A breathlessness took over that had nothing to do with sprinting and everything to do with thoughts of their secret nightly rendezvous.
This had become their life in Rickety Rock.
They’d fallen into it like puzzle pieces clicking into place.
Augie would arrive at dawn, and he and Raz would spend six hours in the gym training hard. They followed a strict schedule. Augie had arranged for sparring partners to come to the house, and the trainer kept Raz on his toes with drills and weight training sessions. She and Sebastian didn’t rise quite as early, but they’d take their breakfast outside onto the porch where they could watch and listen in on the training sessions.
And Buddha, help her. Gobbling down cereal next to her favorite almost seven-year-old while watching a shirtless Erasmus Cress move with raw power, his muscles slick with sweat and glistening in the morning light, was one cosmically sensational way to start the day.
Putting aside the fact that the man was truly a thick slice of hotness, her beefcake was athletic poetry in motion.
His focus and dogged determination were visible with every punch, every rotation of the jump rope, and each clang and bang of weights. Sounds that once made her want to bang the living daylights out of her gong now signified the man’s resolve to win.
But that didn’t mean she’d become professional boxing’s biggest fan.
She still didn’t like the idea of fighting and certainly didn’t condone gambling as a pastime, but she viewed the sport differently now. With Sebastian explaining the maneuvers and breaking down the intricacies of the combinations, what once looked like a pair of men begging for brain damage had become a technical dance—a choreographed combat that required as much mental strength as physical prowess.
But her pint-sized partner in Pun-chi yoga wasn’t always by her side. Sebastian attended the Bergen Summer Adventure Day Camp twenty minutes away in Aspen with Phoebe and Oscar during the weekdays. The trio were as thick as thieves, laughing and chatting as they waited to be picked up each day. And that led to another part of her day that put a smile on her face. There was nothing like watching the boy spot her in a crowd of parents, grin that sweet toothy grin, then run toward her, arms wide open, ready for a hug.
But she wasn’t only the nanny.
She wore two hats in this household.
The frilly-sounding position of spiritual advisor Briggs had invented had morphed into the role of Pun-chi yoga coach.
And these sessions were no joke.
Augie had scheduled an hour a day of the budding practice, and she wasn’t about to let him or Raz down. What had started as a game with Sebastian had become an offshoot of traditional yoga that literally and figuratively packed a punch. The practice fostered balance, core strength, and endurance, and she challenged Raz every day, training him to use his breath to channel his focus.
And he did.
He not only followed her instructions, but he also suggested punches for different yoga poses. On the surface, yoga and boxing appeared to be two diametrically opposed types of exercise.
But they weren’t.
Not anymore—not with the two of them collaborating.
She’d lead him through a yoga flow, and Raz would suggest boxing elements.
This balanced approach had ushered in a balance within her—a centering of her chi that she welcomed like a long-lost friend.
Was it simply a tweak to her usual yoga regimen that had stabilized her life force, or was it something else?
Could it have been the power of three, the harmonious trifecta of energy created between herself, Raz, and Sebastian, that evened out her life force?
Or could it be the man who gazed into her eyes and spoke the words that set her body aflame?
You’re mine.
With that statement, he’d stripped her soul bare and touched her heart, but the proclamation came with an unspoken caveat.
She would be his…until she wasn’t.
Their stint in Rickety Rock would end in a matter of weeks.
What did the future hold for two self-professed loners in love?
She didn’t have a clue.
All she had was this time in this place, and she wasn’t about to waste a single second worrying. There would be plenty of time for that later. Luckily, their days were jam-packed, rarely giving her time to dwell when the questions arose in her consciousness.
And speaking of jam-packed days, the training didn’t stop after their midday Pun-chi yoga session.
There was no time to lounge around after lunch.
That time was donkey time.
Maud and Wobbly Bob had shown them the pack burro racing ropes. Never in her life had she pictured herself jogging alongside a donkey. But now, she couldn’t imagine hitting the trail without her sweet Plum. Sebastian was right. Donkeys were remarkably smart, undeniably affectionate, and exceptionally fast when they wanted to be. She and Plum had clocked a seven-minute mile—and they’d done it running uphill.
But it wasn’t always an effortless walk in the park—or run on the trail, for that matter. Bob was on the mark with his “the donkey knows” words of wisdom.
The donkey really did know when it wanted to move, and it also knew when it didn’t. But Plum, with her gray face and a fondness for chasing butterflies and Beefcake with his occasional bouts of passing foul-smelling gas, had brayed their way into their hearts.
Yes, even Raz’s beastly boxer heart had opened to the animals.
Similar to the Pun-chi yoga sessions, Augie had worked the donkey runs into Raz’s training schedule, and truth be told, this had become one of her favorite parts of the day. Raz and Beefcake shared an alpha energy like no other, and the banter between the beefcakes had her in stitches. Of course, Beefcake couldn’t speak, but his grunts and whinnies communicated his bullheaded nature. These two loved to go at each other, which had educated her in the wide world of British insults, thanks to Raz’s colorful language.
She cleared her throat as she formulated a zinger. “What do you say, my sweet bird?” she sang in her best British accent. “Ready to splash out and show these plonkers what a proper burro racer looks like?”
“Nice one, Mibby!” Sebastian called, glancing over his shoulder.
Here’s the thing.
She might be all about love and light ninety-nine percent of the time, but a part of her lit up when faced with a challenge. Not to mention, it was great fun to toss around the saucy British barbs.
The Brits could really craft an insult.
“Don’t exert yourself too much, Mibby,” Raz chided, going big bad boxer. “You’ve got to save some energy for our noisy yoga session tonight. You know how demanding the practice can be.”
Her cheeks, already warm from running, now burned.
Yep, it didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. Noisy yoga was the codeword for knocking boots.
If the daylight hours were for training time, the night was for like cures like benchmark maintenance, otherwise known as hot and dirty, noisy yoga.
Forget about red rooms with whips. They had nothing on the delights of crow figurines and shades of blue and violet.
It was safe to say that her O was back. And little Miss O had returned with a vengeance.
Now, the gal who’d fallen prey to an O hiatus was living on the apex of ecstasy and banging out Os almost as fast as Erasmus Cress could knock out a set of one-handed push-ups.
But fantasizing about what Raz had up his sleeve for tonight’s noisy yoga sesh wouldn’t get her through this training run. She lengthened her stride and sized up her beefcake.