their honor, others charged with excitement and thriving off the rush of being the center of attention.
Behind the podium was a well-guarded table that held gold-lettered plaques and gift certificates for the scholarship recipients, paid for with the year-round contributions from the event’s sponsors and generous benefactors. For every child in attendance there seemed to be at least three adults present. Among the sea of people were parents and guardians, social workers and teachers, wait staff carrying platters of appetizers and kid-friendly beverages, as well as the occasional city official, journalist, or celebrity.
A blueberry mojito in hand, Waverly surveyed the ebb and flow of guests on the terrace, searching for a man with a burr haircut and green eyes that had seemed to hold the power to look right through to her every unspoken wish. What would be his motive for not showing up to this fund-raising event, when the announcement she’d found online had all but gushed over his generosity and dedication to children’s literacy and academic excellence?
Had he guessed she would attempt to find him here and backed out of the commitment? Not only did the sneakiness of the move frustrate her, but Waverly found it intolerable that he’d brush off a cause he was supposedly so devoted to.
Or his absence could have nothing at all to do with her.
Why do I care one way or another? Why am I even hoping he’s a better person than that?
Waverly returned her attention to the mojito and let a circle of women draw her into a conversation about the benefit.
Yesterday she’d contacted the event’s chairperson and made an anonymous donation to the Young Minds, Bright Futures charity. She approved of the cause that offered Clark County’s academically gifted children the recognition they deserved no matter their families’ income or social status. While some of the silent-auction items offered entertainment, many were scientific in nature—such as the gemstone Waverly had her eye on—and the proceeds from all would be funneled into the charity’s scholarship fund.
She’d come here for one mission, but in between searching for Jeremiah she found herself enjoying the atmosphere and the company of brilliant, humble kids and the grown-ups who were not only present to share the glory but appeared genuinely proud.
In that respect they were more fortunate than Waverly had ever been.
As the conversation waned and a few of the women stepped away, Waverly finished her mojito and found Meg leaning back against a wall at the opposite end of the terrace, clad in leather pants and a hunter-green peasant blouse. “I don’t think Jeremiah’s going to show,” Waverly said. “And I was so looking forward to playing spy.”
“I found out that Jeremiah participates in this benefit every year. It hits close to home for him, turns out. He’s a brainiac, too.” Meg hitched her chin up at the sun bleeding hues of orange and purple into the horizon. “It’s early. He’ll probably show. Are you going to take off?”
Waverly preferred to stick around for the ceremony and the results of the silent auction, but the idea of Jeremiah turning his back on these kids and this fund-raising event—to avoid her?—left her feeling unsettled. The fact that it bothered her was even more troubling.
“Maybe,” was her uncertain answer. “For a woman who wasn’t too enthusiastic about making an appearance here, you sure seem comfortable,” Waverly noticed, realizing for the first time that Meg held two glasses. And both contained what looked like tropical punch garnished with orange slices.
Meg’s gaze lowered slightly as she sipped from the glass with the lipstick-stained rim. “I met a cop. His name’s Parker.”
“That’s great!”
“He’s a widower. Has a son.” Meg held up the second glass in explanation. “An actor from that new motorcycle club show is here, and Parker took his kid to get an autograph.” She polished off her juice and handed Waverly the glass, then straightened and grabbed her cane from its hiding spot behind her.
“You hid your cane?” Waverly whispered. “If you like this cop so much that you’re holding his son’s juice glass, you should find out if he has a problem with your injury.”
“Waverly, it’s not like I looked at him and saw wedding bells. I guess I was pretending for a bit that I’m one hundred percent whole.… Dumb.” She laughed, but it lacked warmth or humor. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to find a guy. I came to help you scope out Jeremiah.”
“Things have an odd way of changing course sometimes,” Waverly said, but she’d let her friend make her own choice. She handed Meg’s glass to a waiter and turned discreetly, scanning faces. “Which one’s Parker?”
Now Meg’s smile was authentic, and she braced her weight on the cane, carefully taking inventory of the terrace crowd. “Over there by the band. Dark hair. Dimples. Roman nose.… Isn’t that what they call it?”
The man bent to say something to the boy in front of him, and both women fell silent, enjoying the view.
“Somebody’s got a crush,” Waverly whispered.
“He’s a dad. And his son’s a ten-year-old physics genius, turns out.”
“He’s a man—” Waverly paused as he and his son turned to wave Meg over “—and both he and his kid seem taken with you. Get to know him, if you want a friend’s suggestion.”
Meg frowned, as if ready to protest, when something trapped her attention. She subtly lifted her brows at Waverly. “Well. Here comes your man.”
Waverly felt Jeremiah’s approach even before she turned to see him backlit by the million dots of glowing gold from the lights that had been strung about the terrace. She thought she’d memorized every detail—his height, his tanned skin, that beautiful curve of his mouth—but seeing him weave through the clumps of guests, in an almost black suit and stark white shirt with no tie and an unbuttoned collar, jump-started her arousal.
Something about him affected her in a way she couldn’t define and certainly didn’t want to accept. It was as if he’d figured her out even before meeting her. Without touching her, speaking to her or even looking at her, he called to her.
And this was how it had happened to begin with.… Except there would be no fantasies tonight. Just reality. Just business.
“I won’t be far,” Meg let her know in a low tone only Waverly could hear before she slipped into the crowd.
Jeremiah let his eyes touch her in one smooth stroke from her hair, which she’d wrangled into a high knot, to her boa stilettos. If he was waiting for her to react, he could keep waiting, because she wouldn’t shrink or flush under his stare. Establishing right now that he didn’t outmatch her was paramount.
“Funny how you and I never ran in the same social circles before you were hired,” Jeremiah said, his baritone tight with tension. He acknowledged a trickle of passing acquaintances—men in suits and women in soiree dresses—with easygoing nods and brisk handshakes before zeroing in on her again. “Is this new? Your interest in providing for incredibly studious kids?”
Waverly let the fire glint in her eyes but blinked it smoothly away after a moment. “I support this charity’s mission and am glad the Las Vegas Villains chipped in. But I’m here because I looked you up online and I need a word with you. In private.”
Nothing like blunt honesty to throw a man off his game. She liked seeing surprise flare in his eyes but didn’t bask in the satisfaction. Divulging the location of an unlocked meeting room that she’d found earlier, she instructed, “I’m going there now, but you’ll need to wait some minutes before slipping out of the ballroom—”
“This feels familiar.”
“I’ll be a saint.” Waverly’s mouth softened as if on the verge of a smile, just enough to reel in his attention. “History won’t repeat itself. I can promise you that.”
She made haste, pretending to be on a pressing cell phone call as she walked with purpose through the halls, then dropping the phone into her tiny handbag when she found the vacant meeting room without anyone in her way or on her trail.
While she waited, she let her foot shake freely, getting the nervousness out of her system. Which was stupid because she’d come to this benefit to rattle him enough to drop whatever unfounded vendetta he had against her family.
If, in fact, he had one.
“The presentations will be starting soon,” Jeremiah said, coming into the meeting room that suddenly felt too small for the two of them, “so we may have to cut this short. You know how that is.”
Waverly let the razor-thin sarcasm pass but was stunned at Jeremiah’s audacity to set her up and be sullen about not finishing sex in his suite at the Rio. “Won’t take long.”
“What about your friend? Is she around or did she outfit you in a wire or something?” He must’ve noted the concern sweeping across her face, because he continued, “I saw her at the team party and again here, speaking with you. And she looks on edge, like she’d frisk a nun.”
“My friend is here for moral support.” And to help me spy on you, of course.
“Then a wire…?” Jeremiah came farther into the room, into her space, and circled her, his gaze coasting deliberately, agonizingly meticulously over her every line and curve.
“That would be unnecessary, seeing as I came here only for a colleague-to-colleague conversation.” Waverly needed him to stop moving, to stop allowing his scent to wash over her and drag her memories back to dangerous moments. “I want to know if you set me up the other night at the Rio.”
Jeremiah did stop, as if frozen in place. “How would I have done that?”
She wanted to be able to see the truth in his eyes, to see deeply into him the way he’d seemed to be able to stare right to the core of her when they were just random strangers in a hotel nightclub. Or perhaps she hadn’t been random to him but the woman he was after from the start. “Carefully but easily. You saw my name and picture on social media or sports news. You had someone follow me around and let you know where I was. Then you…pounced.”
“Understand this. I didn’t know who you were when we met. And it was all up to you, Waverly. You came and went on your own terms. And why would I work so hard for an easy fuck?”
Oh, he wasn’t going to throw her off with that. “Maybe an easy fuck wasn’t your actual objective.” Waverly refused to look away, wouldn’t let her nerves get the best of her. “Was having sex with me going to be a bonus or a token or something?”
“No.” The word was low, but it resounded in Waverly’s ears until it penetrated all the way down to her heart.
“Then what was your agenda…Jeremiah Tarantino?” At his hesitation, she prodded, “Just admit that you have a problem with my family and with me being on the training staff.”
“Goddamn right, I have a problem with your family taking what doesn’t belong to you.” The truth ignited the heat in his eyes, and though the reality of it stung, Waverly would’ve respected him less if he’d lied.
“Your father sold the franchise to my father. It was a fair deal.”
“Preying on a man still grieving the death of his wife isn’t fair where I come from.” Jeremiah pulled a chair back from the conference table and sat, watching her openly. He legitimately believed that her father had intimidated his father into selling the Villains. It was absurd, because she knew it wasn’t true. But to him…
“The Greers don’t operate like that, Jeremiah.”
Whether he trusted what she told him or not didn’t matter. She would help her parents fight whatever trouble the Tarantinos sent their way…if they let her. Of course, if Jeremiah decided to disclose the details of their first meeting, there was an almost certain chance that her parents would want her as far away from the organization as possible.
“What do you intend to do?” she asked, standing in front of him. “Notify my family and the media and the league that you saw Waverly Greer’s underpants? Is that the satisfaction you want?”
“What would that accomplish?”
“Jeremiah, for starters it would get me off your territory. I’d be off the team.” The possibility of losing it all hadn’t felt quite as real as it did once she’d said the words to him aloud. “But so would you. Are you really so confident you can break down my family that you’re willing to risk your own career?”
“Your family controls the front office. You’re golden, Waverly. As good as tenured on the damn training staff.”
“Actually,” she said quietly, “you have that ‘family takes care of family’ luxury. I don’t. People on the outside calling foul, claiming nepotism? They’re so wrong. None of you know my parents.”
“Waverly. You say my family takes care of one another.”
“Clearly.”
“Who takes care of you?”
I do. It’s what I’m used to. But she wouldn’t tell this man that. Already she’d said too much, let the conversation go too deep into waters she didn’t want to disturb. He knew that he could hurt her…but would he?
Rather than press for an answer to his question, he came back with another one, getting to his feet as he spoke. “Who’s to say you didn’t plan to casually run into me at VooDoo?”
“Like I said earlier, the Greers don’t operate like that. We play fair and that makes winning sweeter.”
“You didn’t know who I was?” he countered.
“I didn’t realize you were Milo Tarantino’s brother until you told me your name at the party.”
“Milo’s brother.” A rueful smile touched his face. “Yeah, he was the star. I was a competent athlete but didn’t have the same ‘star quality,’ so I hung somewhere in the background…a nerd…a kid who was all about the books, just like the kids being honored in this building tonight.”
So he was committed to the charity’s cause. Did he see aspects of his younger self in the kids in the Valencia, kids who were gifted in some ways but disadvantaged in others?
“No one should be overlooked or forgotten.”
Was he referring to the kids who now had “bright futures” or himself…or her?
Waverly hadn’t realized that with each sentence he’d come a step closer to her, and now he was in her space again.
“After this, you’ll remember me.” Jeremiah pulled her against the wall of his body and fit his mouth over hers.
The sudden grab gave her no time to react. Waverly felt herself going willingly deeper down the path that had put her in this cluster to begin with, but the last thing she wanted to do was disengage from a man who talking to her—not with words but with lips and tongue.
His hands found their way between them. They squeezed her breasts, stroked down her belly, gripped her ass with an unexpected harshness. All the while his mouth was hot and dangerous and so thorough.
Because if his mouth covered hers, she couldn’t speak. If his hands trapped her against him, she couldn’t leave.
Not that she could decide if she wanted to. Even as he yanked up her dress and nudged her legs apart… Even as moved aside her underwear and drove two fingers into her, searching, stroking, drawing out wetness… Even as he manipulated her clit until she bit his lip, shoved at his shoulders, and came so roughly she almost knocked them both onto the floor.
When he finally released her, she staggered, momentarily dazed, and for a long moment there was only the ragged sounds of their breathing.
Waverly smoothed her dress, staring at the fingers he’d wedged inside her. “Told you I wasn’t wearing a wire.”
“Had to know what you intended to do,” he said, throwing her words back at her, his voice rough like gravel.
“I intend to go to Mount Charleston and do my job.” She headed for the door.
“Waverly…I won’t take any cheap shot against you. But the one thing worse than fucking you when I didn’t know you were my coworker, that you’re a Greer, would be to fuck you now.”
“Then don’t do it.” She rolled her tongue over her bottom lip and could taste him there. “See you at camp.”
◆◆◆
Desert Luck Center, the Las Vegas Villains’ training facility, spread out over a corner of Mount Charleston, Nevada, was architectural heaven, with its most grand outdoor features being two practice fields, a basketball court, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Beyond the spacious lobby, the sprawling main building housed a weight room, equipment room, cafeteria, auditorium and lounges for players and staff.
Like the first day of school, Waverly thought as she parked her Fiat in the lot, hitched the strap of her duffel bag over her shoulder, and hurried inside out of the light summer drizzle. Growing up, she’d been that oddball blonde who was excited at the start of a brand-new year but who purposely wore the previous year’s clothes just because everyone else would be wearing brand-new stuff, making every classroom smell like a department store. Today, though, brand-new athletic shorts peeked out from underneath her favorite oversize cotton T-shirt.
Today she was more anxious than excited. It was imperative that she check her nerves at the door and present a cool exterior. If she could show up to camp every morning and return to her temporary “villa home” each afternoon knowing that her presence on the staff had made a difference, then she’d be super.
She’d expected uncomfortable glances from players and coaches alike but had not expected to locate her assigned locker and see a new-with-tags push-up bra taped to the door.
A few muffled snickers rode the air.
Wasn’t this supposed to be professional football? Even her college athletes and colleagues hadn’t stooped low enough to pull this kind of junior high prank. She peeled the garment away and twirled it around her finger. “Wow. Thanks for the gift, but guys… Your accuracy’s shit. My tits aren’t this big.” Pissed, she peeled off her T-shirt to demonstrate. “See? This bra is meant for a fuller set.”
The majority of the laughter stopped, to be replaced with shock, arousal, and loose threats about posting her outburst on Instagram. Someone muttered, “Fuck, we should’ve gotten her the panties, too.”
She rolled her eyes. As if they’d never seen breasts. As if nudity wasn’t a fact of life in locker rooms. “I’m an adult female, with adult female parts,” she announced. “Are we clear on that—and the fact that if anyone records me on his phone, I’ll introduce his balls to my pointiest-toed shoes?”
She scanned the mostly unfamiliar faces, pausing when she saw Finn Walsh.
She pitched the oversize bra into a wastebasket and put her shirt on, embarrassed to be caught proving a half-nude point in front of the head coach. He’d warned her about this, and she’d been so cocky about being equipped to handle it. No doubt he’d report the episode to her parents, who would be more interested in how she dealt with the situation rather than who instigated it.
Finn swaggered past, clipboard in hand. “Well done, Waverly.”
Suppressing a grin, she issued a short nod of acknowledgment and finished checking in, meeting people she’d glimpsed at the team party but couldn’t recall by name, as well as others for the very first time.
Of all the hands she’d shaken, the nods she’d returned, none had been Jeremiah’s. She didn’t like compulsively searching a group for his face or that when she paused for a heartbeat, she remembered how it felt to have him against her, taking up her oxygen and replacing it with something that felt like uncorked lust. Nor did she appreciate the worry that lingered like a dark lullaby in the recesses of her mind, one that warned she couldn’t trust a man with such an obvious motive to give her family hell.
Up to this minute he hadn’t gone back on his word—her parents were all about action and would’ve contacted Waverly by now if Jeremiah had talked. So he was keeping their secret, or secrets if one also counted the fingering disguised as a wire check encounter at JW Marriott.
But for how long? Waverly didn’t know, and so she would be on guard, as Meg had cautioned. What she couldn’t tell anyone, even her closest friends, was that one secret exposed would lead to another, then another, until her worst mistake resurfaced. Every minute now was an unknown.
All she could do was focus on the game.
Waverly strode outside to be immediately signaled over to the sidelines as the players, damp from rain and sweat, dove into the first scrimmage, with Finn transformed into a hard, cursing force no one wanted to cross. Several minutes into the mock game, two rookies collided with a reverberating crash of bone and muscle and metal and hit the ground hard.
One man dragged himself to his feet. The front of his shirt was stained red, and when Waverly and another trainer lunged forward, he hollered with his hands out, “It’s his!”
Waverly reached the injured man first, discovered blood blooming across his mouth and chin. As he reached back and yanked off his helmet, he growled a curse and she could see that he’d lost two teeth.
“Welcome to camp,” the other trainer said with a friendly wink as they collected the teeth from the turf, and helped the player to his feet and off the field.
After the completion of the first of that day’s two-a-day, Waverly was refilling her water bottle at the Gatorade station when two offensive linemen trotted past in jersey shorts and cutoff tees, identical thick lines of sweat down their shirts.
“My dick hurts. Massage it for me, Goldilocks.”
She looked up from the drink dispenser and brushed back the errant spirals of hair that had frizzed from the earlier light rain. “Who said that?”
“Said what?” the taller of the two replied, while the other shrugged and crossed his arms over a wide chest, making the Japanese characters tattooed on his dark skin soar over his biceps.
She glanced across the way at where Jeremiah was crouched, examining one of the new prospect’s quads. So far today, Jeremiah hadn’t said a word to her, and when he saw her now, as if he’d felt her eyes on him, he only turned his back to her and continued with his task.
So that was how he wanted to approach this.
Mind made up, she worked through the next few hours until the majority of the players had retreated inside to the locker room. Then, taking a deep breath, she barreled right in.
All of a sudden the same men who oozed confidence and felt free to say and do whatever they pleased on the field were modest and scandalized when she walked in on them without their pants.
It would’ve been laughable had Waverly not been on a mission to defend herself and lay down some rules.
“Eh, somebody get her the hell out of here,” someone shouted, and several booming male voices rang out in agreement.
“Nope.” Waverly planted her fists on her hips. “I am a female and you all are males. Our bodies aren’t exactly the same, but so what? I’m not a massage therapist, so please do not try to be funny and ask me to massage your penises. I’m a trainer. Let me do my job.”
Several of the men had tuned her out and continued dressing—or undressing—in front of their lockers or moving off to the showers, while some cursed and others pretended to be invisible so that she wouldn’t get the crazy idea to single them out.
“Nice speech. Now get the fuck out.”
This came from Omar Beckham. His shadow seemed to fall over her as he stepped closer, his mouth flat, his eyes cold.
Waverly had faced down many a disgruntled athlete and wasn’t going to back down from a man who’d been busted for steroids, arrested on cocaine charges, and was rumored to have a history of domestic violence. In him her family saw championship potential. All they wanted were results.
Well, all Waverly demanded was respect.
“Who said I was done?” she replied coolly, sliding her gaze about the room and seeing only bystanders who showed no interest in getting involved. Not even the men from the coaching staff, who for the most part wore poker faces. One—was he the wide-receivers coach?—was smirking.
“I did.” Another step, then Omar swung back—
Waverly’s hand shot up, planted firmly on his chest with a solid thwump. Her heart surged against her ribs, but she didn’t shake. “Touch me and you won’t like what happens next.”
Long moments later, Omar backed away from her and had the nerve to howl with laughter. “Scared little innocent bunny. Made you flinch,” he said, then tossed his towel at one of his teammates and left the locker room.
She waited, knowing he wouldn’t leave the premises until after a full weight-training session. Checking his individual training schedule for the day, she made a mental note of when to be in the weight room. Time evaporated as she updated injury reports, viewed last season’s films to compare the rehabilitated players’ performances to what she’d witnessed today and sat in on the coaches’ late-afternoon meeting in preparation for a full-squad training day tomorrow.
Waverly had a few unscheduled minutes and took the opportunity to check her phone. A voice mail message from Joan marked Urgent.
“My sorority sister Rebecca’s son, Sam Pratt, is in the city tonight. He’s a journalist in L.A. You met him at that wine tasting in Napa last autumn, remember? I told him you’d meet him for a late dinner.…”
Her mother’s message continued with the location where Sam Pratt—the name still didn’t sound familiar no matter how many times Joan had dropped it in her message—would be, and she was especially “helpful” in having taken the liberty of choosing the outfit Waverly should wear.
Guess you’re okay with pimping me out, but don’t want me to dress myself like a Wednesday-nights-half-off whore, right, Mom?
Working the tension from her jaw, Waverly put away her phone without returning Joan’s call. Urgent, her ass. Pairing up her unmarried thirty-two-year-old daughter with a man was a downright emergency to her mother.
“You look pissed. Is it because of Beckham or your phone, which has a talent for getting in the way of things?” Jeremiah had soundlessly entered the room and leaned against his locker, watching her.
“The best way to forget the Rio is to stop mentioning it,” Waverly said. “Especially here. We can’t bring what happened in Vegas to Mount Charleston.”
“Right.” He turned, opened the locker and swept off his shirt, rewarding her with a full view of his muscled, sweat-dampened back.
She was entitled to look, she told herself, so long as she didn’t touch. And even that didn’t seem fair, though she’d take what she could get. It was risky, but how could she not want to know, scene by scene, what would’ve happened with Jeremiah had her mother’s phone call not interrupted them in his suite.
Jeremiah turned to face her, and suddenly she was unable to move. Holding her stare, he gripped a fresh T-shirt in front of him and took his sweet time putting it on, maximizing the effect that tickled and tortured her aching libido.
She’d never been more turned on to see a man strip.
“Waverly,” he whispered, his lips curving into a slow smile.
She blinked. “Uh…what?”
“Next time we do this, I hope we can switch places.”
Any decent comeback failing her, she hurried straight to the weight room to see Omar exchanging bro hugs with the assistant coach who’d monitored his workout. When the coach left, Waverly sidled up to the player. “So, Omar, how much better did you feel after intimidating me in the locker room?”
“Can’t take it, then leave.” Tough words, but there was no steam behind them as there had been earlier. First day at camp could wear down any man, and she thought it served athletes well to remember camp as a humbling experience.
He seemed especially drained, and she knew exactly why. There was a learning curve—physical, mental, emotional—when coming off steroids.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Damn, does it matter?”
“Yes.” If he was desperate enough, he’d find a fresh hit of steroids. Withdrawal was one thing, but returning to a sport with a body that felt deflated compared to the way it had been under the effects of unnatural enhancements was something else entirely.
What kind of trainer would let him destroy his career and health that way?
Ask questions, get answers, push, watch over him. She would do it all.
“Miss, I’m going to get my hair braided.” He reached up with flexing muscles and grabbed the big puff of tightly curled hair that was straining against a rubber band. He was known in the league for sporting long braids with a streak of color that was a shout-out to whatever team he was on. Now that he was the Villains’ new kicker, she assumed he’d be getting some red or silver in his hair.
He didn’t call her Waverly, as she’d asked everyone to do, but “miss” was a start and was actually…respectful.
Omar sighed. “Look, you don’t believe me? C’mon, then.”
Waverly narrowed her eyes but followed him as he continued out of the weight room toward the lobby. “Come with you?”
At her hesitation he scowled. “Yeah, thought so. A spoiled little white girl afraid to ride with a big black guy.”
“You’re so fucking wrong, it’s not even funny, Omar.”
“But you backed off, so…”
A dare.
“Do not leave without me!” Waverly called, already racing back toward the locker rooms. He’d challenged her and she was more than ready to show him she wasn’t to be trifled with. She grabbed her duffel and ran back half expecting to find the polished lobby empty, with only a vacant reception desk and the supersized photo collage of past Villains in action.
But Omar remained where she’d left him, and with a conceding headshake he said, “Jesus. All right, let’s go. Don’t touch my radio.”