D.J. matched Quinn’s long-legged stride. As he picked up the pace, she kept her breathing slow and deep. Their feet pounded out a steady rhythm.
“We’re going to need to find a gym at the end of the run,” he said. “I planned a route that will have us finish up at your office. I figured you’d know the closest place to work out.”
How did he know where she worked? Travis or Kyle, she told herself. They knew where her office was located, and they were Quinn’s new family.
“I have a weight room in the back of the office,” she said as they jogged under several trees. “We can finish up there.”
“Great.” He shot her a grin and picked up the pace. “Six miles okay by you?”
Six miles? At nearly a run? “Not a problem.”
They arrived back at her office in less time than she would have thought possible. D.J. considered herself fit and athletic, but Quinn had continued increasing the speed of their run until she’d been gasping for breath. But she’d kept up and she hadn’t complained.
After unlocking the front door, she walked into the empty front office. Her part-time help didn’t start until after lunch.
She’d left a six-pack of bottled water on the reception desk. After tossing a bottle to Quinn, she took one for herself and downed about a third of it. She wanted more, but knew she had to wait and let her body cool down a little.
Sweat dripped off her. She’d pulled her hair back into a French braid that morning and the long end was plastered against her T-shirt. She felt hot, flushed and in desperate need of a shower. But there was still part two of the tryout.
“The weight room is back this way,” she said, careful to speak slowly so she didn’t gasp the words.
By contrast Quinn was breathing evenly, as if the run hadn’t winded him at all. He was sweating, but not in any distress. He sipped his water.
She led the way down the short hallway to the big open back room. When she’d rented the office, she’d specifically looked for a location that had space for a workout room. There were mirrors along the rear wall. Weight equipment lined the right side of the room, while thick floor mats defined a sparring area on the left.
D.J. finished her water and tossed the empty plastic bottle into a green bin marked Recycling then faced Quinn.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
His eyebrows rose. “Why don’t you take me through your regular routine?”
She preferred to work out alone, but this wasn’t about what she liked. She had to make a point.
She grabbed twenty-pound free weights and started with walking lunges. From there she headed to the machines. Quinn didn’t say anything as she went through several exercises, although she could feel him watching her. His silent attention started to get irritating, but it was his physical strength that made her uneasy as he started to work out with her. He could leg press seventy pounds more than she could. After she used a set of weights, he picked them up in one hand as if they weighed nothing. When she went to the barbell for chest presses, adding on enough weight to make her shake through the last set, he stood by her head and spotted her. After she finished, he casually picked up the equipment and slipped it back into place without breathing hard.
Pausing to wipe sweat from her face and neck, she studied him in the mirror. On the run, she’d been too busy trying to keep up to really catalogue the powerful muscles ripping through his body. Now she could see the definition and thickness of his chest and the strength in his legs. He wasn’t cut like a gym jockey. Instead his muscles had a purpose. He was the kind of man who knew how to make his living the hard way.
He scared the hell out of her.
D.J. swallowed the fear and kept herself focused through her tricep presses, then leaned back on the bench and exhaled.
“That’s it,” she said, wondering if she had the strength to stand. Her bones felt as if they’d turned to putty. Her muscles were as resistant as cooked pasta.
“Not bad,” he said, holding out his hand.
She glanced from it to his face, then back. She understood the gesture. He was offering to help her to her feet. The logical, rational part of her brain said to save her own strength and accept the assistance. The less-in-control side of her psyche warned her that once he had her hand in his, he could easily flip her and get her in a lock that she could never break.
Deliberately D.J. grabbed his hand and pulled herself up.
Nothing bad happened, unless she counted ending up standing too near to Quinn. They were only inches apart-so close that she could see the various shades of brown and gold that made up the deep color of his irises.
“You work hard,” he said. “You’re strong and disciplined.”
His words pleased her. “Great. So now –” He cut her off with a smile. “Now let’s see what you can do on the mats.”
She wanted to groan in protest. She wanted to flop down on the floor and sleep for a week. She wanted a full body massage followed by some time in a sauna. Her legs quivered at the thought of supporting her weight for even one more second.
“Why not?” she said instead and led the way to the sparring mats.
Quinn stood across from her. He was relaxed, his legs slightly bent, his arms at his sides.
“Attack me,” he said.
D.J. wished she was big enough so that just sitting on him would squish out all his air. Unfortunately she wasn’t, so she was left with no option but to do what he said.
She considered several tactics. Her only chance at something close to a decent showing was to surprise him. She feigned a jab with her right hand, shifted right, made a quarter turn toward him and punched a kick right at his –
Thunk. The floor came sailing up from nowhere as she found herself flat on her back. Now she was not only tired, but sore all over. She scrambled to her feet.
“Again,” he said.
She attacked, with no better luck at times two, three and four. On the last tumble to the ground she was too close to the edge of the mat and her elbow connected with the wood floor. Pain exploded with such intensity that she thought she might throw up.
Quinn knelt down next to her. “You okay?”
Speech was impossible, so she nodded. He reached for her arm and probed her elbow. Even the light brush of his fingers made her grit her teeth to keep from gasping.
“Nothing’s broken,” he told her.
Great. If “not broken” hurt this much she would hate to encounter actual bone shards. She’d had a broken arm as a kid and didn’t remember it hurting so badly. She forced herself back to her feet, expecting him to tell her to attack again. Instead he moved in front of her.
“We’ll do this one in slow motion,” he said. “You start your moves and I’ll show you how I counter them.”
He took her through the movement step by step until she saw how he had managed to stop her each time.
“Now that you know what I’ll be doing, you can respond differently,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Ready?”
She nodded and moved in. This time when he spun and grabbed for her, she stepped out of reach. Nanoseconds later his leg shot out and connected, an arm moved and she was flipped and sailing onto the mat again. But instead of stepping back as he had before, he moved forward, bending toward her.
D.J. hadn’t expected him to get so close. As the air rushed out of her body, her mind blurred at the edges. Quinn disappeared and in his place she saw her father looming over her. She could smell the liquor. People always said that vodka had no odor, but they were wrong. The scent seeped from her father’s skin and made her stomach get all tight and sore.
She could see the man’s bloodshot eyes, and the angry twist of his mouth. The baseball bat in his hands rose and then slowly sank toward her. She braced herself for the crunch of hard wood against bone and tried not to imagine the pain that would explode when he broke not just her body but her soul.
She blinked and he was gone. There was only Quinn staring down at her, his brown eyes crinkling slightly as he smiled.
“You got the wind knocked out of you,” he said. “Can you breathe?”
Could she? She tried an experimental breath and felt air fill her lungs. She felt both hot and cold, as if she’d just broken a fever. She could taste the terror – it was metallic, just like blood.
“You’ve got potential,” Quinn said, as he held out his hand again.
She wanted to run, to scream, to disappear. But she’d long ago learned that the only way to conquer her fear was to face it head-on. She took the hand he offered and let him pull her to her feet.
When she was standing, she resisted the blinding need to bolt. Instead she crossed to the small refrigerator in the corner and pulled out a bottle of water.
“Want one?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She tossed him one, then took hers in her hand. After gulping down half of it, she placed the cool plastic on the back of her neck. Then she walked the length of the exercise room and tried to get calm.
Irrational fear caused a chemical reaction in the body, she reminded herself. The fight-or-flight response was triggered, and her mind was no longer in control.
She was fine. Or if she couldn’t believe that, she would be fine in just a minute or so.
She walked back and forth three times, then risked glancing at Quinn. He was watching her. While she knew there was no way he could figure out what had just happened, she couldn’t help feeling vulnerable and afraid.
Fear. She hated it. Fear was weakness, and the only antidote was to be strong.
She stopped in front of him. “So?”
She made the word a challenge.
“I’ll take you on,” he said.
She felt both relief and apprehension. She wanted to learn, but why did he have to be the one teaching her?
“Great.” She drank the rest of her water. “How long are you going to be in town?”
“A few weeks.”
That surprised her. “Don’t you have to get back to your assignment, or whatever it is you call it?”
He shrugged. “I’m on leave. Voluntarily. I’ll be around long enough to teach you a few new moves.”
Leave? Why? But she didn’t ask. There was a more important question. “What do you want?”
He twisted the cap off the water bottle and downed the liquid in several long, slow gulps. A single drop escaped from the corner of his mouth. She watched it trail down his jaw to his throat where it blended in with the sweat glistening there. When he’d finished, he turned his dark gaze
on her.
“Let’s see,” he said. “You’ve offered me money and sex. What else you got?”
The blunt question stunned her. “You’re the one who has to define the price. I decide if I want to pay it.”
“Good point.” He looked her up and down. “Okay. Here’s the deal. I’ll give you the lessons you want. In return, you’ll keep me company while I’m in town.”
She relaxed immediately. “You mean sex.”
“I mean dinner.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Dinner. It’s the meal that comes after lunch. I want you to have dinner with me tonight.”
She took a step back. “Hell, no” hovered on her lips, but she sucked in the words.
“One dinner in exchange for teaching me while you’re in town?” she asked.
“We’re starting with one dinner. There might be more. I might even want you to join me for lunch.”
She really wanted to say no. Nothing about this appealed to her. For one thing, it didn’t make sense.
For another, she hated anything to be open-ended. She wanted the rules defined up front.
“You can pick the restaurant,” he said. “This is your town, after all. But nothing cheap. No fast food, no burger places. Somewhere nice. And you have to wear a dress. I want to see cleavage and legs.”
She nearly decked him for the last crack. “I don’t date,”
“This isn’t a date. It’s business.”
He moved close. She braced herself to ward off an attack, but instead he simply tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She found herself wanting to lean into the tender gesture. So, of course, she didn’t.
“I’ve been out of the country a long time,” he said. “Is it so hard to believe I want to have dinner with a beautiful woman?”
She nearly spit in surprise. “Somewhat attractive” she would have bought, but beautiful?
“I don’t play boy-girl games,” she said. “They’re all designed to make sure the boys win.”
“I’m not a boy.”
There was a news flash. She narrowed her gaze.
He grinned. “Dinner in exchange for lessons. What’s not to like?”
She wanted to throw his offer back in his face but couldn’t say why. What was the big deal about having dinner? Logically it was easier than having sex with him. Except sex was little more than a bodily function. She could disconnect and it wouldn’t matter. Dinner...dinner was complicated.
“Fine,” she ground out as she clenched her teeth. “Dinner.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“No, I’ll come get you at your hotel.”
“Works for me.”