Page 89 of Own the Eights
Danielle huffed an exaggerated sigh. “It’s so hard when everyone wants a piece of you. We have so many balls up in the air. So many people and companies wanting to work with us thanks to our skyrocketing blog numbers, right Daniel?” she added with a slight edge to her voice.
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he replied, pulling up his hoodie and continuing to scan the crowd like a paranoid mannequin.
Georgie raised an eyebrow. “Is he okay?”
A slight blush colored Danielle’s porcelain cheeks. “He’s just scoping out our competition. By the way, where’s your teammate? There’s not any trouble in paradise, is there?” she asked with a little smirk.
This bitch! Hermione raised her wand to knock this Danny into next week, while Jane and Lizzy readied their teacups to hurl the hot liquid at the woman’s smug face.
Daniel leaned in toward his sister. “I want to get this over with. Let’s get to the front of the pack.”
“May the best team win,” Danielle said over her shoulder but with a lot less bite to her words as the Barbie-bot scanned the crowd.
Oh, screw them! And what did they have to be nervous about with theirskyrocketing numbersand numerous entrepreneurial opportunities? Still, Daniel’s level of unease was weird.
Georgie went back to her stretching when another voice called out to her, and she inwardly cringed. Maybe Daniel had the right idea by hiding under a hoodie.
“Hey, Georgie!” Barry said, weaving through the crowd. “Hector and Bobby wanted me to stick close to you during the race to get some footage.”
Georgie held back a groan. As much as she wanted to tell Barry to get lost, he was only doing his job.
She tried to muster a smile. “No problem.”
The man started to reply but stopped when his phone began buzzing and pinging like crazy. He stared at the screen, his eyes going wide. “You’ve gotta see this, Georgie.”
Oh, hell no! If there was a day to stay off the internet, it was today.
She took a step back. “Nope, I don’t want to see anything.”
“Georgie, it’s amazing. It’s—”
“GO!” a voice bellowed over the massive speakers stacked around the starting line.
Music blared as the race participants scrambled to separate themselves from the pack. Georgie popped in her earbuds and settled into her running pace. Poor Barry wasn’t going to get much of a performance out of her today. No baby farm animals and no wet T-shirt shenanigans. She’d zone out, finish the race, then stop by the shop and gorge on her last tube of vegan cookie dough.
The 10K was six point two miles, and Georgie gave a little sigh of relief when she passed the five-mile marker. So far, so good. She wouldn’t have called her encounter with the Dannies fun, but it was painless, and she hadn’t laid eyes on Jordan once. While she’d started the race in the back of the pack, he’d probably gotten there hours early with the tips of his toes grazing the starting line, ready to take off like a shot.
“Always win. Always finish what you start. Always be the best. I’m Jordan Marks, the perfect ten, and I always crush it,” she murmured under her breath, doing her best Emperor of Asshattery impression.
“Is that what I sound like?”
Even with her earbuds in and Michael Bolton belting away—yes, she added the lyrical genius’s music to her playlist—the delicious, treacherous shiver spreading through her body could only be in response to one person.
Willing herself not to trip or fall ass over elbow, she glanced at Jordan, walking alongside her and holding…
“That better not be my vegan cookie dough!” she exclaimed.
His eyes widened, and he looked like a kid who’d just gotten caught with his hand in the vegan cookie jar.
“You went to my shop and took my cookie dough?” she tried to yell, but it was damn hard to do while running.
“I was looking for you, and it’s more complicated than that,” he answered.
She had to look away because she couldn’t take the depth of emotion in his eyes, and she sure as hell couldn’t allow herself to feel an ounce of compassion. Not after how he’d treated her.
She doubled her resolve. “What do you mean, it’s not that complicated? Is that my cookie dough?”
“Yes.”
