Of course she was. She had to be. If she wanted a permanent position at Lennox Investments she had to work twice as hard as anyone else because her dad owned it. And she did want a permanent position. She hadn’t worked her butt off at Stanford for nothing.
“I’m behind,” she said. “It’s no big deal.”
“Okay, okay. Fine. But if that man in there is as hot as the girls in HR were saying, you might be finding your own way home, know what I mean?”
Tamara rolled her eyes. That was pretty much a given when going out with Rose. “So why did you drag me down here then?”
“Hey, I’m thinking of you, too, okay? Maybe the dude’s got a friend or something.”
“I have a boyfriend already, Rose. I don’t know how many times I’ve told you that.”
“What? That guy in New York? Whom we’ve never even seen?”
“Yes. That guy in New York.” Tamara tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice. It wasn’t the first time she’d had this conversation with Rose. “And you’ve never seen him because he’s in New York.”
Rose waved a hand. “Whatever. Just trying to help a girl out.” She turned and started heading toward the doorway.
Tamara shook her head and followed Rose inside the building, stepping into the hallway.
It was just about as rundown as the exterior, narrow and dark, the floorboards dented and dirty. There was also a smell, of sweat and unwashed towels, and something else unpleasant Tamara couldn’t identify. She wrinkled her nose at it. Why the hell couldn’t Rose have found a hot guy giving self-defense classes somewhere else? Like at one of the cleaner, brighter gyms in her area? Why did it have to be in one of Detroit’s meaner neighborhoods?
Rose pushed open a door that read GYM and Tamara let out a silent sigh of relief.
Light flooded a massive open space with concrete block walls and some exercise machines scattered around. There were a couple of punching bags hanging from the high ceiling and a boxing ring down one end, a water cooler and a bank of shelves with various different exercise gear stored on it standing near a wall.
Well, it wasn’t at all like the polished, boutique gyms she was used to, and that sweaty, musty smell was still hanging around distastefully, but at least there was light.
Tamara looked around, hoping to find a chair or a bench or at least something to sit down on where she could wait.
Alas, there was nothing but the bare, dirty wooden floor.
A group of around ten women were already gathered in a circle near the ring, their eyes fixed on the man standing in the middle of the group, who turned as Rose and Tamara entered.
“Holy shit,” Rose breathed. “The HR girls weren’t kidding.”
Eyes the color of polished steel swept them a glance, sharp as a sword blade. “You here for the self-defense class?” The man’s voice was husky, gritty like fine sand, a kind of energy running through it. Like Detroit itself, always moving, changing. Full of punchy vitality and a stubborn determination.
And for some reason it made Tamara’s breath catch.
“Uh, yeah.” Rose was already walking forward, dumping her purse near the shelves. “Sorry about that. Traffic was a nightmare.”
Tamara couldn’t stop staring at the instructor. God, he was beautiful. His face was all perfect lines, straight nose and hard jaw, high cheekbones, a long, gorgeous mouth. And yet marring all that perfection were the stitches through one dark, winged eyebrow, the bruise along one side of that classical jawline. A half-healed cut marring the perfect shape of his lower lip.
A shiver brushed over her skin, though she couldn’t fathom why. Since when had she ever gotten off on scars?
The women shifted around him, an unfocused blur as the circle parted and he came toward them, moving with the lethal, fluid grace of a leopard.
Her heart began to pick up speed.
There was something about him, as if the restless energy in his voice moved along the surface of his skin, too. A barely leashed violence that pulsed in the air around him like electricity from a live wire. He almost crackled with it.
That, combined with the marks on his face, made him . . . disturbing in a way she didn’t quite understand. She found herself rooted to the spot as he came closer, his strange, glittering silver gaze catching hers, a blade running straight through her.
This is what you’ve been searching for. What you didn’t even realize you wanted.
The thought registered dimly in her brain, a strange fear gathering in the pit of her stomach.
Weird. Why would she have been searching for him? She didn’t even know the guy. And besides, how could a man in a tight-fitting, faded black tee and black sweatpants be threatening?
Yet . . . somehow, he was. Projecting violence and darkness and danger like a storm front, switching something primitive in her brain into fight-or-flight mode.
She held the strap of her purse in a death grip.
He stopped abruptly in front of them and when his gaze switched from her to Rose, it felt like she’d been released from heavy chains.
“Traffic?” he demanded. “At this time of night?”
Rose, who was never cowed, blinked. “Um . . . Yeah.”
“Bullshit. For future reference, if you’re gonna be late, I don’t wanna see you. Understand me?”
Rose all but shuffled her feet like a teenager. “Sorry. I didn’t—”
“What’s your name?”
“Rose.”
“Rose, I’m Ezekiel West. You can call me Zee. Now get your ass in the circle.”
Without a single protest, Rose did as she was told. Which was unheard of, if you knew Rose.
Zee switched his gaze back to Tamara and again the air seemed to thin around her, the ground unsteady under her feet. “What about you?” He swept a look down her body, his cut lip curling as he took in her preppy jeans and T-shirt. “You here for the class or what?”
“No,” Tamara said carefully, forcing her voice to work. “I’m just waiting for my friend.”
His gaze came back to hers. And for a moment it felt like he could see right inside her. Right down to her bones, to her soul.
It made the fear turn over inside her, panic closing long fingers around her throat.
What the hell? He can’t see inside you, idiot. Pull yourself together.
What was wrong with her? This guy was seriously freaking her out for some reason she didn’t understand, and she did not appreciate it one bit.
“Uh-huh.” He was still staring at her, the electricity radiating from him, crackling over her skin. Burning right through her clothes. Holy crap . . . “No one comes into my gym to do nothing,” he said flatly. “Either you get involved or you get out.”
Arrogant bastard. She was used to arrogance from Robert’s friends, or from some of the people in the social circles her family moved in. But certainly not from some guy in sweatpants with bruises all over his face, in a shitty part of town.
Still, it wouldn’t do to be rude. A Lennox was never rude.
“I’m sorry,” she said coolly, “but I’m not dressed for the class. And I’m certainly not waiting outside in the dark.”
He continued to stare, the sheer intensity of his focus unnerving.
Resisting the urge to lick her dry lips, she tried a polite smile instead. “Do you have anywhere I can sit?”
He said nothing for what seemed like a very long time. Then, with an abruptness that was only just short of rude, he turned away. “Nothing but the ground, pretty girl,” he said carelessly over his shoulder.
It was not a compliment, that much she knew.
Tamara gritted her teeth and looked around for somewhere that maybe had less dirt on it than where she was standing. There wasn’t anywhere.
So she sat gingerly on the floorboards, her back against the concrete wall, her purse held tight to her side. Her heart still beating hard and fast.
Crazy. This was crazy. It just made no sense at all.
She’d never met
a man—anyone—she’d had such an instant and strong reaction to, and why it was this guy was causing her such a chemical imbalance she had no idea. For God’s sake, Robert was just as good-looking yet she’d never even felt that way about him. And he was her damn boyfriend.
The concrete was rough against her back, no doubt snagging on the fine cashmere of her tee, but Tamara ignored it as she got her phone out of her purse and began going through her e-mails.
Another one from her mother, long and full of the usual boring society gossip.
Zee’s husky, gritty voice drifted in the big empty space of the gym and Tamara couldn’t help herself, looking up from her phone screen to see what was going on.
He was demonstrating some move or other, at first fast and fluid, then slowing it right down so the women could see each separate movement.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him. It was as if he’d taken that restless, violent energy and channeled it into a series of precise shifts of his body. A hold. A pivot. A kick. A turn. All of it measured and controlled. All of it powerful.
He must be a professional fighter. Martial arts or whatever.
God, she shouldn’t have been looking. She’d always abhorred violence and she was inclined to go with her instincts on this one. If her gut said the guy was bad news, he probably was. And boy was this one bad news.
Yet she still didn’t look away. Couldn’t.
His T-shirt was starting to stick to his body in the heat of the gym, outlining the hard, cut muscles beneath. Broad shoulders and narrow hips, his skin tanned and smooth and . . . inked. There were what looked like flames extending from under the sleeve of his tee, licking around the powerful muscles of his right upper arm. On his left the coils of what looked to be a serpent.
Well, of course he had tattoos. Didn’t all professional fighters have them? They weren’t her thing at all, so why she was staring at them?
Zee had stopped in the middle of the circle, still talking, running an absent hand over black hair shorn close to his skull. The women were clearly all enthralled, including Rose, who didn’t even glance in Tamara’s direction.
Tamara wrenched her gaze away and concentrated her attention on her phone.
No. No more looking. She had work to do and she wasn’t going to be distracted.
An interminable time later, the buzz of chatter rose and when she glanced up, she saw the group of women were starting to break up. A few of them were gathered around Zee and the looks on their faces were openly avid. Rose—unsurprisingly—was one of them. The rest had drifted over to the pile of purses near the water cooler, talking among themselves as they started gathering up their belongings.
Tamara got to her feet, brushing off the dust and hoping there were no permanent stains on her jeans. Her butt was numb from sitting on the floor and quite frankly she couldn’t wait to get back to her downtown apartment and finish the spreadsheet she’d been working on, then get started on the presentation Scott, her asshole boss, had told her to put together. Focus on her path to success; that was the key.
And maybe not the hot self-defense instructor.
No. Especially not him.
Soon enough, Rose went to get her purse, slinging it over her shoulder as she came over to where Tamara stood. Her cheeks were pink, her forehead sheened with sweat, and she was looking a little sheepish. “Hey, a couple of the others are going to a new club that’s just opened near here and I thought I’d go along. Do you mind? Or you know, if you want to come . . .”
This wasn’t entirely unexpected behavior from Rose, and Tamara tried not to feel annoyed, but irritation sat in her gut all the same. Fantastic. So not only had she had to sit for an hour on a dusty gym floor, fighting the almost overwhelming urge to keep glancing at Zee, but now she was being ditched in favor of a club.
This evening was getting better and better.
“Thanks for the offer, but no. I’ve got a spreadsheet I need to finish.” She forced a smile on her face. “Besides, I don’t want to get in the way of . . .” She directed a glance toward Zee. “You know . . .”
Rose pulled a face. “Zee apparently doesn’t do the chicks in his classes, or so Katie over there tells me. So if I want to hook up tonight, it’s the club or nothing.”
“You really have to hook up tonight?”
Rose gave her an incredulous look. “Is that really a serious question? I haven’t gotten laid in, like, two weeks. A girl has needs.” A naughty grin spread over her face. “Oh and I hear this club is a serious bad-boy magnet and you know how I love a bad boy.”
Yes, Tamara knew that very well indeed since Rose had no problem sharing blow-by-blow descriptions of her various conquests. “How are you going to get home then?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be with Katie and the others. I’ll organize my own ride.”
Excellent. So she was going to have to find a taxi herself, was she? Trying not to think about the broken-up sidewalks and abandoned buildings outside, Tamara clutched her purse tightly. “Fine. Well . . . have a good evening, I guess.”
Her friend lifted a suggestive eyebrow. “Hey, no reason you can’t get lucky. Especially since you’re not actually taking his class and all.”
Tamara pulled a face. “Boyfriend, remember?”
Rose blinked. “But tall, dark, and tattooed. And a body like you wouldn’t believe. Perhaps you can work something out with your guy in New York? A get-out-of-jail-free card?”
Tamara shook her head. Her relationship with Robert was long-distance, but they’d never talked about seeing other people. At least he hadn’t and neither had she, mainly for the simple reason that she’d never met anyone else she wanted. She’d assumed the same of him.
But what if that’s not the case? What if he’s been sleeping around?
It was a shock to realize that the thought didn’t really bother her all that much.
Disturbed, she ignored it. “Tattoos are not the be-all and end-all, believe it or not.”
Rose only snorted.
The small group of women began to head toward the gym’s exit, one of them gesturing at Rose to follow.
“You’re going to be okay going home?” her friend asked belatedly as she turned toward the group.
Tamara got the feeling that “no” wouldn’t be what Rose wanted to hear and since it wasn’t worth making a fuss about, she only smiled. “Of course. I’ll get a cab home. You go and enjoy yourself, okay?”
Rose grinned back, gave her a thumbs-up, then vanished through the gym’s exit along with the others.
Tamara took a deep breath and then started after them.
No, she wasn’t going to turn around and see where Zee had gotten to.
No, she didn’t need to see him one last time.
The hallway was as dark and as dingy as it had been on the way in and she really wasn’t looking forward to going out there by herself and finding a taxi, but maybe she’d get lucky.
Then abruptly, the door behind her banged open again. “Hey,” a deep, rough, and gritty masculine voice said. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
She stilled, her heartbeat fast and furious. “I’m leaving, what does it look like?”
“You’re not going with the others?”
“Not tonight.”
“You gonna get a taxi?”
“What is this? Twenty questions?” She didn’t turn, just started walking. “But yes, I’m getting a taxi.”
“Where to?” It was not a polite request. It was a demand.
A ripple of anger moved through her, though she didn’t really know why. Repressing it, she stopped and turned around to see Zee standing in the doorway, one tanned and tattooed arm resting against the doorframe, those uncanny silver eyes fixed on her.
Something hot stirred in her blood. A shifting, hungry, unfamiliar thing.
It irritated her.
Lifting her chin, Tamara gave him the ice queen stare she’d perfected during her college years, the one that had cowed an
d discouraged many an unwelcome advance. “Where do you think? I’m going home, if you must know. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“You don’t wanna be standing out on the sidewalk for a taxi in this neighborhood.” His gaze never left hers. “Pretty little rich girl like you wouldn’t last long.”
Pretty little rich girl. How patronizing.
You’re only pissed because he’s right. Standing out on the sidewalk here would be a stupid idea.
Her fingers moved restlessly on the strap of her purse. For some reason, she really didn’t want him to see her uncertainty. “Thanks for the concern, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Zee leaned against the doorframe. “You’re a little lamb, pretty girl,” he said casually. “And there are wolves in this neighborhood who would eat you for breakfast. So I guess that depends. Do you wanna be breakfast or do you wanna be alive?”
Her spine stiffened. She was no one’s breakfast and she wasn’t a lamb. He had no idea.
Careful. Keep it under control.
She forced down her annoyance. “Don’t you have something else to do? Someone’s butt to kick?”
His smile was white in the dim light of the hallway. “You should have taken my class. Then I wouldn’t need to worry about you standing out there on the sidewalk by yourself.”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry, but I’m not taking any classes right now. And you don’t need to worry about me. Like I said, I’ll be fine.”
There was a moment when she thought he was going to drop it. Where she expected him to do what any of the other guys she knew would do, which was to shrug their shoulders and back away, leaving her alone.
But he didn’t. He just looked at her and she felt the air between them get dense and thick, humming with static like the atmosphere before a particularly violent thunderstorm. Then, with a sharp movement, he stepped into the hallway, the gym door slamming shut behind him.
It happened so fast that even hours later, she still couldn’t figure out quite how he’d managed it.
One moment they were facing each other in the dim hallway. The next she was up against the wall and he was standing in front of her, caging her, his palms flat on the dingy plaster on either side of her head.
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