Ice Games (10 page)

“This
will
be easy,” I told her. I skated to Ty’s side, and then turned my back to him, standing in front of him. “Can you lift me up?”

“How high?”

“Put your hands on my waist and pick me up as high as you can go.”

Big hands grasped me at the hips, and he hefted me into the air as if I weighed nothing. I held my breath as he held me up to shoulder height. “You want higher?”

“That’s good,” I told him, keeping my body as straight as possible. “We could do something like this, or I can do the splits.” I extended my legs outward as an example. “Or if he can hold me on the thighs, I can pull one leg over my head.”

“So you
can
put a leg over your head?” Ty asked. “I thought you were joking when you told me that. Damn, girl. I think I want to see it for myself.”

I blushed, dropping my legs, and patted him on the hand. “Put me down now.”

He did, lightly, and I hopped away on the ice, hoping to hide my flustered sensibilities. “See?” I told Imelda. “We can work a few more lifts in there, and if we increase the difficulty, we should score better.”

“I don’t think so,” she said again, and turned back to her phone.

I wouldn’t be deterred. “We need more flash in this routine,” I told her. “You basically just have us circling around on the ice for a minute and a half with two lifts. No one’s going to be interested in that, especially not if we’re dancing to the Maltese Falcon.”

She ignored me.

“What about the costumes?” Ty asked, skating to my side and skidding to a stop (rather artfully, I noticed).

“Just a pinstriped suit for you and a white dress for her.”

“Sequins?” Ty asked.

“Not many,” Imelda said quickly.

He gave me a pained look.

Ugh. It was like she was ignoring everything we wanted to do. “You do realize we almost went home last night? This,” I shook the printed out routine at her, “is going to ensure that we go home. It’s boring!”

“I’m trying to keep in mind his capabilities and give the audience something appealing,” Imelda said easily, and then she went back to her chair.

I wadded up the paper in disgust. She wouldn’t come onto the ice with us. She had zero enthusiasm for her job. She made decisions without consulting us, and they were bad ones. “You know what? You’re fired.”

Her head popped up at that. “You can’t fire me.”

“Sure I can.” I pointed at the door. “You’re fired. Get out.”

“The network appointed me,” she said with a frown. “You don’t get to decide.”

The cameraman zoomed in on my face. I didn’t care that they were filming. She was doing nothing but dragging us down. “The Maltese Falcon is boring. You didn’t ask us if we wanted to dance to that, you just picked it. You’re ignoring our requests for the routine. You’re putting sequins on the costumes even though we’ve asked you not to—repeatedly. At this point, if we follow your routine, we’re going home. At least if we do our own routine, we’ll stand a chance. So if the network doesn’t kick us out, we might have a shot in hell of staying. Like I said. You’re fired.”

Imelda huffed. “There’re two of you on this team. I’m staying.”

Ty skated to my side. “I agree with my partner. I think you need to go.”

I gave Imelda a blissful smile. “Problem solved.”

She stared at both of us, and then pointed her phone in my direction. “I’m calling the network.”

“Call,” I bluffed, skating away. “Either you walk out, or we do. Let’s see which one they put on the show next week.” And I skated away, just because I could. It wasn’t like she’d follow me onto the ice, anyhow.

By the time I turned around again, she was gone, and Ty was there on the ice, arms crossed, giving me an impressed look.

I skated a circle around him, thinking. “You mad?”

He laughed. “Hell no. I was just thinking you have balls of steel sometimes.”

I gave him a flirty look. “Don’t fuck with me when I’m on the ice. That’s my home territory.”

“No kidding,” he drawled, his look appraising. “I like it. So…what now?”

I thought for a moment, skating in circles around him. “This is different than regular figure skating competitions. We’re pretty much fucked with the judging panel no matter what we do.” Okay, so maybe that wasn’t that different than some skating competitions. “We need the audience on our side. Which means we have to impress them. Dazzle them.”

“Oh god. Dazzle. With sequins?”

I gave him a look. “Give me more credit than that?”

He chuckled. “Fine, fine. So tell me what you’re thinking.”

I continued to skate circles, thinking, my hands clasped behind my back. “We need to shock them somehow. This week’s theme is cinematic. Movie stuff. We just need to find the perfect movie that fits in with who we are….” An idea dawned on me, and I snapped my fingers. Oh my god, it was perfect.

It was perfect
if
Ty went for it.

I skated toward him and put my hands on his shoulders, looking up at him. “Do you trust me?”

“As much as I can trust anyone in this chickenshit outfit,” he said with a grin. “And as long as you don’t dress me as one of the Village People, I’m fine.”

“Nope,” I said enthusiastically, heading to the edge of the ice and stepping off. I went to my workout bag and pulled out my phone, then searched the internet for a clip. When I found it, I went back to Ty and handed my phone to him, looking for approval.

He snorted at what I picked, even as the music began to stream out from my phone, tinny and muffled. “
Jaws
? Cute.”

“That’s right,” I told him. “It
is
cute. People will think we’re poking fun at ourselves. They won’t expect it, and it’ll catch their attention. It’ll make you look like you have a sense of humor about the biting thing, and people will talk about it. That’s exactly what we want. It defuses an ugly situation and shows we can laugh at ourselves while having fun.”

He considered, staring at my phone for so long that I thought he was getting angry. Maybe I’d pushed too far and he’d tell me to fuck off. Maybe Ty didn’t
have
a sense of humor about the whole biting thing. When I’d asked him before, he’d shrugged me off.

But as I watched, a slow smile spread across his face. He looked over at me, and chuckled again. “Balls of steel, all right.”

Relief cut through me sharply, and I laughed. He wasn’t mad at me. Thank goodness. “I figure we can shock them into loving us, or go home anyhow.”

Ty regarded me. “So how do we skate to that music?”

I thought for a minute, and then grinned, my mind full of ideas. “We follow the pattern of the song. We can do slow movements at the start, and build up to the crescendo. When the crescendo hits, we can do a lift. You can put me on your shoulders, and I can raise a leg into the air. Oooh!” I clapped my hands. “I know. We can design a costume for me so that when I raise my leg into the air, it looks like a shark fin rising from the water.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “I’ll admit, that’s kind of cool. So what do I wear?”

“You can dress as the main guy from
Jaws
. In the black shirt and jeans. Glasses, the works. What was his name?” I snapped my fingers, trying to think.

“Brody.”

“That’s it. Something simple and masculine.” I gave him an impish smile. “No sequins.”

“I could kiss you for that right now.”

I blushed. Hard. “No kissing necessary.”

He chuckled. “Spoilsport. So…partner lifts. How do we work those in?”

I considered for a moment, and then held my hands out in our dancing position. “Let’s try a few different things.”

~~ * ~~

We experimented for a few hours and came up with a loose routine. I made notes and decided to work on the choreography in my spare time. Meanwhile, we set one of the production assistants on getting the music rights to
Jaws
and some concepts for costumes.

At least if we went down this time, we’d go down on our own terms.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jaws
, of all things. The girl’s a genius, I have to admit.
— Ty Randall, Pre-Show Interview for Week Two

~~ * ~~

The next week passed surprisingly quickly, and before I knew it, it was competition night again. I was more nervous this time than last time—Ty had our routine down pat, since a lot of it simply consisted of hefting me into the air and gliding. Even our costumes were awesome, right down to Ty’s black mock turtleneck sweater and tight black pants. He even had a big brown gun-belt, which was in the movie clips and was a great touch that Ty himself had thought of. He wore a pair of wire-rim glasses to complete the look.

My outfit was a plain, dark blue to about mid-calf, and then it changed to gray. There were ‘wings’ tied to each leg that I was going to release about halfway through our dance, and hopefully they would surprise everyone.

Ty and I had practiced day and night for this particular routine, and I was so proud of it. We’d even worked with the production and lighting crew to get the look just right.

This time, we’d drawn the last skate. Jon Jon and Julia Mckillip were up first. I tried to pay attention to the other routines like Ty was, but I was a bundle of nerves. I kept crossing my legs and reaching down to touch my talismans over and over again, rubbing the newest—a sequin from last week’s costume.

No one fell tonight. I couldn’t watch the TV in the Crash Room—bad luck—but Ty had no such qualms. He’d lean in close every time a couple went on to ice skate, and he would give me a bit of a play by play.

“Jon Jon and Julia look pretty stiff,” he’d tell me as the strains of ‘Love Story’ echoed in the room.

Then, “Emma’s cute. They stuck to country again,” he told me. “Nine to Five” played, and I could tell from the clapping of the audience that they were definitely into their theme. Good for Emma.

“Annamarie went for hotness, clearly,” Ty told me with a chuckle when the next couple went on. I glanced at the TV, unable to help myself despite the bad juju, and rolled my eyes. The theme was clearly
Titanic
, but Annamarie had taken her own interpretation, her costume showing more skin than was probably legal in that time period, while Serge was dressed as Jack from the movie, complete with suspenders and rolled up white sleeves. I looked away again, quickly, when Annamarie ran her hands down her breasts in a showy motion.

“Damn,” Ty said. “She’s clearly here to win.”

“Or to hook up,” I muttered under my breath.

“Hmm?” Ty asked, leaning in to me.

“Nothing.” I wouldn’t look at the TV again if it killed me. No sense in psyching myself out.

Toby and Victoria were next. The familiar strains of “Hakuna Matata” from
The Lion King
filled the speakers. I heard Ty chuckle. “They look cute. They’ll do well.”

“You’re not helping me,” I told him, and I rubbed the talismans on the bottom of my skate even harder.

“You two are up,” one of the production assistants called.

“Let’s do this,” Ty told me. He put an arm around my waist as we headed to the curtained staging area.

“Thirty seconds,” the assistant whispered to us.

“You ready?” Ty murmured in my ear. It sent shivers through my body. He raised his fist, and I gave him a fist-bump back, and then we did the motions of his lucky handshake.

I smiled at him. “Juju is now in place.”

“We are going to kick ass,” he told me. Then he took my hand, and we skated out onto the center of the ice.

Our beginning ‘pose’ started with the two of us together. I stood in front of Ty, and his arms were wrapped around mine. As soon as the music began, we began to skate, the low notes soft and deceivingly smooth. No one was making a sound as we danced and skated our way around the ice, preparing for the first lift.

Then it began. The familiar, haunting chorus of Jaws with the ominous notes. As soon as it started, Ty raised me into the first lift, and I moved over him, my body flat, one of my legs raising into the air. The lights in the stadium had gone dim, and a spotlight shone on our lift.

The flaps in my pants were now undone, and when I raised my leg into the air, I did so slowly, even as Ty lifted me higher. With the gray of my costume and skate cover, and the surge of our movements, it mimicked the rising of a dorsal fin into the air.

There were ripples of shock and laughter in the audience, and then cheers.

The routine continued on. Ty gracefully let me down onto the ice and we clasped hands, moving to the music in a fluid motion that we’d practiced hard to make look so incredibly easy. Then, the crescendo rose again, and we did another “dorsal fin lift.” This time, there were wild cheers from the audience.

I tilted my leg forward, and did a slow flip down Ty’s front, landing on my skates as we began to dance once more. The hardest parts of the routine were done, and now we just needed to finish well. I’d added a spin for myself at the end, and Ty raised an arm over my head as I started to spin around like a top. I curved my leg in, whirling faster and faster as Ty continued to skate a wider circle around me. The swing of my specially-made pants flared outward; the dual colors making the spin more visually stunning than it really was.

The last few notes of our routine hit. I slammed to a stop and dropped into a dramatic dip. As we’d practiced, Ty was there to catch me inches before I smacked onto the ice, his hand behind my shoulders. We froze, waiting for the audience reaction.

There was a roar of applause.

Breathing hard, I grinned up at Ty, and we both got to our feet. I put my hand in his, and we waved at the audience. They were standing up. A giddy wave of excitement shot through me, and I gave Ty a triumphant look. See? We didn’t suck after all.

Once the audience calmed down, Chip skated over to us.

Ty looped a casual arm around my shoulder, leaning in over my shoulder as I moved in next to the host.

“Well, that was original,” Chip said with a laugh. “It’s a big change from last week.”

“We decided to take things into our own hands a bit more,” I said with a smile, glancing over at Ty. “Show off our personalities.”

“And
Jaws
does that?” Chip held the microphone out to us, waiting for a response.

Ty leaned in closer to me, his breath on my neck. “It’s because I like to bite.”

And he gave my ear a friendly, playful nip.

My eyes went wide, even as the crowd roared their appreciation. Catcalls filled the air. I hadn’t expected his bite…or their reaction. Immediately, I blushed hard.

Thank god Chip didn’t see my reaction. He turned away, facing the panel of judges. “Let’s see what our panel thought of Ty and Zara’s interpretation of
Jaws
!”

Penelope’s mouth was thin, her arms crossed. She swiveled in her chair for a moment, and then picked up a score card. “Better than last week, but I’m still waiting to be wowed.”

It was a four.

I exchanged glances with Ty. Figure skating was full of all kinds of bullshit scoring, but this was getting ridiculous.

“Well, I loved it,” Irina said. “I thought it was playful and fun and very creative. We should see more routines like that.”

And she gave us an eight.

“I agree,” Raul said. “That was exciting and different. I’m impressed.”

He also gave us an eight.

I squeezed Ty’s hand excitedly. Our scores didn’t suck this time. It didn’t matter if we were in the middle of the pack as long as we weren’t last and we didn’t hose the popular vote.

We retreated backstage to the Crash Room. I sat down next to Ty on our bench and resisted the urge to rub my ear. It still tingled from his nip, and I was pretty sure my entire body was vibrating with intensity.

“That went well,” I said breathlessly. “I think they liked it. The audience, that is. Not the judges. They never like us. Well, at least not Penelope. But the other two gave us good marks,” I babbled.

He swiped at his face with a towel, and then nodded. “Yeah, it wasn’t bad.” He seemed so casual, as if it were every day that a guy just reached over and bit his partner’s ear on national television.

“You surprised me,” I blurted after a moment, unable to stand it any longer.

“Huh? Oh.” Ty chuckled. “Yeah. I figured it’d be good to get the audience on our side as much as possible, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Sorry if I freaked you out. I wasn’t trying to scare you.”

“You didn’t…I wasn’t—”

But now he was looking at me curiously. “You do know I’d never hurt you, right, Zara? That shit with me…” He rubbed his chin. “That was just heat of the moment in the cage. It’s not really me.”

I knew about that sort of thing. So I nodded. “No, I get it. Don’t you worry about me.”

Just for show. Nibbling on my ear, purely for show. Was I impressed with how clever my partner was? Or incredibly disappointed that it wasn’t more personal?

~~ * ~~

The next night, we were the second couple marked as safe.

“I knew it!” I said to Ty triumphantly as we skated off the ice and into the production area. An assistant was there, holding our blade guards, and we popped them on quickly. “We’re here another week. That’s awesome. I’m so excited!”

Ty grinned at me. He wasn’t bubbling over with enthusiasm like I was, but he did seem pleased at our success. “We deserved it. You kicked ass.”

“You weren’t so bad yourself,” I said loftily. We headed to the changing area, and Ty put his hand on the small of my back to guide me through the sea of people moving around us, still moving frantically since the show was still on. At least our part was done. “I think that ear thing was inspired.”

“So was
Jaws
,” he told me. “We should go out and celebrate, you know.”

I felt a flutter of excitement at the thought. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Grab a bite to eat, get away from the whole gig for a few hours. Celebrate our awesomeness for a bit.” He grinned at me, so boyish and gorgeous that I couldn’t help but fall under his spell. “I think we could use some downtime.”

“That sounds good.” I glanced around the surging backstage area. “Should we invite the others?”

His brows drew together. “Why?”

So it didn’t seem like a date? “Oh. Uh, no reason. I was just curious if you wanted to hang with Annamarie or something.”

“Nah. Let’s just go the two of us. It’ll be easier to sneak out with a small party.”

“Got it. Let me change.” I headed into the girls’ locker room, feeling a little weird. The flutter had taken up permanent residence in my stomach. Ty wanted to go out with just me? Even after we’d spent the last four weeks with solely each other? Really?

That was either…really flattering, or just more team building and that I was reading too much into.

I quickly showered, scrubbed my face off, and dressed. My hair was wet, so I pulled it into another tight bun and changed into my leotard and tights. I’d worn a sloppy plaid tee over the ensemble, and now I wished I’d worn something a bit…sexier. God, why did I suck so hard at being attractive?

I’d never really had a chance to date much. As in, at
all
. My teenage years had been spent on the ice, practicing, even after my flameout. I’d been homeschooled and was an only child, so I’d never been around a ton of guys. Later on, the kind of guys I met didn’t understand my dedication to and drive for my ice-skating career, even though it had petered out long ago.

Plus, it was hard to meet men when you were dressed up as a pink dinosaur.

Basically, I had a lame dating track record. I could count the number of dates I’d had on one hand, and no one had ever gotten further than second base with me.

I was pretty sure Ty had a lot more experience than that.

This isn’t a date, Zara
, I reminded myself. We were skating partners, busy repairing our careers. I was reading a lot more into it than I should have been.

I swung my gear bag over my shoulder and ran into Emma as I left the locker room. “Hey,” I told her. “Who got eliminated?”

“Jon Jon,” she said with a grimace. “No surprise there, but he’ll be really disappointed. But that partner of his just has no rhythm. Poor guy.”