Summer Kisses (281 page)

Katherine limped into the back room of the gym. It had a full complement of first-aid and emergency supplies including a heart defibrillator. She took a quick swipe of her face with her hand, which made me fear impending tears.

I led her to the table at the back of the room and patted the surface. “Hop up here, and let’s see how bad it is.” I tried to be as matter-of-fact as possible to reduce the humiliation showing on her face.

She leaned toward the exit, crossing her arms in front of her. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. I should go home.”

“Just as soon as I check you out.” I gave her a grin and a wink for good measure.

“Don’t—” Her voice cracked. “Don’t flirt right now, okay? I’m totally humiliated here.” She blinked rapidly.

Oh shit.
Now I felt like a complete ass. Something that kept happening around Katherine. Usually, I managed
not
to stick my foot in my mouth around most women.

I took her hand and tried to call some level of sensitivity. Not my
forté.

“People fall in here all the time. That’s why we have a first-aid station. Come on. Let’s make sure you didn’t seriously hurt yourself, okay?”

She jerked a nod and looked at the table appraisingly for a moment.

I pushed a small stool in front with my foot so she wouldn’t have to struggle.

“Thanks,” she said hoarsely.

I continued to hold her hand until she was seated. Her fingers were long with short nails polished in a natural light pink color. She wore a ring on her right hand with a round, dark-blue stone with triangular diamonds on either side. It was pretty and looked nice on her hand. Simple. Classy. Like her.

With an odd sort of reluctance, I let go of her fingers and concentrated my attention on her calf.

“You definitely have a primo case of road rash.” I pulled out the anti-bacterial spray with a numbing agent that would sting less than peroxide or alcohol wipes. “Hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”

“You could say that.” Katherine swallowed hard.

Before announcing what I was going to do, I doused her calf with the spray. She sucked air in between her teeth. “Holy crap,” she whispered, flexing her foot.

The movement changed the shape of her already shapely calf. I touched a non-scraped section of leg. Her skin was warm. Her legs smooth. I wondered briefly how she felt about the kiss-it-and-make–it-better method of first aid.

Her other knee had a giant scrape along its surface. I looked into her eyes. “Ready for this?”

She winced, took a deep breath, and nodded.

I sprayed, and she breathed out hard. I was kind of impressed that she didn’t make any other sound. I’d had similar injuries from a bicycle accident last fall, and I remembered lots of swearing as I patched myself up.

“Get yourself anywhere else?”

She hesitated for a long moment then shook her head. “Nope, that’s it.” She looked up then left.

“Liar.”

Her eyes went wide.

“Where else?”

“What gave me away?”

“Your hesitation and your eyes. Where else?”

Katherine shrugged. “Just my ribs. I’m fine though,” she rushed to assure me.

“Let me see.”

Grabbing the hem of her shirt, she held it to the table. “It’s
fine
.”

“So then you won’t mind if I take a look.”

She didn’t say anything. Neither did she lift the hem of her shirt.

“You’re wearing a sports bra, right?” I could see the outline plainly through her tee shirt.

She nodded.

“There are a lot of women in here who work out in that alone. Trust me. This isn’t uncharted territory.”

She gave me a look. “You haven’t charted
this
territory, Sparky.” From the tone of her voice, neither would I.

Ever.
Despite what did and what more could have happened in front of her neighbor.

“Lift up the side. You don’t have to take your shirt off.”

Katherine bit her lip again, and I started to feel like a bully. Finally, she lifted the side of her shirt, her eyes focused on the wall behind me.

“Ouch,” I said. “That’s definitely the worst of the three.” A two-inch-wide scrape, surrounded by red, already-swelling flesh, suggested she’d have one hell of a bruise when all was said and done.

“How bad is it?”

“You’re going to be feeling that in the morning.” I gently prodded her rib. “Does it hurt more than skin deep?”

She shook her head.

I sprayed the scrape before she could prepare herself. “But I’ll offer to feel
you
in the morning if that helps any,” I said, trying to distract her.

“You don’t give up, do you?” She chuckled, and an actual smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.

“Never.” Probably better that she didn’t take me seriously. I put the spray away. “You’ll still work out again tomorrow?” I feared this experience would sour her on the whole cause.

She shrugged. “I guess.”

“Will you promise me if I promise you a signed contract in the morning?” Why I was so insistent?

After a long moment, she finally answered. “I promise.”

The happiness and anticipation those two words brought me should have concerned me a great deal more than they did.

When I woke up the next morning to the wail of the alarm, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. Then it hit me.

My hamstrings had shrunk.

Oblivious to my pain, the alarm continued to blare, its wail digging holes through my brain. I reached one arm out from underneath the covers and smacked the snooze button.

Then moaned.

Wow.
That hurt even more that I’d anticipated.

How would I make it through the day? This was supposed to be my first day working on-site at Mitchell Fitness, and I sincerely doubted I could walk. Call it vanity, but I really didn’t want Quinn seeing me like this. Bad enough he’d seen me take the tumble off the treadmill.

I looked across the room at my own implement of torture, covered by the last few days’ worth of clothes. Out of force of long habit, I cursed it.

This of course led me to begin cursing Curtis, one of my favorite pastimes. The son of a...

Well, actually his mom had been pretty nice. Curtis and I had dated for the better part of a year. I had waited for things to go to the “next level,”, i.e., marriage or at least living together, and instead, he gave me an ultimatum. Lose weight or lose him. I’ll admit to about two horrid days when I actually stopped eating before I found my backbone and gave him a counterproposal: he could love me as I am or he could hit the road. Honestly, I thought he was bluffing. At least until he left.

About a week later, he had the “gently used” treadmill delivered, in case I’d “changed my mind.” Not a chance. I vowed that if my diet worked and I got down to my ideal weight, I’d send a picture of me in a bikini so he could see what he missed out on. I kept threatening to put the treadmill up for sale on Craigslist, but somehow never got around to it.

I shook my head, trying to rid myself of depressing thoughts. The good news was that I’d been so tired the night before that I hadn’t even bothered with dinner. So I had, thus far, actually stuck to my diet. The bad news was that, as a result, my stomach grumbled loudly. I needed to grab breakfast before I left.

To do that, I’d actually have to get out of bed.

Finally, I crawled from beneath the blankets, wheezing and creaking like a little old lady. A blistering hot shower and a couple of ibuprofen helped take the edge off. A cup of coffee put me in a human state of mind, and a bagel with light cream cheese gave me enough energy to get out the door.

Quinn had made me promise the day before to bring my exercise clothes, and while I seriously considered accidentally-on-purpose leaving them by the front door, I picked up my duffel bag at the last minute. Despite the fact that I knew we’d never be a couple, part of me really liked him in a seventh-grade, wow-he’s-so-cute sort of way. I didn’t want to face the disappointment that would follow an announcement that I wouldn’t be joining him for a workout.

I arrived at the Mitchell Fitness’s headquarters right at eight. The greeter from the day before welcomed me with a smile. “How’s your leg?”

“Serious road rash. Fortunately, it doesn’t hurt too badly.” I only stretched the truth a little bit. My ribs took the brunt of my fall, but I kept that to myself.

“You working with Quinn again today?”

“Yeah. I’ll be here for a few hours every morning for the next few weeks until we get all the details hammered out.”

She gave me an odd look. “You think you’re going to be able to get in shape in a few weeks?”

Realizing she didn’t know who I was outside of the “Treadmill Klutz,” I clarified. “No. I’m with Wurther Advertising,” I told her as the phone began ringing. “We’re running your new ad campaign.”

“Oh. Groovy.” She answered the phone quickly, gave the caller directions, and hung up, continuing our conversation uninterrupted. “Quinn’s upstairs if you want to head on up.”

I took the steps gingerly, the muscles in my legs protesting. Quinn greeted me at the top of the stairs. “Hey. How’re you doing today?”

I shrugged, trying not to wince at the pain that shot through my shoulder and down my arm. “Pretty good.”

So I’m a big fat liar. But I’m not a whiner. At least, not on the outside.

“Good to hear,” he said, studying me.

“You ready to get to work?”

“Sure. I took the liberty of setting up the office next to mine for your use. If there’re any office supplies you need, let my assistant Paige know. We have a wireless network.” He opened the door to the second office. While smaller and definitely more austere than my office downtown, it was certainly more than functional. And it had the added benefit that Ben-III wouldn’t wander in to annoy me.

An oak-laminate desk with matching bookcase and credenza, blue cloth office chair, and two chairs opposite the desk made up the room.

Quinn hovered in the doorway, seemingly waiting for some acknowledgment from me. “This is great, thanks.”

“Do you need anything else?”

“I have an intern who will be helping me with the member interviews later this morning. We’ll need a table near the entrance. Can we offer participants a coupon for the smoothie bar?” From my briefcase, I pulled an example I’d worked on after arriving home the night before. “In addition to influencing them to participate in the survey, it might cause them to try out the bar for the first time.”

“Win-win.” He waved the coupon. “I like this. It looks good. You work fast!”

I couldn’t help smiling at his compliment.

“What’s the best seller in the smoothie bar?”

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

“The strawberry protein shake. But my favorite is the peanut butter chocolate.”

Having Quinn’s approval for this part of the project, I sat down to finish the interview polls and the signage so that the intern, Amy, could print them at our office before heading over.

She arrived by ten, and as we set up the table near the entrance of the club, I could feel a jolt of excitement about the project.

It might make me a dork, but I really love how all the details come together to create a finished project. And I loved that I could handle those details. Which was good, because thanks to the micro-budget Ben-III gave me, I would be doing a lot of this myself.

Amy helped arrange a cloth over the table and pulled out the sign I’d designed. “Your opinion is worth
peanuts
(and chocolate or strawberries or mango). Get a 25%-off coupon for a smoothie for telling us about your Mitchell Fitness experience.”

I agreed to go through the first couple of interviews with Amy. Our first taker reminded me a lot of myself, though she was somewhat thinner. “I come to the gym because I
have
to, not because I
want
to,” she said, taking herself out of the running to be one of our “regular-sized” members who still got a lot of use out of the gym.

She’d probably feel a little differently if she was working out next to Quinn. Not that I was going to recommend that for her. A pang of jealousy twinged through me, which I had no right to feel.

I was definitely getting in over my head with him, and that was dangerous.

“Hey, we’re ordering salads from the deli down the street. You want one?” I popped my head into Katherine’s borrowed office.

Slipping a pair of dark-rimmed glasses from her face, she set them on the desk before focusing on me. She’d stuck a pencil in the thick coil of hair at the back of her head, and it jutted out at an odd angle.

“Salad?”

“You’ve heard of salad?”

“It’s the course before pasta, right?” She offered a devilish smile.

I raised an eyebrow. “In my world—your new world—it
is
the meal.”

“Right. Umm. Sure. Salad for lunch sounds great.”

Such a liar. But I fully intended to get her a salad that would change her mind about salads. “Trust me. You’ll love it. Anything you don’t like?”

“Lima beans and celery.”

“Got it.” Before I peeled away from the door, I saw her slide her glasses back on and go back to work.

So far, I was impressed. True to her word, she and her intern were causing minimal interruptions on the gym floor, and the members were filling out far more questionnaires than I’d expected. I kind of liked that she used the peanuts line in her poster after I told her it was my favorite.

A half-hour later, armed with two salads and two bottles of water, I returned to her office, plopped into the chair across from her desk, and set her lunch beside her.

Reluctantly, she pulled her attention away from her laptop screen.

“You getting a lot done?” I peeled the lid away from my salad.

She nodded around a bite of salad then took a sip of the bottled water.

“And the salad?” I asked.

“I appreciate you cutting me a break, if that’s what you mean.”

“Huh?”

She finished chewing and swallowed. “Never in my life has salad tasted so good. You’re a champ to give me the ‘normal person’ version of your health-nut meal.”