Page 5 of Revive Me

And even though I wasn’t planning on leaning on the pro athlete card to get her attention, I can’t help smirking at her accurate guess. “How badly does the physical therapist in you want to study my body to find out?”

A blink of surprise, then…

She bursts out laughing.

“I was expecting a line, butthatwas more than I could have hoped for,” she says between giggles.

I school my expression to one of affront. “Not exactly the reaction a guy wants to hear after he buys a pretty girl a drink, Liliana…”

“Technically, the bartender bought my drink,” she teases with a pointed look.

“Technically, the bartender boughtmedrinks,” I counter with a sniff.

She collapses into another fit of giggles, which is enough to make me smile. I’m still smiling like a fool as I watch her try the drink.

“Ohyum,” she says emphatically, licking her lips as she turns wide eyes to me. “That’s delicious.”

I nod at the drink. “Told you. Beckett knows how to make ’em.”

My gaze stays locked on the way her lips wrap around the straw as she sucks down more of her drink. By the time she straightens again, her glass is half empty and my jeans are a little tighter.

“So the not drinking thing…” she starts, oblivious to my staring. “That’s because of your career?”

I roughly clear my throat. “Yeah.”

“And what’s your sport?”

“MMA.”

Her mouth forms anO. “That’s a rough one.”

“It’s not that bad,” I say with a shrug.

Her eyebrows pinch together slightly. “You’ve never had a bad injury?”

I shake my head.

“Why do I have a feeling that your idea of a bad injury and mine are two very different things?”

When that only earns her a grin, she rolls her eyes playfully.

“So why MMA?” she asks. “How’d you get into it?”

“I don’t know, it just kind of happened,” I answer, twirling my glass on the bar top as I recall the memory. “A new gym opened down the street when I was sixteen, and I was curious, so I tried it out. I got addicted my first class and never stopped.”

“Which naturally leads to getting in the ring and later going pro, of course.” She nods in mock-seriousness.

“Something like that.” Chancing a hip check, I volley the question back to her. “So why physical therapy?”

She takes a lazy sip as she thinks it over. “It sounds cliché, but I just wanted to help people. Specifically, with their quality of life. I mean, working with someone to make them healthier? It’s”—she sighs happily—“everything.”

“Sounds fulfilling,” I remark honestly.

“It is,” she says with a nod. Then she lets out a loud laugh. “The fact that I come from a family of thrill-seekers who are prone to injuries probably played a part in it, too. But I’m going to say that was my secondary reason.”

That piques my interest even more. “Thrill-seekers, huh? What kind of activities are we talking about?”

She waves her hand. “Oh, you know, the usual. Skydiving, mountain biking, hiking the biggest mountains in the U.S.”

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