Mixing Business...With Baby

It took a moment for her stunned double take to announce that she’d recognized him. He pasted a grin on his face, offered a cheery wave. Even though she was at least fifty feet away, he saw her brows furrow in a suspicious frown.

Initially he’d planned to jog alongside her, try to engage her in conversation. The look in her eye made him rethink that option. Instead, he simply called out, “Nice day for a workout, isn’t it?”

She simply stared at him.

Rick felt his jaw slacken. He’d never in his life had to work so hard to win a woman’s interest. Nor had he ever been so determined to do so.

Clearly she was not approachable at the moment, so Rick decided to carry his charade a bit further by emulating the warm-up exercises he’d just watched her perform. Placing his hands on his hips, he twisted his upper body several times. A glance out of the corner of his eye confirmed that she was watching him. Emboldened, he flashed another of his winning smiles, then stretched out one leg as she’d done, and flung his torso forward, planning to touch his forehead to his knee.

Something popped in back.

His spine went numb. He could no longer feel the outstretched leg, and the one on which he was supporting his weight began to quiver madly.

The horror of his situation dawned on him a fraction of a second before he toppled sideways into a clumsy heap. The moment he hit the ground, his left calf went into spasms. He let out a howl, grabbed his leg, and writhed like a clumsy snake, oblivious to the startled stares of passersby.

By the time he’d kneaded the knots out of his muscles, the path beside the forest-green park bench was empty. Catrina was gone.

Rick limped back to the office, daunted but determined. Whether Catrina Jordan realized it or not, she’d thrown down a gauntlet of challenge.

Pain shot from his lower back to his shoulder blades. Rick sucked a breath, listening to the shower sounds emanating from the women’s locker room. He’d guessed that she’d use the health club on the top floor of their office building to change clothes and shower after her lunchtime jog, and the familiar battered duffel left on one of the workout benches confirmed his assumption.

He also presumed that she had witnessed his clumsy tumble in the park and had no doubt been mightily amused by it. Ego wouldn’t allow him to let her believe that he was inept enough to have actually hurt himself, so he’d dragged himself up here to put on yet another show of machismo.

She would no doubt appreciate the effort. Women always appreciated a cunning display of male physical prowess. And Rick appreciated their appreciation. Even if it was undeserved.

Slowly, painfully, he lowered himself onto a weight bench, which supported his torso as he planted his feet on the floor. A tubular rack above his head held an iron bar affixed to a set of iron discs. The past ten years had not been the most athletic of his life, but in college Rick could bench press one hundred pounds without breaking a sweat, so it didn’t occur to him to double-check the weight of the unit. Besides, he didn’t want to move again until he absolutely had to. A lack of routine exercise was revealed in the tremor of his strained muscles.

He was already panting like a whipped dog, his back was killing him, but the sound of running water in the women’s locker room had just been replaced by the whir of a hair dryer so it was nearly show time.

He sucked a breath, curled his fingers around the bar over his head and waited.

Within a matter of minutes, Catrina emerged from the locker room wearing street clothes, and carrying her jogging ensemble under her arm. He noticed that her ruined nylons had been removed, leaving her legs bare and pale and exquisitely attractive.

She didn’t spare him a glance. Instead she stuffed her sweatsuit into the open duffel, grabbed her worn-out shoes from beneath the bench and tied them to the bag handle.

She was clearly preoccupied. Her lips pursed in a sensual pout, her pale brows puckered with appealing concentration. Her skin was slightly flushed from the shower, a pink glow from cheek to jaw that imparted an appealing radiance to her creamy complexion.

Rick thought she was just about the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life.

He cleared his throat. “Hello, again.”

She spun around, touched her throat in a gesture of vulnerability that he found strangely enticing.

“Our paths just keep crossing.” He flexed his fingers around the weight bar, fought a grimace as his back issued a protest. “Uncanny, isn’t it?”

Tilting her head, she regarded him. “Yes, uncanny.”

“I would have joined you at the park, but I didn’t want you to feel bad if you couldn’t keep up.”

She smiled then, a brief flutter of lips that was absolutely devastating. “I’m sure you would have left me in the dust. Presuming, of course, you had stayed on your feet in the first place.”

Well, at least she’d been watching him. He took some small consolation in that. “A minor mishap. Have you never gotten a pebble in your shoe?”

“A pebble?”

“Sharp little devil. Poked itself right into my instep. You know how it goes.”

A flash of tooth scraped her lower lip, as if she was biting back a smile. “Of course.”

“So other than jogging, what else do you do to buff up?”

“‘Buff up’?”

“You know, tone the old quads, beef up the biceps.”

“Oh. Well, I enjoy tennis. Or I used to. There’s little time for it any more.”

A clue. He pounced on it. “This is truly amazing. Tennis is absolutely my game.” Grab a ball, hit it with a racket. How hard could it be? “Maybe we could share a court some time.”

“Maybe.”

She was softening, he could see it in her eyes. “You ought to try working with the weights, too. It’s great for the cardiovascular system.” To prove the point, he hoisted the bar with a macho grunt and felt something give at the base of his spine. His arms collapsed like wet noodles, and the bar came down on his chest, pushing the air out of his lungs with a humiliating whoosh.

Catrina widened her eyes. “Are you all right?”

He opened his mouth, sucked a wheezing breath. “I meant…” a peculiar hiss emanating from somewhere deep inside “…to do that.”

She blinked. “Why?”

It took a few seconds before he could speak again. “Lower weights—” he wheezed “—then lift them.” He wheezed again. “That’s how…it works.”

“I see,” she murmured, clearly unconvinced. “Well, I’ll leave you to your workout.”

Rick smiled, managed a painful nod. “If you see Frank Glasgow, could you…send him up?”

“Of course.” She glanced once more in his direction, then scooped up her duffel and left.

After what seemed a small eternity, Frank poked his head into the gym. “What can I do for you?”

“You can get this…damned thing off.” Rick gritted his teeth. “Then drive me to the hospital…I think I broke a rib.”

“I tell you, Gracie, it’s absolutely eerie. Every time I turn around, there he is. And he’s sending me presents.”

“Presents?” Gracie’s eyes popped. “You mean like diamonds and perfume and furs?”

“Well, no.” Catrina cleared her throat, glanced away. “Er, a case of panty hose.” Expensive panty hose, attached to a dozen colorful helium-filled balloons and shuttled to her apartment door by a uniformed courier who was most unhappy when she refused to accept the delivery.

Gracie blinked rapidly. “Oh, my, that does sound a bit personal.”