Bedroom Games (8 page)

“You’re still not answering the question,”
Brodie said, and his hands went to my waist, pulling me against
him.

I wanted to shove him away in irritation, but
I forced myself to put my arms around his neck. “You’re a
suspicious dick.”

“I’m suspicious because I know I’m right.
Just answer yes or no, Kandis, so I know how to play my game.” And
to my surprise, he leaned in and brushed his mouth ever so lightly
against my own. Then, he whispered, “Because if you screw me over,
I’m going to ruin your game, too.”

That light, meaningless kiss held me frozen.
I’d been expecting the flirty embrace to mask our words, but Brodie
took things one step further, always. It was like he had no
boundaries. Nothing he did meant anything to him.

So why did it send a weird little thrill
through my body?

Because he’s good
looking
, I chided myself. No more, no
less.

“I warned him,” I admitted, my breath
fluttering against Brodie’s skin. Our mouths were still super close
together, and it sent electric little jolts through my body.
“Jendan’s playing with me, though. He’s safe. All I told him was
that he needed to not come in last. That was all.”

“Okay. Thanks for telling me,” Brodie
said.

And then he slapped my ass and walked
away.

Outrage blasted through me, and I held
stock-still for a long moment. He’d done that on purpose, just
because he knew I couldn’t get mad. If I did, the others would
think we were doing something other than canoodling under the tree,
and they’d get suspicious. My mouth twisted into a reluctant smile
of admiration.

Brodie wanted to play, did he? Game on.

~~ * ~~

“Tonight,” Liam said as he
stood in front of the eleven people seated on the couches in the
living room. He held a cue card in front of him, provided by
the
House Guests
staff, and read from it. “The nomination ceremony will be
different. For the rest of the season, you will be nominated on the
same night you will be evicted. However, in honor of this first
week in the house, tonight a team will be nominated and then voted
off a few days from now.” Liam tossed aside the card, and glanced
at his partner. “We ready to do this?”

She blew him a kiss. They were so adorable I
wanted to puke. If they got to the end? No one else stood a
chance.

“Right.” Liam rubbed his hair and gave us
that quiet smile that told me he was acutely uncomfortable being in
the spotlight. “I have to pick a team to nominate for eviction.
Katy and I thought long and hard about this.” He glanced down at
his blonde partner, who gave him a small little smile as if sharing
a secret. He winked at her, and then he turned back to us. “In the
end, we decided to just go with what we thought was fair for
everyone, and picked the team that came in last in the reward
challenge.”

At my side on the couch,
Jendan’s leg nudged mine, as if to say
Good
call
.

On my other side, Brodie nudged me, too. I
was starting to feel like I was a punching bag caught between the
two men.

Liam clasped his hands and exhaled. “So,
tonight, I’m placing the team of Mickey and Lenore up on the block.
I hope you guys realize it’s nothing personal, just that someone
had to go up.”

“No problem,” Mickey said, a pleasant look on
his broad face. He moved to the two chairs designated at the front
of the room for the nominated players.

Lenore looked less pleased. She cast an angry
look at Liam. “That just cost you the game, young man.”

Liam’s eyebrows went up in surprise, but it
was Katy who lost her temper. She stood up, all five foot nothing
of her, and put her hands on her hips, facing down the elder woman.
“You just got our votes, then. I’m glad we put you up. I hope
you’re the first one to go home. I—”

“Katy,” Liam murmured, putting an arm around
the blonde’s shoulders and steering her away from Lenore. “Let it
go, baby.”

“That was just rude,” Katy muttered, but she
slid in close to Liam again, sending another scowl Lenore’s
way.

Liam patted Katy’s shoulder
and pulled out a blue
House Guests
card, reading from it. “The final vote will be two
nights from now, when the live TV show is filmed again. Until then,
the two nominated contestants will be allowed to campaign to try
and sway votes to their side.”

“Yeah, good luck, Lenore,” Katy cut in.

Liam shushed his girlfriend again, but there
was a smile on his face. The rest of us quietly laughed at small
Katy’s fierce rage on her tough-looking boyfriend’s behalf. “Once
the vote is finished and the contestant has left the house, you
will prepare for the next Power competition and another game twist.
Be ready.” He flipped over the card and then shrugged. “That’s all
it says.”

“Another twist, huh?” Brodie rubbed his chin
thoughtfully. “Wonder what kind.”

“Nothing good, I’m sure,” Casper pointed out.
Several others nodded.

“Well, enough about that,” Mickey said,
getting to his feet. He clapped his hands and gave us all a beaming
smile. “Who wants a massage, courtesy of their favorite masseuse
who needs a vote?”

~~ * ~~

The night before our first live show, I was
wide awake long after midnight.

Not because I’d heard something in the creepy
old house. I hadn’t since that first night. Not because I was
nervous about the live show. I wasn’t. Instead, I listened closely
to Brodie’s breathing on the couch across from mine. When I was
sure his breathing was even and he’d gone to sleep, I peeled back
my blankets and slipped off the couch, tiptoeing out to the
backyard.

I returned to the living room a few minutes
later to find Brodie laying on my couch, giving me an expectant
look as I tiptoed back in.

Busted. Damn it. He’d been faking going off
to sleep.

“Whatcha got there, hotness?” he
whispered.

“None of your business,” I whispered back.
“How’d you know I was up?”

“You’re totally obvious,” he said. “When
you’re agitated, you twitch a lot and can’t sit still. And you were
twitching like mad tonight, so I knew you were up to
something.”

I sighed and flopped down on one end of the
couch, sitting across Brodie’s sprawled legs. If he wasn’t going to
get up, I’d just sit on top of him. “That’s right. You caught me.
I’m up to no good.”

“As long as it’s something I can edge in on,
I don’t care if it’s good or bad.”

There were times when I appreciated having a
partner with questionable morals, I decided. I showed him the
object I’d hidden in my hand—the recorder.

He looked vaguely disgusted. “More ghost
hunting?”

“You wish,” I said. I’d used the recorder for
ghost hunting the first night I’d gotten it, but when eight hours
of recordings had turned up nothing but snoring, I decided to use
it for something slightly more nefarious. “I hid this in one of the
flower pots in the smoking area.”

Several of the people in the house were
smokers—Marla, Lenore, Sunnie, Fido, and Casper. Jendan was super
into fitness, so he was probably the most ridiculously healthy in
the house. I doubted he even drank. I hadn’t seen Katy or Liam head
down to the smoking area, so I guessed they didn’t smoke. Brodie
didn’t, either. Of course, that meant that the smokers often went
out to have a cigarette and chit chat, and that meant that the
non-smokers were rarely in on the conversations. It was something
I’d noticed early on, and I’d considered taking up smoking just to
muscle in on the private conversations…but I couldn’t stand the
taste or the smell.

Having a recorder was the next best thing,
though. Maybe even better.

Brodie sat up as I showed him the recorder, a
gleam of appreciation in his eyes. “You are a genius. I could kiss
you.”

“You already did,” I replied pertly, but I
couldn’t help but smile at his words.

“Yeah, but this time you could act like you
enjoyed it,” he teased.

I glanced over at him from under my lashes,
curious. Had he thought I hadn’t enjoyed the impromptu kiss? It had
taken me by surprise, but…it wasn’t a bad kiss. “I didn’t enjoy it
because your kisses don’t mean anything, Brodie. You pass them out
like candy.”

He chuckled, unhurt by my tart accusation.
“So do I get to listen in on the tape?”

“As long as you promise not to burn me and
tell the others I’ve been recording them.” Even Jendan didn’t know
I was borrowing his recorder for sneaky purposes. I thought it
might seem too shady, so I’d kept the secret to myself.

Plus, I was a little curious about what
Jendan was saying about me, too.

Brodie made a ‘cross my heart’ motion on his
chest. “You’re my partner. You can trust me to save your ass as
long as it’s attached to mine.”

Fair enough. I slid a little closer to him on
the couch and we bent over the recorder, listening. The first few
minutes were nothing but silence, so I started to skip ahead every
few minutes, listening for voices. When I heard someone, I’d rewind
and then we’d listen in on the conversation.

We listened to that darn recorder for hours,
our heads bent together. And we found out a wealth of information,
only some of it surprising.

Mickey was hitting on every woman in the
house and failing miserably. That wasn’t surprising.

Lenore was furious that she’d been put up for
the vote, and she was busy campaigning to get out Katy and Liam.
That also wasn’t surprising, though the viciousness of some of her
words was startling—and kind of lame. I lost track of how many
times she referred to Liam as a “tattooed hooligan.”

Casper and Sunnie and Fido
seemed to be in an alliance together, which worried me. They didn’t
trust Brodie, didn’t trust me by default, and had pulled Marla in.
Marla assured them that she had Jendan’s vote and that he’d align
with them. They wanted Liam and Katy gone ASAP. Not only because
they’d won last time, but Katy and Liam weren’t exactly playing the
best game. They tended to hang out in their room together and just
talk quietly between themselves. Brodie had mentioned to me that
his sister was a bit of an introvert, and it seemed that Liam was
too. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when it came to a
game like
House Guests
? It was pretty much a one-way ticket home.

I mentally counted as we listened to Sunnie
and Casper make plans with Marla. Sunnie, Casper, and Marla. They
said they had Jendan. Fido was with them. That was five together.
Right now, it sounded like they were planning on all voting for
Lenore and then pulling Mickey to their side. He’d follow, because
he was no doubt upset that Katy and Liam had nominated him for
eviction. That would give them six, and if there were eleven left
in the house, we’d be outnumbered.

Damn. Week one and I was already on the
losing side.

The recorder ran out and clicked off, and I
gave Brodie a concerned look. “What do you think?”

He rubbed his spiky blond hair. “I think we’d
better not lose the next Power challenge, or we’re screwed.”

I twirled a foot, fidgeting anxiously. “This
sucks. If they’re going after Katy and Liam, you know we’re
next.”

“I know,” he said grimly. “We have to pull
some of them over to our side.”

“I thought I had Jendan, but the way Marla
was talking, I’m not so sure. I’d say we could work on Lenore, but
she hates Katy and Liam.”

He thought for a moment. “I can probably work
on Sunnie. Can you work on both Jendan and Mickey? Mickey likes
you.”

I knew he liked me. He’d been trying to give
me creepy massages all week. Ugh. “Do I have to?”

“Only if you want to stay,” Brodie said.

Damn. “And we have the twist coming up. That
could be anything.”

“It might break us into individuals again. If
so, you’ll probably be safe.”

I wasn’t so sure. It sounded like everyone
had made deals without me. My feet drummed anxiously, and I tapped
my fingers on my knees, thinking hard. “There has to be something
we can do.”

“We can win the Power Play.” Brodie shrugged
his shoulders. “If not, we have to play it by ear. Just know that
if I get nominated, I’m selling you down a river.”

“Like I expected any less?”

~~ * ~~

I fidgeted nervously on the couch. I had one
leg crossed, and the foot in the air was bouncing like mad while we
waited through a commercial break. Nearby, seated in the two
nomination chairs, Lenore seemed to be meditating, and I was pretty
sure Mickey had just picked his nose on TV.

Brodie reached over and put a hand on my
knee, a silent indication that my fidgeting was noticeable and a
dead giveaway of my nervousness. “Sorry,” I breathed to the group.
“TV makes me nervous.”

Such a lie. I wasn’t worried about being on
TV as much as I was about how the vote—and the subsequent
competition and twist—would go. But I smoothed a hand down the
simple green dress I was wearing, trying to calm myself. Poker
face. I needed a poker face.

The
House Guests
logo disappeared, and
Becky Bradley’s face appeared on the screen, all smiles and big
hair. “House Guests, I have the results. In a vote of eleven to
one, Lenore, you have been evicted. Please grab your bags and exit
the house through the front door.”

We clapped politely, but I felt the pit of my
stomach drop a little. Ten votes for Lenore. I’d voted for her
since I knew the rest of the house would be voting that way. It
seemed everyone had been on the same page. So that meant that
either they’d all been talking, or everyone had found the psychic
as annoying as me. It was hard to tell, and that made me
paranoid.