“It’s a long story, but yes, I was hired to do both jobs,” she answered, settling for vague yet polite.
For a second, then two, neither twin spoke.
Were they in the clear? She caught Raz’s eye, knowing he was wondering the same thing.
“Another quick question,” Callista mused.
“Yes?” Libby answered.
“Are you doing each other?” Callista continued with a cheeky lilt to the question. “Because if you’re not, maybe you should. Calliope and I could feel the heat between you two coming right off the computer screen. What a bloody scorcher!”
“Callista!” Raz exclaimed. “I’m ending this call. Be good, girls. I love you both.”
“Before you go, Raz-a-ma-taz, Granny Fin is—” Calliope began, but Raz wasn’t having it.
“Goodbye,” he growled like an exhausted bear, then pushed the button to end the call.
“Raz-a-ma-taz?” Libby repeated.
“It’s what they liked to call me when they were little. I’m eleven years older than they are. I helped raise them with my granny. I can tell you this. It was easier when they were toddlers and could barely talk.”
He didn’t mention his parents. What had happened to them? But she wasn’t about to ask—not now. Then again, she’d rather eat broken glass than discuss her father.
She pushed the thought aside. “Your sisters seem great, Raz. The teasing means they love you.”
He nodded. “They’re studying to be schoolteachers and spending the summer in South Korea helping kids learn English,” he said, and in the glow of the dash, she caught the hint of a grin—and not the cocky, shit-eating grin he was so good at deploying. No, this expression radiated pride.
She understood the reaction.
A grin matching Raz’s pulled at the corners of her lips. “My brothers are abroad for school, too. They want to be—”
“Doctors,” Raz supplied. “Remember, Briggs knows—”
“Everything about me,” she finished as a chill ran through her.
Did he know about her father? Surely, a background check would have revealed more than his name and employment status.
“Libby, plum, I’m…” Raz began, then leaned toward the windshield and slowed down. “Bollocks,” he whispered.
“You’re, bollocks?” she asked, confusion marring her features before she caught sight of several vans parked outside a gated drive.
“Bloody press,” he mumbled as they pulled up to the gate. He looked her over. “Just smile and act…spiritual.” The proud big brother had disappeared as the vapid athlete took over.
Did he really think yoga and spirituality were an act?
Before she could protest, he rolled down the driver’s side window as beams of light lit him in a harsh blast of yellow.
“Lion, is it true? Does your training involve a guru?”
“Are you afraid you can’t beat the Snake without going to extremes?”
The questions came at Raz in sharp pops of sound. She ignored the jittery men calling out and focused on the boxer in the seat next to her. A muscle twitched on his cheek before he donned a cocksure grin.
Was this his mask, or was this the real Raz? Who was he at his core?
“You know better than to think that the British Beast is afraid of anything,” he boasted. “I crush whoever’s across from me in the ring. You saw me tonight, lads. Your girlfriends wish you were half as fit and jacked as I am.”
A few of the men chuckled, but Libby recoiled.
What a smug asshat!
“Are you planning on showing up for the fight? It’s a fair question, knowing your history,” called another reporter.
Raz clenched his jaw as angry energy tinged with bitter remorse built around him in invisible plumes of fury. Her chi may be off, but she couldn’t mistake his vibe. For the last seventy-five days, she’d lived it.
“Oh, I’ll be there,” Raz growled. “This is the fight of the century, mates. And you’re looking at the winner.”
Was she utterly disgusted with this egotistical version of the man?
That would be a Buddha-licious yes.
This creep wrecked her inner balance.
But she had questions.
What had happened to him? Why had he skipped out on his last fight? He didn’t seem like the type to back down from anything. And then she remembered the Derricks. This must be the fight they’d been talking about.
“Hey, look, it’s Libby Lamb! She’s with him,” a reporter yelled, cutting into her thoughts. She pulled her wrap around her body as the media migrated to her side of the car like a swarm of hornets.
Raz rolled up his window. “Don’t worry. They can’t see you. The windows are tinted.” He pressed a button on the dash. The creak of the gate opening sent the reporters dashing away from the car like a bunch of cockroaches. With a smug expression pasted to his face, he maneuvered the Hummer through the sea of flashing lights.
“Get used to it. It’s part of the show,” he muttered.
Libby seethed as they headed up a hill toward an enormous hulking mansion. It made sense that he’d live in a monstrosity of a home in Denver’s priciest neighborhood. He drove a monstrosity of a car and behaved like a monstrosity of a jerk. “Just when I was starting to think you were a real human being, you revert into that chi-crashing, O obliterator,” she hissed under her breath.
“What does that mean?” he shot back, irritation infused into the question.
“Why do you do that, Raz?” she asked, shaking her head in disgust.
“Do what?” he barked as he slammed the car into park in the center of the circle drive, then turned in his seat and gave her that look.
Inside his stupidly tricked-out, giant testosterone mobile with his giant mansion looming, and that smug smirk slapped to his face, he’d done it again. He’d given her that look. The same look he’d given her seventy-five days ago. His gray gaze cut through her as if she didn’t exist.
On the brink of a karma cataclysm, she unbuckled her seat belt, grabbed the drawstrings on his hoodie, yanked his stupidly sexy body her way, then sized him up as the vibrator chucking part of her took over. “Why do you act like an arrogant, self-absorbed jerk?”
He unbuckled his seat belt and leaned in. The tip of his nose brushed past hers. Time slowed to a crawl as the air sparked with an impassioned intensity. “It’s my job. I’m a fighter. It’s what the boxing world wants,” he countered in an infuriatingly sexy rumble.
He might think this beastly lion business scared everyone into submission. But it didn’t work on her. Her pulse raced. Her chest heaved. The peace and love version of herself made way for a woman scorned. And this woman didn’t back down. “I don’t care what the media wants. What do you want?”
The air crackled between them on the verge of igniting as breathless anticipation sent a furious charge through her body.
“What do I want to do right this very minute?” he asked. The heat of his breath tickled her lips. He gripped her shoulders. The raw strength of his hands holding her in place sent a ripple of warmth between her thighs. Hot, wet, and ready to spring across the console and mount this man like he was a wild stallion; she was on the brink of losing total control. And look who’d decided to say hello. Nice to see you again, sacral chakra. And it wasn’t only the seat of her sexuality taking notice. The seven energy centers in her body lit up like a Christmas tree.