Love is a Battlefield: Games of Love, Book 1 by Tamara Morgan Page A

clan battles of Scotland or a battle of honor against a neighboring village maga’lahi warrior on a remote Pacific island, but something petty and small. Something that would sneak underneath a certain woman’s skin and cause her to itch and writhe without any way to alleviate the discomfort.
    And he knew how he was going to do it.
     
     
    “You look awfully pleased with yourself,” a small, feminine voice said.
    Julian looked up to find his sister, Beth, leaning in the doorway of their mother’s kitchen, watching him eat oyako-don like it was the first meal he’d had in a week. His mom always made the traditional Japanese egg-and-chicken rice bowl in the weeks leading up to the Games. The dish had been Harold’s favorite. He’d always said the protein provided a man with everything he needed to fight and to fuck—though that last part was offered in a low undertone meant only for Julian’s burning ears.
    “That’s because I am pleased with myself, little sister.” It had been a few days since he’d visited the tailor, and things were definitely looking up.
    He stood and gave her a hug, but she disentangled herself with a frown. She was fifteen, the age when affection ruined the painstaking effects of teenage angst. She was a beautiful girl, with his same skin tone, her eyes a lighter shade of brown and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, but her hair was cut at a cross angle to her face, and she had so much eye makeup on she might have been an eighties pop star. He wondered how much time she was spending alone at the house.
    “I haven’t seen you around the house very much. How are things?”
    She shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”
    “That’s it? Nothing new around here?”
    “What do you want to know?” Beth said. “Mom works a lot, as usual. And Nala is almost never here—she’s got a boyfriend now.” Nala was seventeen, apparently the age when affection came back in full force and attached itself to a teenage male partner.
    Beth hovered above the table, so Julian kicked out one of the kitchen chairs—the same black-and-brass upholstered ones that had been in his mom’s house for twenty years. The woman never updated a thing.
    Beth looked at it with a cynical eyebrow raised. Cynical and pierced. Julian wondered how well that had been received. The day he’d come home with his tattoo, a swirling traditional Micronesian pattern across his upper arm and back, his mother had cried. Even after he’d explained—told her it was the story of his heritage, an important reminder to honor all his warrior roots—she’d had to close her eyes every time she saw it for the following three or four years.
    “So, what—are you living here now?”
    Julian felt a twinge of guilt. His and Beth’s was not a particularly close relationship—he’d started following the Games ten years ago, when he was eighteen. They’d all expected him to move home for good when Harold died, but Julian always found some way to put it off. He needed more time training. He needed to spend a few long winters in Arizona, building up a savings cushion to supplement the small life insurance policy Harold had left behind along with several years’ worth of medical bills.
    And now—now he was so close to the Rockland Bluff Whisky sponsorship it would have been ridiculous to cut back his SHS commitments. The money would be enough to let his mother quit working for good. To send both sisters to college with room to spare.
    “You don’t have to worry anymore,” Harold had said gruffly the day he’d married Chika in a little ceremony at City Hall, followed by a party at the local pub. It was a day that changed everything, when Harold bestowed their little family with his name and the good cheer that followed him wherever he went. Julian had never realized how much they’d struggled until that moment—financially and emotionally.
    “It’s my job to provide for you both now. That’s what a real man does, Julian. Provides.