Page 18 of Guilty as Sin
He recognized the other jarring note only when he was halfway across the floor toward her. She wasn’t wearing earphones. Usually, a good-looking woman listened to music as she worked out.
He stopped where he was.Think.Why was that? Probably something to do with discouraging random blokes from disturbing them when all they were doing was trying to get in a gym session.
However much Lily was struggling, and however good she looked in that gear, that was what she was doing. A workout. She’d liked his help with the goats, and she’d liked that he hadn’t chatted her up too much while he’d done it. She’d liked his restraint, the same way he’d liked hers. And she wouldn’t like this.
He hated when he was sensitive. He sighed, veered away, climbed onto a rowing machine, adjusted the seat to accommodate his legs, and flipped the resistance to high.
Kelli popped up before he’d made it through two minutes, and he felt a flash of irritation that told him he’d guessed right about Lily.
“What’s on the program for today?” the trainer asked. She didn’t mention his beard. She was wearing a crop top and capris herself, both of them in black, and she absolutelywaswillowy, tall, and brunette. “How can I help?”
“I’m all good,” he said. “Lower body today.” He glanced at Lily without intending to. She’d moved on to goblet squats, clutching a single weight in her hands and… well, doing squats. A quick glance around told him that even at an off time like this, more than one bloke was watching her do them, and he wanted to tell them to… what?
He knew what. He looked back at Kelli, but she’d followed his gaze. “Well, not like that, I hope,” she said with a laugh. “I hope you’re lifting something a little heavier. Women who don’t work out for three months and then think they’ll get results in one day, and using five-pound weights?”
He didn’t say anything, just kept rowing, and after a minute, she glanced at him sidelong and said, “You think that’s too honest. But helping somebody who’s worked hard to get himself in shape and keep himself there is a whole lot more satisfying than what I usually end up doing, which is to help somebody set up a program they won’t follow. Trainers are attracted to self-discipline. It’s why we got into it, after all. But I shouldn’t say it, you’re thinking.”
“No,” he said. “But we all have our moments.”
“Right,” she said. “If you’re all good, then, I’ll go earn my money helping people set up programs they won’t follow.”
Which was all fine. He watched her stop to talk to Lily, watched Lily shake her off, and thought something like,I knew you had it in you.Which was an odd reaction. Getting training from an expert was a good thing. Training was how you improved, how you kept yourself from getting complacent. Was it actually that he didn’t want anybody, male or female, talking to Lily?
He needed a trip to the pub, that was what it was. An evening at the Glacier Point Bar & Grill, leaning against the mahogany bar with a foot on the rail and a bottle in his hand, buying a pretty girl a drink or two and seeing what she thought of his accent. Flirting, and maybe more. Moving on. He’d thought he’d never be ready again, but clearly, he was.
He should do that, yeah. He kept rowing, watched Lily rack her weights like she knew what she was doing, no matter what Kelli had said, then stretch out without a bit of self-consciousness, palms on the floor, knees pedaling, and glorious bum in the air. After that, he watched as she stood, turned, and her eyes met his.
And then he watched her turn and leave.
Well, bugger.
You are not here to get laid.Maybe if Paige said it ten times fast, she’d believe it.
You are Lily.That one made it through. She took a quick shower, did the bare minimum on the makeup, changed back into the too-fancy dress, spent ten more minutes getting an agonizingly-slowly-prepared smoothie from the juice bar, and headed back to the shop drinking it. She’d still be hungry, but the whole day had rattled her enough that she’d needed to spend her lunch hour—which wasn’t actually an hour—in territory more familiar.
When she stepped back into the store, she found a man there. And not the man she’d been thinking about.
Shopping for the trophy wife,she thought immediately, then checked in with her impressions to see why. It wasn’t that the wife was there. Hailey was at the other side of the store helping a lean, anxious-looking woman pick out underwear, and that woman wasn’t this man’s wife, girlfriend, or anything else.
Why?Because he’d never have an anxious-looking wife. The body language saidrelaxed.It saidrich.It saidnever got into a situation I couldn’t handle.
She kind of hated him already.
He turned, looked at her, smiled, and lifted the item on its hanger without a bit of self-consciousness. One of the camisole-and-boy-thong combos she’d been tagging earlier, which Hailey must have put on display. The white version.
“I always like white best,” he said conversationally. “What does that say about me, do you think?”
He had some white himself. Silver, to be exact, at the temples of his perfectly cut dark hair. He wasn’t quite dressed for Sinful, either. No plaid, no camo, and no denim. He was wearing black dress trousers that, even without a Lily-eye, Paige could guess had cost some money, and a white-on-white striped dress shirt that ditto. No tie, but only because he was too stylish for a tie. She’d bet he had a black jacket in his car, and that he’d spent more on the whole outfit than she had on her spa vacation.Includingall the waxing.
He hung the lingerie up again before turning toward her again, and she checked his pockets out of habit. Wallet in the back and nothing else, or it would have been obvious. “Dockers” wasn’t a word that had ever crossed this guy’s lips, and neither had “a little more room in the seat and thigh.”
She eyed him, eyed Hailey, still talking to her customer, and said, “I don’t know. What do you think?” Which sounded hostile, but shefelthostile.
“That I prefer my romance on the innocent side?” he said, then laughed, and she bristled. He must have seen it, because he said, “That sounded terrible. That I like to ease into it, maybe. That a little shyness can be sexy.”
“Spoken like every man with an eye for an eighteen-year-old,” she said, and saw his eyes widen. Way too bitchy, and something Lily would never have said, but she couldn’t quite manage “Lily” at this moment.
He put up a hand palm-out and smiled, a rueful thing with too much good humor in it. “I come in peace. I guess there’s no way to talk about lingerie preferences without sounding at least a little creepy, so let’s just say I was waiting for you and passing the time by looking around. Would it help if I bought something?”
