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Miguel was watching her brother too.
Then she looked at Landon, standing relatively still on the sidelines, his eyes locked on her. When she threw him a wink and raised one eyebrow in challenge, he lifted his hands to do the wildcat scratch in time with the song.
Oh yeah. He remembered it.
Of course, unlike Miguel, who was relishing the cheers and attention, Landon was content to just watch her.
“Those are my babies!” Sunnie heard Bubbles yell from the bleachers. A quick peek in that direction proved her entire family was on their feet, bouncing in time to the music, laughing and cheering them on. Even Pop Pop was doing a little shuffle, reaching over to grab Darcy’s hand and give her a spin in place.
They got a standing ovation once the song ended.
Landon started to walk toward her, but before he got there, she felt a hand slide over her eyes, a deep male voice murmuring, “You look hot in that skirt.”
Sunnie pulled the hand away and turned, surprised to see Naked Ned standing there. She and Ned had dated a few years earlier, the relationship lasting almost five months, which put him at the top of the list in terms of longest boyfriend.
“Ned. What are you doing here?”
“My cousin is playing for the firefighters. I got here halfway through first half. Thought that was you sitting across the court.”
Her family and Landon had nicknamed him Naked Ned one night after they’d all gone club-hopping together. Ned had come back to the apartment with her, the two of them turning in early. At some point, Ned—sans clothes—had decided to venture to the kitchen for a snack. Finn, Landon, Colm and Padraig had still been awake. Apparently, Ned hadn’t felt any compunction in having a conversation with the four of them, his balls swinging in the breeze. The chat had ended when Sunnie had come out, spotted him, and asked why the hell he was naked.
The nickname stuck, but Ned was gone before dawn the next morning.
“Yeah, I’m here cheering for my dad’s team.”
The buzzer sounded to announce the end of halftime. Sunnie looked over her shoulder to find Landon staring at her. Miguel slapped him on the shoulder to grab his attention, and Landon took his spot on the court as she and Ned walked to the sidelines.
“It’s good to see you,” Ned said, his gaze sliding up and down. It took everything Sunnie had not to roll her eyes at his ogling.
Guys and cheerleaders. So typical.
“You too.” She endured a few minutes of small talk as Ned chatted about his job, hinting strongly that he was newly single again.
“Sunnie!”
She turned at the sound of her dad calling her name. She spotted him standing on the sidelines, hands on his hips, scowling. Then he jerked his head toward the court where Landon was playing…badly. One eye on the basket, the other on her. A quick glance at the scoreboard told her the cops were now down by six.
“Duty calls,” she said to Ned, grateful for the chance to get away from him.
“Maybe we can—”
“We can’t,” she said, heading him off at the pass. “I’m dating Landon.”
She saw the look of surprise on his face and tamped down her annoyance that Ned seemed to consider that relationship so unlikely.
Sunnie sat next to Yvonne, who said, “If looks could kill, Ned would be a chalk outline on the floor right now.”
“Very funny,” Sunnie murmured, secretly pleased to think Landon was jealous.
She shoved that pleasure away when she realized that was actually a bad thing.
Jesus.
She was twenty kinds of fucked-up right now.
With her safely back on the cops’ side of the gym, Ned on the other, Landon turned on the heat, nailing back-to-back three pointers in the last quarter to propel his team to victory.
Dad had appointed Landon team captain, though neither of them was sure if that was a nod to Hot Cop, or as punishment for all the shit that viral video caused. As a result, a reporter from the newspaper, there to write about the game, pulled him aside as the rest of the team headed to the locker room.
