With the perfectly reasonable amount of space between his shoulders and mine, it felt almost as if he were slowly winding a string. The string, in my mind’s eye, was invisible to anyone but me, which meant I couldn’t sever it, couldn’t apply any boundaries to the way that my body wanted to sway gently in his direction.
“You post about the open positions?” he asked. The clear subject change had me breathing just a little easier.
“Yeah. I’ve already gotten a few applicants.” I brought the schedule back up so he could see. “But unless someone gets sick, we’re good with this until Kelly can come back.”
As Aiden glanced at the schedule that I’d pulled up on the computer, I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath.
If I could manage one entire day without doing something stupid, I’d feel like it was something I could get control of. If only my imagination would cooperate. For a virgin, my imagination was very, very good.
When I opened my eyes, he was squinting at the screen, and it made me smile. He noticed.
“I can’t see these tiny numbers,” he muttered, leaning over my shoulder.
“Me neither,” I admitted.
“Molly Ward,” he said quietly, his finger tapped the screen for the training session I’d popped into the calendar. His arm brushed against mine as it did. “Relation or coincidence?”
“My oldest sister.” I gave him a sideways glance. “She paid, if you’re wondering.”
“I wasn’t.” He moved away from the desk, and I found myself losing a bit of that closely-held tension. “You make your sister pay, huh?”
I exhaled a laugh. “She can afford it.”
Aiden stared out into the parking lot, but I couldn’t tell if he was going to say anything else by the way he held himself.
“My brothers think they should be able to work out for free,” he said. “I thought about being nice and saying yes.”
My attention stayed on the computer screen as I tried to decipher what he was trying to get from me. Small talk was not something we’d mastered. Which made my fantasy life even worse, the more I thought about it. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to know about him. I did. But it was so obvious that the more I knew of Aiden, the more I’d want him.
But this tenuous thing we were doing by walking a strange tightrope of tension couldn’t continue.
Finally, I glanced at him. “Depends on how many brothers you have.”
“Too many.”
His dry answer had me smiling. His brows dropped, like my reaction confused him.
“Did Amy ever look into getting a key scan set up on the door?” he asked.
At the change in topic, my eyebrows lifted. “A couple of years ago. At the time, we couldn’t swing it.”
“Okay.” He glanced at a big black watch on his wrist, and I had to fight not to allow my eyes to trace along the veins that mapped his forearm. I wanted to lick them like they were candy. “I have to go pick up Anya from my brother’s. Your sister is here after open hours are done, right?”
I nodded.
He gave me a pointed look. “Lock that front door.”
“Will do,” I answered quietly.
It would have been easy to dismiss him or tell him that I would be fine if I was here with Molly. That I’d be fine even if I was here alone. It would have been easy to take his words for something deeper than face value, like they were meant for me alone, but the hard truth was that he would’ve said it to Kelly or Emily. He would’ve told our male trainers that too. My heart wanted to soak up his words and let them bring life to the rest of my body, but my pride slammed the wall shut. Because that would help nothing.
While he gathered his stuff from his office, I kept myself busy. One of our members flagged me down, needing help with his form, so I wasn’t even watching when Aiden left for the day. By the time the open gym hours concluded and the last person left, the late summer sun was still bright in the sky. Because the glass front of the gym faced west, it was my favorite time to do work in view of the windows. While I waited for Molly to arrive, I sat on the floor with my back braced against the front desk and started scrawling out ideas for the self-defense class.
Immersed in those ideas, which I’d been thinking about for months before Aiden ever took ownership, I didn’t even notice Molly’s car pull in. It wasn’t until she pulled open the front door and shouted, “I’m so sorry I’m late.”
I jumped, hand slapping my chest. “Holy shit, Molly.”
She eyed me. “Didn’t you see me peel into the parking lot?”
“Apparently not.” I tossed my notebook aside and stood.
Her hair was tumbling out of a ponytail, her chest already glistened with sweat, and I tilted my head to the side as I studied her workout tank. “Is your shirt on backward?”
She glanced down. “Ummm …”
“Oh, my word. That’s why you’re late?”
Molly laughed.
“You know what I keep thinking?”
“What?”
“You’re not even newlyweds, and you and Noah are already nauseating. What’s it going to be like when you’re actually married?”
She blew out a hard breath. “Please. We’re basically having our honeymoon before the wedding. He was all worked up after training camp today, so … ” She shrugged. “Gotta get that tension out somehow, you know?”
Nope, sure didn’t.
“Honestly, I don’t want to think about you and Noah and the kind of activities you get to have right now.”
Molly laughed again, sitting on the bench in front of the window as she tugged on her workout shoes. While she wasn’t looking, I studied my older sister. Made me wonder about how it must feel to have someone in your life like that.
And because I was me … I didn’t ask.
“Where are we starting first?” she asked.
I blinked. “Umm, I have some bodyweight exercises mapped out. Arm day today.”
“Oh, goody,” she muttered.
While she made her way over to where the ropes and bands were laid out on the rubberized floor, I cued up some music.
We worked our way through a few things, and like I usually did, I worked out alongside her.
Molly and I were shoulder to shoulder, passing a medicine ball back and forth after twisting to the side, when I asked a question that later, I’d really, really wish I hadn’t asked.
“You get all your RSVPs back?”
With a twist, I handed the black ball to her, and she mirrored my movement with a grimace. My quads were burning as I held the squat and waited for her to give it back. But when she turned back toward me, I caught a look … just a glimpse of discomfort.
“What?” I asked. I took the ball and twisted again.
When it was in Molly’s hands, I stood. She did the same, setting the ball down at her feet.
“Nothing.”
But she didn’t make eye contact when she said it.
“Molly.”
“Isabel.”
“You had a look, and don’t even pretend you didn’t. Is Noah still on that let’s invite the entire team kick?”
She exhaled a laugh. “No. Too many guys travel during the bye week anyway.” Molly paused, her eyes finally locking on mine. “But we did end up sending out a last-minute invite this week. And … and I don’t think you’re going to understand why.”