3
Hmmm, okay. Where had the sexy sonofabitch got to?
Stopping beside the rooftop pool, its underwater light casting everything around it in a crystal-blue sheen, she chewed on her bottom lip.
She’d weaved her way through the party twice and hadn’t caught a glimpse of him. She had, however, dodged a slurred invitation from an inebriated Captain America—with an extremely un-Captain America paunch—to fill her mouth with his ‘Scooby snack’, which was both lame and eww. She’d spotted Elisa and Zeta checking out a sexy vampire standing near them, and she’d spotted the sex-kitten scientist who’d smacked Owen.
Bria actually stalked her through the party for a few minutes, on the troubling chance of finding Owen that way, but whoever the scientist was, she hadn’t gone anywhere near Owen again, and Owen hadn’t gone anywhere near her. At least, not while Bria followed her.
Now, nursing a sedate glass of ice water, Bria scanned the mass of people mingling around the pool’s edge.
No sign of Owen here, either.
Fuck, what if he’d gone home?
To Australia? Or to where his sister—
“Oh, you fucking idiot,” she groaned, dropping her face into her fuzzy-brown gloved hand. His sister. What if the woman who’d approached him was his sister? He’d said his sister lived in the building.
Of course, that made more sense.
But you don’t know how long he’s been here in the US. He could’ve been breaking hearts from one coast to the other, for all you know.
She grit her teeth, getting seriously pissed off with her internal monologue’s Negative-Nelly attitude. When had she become a pessimist?
Since she’d almost died in a failed landing. Or since she’d caught Simon fucking the woman who was meant to help her get back into physical?
“Fuck.” Maybe everything that had happened to her in the last six months had screwed her up more than she’d thought.
So what did she do about it? Therapy? Or would wild monkey sex with Owen fix it? Or at least start the ball roll—
“Hey, Bria,” a familiar male voice uttered behind her.
She swung her head around a heartbeat before Simon pressed his palms to her back and shoved.
The world tilted. Blurred.
And she hit the water.
She went under, the voluminous Scooby-Doo onesie sucking up the pool with greedy haste, weighing her down.
Shock fought with rage. Rage won.
Fucking jerk.
She planted her feet on the pool’s bottom, let her knees bend a little, and launched herself upward with a powerful downward swipe of her arms. Her hip protested, and a tight, drilling pain stabbed into her pubis bone, but she ignored it.
Coughing, spluttering, she breached the surface, water streaming over her face, blurring her vision. “Prick!” she shouted, wiping at her eyes with sodden gloves.
She heard him laugh. And then she heard him shout, shocked and indignant, and suddenly the water next to her displaced, splashing all over her.
She stumbled sideways. What the—
Rubbing at her eyes again, she looked at the lurching, stumbling, swearing cheater beside her, and then up at the side of the pool.
“G’day.” Owen extended his hand towards her, a lopsided grin playing with his lips. “Want some help?”
“Did you do that?” she asked, slapping her drenched palm to his.