“If you ate more rice cakes, maybe you wouldn’t have to worry about your weigh-in at the beginning of every season,” she snarks.
“My weigh-in issues are because I’m such a fucking stud. All muscle and almost too tall for this damn sport,” I remind her. I love weight-lifting, which isn’t a great hobby for this sport, and I’m six feet tall, which means a couple more inches and I wouldn’t be able to fit in the car. Clara herself is almost five ten, just like Tommy was.
I throw on some street clothes and mull over what to do tonight. Tomorrow is another practice day, so I can have a little fun tonight. Just a little. Clara drives us back to the hotel. By the time she hands the keys to the valet, she’s totally read my energy. “So, club or restaurant?”
“Club,” I say.
“I’ll change and then meet you in the hotel bar in fifteen,” Clara says.
Two hours later, I’m buzzing on some beers and a couple shots of tequila as I sit in a smooth leather booth and look through the glass partition that separates the VIP area from the dance floor. Clara is down there shaking her money-maker, and my urge to scowl has never been stronger, but I fight it with another shot of tequila. I’ve scowled at my sister’s dance moves before, and people have caught it on their camera phones and labeled me a jealous boyfriend. And then I want to hurl, so I’m more careful about my facial expressions now. I scowl because she’s my sister, and watching her bump and grind is gross.
“Worried?” a voice says, and my head swivels, and I find Frankie standing in front of me. She looks like a walking wet dream in a clingy, shimmery deep purple dress. Her hair is loose and wavy, and her lips are painted a dark, sexy red.
“About the race? No,” I reply. “Join me.”
“I’m not joining you,” she responds without even thinking about it. “You’re busy making sure no one macks on your girl, and I wouldn’t want to distract you.”
“That’s not what I’m doing at all,” I reply and clarify. “I’m making sure whoever hits on her isn’t a fucking predator because she’s my friend, and I care about my friends.”
“Uh-huh. Sure.” She says it like she doesn’t believe me, but something softens in her expression.
I pat the plush leather seat beside me. “Join me.”
“No.”
She turns to leave. “Okay then, join me at the hotel pool later.”
“Hell, no.” She retreats back to the table she’s sitting at with Lucia and Jennie, who has her face buried in her phone.
She was firm in that hell no response, but I decide to go to the pool anyway when we get back to the hotel. The Four Seasons has basically the entire F1 staying in their two towers, east and west, that are joined in the middle at the fourth floor by the amenities. An indoor pool, a gym, a spa, and a few conference rooms.
Clara, despite the fact that her room is in the east tower and she usually takes her own elevator, walks to the west tower and waits for the elevator with me. When it arrives, she steps inside when I do, and I raise both my eyebrows. “This have anything to do with your disappearance?”
She had disappeared for about an hour off the dance floor when I went to the bar to order another beer and got locked into a conversation with a guy from our pit crew. Clara stares straight ahead, arms crossed over her chest. “Mind your business, bro.”
I open my mouth but force it to close before I can say anything. She’s right. Her sex life is not my business, and although I worry about her, I also trust her to know what she’s doing. Also, Clara has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I know because after my dad died, I made sure the estate kept paying for her needs, educational and otherwise. She doesn’t get off the elevator at the fourth floor, which would be the last way she could make it back to her tower and her room. I get off on my floor, which is the second from the top, but she hasn’t hit a button or gotten off. I step out and block the door from closing. “Have a safe, fun night.”
“Thanks. You have a fun night too, but don’t do anything stupid,” Clara adds as I move my hand from the doors and they start to close. “Like your boss.”
“My boss is not stupid!” I protest but the doors are closed.
Fucking hell. She knows me too well. And she isn’t wrong. Although Frankie is far from stupid, meeting her at the pool is a very dumb idea. Nothing good can come of it. Well, I mean the sex that will come from it will be good. But that’s about it. The rest… it could be disastrous. But damn if I don’t want it anyway.
I quickly change out of my club clothes, throw a robe over my bare body, shove my feet into some slippers, and head to the elevators again. I had planned ahead, and my personal concierge Pamela had granted my key card after-hours access to the amenities when I checked in. It’s no rooftop ocean view pool, but it’s decent. The walls are frosted glass to keep peeping eyes from nearby apartments and offices from glancing in. At night, the window frames glow a pale pink thanks to led lighting. The pool is a simple, saltwater thing. Rectangular with a shimmery pearl tile. Tucked into the corner of the area, almost unnoticeable, is a cave-like room. It has walls made of mineral rock, heated marble floors, and double-wide plush loungers spaced evenly against the back wall that also has a waterfall. Pamela must have turned it on, anticipating I would be using it.
At least, that’s my first narcissistic thought, but then I see two tiny, high-arched feet on the tip of the farthest lounger. The delicate toes covered in perfect glittering seafoam green polish. I walk toward those delicate feet, trying not to smile in victory. Frankie will hate the smugness of that. My dick, on the other hand, is already celebrating, straining excitedly against the soft terry cloth of my robe. My eyes slide up her smooth, sculpted, bare calves and my mouth actually waters when my gaze reaches the apex of her thighs, which is covered in a simple, tiny, pure white bikini bottom.
Frankie Castera came. And now she’s going to come.
