Loving Mr. July (6 page)

“A different thing entirely,” Kurt
acknowledged. “But for the next three weeks anyway, you don’t have
a choice.” Kurt removed the pin on the weight stack for the nearest
machine, and changed out the straight bar for an angled one. “Now
we’re going to work the triceps.”

Cynthia sighed. She let him move her into
position in front of the machine, and show her where to place her
hands on the bar. She jumped a bit when he wrapped his arms around
her, put his hands on either side of hers and pushed down. The heat
from his body enveloped her. In her sneakers, the top of her head
fit under his chin. The woodsy scent she had smelled earlier now
mixed with his own scent. Distinctly male. Utterly hot.

This kind of weight lifting she could do. All
day, as a matter of fact. Engrossed in enjoying his nearness, she
jumped when he let go of the bar and moved away. The weight
crashing back to the stack jolted her back to reality.

“Now you do it by yourself, just like that,”
Kurt said.

Cynthia took a peek at his face. His bland
look gave nothing away. So I’m the only one having a moment here?
She decided right then and there that she was not going to let him
become aware of her attraction.

She took the bar and pushed it down, catching
a friend’s eye as she did. “Hey Michael, how are you?”

“Cynthia! I haven’t seen you in ages, what
gives?” He leaned in to kiss her cheek.

“Working out, so I can get muscles like
yours.” She let go of the weight bar, purposely put a hand on his
bicep and squeezed, knowing Kurt was watching. Michael was handsome
and kind, and gay as could be. But Kurt didn’t need to know
that.

“Looking good, too.” Michael winked at her
and moved on.

A short time later, she saw one of the
firemen who had also been in her calendar. She congratulated him on
his new baby. He gave her an enthusiastic hug and told her his wife
loved the gift she had dropped off. She hugged him back, noting
with some satisfaction that Kurt had observed the exchange, but
wasn’t close enough to hear what they said.

That should confuse him, she thought, make
him at least think she had other fish in the sea. The only problem
was, she couldn’t get over how fabulous it had felt in his
arms.

~ ~ ~

Kurt emerged from the locker room and headed
toward the lounge area to wait for Cynthia. Might as well check on
the Padres game, he thought. Cynthia was bound to be doing whatever
it was that took women so long in bathrooms. He sat on the couch,
about to lean back when he noticed a flash of unmistakable pink
against the wall.

He got up and ambled closer. Yep, that was
Cynthia all right. A guy crowded her against the wall, one hand
above her head, his body angled along hers. She had her hands on
his chest.

He had half a mind to leave her there. Let
her find her own way home, if she was going to flirt with everyone
in sight. Jaw clenched, he moved in, raised his voice, put a little
edge in it. “You ready to go,
Sweetie
?”

Startled, the man turned around. “We’re
having a conversation here, do you mind?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Kurt folded his
arms across his chest, widened his stance, narrowed his eyes.
“Cynthia came with me, and she’ll be leaving with me.”

The man glanced back at Cynthia, who had
taken advantage of the moment to put some space between them. “Oh,
so that’s how the wind blows, does it? Figure you’ve moved up in
the world, huh?”

He turned back to Kurt and let out a harsh
laugh. “Hey.” He put his hands up. “You can have her, Dude.”

What the hell was that? Kurt turned to
Cynthia, took in her flushed face and downcast eyes. “You ready to
go, or is there another guy you can find to kiss tonight?”

Cynthia didn’t say a word. She just nodded
and headed for the entrance.

Kurt was standing in his office, staring out
the window and thinking about the last couple of weeks when Blake
interrupted his thoughts.

“Here’s the bill of materials you were asking
for.” Blake slapped a thick spreadsheet on Kurt’s desk. “It’s been
scrubbed by the operations team. Think we’ve got as low of prices
on the components as we’re going to get. Means our margins will be
up to almost 60%. You should be happy…”

He paused when Kurt didn’t react. “You okay,
Dude?”

Kurt tried to focus on Blake’s face, his
thoughts still a mile away. “Huh?”

“You’ve been after me to get this BOM to you
for weeks. I thought you’d be jumping up and down.” Blake picked up
the spreadsheet and dropped it back down on the desk with a thump.
“Instead you’re miles away. What’s up?”

Kurt motioned to Blake to shut the door.

Blake gave him a salute, but complied.

“I know you’re loyal to your wife, but what I
say here stays in this room.” Kurt gave Blake a hard stare.
“Agreed?”

“Not going to lie to my wife, Kurt.”

“Wasn’t asking you to. Just want you to keep
a confidence.”

“What the hell?” Blake gave Kurt an
incredulous stare. “When have I ever broken your confidence?”

“Well there was that time involving Missy
Bender.” Kurt grinned at Blake.

“And we were what, thirteen, fifteen?” Blake
pulled up Kurt’s visitor chair, straddled it. “Geez, Kurt.”

“I know, I know.” Kurt dropped into his own
chair. “It’s just that this involves Cynthia, and you know how
close she and Sharon are.”

“Bond runs way deep.” Blake nodded. “But I
thought you couldn’t stand the woman.”

“Thought so too.” Kurt picked up a pen from
his desk, started fiddling with it. “She’s always gotten under my
skin. Don’t have a clue why. And I seem to get under hers. She’s
never been as friendly to me as she seems to be with you all.”

“Then why the hell did you insist on her
working out with you twice a day?”

“Heard about that did you?” Kurt leaned back
in his chair, looked away for a moment then looked Blake in the eye
again. “Thought she should pay for coercing me into doing that damn
photo shoot.”

Blake squirmed in his seat a bit. “About that
photo shoot, Kurt, and remember when you hear this that you love
your new sister-in-law and she’s kind of partial to my face looking
the way it does.”

Kurt raised his eyebrows.

“Wasn’t Cynthia’s idea. Was mine.”

“What!” Kurt shot to his feet. Blake followed
suit, eyeing him warily across the desk.

Kurt’s assistant, Holly, knocked on the door,
started to enter, took one look at the two of them and changed her
mind. “Think I’ll come back at a better time.”

Kurt turned from glancing at the doorway to
look back at Blake. “Did you see the look on her face?”

Blake grinned, hands unclenching. “Yeah.
She’s remembering the dust up we had over the new office
design.”

“New office design?” Kurt snorted. “I don’t
think so. It was because you were mooning over Sharon and you’d had
that fight with her over the land lease.”

“I needed to let a little frustration
out.”

“So you rearranged my face.”

“You’re still too pretty, even with the
broken nose.”

“Up yours.” Kurt sighed and plopped back into
his chair. “And sit down. I’m too tired from all these workouts to
return the favor.”

“Thank God.” Blake took a seat. “You’d cream
me. I haven’t been to the gym in ages.”

“Too busy being the happy husband?”

Blake leaned back, a satisfied smile on his
face. “There are some great perks to being married.”

Kurt put up a hand. “Don’t want to hear about
it. Especially not from the guy whose dingus was close to falling
off from disuse before you met Sharon.”

Now Blake gave Kurt the finger.

Kurt grinned. “Just saying.”

“Haven’t had any in a while. That your
problem?”

“I know it sounds hard to believe, but I
wasn’t really missing it. Wasn’t anyone I connected with in a
while.”

“This my little brother talking?” Blake sat
up, put both feet on the floor, hands hanging loosely between his
knees. He leaned forward to peer at Kurt more closely. “The guy who
has had whomever he wanted since high school?”

“Exaggerating just a little, aren’t you?”

“Not really. No.”

Kurt grinned. “Okay, I admit. I like women.
Doesn’t mean I sleep with everyone I date.”

“Even a small percentage of the total women
you’ve dated would be mind boggling to me.”

“Can we get back to the point here?”

“Go ahead.” Blake responded to the serious
note in Kurt’s voice. “What’s up?”

“So I’ve got Cynthia staying at my place
now.”

“What the hell?” Blake’s brows drew
together.

Kurt put up a hand. “Not what you think.
She’s working out with me and kind of got the impression that she
was supposed to cook for me too—”

“Now I wonder how she got that idea?”

Kurt quelled him with a look.

“So as I was saying, she’s staying at the
house.”

“And the problem?”

“I don’t know.” Kurt ran a hand through his
hair, looked away.

Blake considered him silently for a moment.
“You into Cynthia?” His voice held a note of incredulity. “Not your
typical choice, is she?”

“I said. I. Don’t. Know!” He put both hands
on his head, then grimaced when he felt the pull of his sore
muscles. “I find myself looking forward to our workouts. Why, I
haven’t a clue. It’s not like she’s given me any kind of indication
that she’s interested in me. If anything, she sort of acts like she
dislikes me. But she’s smart. Keeps me on my toes. And funny, when
she’s not trying to put me off.” Kurt frowned “Or flirting with
every guy in sight.”

“And I take it you’ve tried all your patented
moves.” Blake sat back, stretched, a slight grin coming to his
face.

“It’s not funny.” Kurt glared at him,
thinking about how often he’d tried to move in on Cynthia to no
avail since the start of their ultimate togetherness experiment,
and knew he looked guilty to Blake.

“On the contrary,” Blake said, not even
trying to hide his amusement now. “I never thought I’d see the day
when you met a woman you couldn’t get. To see you lowered to the
level of the rest of us who have had to grovel is hilarious.”

“Maybe I should rethink my reluctance to
rearrange your face.”

“I don’t think so.” Blake got to his feet,
still laughing. “Because I might get a punch in, and then where
would you be with Cynthia? She can’t have a Business Hunk of San
Diego with a black eye.”

“Oh, damn it, you’re right.” Kurt reluctantly
started laughing too. “I’ll get you back for this.”

“Don’t doubt it.” Blake said. “But right now,
you’d better go where ever it is you’re supposed to be going.”
Blake inclined his head toward the window between Kurt’s office and
his assistant’s desk. She was urgently gesturing to Kurt, pointing
to her watch.

Kurt glanced down at his calendar. “Aw hell.”
He was a half hour late to his meeting with a new customer.

Cynthia stood in Kurt’s kitchen, chopping
vegetables, thinking about the past couple of weeks. She hadn’t
seen the creep from high school at the gym again, thank goodness.
It had been bad enough to have him pin her to the wall, and expect
that she would welcome his advances, just because she’d been
foolish in the past. But the fact that Kurt had witnessed it, and
evidently thought the worst, well that was downright
humiliating.

And why wouldn’t he think the worst, she
thought, as she diced the celery with a vengeance, after she had
openly flirted with all the other guys to cover up her mounting
attraction to him? When would she ever learn?

“What’s the delicious treat for tonight? More
dry chicken? Tasteless fish? Bland vegetables?” Kurt wandered into
the kitchen, shirtless, shorts riding low on his hips, still
toweling his hair dry.

He seemed to walk around shirtless a lot
these days. It was rather disconcerting. Especially since the
imagined donut had long disappeared. She’d held him to Carl’s diet,
which he groused about daily. He’d already lost nine pounds. She’d
lost four. Life wasn’t fair. But four pounds in two weeks was a new
experience for her. She wasn’t complaining—too much—even though
every muscle in her body screamed from the twice-daily workout
schedule. She was sore in places she hadn’t even known she had
muscles.

And Kurt had a serious six-pack emerging.
Cynthia looked up from examining his incredibly hot body to see
Kurt watching her, amused.

She felt her face flush, and talked quickly
to cover it up. “I’ve got a confession to make.”

Kurt stopped drying his hair, draping the
towel instead around his neck. “Do tell.” He grabbed a carrot,
started munching.

“This,” Cynthia said, bringing a notebook
over to show Kurt, “is the cookbook I’ve been using to cook for
us.”

Kurt glanced at the unbound notebook and
raised his eyebrows. “Thought you said you had Carl’s
cookbook?”

“That’s it. Carl’s cookbook.” She plunked it
down on the counter. “Before he brought it to me for marketing
help.”

“This is what he started with?” Kurt flipped
through the pages of typed recipes and pasted photographs.

Cynthia nodded. “His recipes were seriously
bad. He knows a lot about protein, carb and fat ratios. A fair
amount about nutrition too, but cooking tasty food? Not so
much.”

“Mediterranean chicken.” Kurt scanned a
recipe’s ingredients. “What makes it Mediterranean, the sprig of
basil resting on top in the picture?”

“Evidently,” Cynthia said. She pulled a
hardbound book with bright photographs of food on the front cover
from under the shelf. “And here’s the recipe as it was published.”
She flipped to the appropriate page.

“Garlic, oregano, basil, thyme,” Kurt rattled
off ingredients. “Now that’s sounding more like it.”