Settling the Score (The Summer Games #1)(5)

“Oh, someone’s neerrrvvouuuusss,” Kinsley said with a knowing smirk.

“It’s her first Olympic party, of course her bowels are moving Kins!” Becca laughed.

I closed my eyes, took two deep breaths, and then slapped on a fake smile. “Honestly, I’m so glad you guys came with me. I’m just going to head over to the restroom and when I get back, we can party together the rest of the night.”

My fake speech threw them off, so much so that they let me go to the restroom all by myself; as a twenty-one-year-old, I never thought that would be an issue. Fortunately, the second I was out of their sight, I finally saw the party for what it really was: a playground.

The Brazilian guys had a condo that was at least twice the size of ours. The living room was packed from wall to wall with a multinational bevy of Aphrodites and Adonises. Kinsley and Becca were holed up in the foyer, and as I wove through the party trying to find a restroom I didn’t actually need, I realized it wouldn’t be hard to steer clear of them for the rest of the night.

Everyone was shouting over the music, and I couldn’t distinguish one accent from another. I caught passing words in English, but by the time I turned, I couldn’t tell who’d said what. I made it past a rowdy group of guys who were blocking my path to the drinks table, but I weaseled my way through, mostly unnoticed thanks to their gargantuan stature.

“Oy! Where you going?” one of them asked with a heavy accent as I pulled a beer from the table and tried to slink back into the madness.

“Oh.” I laughed. “Just grabbing a drink.”

I wiggled the can back and forth and they all broke out into smiles. Clearly, they approved of alcohol. Between their stature and thick beards, they looked like a group of Vikings who’d accidentally time traveled to 2016. One of them had on a rugby shirt that looked big enough to cover my whole body, which made perfect sense. They were definitely part of a rugby team.

“All right, well you guys have fun,” I said, trying to shimmy past them.

The one who was closest to me—a giant with a red beard that stretched down past his chin—clapped me on the shoulder. My knees buckled under the weight. “Stay! Drink!” he bellowed.

I thought it over for a second. Drinking with a bunch of rowdy rugby players hadn’t really been in my vision for the night, but if I stuck with the Vikings, Kinsley and Becca would never be able to find me. I scanned across them again, and wide cheeky smiles flashed back at me. Crooked or missing teeth were par for the course, but they seemed fairly harmless—so long as none of them thunder-clapped me on the shoulder again. It literally felt like getting hit by car.

Ten minutes later—the details were fuzzy—Gareth (bearded dude) had hoisted me up onto his shoulders and was parading me around the party like a pi?ata. His teammates formed a scrum around him, and they all taught me a drinking song, one that sounded like a sea shanty borrowed from pirates in the Victorian era.

“What will we do with a drunken sailor? What will we do with a drunken sailor? What will we do with a drunken sailor early in the morning?”

I didn’t actually know the words, but I was singing along with them at the top of my lungs just the same.

“What shall we do with an all-i-gat-or? Something-something drunk James Taylor…EARLY IN THE MORNING!” I bellowed, tilting back and forth on Gareth’s shoulders. I’d chugged two beers and the alcohol was sloshing around my stomach in the worst way possible.

“Keepitup, lassie,” Gareth said, tilting his head back to look up at me.

“Oh my god! You just called me lassie!”

I threw my head back to laugh, which in hindsight wasn’t the most genius move. Shifting my weight back threw off Gareth’s equilibrium. Picture a tipsy raccoon on the shoulders of a bear. Sure, he weighed five times what I did, but he couldn’t counterbalance my weight and before I knew it, I was sailing for the ground in slow motion. There was a distinct moment when I thought, This is where a sexy man would catch me if I were a Disney princess. That thought concluded right as I collided with the ground with a heavy “oomph” and the air whooshed out of my lungs.

The music faded and the laughter died down as people formed a wide circle around me. Did they think I was dead or something? Wait, am I dead?

I blinked, and blinked again, trying to make out some definitive sign that I was still alive. The lights overhead swung back and forth, but that could have been the angels calling me to heaven—or y’know, hell, since that’s honestly where I was headed for lying to Kinsley and Becca about needing to poop.

A face leaned over me, blocking the heavenly (or hellish) light. I caught caramel eyes, dark hair, a defined jaw, and a pair of dreamy lips.

Was it God? Or…

“Are you the devil?” I asked the floating head. “Because I swear I was going to clean up my act really soon.”

The face laughed and I focused on the lips that had been moving and now stretched across a seriously cute face. If Satan was this handsome, I’d probably be able to handle the eternal damnation business.

“All right, I’m going to lift you up. Just give a shout if something hurts,” said the devil with a very cute British accent.

Hands wrapped around my shoulders and lifted me up to a sitting position. I could breathe again, and I didn’t feel any pain. I patted my elbows and my head. I surmised that I’d managed to fall very gracefully, like the princess I’d imagined earlier.