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“I’m Oliver.”
I looked toward the new guy. He had a friendly smile with warm, kind eyes. “You can call me Charley.” I smiled back at him and, since I had to keep up with the hugs now, offered him a quick one-arm one.
I moved on next to the other two guys—Mason and the intimidating-looking man in all black who I believed was in league with Jack, Carter something-or-other.
“Charley, huh?” my teammate, Mya, asked, her tone a bit . . . questioning.
“Mmhm. Mom wanted to call her Lottie. Dad preferred her full name,” Lucy spoke up. “My rebellious sister went with her own choice, Charley.”
I glared at her. TMI, Lucy.
“My mom’s name is—” Gwen, I think that was her name, let go of whatever she’d planned to say and shook her head. “I like Charley,” she tossed out as if that completed her dangling sentence.
I shot her a hesitant nod, unsure what to make of any of my new teammates.
“Now that we have the introductions done,” Stephen said with another loud clap, stealing my focus back his way, “it’s time for the first kiss.”
“Kiss?” I blurted, unable to stop myself, and I shifted to the side, slamming into a hard wall of . . . well, Jack. My focus fell down the length of his body. You that hard everywhere else?
When our eyes met, there was a twitch to his lips as if he’d read my thoughts. Like he was holding back a, Why yes, do you want to find out just how hard? response.
“So, um, kiss?” I must’ve missed the kissing part when I’d made my dramatic exit from the group earlier.
“The best way to get to know if you have chemistry with a person right off the bat is to kiss. Let’s see how many men on your team are frogs. And how many are princes.” Stephen grinned. It was less creepy and more like he was trying to sell me on something I sure as hell didn’t want to buy.
“Kiss them? All four of them?” I focused back on Jack. He slid his hands into his khaki linen pockets, but his eyes weren’t on me this time. They were on the sky, as if this idea was as troubling to him as it was to me.
And this wouldn’t be our first anything. In fact, I was pretty sure our kiss in Cape Town had broken records. It’d been a make-out session. One where this so-called bad guy had never even slid his hand beneath my shirt or my skirt. He’d shown me something that sadly I wasn’t used to from most guys: respect. And people wondered why I was still single.
“Of course.” Stephen’s response barely registered, because now all I could think was that I may have had Jack’s motives for being in Brazil all wrong.
I didn’t think Lucy was on the right track, though, either.
But I’d for damn sure find out who the hell he really was and what in God’s name he was doing there.
And so help him, if he was a threat to my sister in any way . . . well, screw whatever weird feelings and desires he inspired within me, I’d lay him out to keep her safe.
Because like I’d done at twenty, I’d do whatever the hell I had to, to protect Lucy.
Even if that meant killing someone.
Again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JACK
How is this possible? It made no fucking sense.
Charley had looked as stunned as I’d felt when I’d walked out there. Probably even more shocked, which was saying a lot.
I hadn’t taken her for the type to join a dating game competition for money. But what were the odds she’d not only be there, but she was one of the women Gwen had prearranged to be in my group?
And now I had a new mission: protect the woman of my dreams. The same woman who’d spent the last ten minutes looking at me like she wanted to kill me.
She thinks I’m a liar, I had to remind myself. I gave her a different name—my real name, ironically—in Cape Town, so of course she’d be wondering why I was using a different one. But hell, that still didn’t explain her bailing on me last month.
Carter turned his back to the host and looked toward the sky as he whispered, “There something you want to tell us?”
