Page 26 of Homecoming Heartbreaker

Mack jerked his head to where a large tree stump sat in the middle of the lawn, decorated with a weathered copper birdbath. “What happened to the oak tree?”

“Big storm six months ago. The trunk cracked and it was deemed to be a safety hazard so we had to cut it down. And stop changing the subject...what do you do for exercise?”

“Yoga.”

Molly wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. Mack and his brothers were men’s men, guys who relished close-contact sports. The nittier, grittier and dirtier, the better.

She could not imagine Mack Holloway twisting himself into a human pretzel.

“Yoga? Gentle stretching resulted in those muscles? No way!”

“I do advanced Bikram Yoga. It’s intense and we practice in a hot room. It’s physically demanding. Bikram Yoga is what I do religiously.”

“And what do you do nonreligiously?” Molly asked as they approached the back door to Moonlight Ridge.

Molly wasn’t looking forward to trudging up all those narrow steps with her arms full of heavy ledgers.

“I also practice Krav Maga,” Mack admitted.

Now that made sense. And typical Mack, he wasn’t one to settle for a judo or karate class; he had to attempt to master the hardest self-defense discipline in the world.

“You’re nuts.”

“It’s been said before,” Mack said, resting his box on his knee to push open the door to let her enter the inn. “You’re still in pretty good shape yourself...how do you stay so slim?” She was happy he’d noticed. But only because she wanted him to appreciate what he’d never lay hands on again.

Well, that was the plan but her body, and libido, had different ideas. It had been a long time since she’d had a man’s hands on her, an awfully long time since Mack had seen her naked.

He’d been good at sex back then; she had no doubt that he’d be brilliant at it now.

Molly cursed herself as she stepped into the inn and immediately turned right to hit the stairs. She was not going to sleep with Mack...

Absolutely, categorically, definitely...

Maybe.

Arrgh!

“You didn’t answer my question, Mol,” Mack said from behind her.

Ah, what had he asked? Oh, what she did to keep in shape. She looked around and shrugged. “I run up and down these steps a hundred times a day.”

She resumed her climb up the familiar staircase, each crack and knot a familiar friend.

“You don’t dance anymore?”

Molly immediately stiffened. She’d been waiting for him to broach the subject of her dancing, the other great passion of her teenage life.

God, everything changed after that hot, sexy summer.

“I left ballet behind a long time ago,” Molly stated, her voice barely above a whisper. And God, how she missed it. She’d been, over the years, so tempted to pull on her tights and ballet pointes, wanting to do grand jetés or to pirouette across a studio.

But she’d been warned that her knee was too weak for her to return to classical ballet so she assuaged her need for dance by joining modern dance, tap and hip-hop dance classes.

For someone who could once make her body fly, not being able to do grand jetés and grand adages was torture.

“Why?”

Molly stopped her climb and leaned her back against the cool white wall behind her. “I tore the anterior cruciate ligament in my knee. And when I say tore, I mean I ripped it to shreds.”

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