Knockemout’s gym was like the rest of town: a little rough around the edges and a lot interesting. It was a long, low metal building with a gravel parking lot. At 7:00 a.m., it was respectably full of motorcycles, minivans, and luxury SUVs.
I’d spent a good portion of the night tossing and turning, thinking about Nash’s proposition. I wasn’t used to a man getting under my skin or into my head like that. I hoped a good workout would help me shake out the obsessive rumination about exactly how close Nash wanted to get to me. Or how close I was willing to let him.
I was tempted. Very tempted. It was exactly the kind of rush the old me would have jumped at. But wasn’t it time to break old patterns? To learn to make better choices?
Besides, if I let the man into my bed, he’d want to get close. And close meant I’d run the risk of Nash discovering my practically insignificant omission of the truth, which he would definitely view as an act of war. And this was why I didn’t do things that remotely resembled relationships.
So what if his hands on me made me feel melty and decadent like a gourmet grilled cheese? This was one challenge I didn’t need to meet. One mystery that didn’t need solving. The smart thing would be to avoid him. Just stay out of his way, get the job done, and be on my way.
Inside, the music was hard-driving classic rock instead of the usual peppy pop mix most gyms preferred. There were no tanning beds or massage chairs, just rows of machines, free weights, and sweaty people.
“You new?” The girl behind the corrugated metal front desk had a nose piercing, a neck tattoo, and the body of a yoga goddess.
“Yeah. I’m meeting Mrs. Tweedy and her friends.”
She flashed a quick grin. “Have fun with that. And definitely sign this.” She slid a clipboard with a waiver toward me.
Wondering just how bad a workout with septuagenarians could possibly be, I scrawled my name at the bottom and handed it back.
“Try not to hurt yourself keeping up,” she warned. “Locker rooms are behind me. Your crew is down there.” She pointed toward the far end of the gym.
“Thanks,” I said and headed in that direction.
The center of the space was occupied by a few dozen cardio machines. Treadmills, ellipticals, rowing machines, bikes. There was a large studio in the back where some kind of boot camp class was in progress. Someone was throwing up in a trash can and another person was lying flat on their back with a towel over their face while the instructor led the rest of the class through an excessive number of burpees.
The crowd was a melting pot of horse people in their Lululemon and high-tech gadget watches mixed with the biker crowd flexing their tattoos in ripped tank tops and bandannas. Running full out on neighboring treadmills were a lean twentysomething white guy in head-to-toe Under Armour and a Black woman with silver box braids and a Harley tank top that had seen its own mileage. His face was contorted from effort. She was grinning.
Agatha and Blaze, middle-aged biker babe lesbians who frequented Knox’s Honky Tonk, threw me a salute from their side-by-side stair-climbers.
“Lina!”
Mrs. Tweedy waved from the free weights section. The half dozen elderly folks in matching track suits behind her eyed me as I approached.
“Morning,” I said.
“Gang, this is my new neighbor and bestie, Lina. Lina, this is the gang,” she said.
“Hi, Lina,” they said as one.
“Hi, gang.” They were a motley crew if I’d ever seen one. Best guess, their ages ranged from midsixties to eighties. There were wrinkles and gray hair but also muscles and top-of-the-line athletic shoes.
“You ready to work?” Mrs. Tweedy twanged.
“Sure.” I’d stuck mostly to running since arriving in town. A nice, easy weight workout would be a good way to ease back into strength training.
“Don’t start without me!” Stef jogged up in designer gym threads.
“We meet again,” I said to him.
“About time, Steffy,” the woman on Mrs. Tweedy’s right said. Her jet-black hair was streaked with silver, and her T-shirt said My Warm-Up Is Your Workout.
“I was in the parking lot giving myself a pep talk,” he said. He looked at me. “You sure you’re up for this?”
I scoffed. “I run five miles a day. I think I can keep up.”
Mrs. Tweedy clapped her hands. “Let’s get these old bones warmed up, y’all.”
“Oh God. I’m dying. Save yourself. Go on without me,” I begged Stef.
He reached down and hauled me off the long strip of mat that ran along one wall of the gym. My knees buckled. I was a dehydrated husk of a human being. My muscles were too weak to hold me up. Miraculously, my heart had stayed in the safe zone through the workout from hell, but the rest of my body had given up.
“Pull yourself together, woman. If you quit now, they’ll never let you forget it,” Stef wheezed. Sweat dripped off his chin. His usually perfectly styled hair stood up in damp black tufts all over his head.
I sucked in a breath. “I don’t understand how a seventy-year-old can go so hard on the battle ropes. Does that mustache give him superpowers?”
Stef squeezed his water bottle over his face. “Vernon was a Marine. Retirement bored him so he took up training for Iron Man events. He’s not human.”
I leaned against the wall next to the water fountain and used the hem of my tank to wipe the sweat out of my eyes. “What about Mrs. Bannerjee? She just dead-lifted two hundred pounds. Eight times.”
“Aditi started lifting weights in her fifties. She has three decades of experience.”
“Let’s go! You can rest when you’re dead,” Mrs. Tweedy bellowed.
“I can’t do it,” I moaned.
Stef put his hands on my shoulders, but the sweat made me too slippery too hold on to. He gave up and leaned against the wall next to me. “Listen to me. We can do this. We will do this. And when we’re done, we’ll go to Café Rev, order Red Line Lattes, and eat our weight in pastry.”
“I need more motivation than pastry.”
“Shit.” He pushed away from the wall and faced me, looking ill.
“Shit what? Did they just add more wall balls? I hit myself in the face last round.” Wall balls were a special kind of hell that involved squatting with a heavy exercise ball and then explosively launching out of the squat to throw the ball several feet above your head. They were worse than burpees. I hated them.
Stef shoved both hands through his hair, then with a grimace wiped his palms on his shorts. “How do I look?”
“Like you were just dragged into the deep end of the pool by handsy mermen.”
“Damn it!”
“But in a totally handsome, Henry Golding kind of way,” I amended.
“Maybe I should take off my shirt?”
“What’s happening right now?” I demanded, snatching the water bottle out of his hands and aiming for my mouth.
“Jeremiah just strutted his fine ass in here to do bicep curls.”
I didn’t stop sucking down water, but I did peer over Stef’s shoulder. The gorgeous barber wasn’t hard to spot, curling forty-fives in front of the mirror…next to Nash Morgan.
I choked and nearly drowned.
“Shit!” I yanked off my headband and soaked it with water before putting it back on.
Stef elbowed me. “Excuse me! You can’t have him. He’s mine. If I ever get up the nerve to actually ask him out.”
“I’m not ‘shitting’ about Jeremiah, dummy. I’m shitting about Nash ‘Dat Ass’ Morgan,” I hissed.
A flutter in my chest had me glancing down at my watch. My heart was steadily thumping along. Now the flutter was moving into my stomach. Apparently this wasn’t a structural defect. This was worse.
Stef glanced over his shoulder, then whipped his head back in my direction, sending a shower of sweat in all directions. “Somebody’s got a crush,” he sang.
“First of all, gross. I have your sweat in my eyes. Second, it’s not a crush,” I argued. “It’s…an awareness.”
My awareness went into roller-coaster-plummet mode when Nash’s gaze locked on me as he stood over a bar loaded with weight plates. There was nothing friendly about the way his eyes roamed me. It was all hunger.
This time, my knees buckling had nothing to do with muscle fatigue.
“No offense, but aren’t you supposed to be some kind of edgy badass?” Stef asked.
I tore my eyeballs away from the smoldering chief of police. “Huh?”
“I’ll admit, Studly Do-Right looks like he wants to walk over here, strip you naked, and bend you over a weight bench.”
My core clenched in involuntarily need.
“But I thought you were a play-it-cool-make-’em-beg type.”
There was nothing cool about the way I reacted to Nash Morgan. It was molten hot need laced with icy licks of fear. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but apparently some men make playing it cool impossible,” I admitted.
“You two gonna run your mouths all day or you gonna finish this set?” Mrs. Tweedy hollered. “Don’t make me add more wall balls!”
“And now everyone’s looking at us,” Stef muttered.
Everyone including Jeremiah and Nash.
I squared my shoulders. “We have to do this.”
“And we have to do it sexy.”
“You might as well take your shirt off then,” I said.
“Same goes. Maybe they’ll be so hypnotized by my pecs and your tits they won’t notice when we go into cardiac arrest.”
“Let’s try to avoid that part,” I suggested.
“I can’t promise anything.”
“Let’s go, kids!” Vernon called.
“Last set, best set,” Mrs. Tweedy shouted.
Stef gritted his teeth. “Come on. Let’s strip and sexy walk.”
“Drink.”
My eyes fluttered open and I found myself staring up into the startling blue of Nash’s. A water bottle dangled in front of my face.
I was too tired and thirsty to take offense to being ordered about.
I worked my way into a seated position. Nash was crouched down next to me, a sheen of sweat glistening on his skin and sucking his T-shirt fast to his chest. Jeremiah stood behind him looking amused.
I kicked Stef’s leg.
“Leave me alone to die, woman,” he said. He was facedown on the mat next to me.
I kicked him again harder this time. “We can’t die in front of witnesses.”
He peeled his upper body off the rubber and blinked at our audience.
“Need a hand?” Jeremiah asked Stef.
I scraped up enough energy to smirk as my workout buddy’s crush hauled him to his feet.
“I’m impressed,” Nash said as I finally gulped down the proffered water. “No one survives their first Sweating with the Oldies workout.”
“I wouldn’t say I survived,” I croaked.
“You got that last rep in,” he insisted. “It counts.”
“And had to dry heave into the trash can.”
His mouth was softened by one of those almost smiles that fired up the wild swooping in my belly. “Still counts.”
“They’re superhuman. Every single one of them.”
“That they are,” he agreed.
I noticed some of the gym goers noticing us. “Either I’m topless or you’re walking around bottomless to warrant this kind of attention.”
He glanced up and around, then grimaced. “Small town. There hasn’t been much to gossip about lately.”
“Besides their chief getting shot, two citizens being abducted and rescued, and a U.S. marshal lurking around town. Where is your shadow with a badge anyway?”
Nash hooked a thumb over his shoulder to where Nolan was sweating all over a stationary bike, looking both pissed off and bored.
“Just another day in Knockemout,” Nash said, offering me his hand.
I took it and let him pull me to my feet.
My muscles sang with a mix of post-workout exhaustion and elation.
“If you’re wanting an answer about your offer—” I began.
But he cut me off with a shake of his head. “I’d rather you think about it a little longer than one night. It’s a big ask. I’ve got a smaller ask I need you to say yes to first.”
“What’s that?”
“Mind watching Piper for me tonight? I haven’t left her alone for longer than a few minutes.”
“Sure.”
“I won’t be too late,” he promised.
I would not ask him what his plans were. And I definitely wouldn’t ask him if it was a date.
“I’m going for drinks with Knox and Lucian,” he said, reading my mind.
The ladies of town would be aflutter over that kind of sexy sandwich of hotness, I guessed.
“Yeah. No problem,” I assured him, pretending that I didn’t feel the stupid wash of relief that it was only a guys’ night out.
He dipped his head toward me in that sexy, intimate way of his. My pulse tripped. So did the woman on the treadmill behind us. She shot me a rueful grin and a shrug when she recovered.
Nash Morgan was a danger to women everywhere.
“Appreciate it. I’ll drop her off a little before nine,” he said.
I vowed to be showered, made up, and wearing something not soaked in sweat. If I could make my legs work by then. “Okay.”
He checked his watch. “I’ve gotta go. I promised Liza J I’d clean the gutters today.”
“Here.” I held out his tumbler.
“Hang on to it. I know where you live.”
“Thanks,” I croaked.
“See you later, Angelina.” He gave me a goose bump–inducing once-over before turning to leave.
“Nash?”
He stopped and turned.
Glancing around at our not-so-subtle audience, I closed the distance between us with the sexiest limp I could muster. “Exactly how much of me do you want?”
Those blue eyes changed to icy fire. “The gentlemanly answer would be as much as you’re willing to give.”
“And you’re a gentleman?”
“I used to be.” Then he lifted his chin. “Drink more water and don’t forget to stretch or you’ll regret it tomorrow.”
It was a good thing my face was already on fire from exertion.
He flashed me a wink and the ghost of a grin before heading for the locker room. I watched him go. So did the rest of the female population of the gym and a handful of the men too.
Nolan got up and wiped down his bike. He threw me a little salute before following Nash.
Stef appeared next to me. “Still up for coffee and carbs?” He had a goofy grin on his face.
“God, yes. Why do you look so happy? Are you delirious?”
“I think so. Jeremiah gave me a sweat towel.”
“Nash gave me his water. Are we as pathetic as I think we are?”
“Oh, much worse,” Stef insisted.
Vernon clapped me on the shoulder on his way to the treadmills. “Way not to suck too bad out there.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You did well,” Aditi said.
“If you’re up for it, tomorrow is chest and back day,” Mrs. Tweedy offered.
“Don’t you dare say yes or I’ll have to come too. And I need three days to recover,” Stef whispered.
My laugh was a barely audible wheeze.
