Glorious Rivals(15)
Gigi’s sixth sense for broody boys told her that that she’d gotten about all she was going to get out of Slate—for now.
Her gaze drifted of its own volition back down to the knife in his hand—definitely sheathed—and she had to ask: “How many horrible things have you done?”
“Counting this?” Slate slipped his knife from the sheath. “Counting you?” He used the edge of the blade to add a notch to the leather. “Fourteen.”
Chapter 13
LYRA
Lyra’s hand closed around a golden dart. Five darts. Five players. For an elongated moment, all of them stood there, each holding a dart and taking measure of the others.
The game was on.
Lyra looked down to the words carved into the table. EVERY STORY HAS ITS BEGINNNING… The game makers had said that phrase before. It was even engraved on the players’ room keys. That has to mean something.
Across the table, Brady lifted his dart up even with his eyes. To Lyra’s right, Savannah started disassembling hers. Rohan took a sip from his champagne glass, then pointed the tip of his dart at Grayson.
“You have the look of a man who knows something,” Rohan declared.
“I don’t know anything.” Grayson rotated his own dart in his fingertips, studying every golden inch of it. “Yet.”
Lyra kept her eyes on the competition as her fingers began to explore her own dart. Etched lines encircled its shaft, each forming a complete ring. At intervals, other marks slashed across the rings, diagonal lines, scattered on all sides of the shaft.
Brady suddenly closed his fist around his dart and walked out of the room.
“And then there were four.” Rohan made a show of lifting his champagne flute to his lips once more, seemingly unconcerned with his dart—or anyone else’s.
The darts might not be the clue. Lyra processed that. The promised first clue in the Great Room could be the champagne flutes or the dominoes or the words scrawled across the table.
Rohan lowered his flute and turned his attention wholly and noticeably to Savannah. He looked at her like looks could do more than kill—like looks could touch.
“Rohan.” Grayson’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I’d like a word.”
Rohan met Grayson’s gaze and offered up a dauntless, taunt-the-devil smile, and then he set his champagne flute on the table and lifted his right hand to Savannah’s face.
From what Lyra knew of Savannah Grayson, that seemed like a good way to lose a hand, but Savannah allowed it.
Rohan slowly trailed his fingers along Savannah’s jaw and down the lines of her neck. “Ambrosial,” Rohan said. “Sybaritic. Voluptuary. That’s three words for you, Mr. Hawthorne.”
Sensing danger, Lyra felt compelled to return a favor from the night before. She lifted her hand and placed it on the back of Grayson’s neck, silent encouragement for him to refrain from murder.
“I, too, know words,” Grayson told Rohan, his tone contemplative—and chilling. “I’ll allow you to imagine which ones I’m thinking right now.”
“Alas, my imagination is without peer.” Rohan twirled his golden dart through warm brown fingers, then picked his crystal champagne flute back up with the same hand that held the dart and raised it toward Grayson in a silent toast. “And so is your sister.”
The muscles in Grayson’s neck tightened under Lyra’s touch, but his ironclad control held.
Rohan pushed his luck and winked at Grayson, then sauntered out of the room, raking his gaze over the fallen dominoes as he did. Savannah went to follow, and Grayson placed himself directly in his sister’s path.
“Savannah? Do be careful.”
“I could tell you the same,” Savannah replied, “but you’re male, and it’s my understanding that men never have to be careful. Anatomy is fascinating that way, is it not?”
Lyra snorted. In other circumstances, she might have liked Grayson’s sister.
Head held high, Savannah stepped around Grayson and exited the Great Room without ever breaking her stride.
Grayson turned to Lyra. “I assure you, I would have given either of my younger brothers the same warning.”
“Have you always been this overprotective?” Lyra asked.
“I have always been precisely as protective as I need to be.”
Lyra thought about Grayson putting his body between hers and the cliff’s edge—and then she forcibly redirected her thoughts. “The clue might not be the dart.”
Grayson eyed the golden dominoes that littered the Great Room floor, then moved to kneel over one section in particular. “This one’s a Fibonacci spiral. Xander’s work, no doubt.” Grayson studied the spiral for a moment, then held up his dart. “But this has Jameson’s name written all over it.”
Jameson was the brother with whom Grayson had disappeared at the bonfire. “How so?” Lyra asked, as she came to stand over Grayson and the spiraling domino pattern on the floor.
“Jameson is… competitive. Intensely and frequently reckless. Fearless to a fault. Our mother always referred to him as hungry.” There was an undertone to Grayson’s voice that Lyra couldn’t quite pin down. “Jamie’s specialty has always been wanting things with an intensity that puts the sun to shame—every win, every answer, every rush.”