Page 34 of Covert Affairs

His fingers flew over the keyboard and a picture of a muscle-bound guy popped onto her screen.

“Why do I have to do three sets of fifteen reps?” She gave a painful sigh. “Please just kill me now. Not only do I not know what the exercises are, I’ll die trying to do them. I’m going to be so embarrassed.”

One of those infamous grunts. “You don’t seem the type to give a flying fig about what someone thinks of you.”

“You’re right.” She sat up straighter and tossed the paper aside. “Who cares if he’s a SEAL and his body alone makes me look like a runt? Who cares that I’m skinny and out of shape? I’ll play to his male ego, the helpless damsel in distress who doesn’t know the names of the exercises or how to do them.”

Silence from Rory’s desk.

She sank her head into her hands and made a hiccupping noise that might pass for a sob if she was lucky. “Who am I kidding? He’s going to laugh at me! He’s going to tease me endlessly about this!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she heard him growl. “Are you going to work or sit there and whine the whole time?”

“You don’t understand.” She shot to her feet and glared across the room at him. “You’re a man. Even in that wheelchair, I bet you have women fawning all over you. I’ve built my reputation on never showing weakness, never letting anyone, not even Ian, see me unsure or uncomfortable.” Shaking her head, she shut off the monitor. “Forget it. I’m out of here. I can’t focus when I know I have to face him and those stupid weight machines in”—she glanced at her watch. Technically Ian’s that she’d stolen—“forty-five minutes.”

She got to the elevator, hit the button. The doors slid open and she stepped inside, wiping at a pretend tear. The doors were two inches from closing when he called out, “Wait up.”

A heartbeat later, the IT guy was inside with her. “What are you doing?” she asked when he punched the button for the basement.

“I’m going to walk you through each of those exercises so your superior image isn’t shot to hell and then you’re going to get your ass back in that seat and check those numbers,capisce?”

She had to roll her bottom lip in to keep from grinning. He would be able to see it in the mirrored paneling. Squeezing her eyes shut as if holding back her tears, she leaned down and threw her arms around him. “Thank you! I owe you big time.”

He peeled her off. “No emotional displays, Greene.”

“Right.” She straightened and tugged on the hem of her blouse, relieved to be able to stop acting.

In the gym, he did as promised and showed her how to use the equipment. She even coaxed him out of his chair at one point to demonstrate how to use something he called a jacked-up rack. He wasn’t stable without his crutches, but he was strong and managed to hobble-walk from that machine to the rowing machine.

Once they’d exhausted the list and both of them were sweating, she went to the locker room and grabbed towels. “I can’t thank you enough.” After tossing one at him, she hitched her thumb over her shoulder as she ran the freshly washed material over her stubby hair. “Mind if I shoot a few hoops before I go back upstairs?”

He gave her a suspicious glance. “You play?”

“Not exactly.” She dropped the towel into a nearby laundry bin. “I discovered a long time ago that I needed a way to decompress between patients. Sinking a ball into a basket kept me focused by using a different part of my brain.” She hopped on one foot and pretended to do just that. “Eye-hand coordination, you know?”

“Your form sucks.”

“I suppose you can do better?” She purposely eyed the chair. A challenge.

He whirled it in a circle. She’d seen him do that once or twice before. It seemed to help him think, like tapping a pen or rocking back and forth in her chair, did for her. “With my hands tied. Let’s see what you got, Doc.”

Now she was in trouble. She’d never played nor had she done anything more than pitch wadded up paper into a trash can. She always missed. “Lead the way.”

There were only a few other employees working out, some using treadmills or the track. One doing calisthenics.

That man hung upside down from a bar. “Yo, Shady.” He grunted as he curled up. He had a faint British accent. “You back at it?”

“Just teaching this newbie how to sink a ball,” Rory replied.

“You’re the new shrink,” the man said, eyeing Vivi upside down. “Parker said you’re a ball buster.”

She detested the term ‘shrink,’ but she suddenly liked Parker even more. “And you are?”

He hauled his sweating carcass off the bar and landed smoothly on his feet. “Name’s Moe, but I go by Henley, and no, I don’t need you poking around in my meatball.” He pointed to his head.

“Not much to poke, I imagine,” she replied under her breath to Rory, but loud enough that Henley heard.

He chuckled. “There’s that ball busting. You’ll get along all right here, shrink.”

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