Audrey works as a bartender at Liberty, a super-trendy bar in Capital Hill. She probably hadn’t even gotten home until a few hours ago, so I did not stop thanking her profusely the whole drive to the gym. I could have called my brother, which Audrey pointed out more than once, but Trey lives on the other side of the city, close to the gym but far from my apartment. Plus he was probably already at the gym by the time I woke up. I thought about calling his wife, Sasha, but she is seven months pregnant so I didn’t want to be bothering her if I could help it.
“Seriously, Audrey, thank you so much,” I coo as she turns onto South Weller Street, where Elevate is located.
“Yeah, yeah. But I am not picking you up for the barbeque tonight,” she mutters. Her chocolate eyes narrow, as if to prove she’s serious.
“Really? Not even if I pay you gas money?” I ask desperately. I really don’t want to take public transit there; it’ll take forever. And a cab or Uber will cost too much.
Audrey smirks at me as she pulls to a stop in the gym parking lot. “I have a feeling you’ll find someone to drive you. Out!”
She orders me out of the car. I’m too late to spend any more time pleading with her. I open the door and close it behind me as Audrey yells out, “Feel free to call me later and tell me how your day is going.”
She winks at me, which is totally weird, and waves as she pulls away. I realize I’m about to miss the beginning of class—the class I’m teaching—so I don’t have time to figure out why she was smiling deviously with that last comment. I push it from my mind and run into the building. I barely look up as I storm into the gym. I toss my bag at Sara behind the front counter, no time to put it in my locker, and rush into the yoga room. Trey is in there checking the temperature. He sees me and crosses his arms over his broad chest, but I ignore my brother and just start talking to the crowded room as I make my way to the front.
“Okay, everyone, welcome to hot yoga!” I clap my hands and reach the front where someone, probably Trey, has already laid out a mat for me, thankfully.
The room is full, which is exciting. We’ve been open a little less than two weeks and business has been slowly but steadily picking up. This is my first full class. Although I know he’s irked I barely made it on time, Trey gives me a quick smile, happy about the attendance.
I see several faces who have started to become familiar. There’s Mrs. Waters, who signed up the first week for our Senior Strength program; three sorority girls from the nearby university, who are also taking beginner CrossFit classes; Tom Orsen, an accountant from the building across the street, who took my Paleo seminar last Monday, and…
Frenchie.
Just like that. Out of nowhere. Completely unexpected. He’s here in my yoga class twisting on his mat, his eyes focused on me. I must have gasped because two people in the front row freeze midway through the first pose and stare at me.
I smile and force myself to calmly coo out the next move. The class is very basic introductory hot yoga class and an hour long. It feels like twenty hours and two minutes at the exact same time. The entire time my mind is racing and my heart flipping inside my chest like a dolphin putting on a show at SeaWorld. My eyes keep landing on him like he’s the center of gravity in the room. I can’t stop myself.
He’s in the center of the back row. I must have pushed right by him and not even noticed when I scurried into the room. He’s trying valiantly to do all the poses, but struggles more than I would have expected with most of it. Such a long, thick, chiseled body…but he’s as graceful as an inebriated stallion. When he attempts the Noose Pose, even though I purposely gave an easier option, he tumbles back onto his ass with a thud. The sorority girls are all staring at him, have been the entire class, and he gives them all a giant grin. They giggle, and he chuckles back. It’s been twelve days since I last saw him—technically since the only time I’ve ever seen him—and damn if he isn’t even better looking than I remembered.
That admission, and the fact that he’s in front of me at all, has me in a tailspin. I never had a one-night stand before, and I always assumed that when you did have one, it meant you only had to see the guy once. But clearly Frenchie didn’t read the fine print. For some absurd reason, I’m really glad he didn’t. Some part of me, under the layers of panic and fear and awkward confusion, is really excited to see him again.
By the time class ends, his heather-gray Winterhawks T-shirt is dark with sweat and sticking to his broad chest and sculpted shoulders. I glance at the logo on his chest, the giant, dumb bird, and realize I’ve found his first flaw: he’s a hockey fan. He takes off his baseball cap, also with the Winterhawks logo, and his golden brown hair flies everywhere. He wipes sweat from his face with his towel before dropping the hat back on his head backward. I might have sighed, unintentionally, but if I did, it blended in with the three sorority girls who were doing the same thing.
Mrs. Waters comes over and asks me a question about one of the poses, and I happily give her a long explanation, grateful for the distraction. When she leaves, though, there’s only one person left in the yoga room. And his bright blue eyes are on me.
He doesn’t move closer. He just stands there, water bottle in one hand, towel over his shoulder, smiling at me. It’s just a small smile. His full lips turned up in the corners and his eyes twinkling. I can’t help but smile back. His grins are more contagious than the plague.
“Hi, Shay,” he says softly.
“Hello, Sebastian.” I should be using his nickname to keep it light, but I’m rattled and off my game. What the hell is he doing here?
“Miss me?” he asks. White teeth flash and he tilts his head just a little bit. He’s a goddamn world-class flirt. I roll my eyes even though my grin grows too.
“I don’t know you, so I can’t miss you, Frenchie,” I reply flatly and carry my mat over to the pile in the corner.
He just stands there staring at me and smirking. And then he changes the subject. “So yoga, huh?” he says.
“Certified instructor since college. I taught a few classes to help pay my way through school, and when I graduated I realized I’d rather keep doing it than find a job that applied my English lit degree,” I tell him and pull my hair from my ponytail, giving it a quick shake, trying to get the sweat in it to dry. Of course, it’s not going to dry, because we’re still standing in a stifling hot room. “Then I got an online degree in nutrition.”
Sebastian nods. “I’ll have to take one of your seminars.”
Something hits me. “How did you know I was teaching this morning?”
“I was at Liberty last night with some…buddies,” Sebastian explains, his accent sounding as hot as I remember as he says the name of my best friend’s workplace with a sexy French twist. “Your friend Audrey recognized me and brought us a free round of drinks. She told me you were teaching this morning.”
I smile ruefully. Now I know why she agreed to get me here on time and why she wanted me to call her and tell her how my day went. That bitch. God love her.
“Hey! You two looking to melt into puddles?” Trey calls out as he walks into the room and right over to the thermostat, cranking it down quickly. Just as quickly as he walks in, Trey walks out, but not before calling over his shoulder at me. “Shayne, we need to talk before you work the juice bar.”
“Sure thing!” I call back. My eyes land on Sebastian again as I start to walk out of the room. “I have to get going. I need to shower and talk to Trey and grovel for almost being late thanks to my stupid car not starting.”
He nods, following me. “Need help showering? I’m really good at scrubbing backs.”
I roll my eyes and point to the sixty-seven-year-old Mrs. Waters standing by the juice bar. “I don’t think Mrs. Waters would appreciate it. Unless of course you promise to scrub her back too.”
Sebastian’s smile drops. I turn and walk toward the women’s changing room, and a part of me wants nothing more than for him to follow me right in there anyway. It doesn’t surprise
me that I’m still so incredibly attracted to him. He was cocky and charming and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the sex for the entire twelve days. So I hesitate before disappearing into the changing room and turn back to look at him. He’s just standing there, smirking and completely checking out my ass. I flush. Again. Our eyes meet, and I find my mouth moving and words coming out. Thoughts I shouldn’t voice but for some reason I am. “Are you…heading out?”
He shakes his head slowly: no. “I’ll be at the juice bar. Waiting for you.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I say nothing and disappear into the changing room, making sure to wiggle my ass as I go, since it’s probably still being ogled.
And I can’t help but think about the sex again now as I shower and change. By the time I’ve changed into clean yoga pants and one of our tangerine Lycra staff shirts, I’m tingling from the memories. It’s hard not to dwell on that night and all its naked, panting, sweaty glory—because it was so out of character for me and it had felt like the best decision I ever made in my entire life. Until the euphoria wore off, anyway.
It was what it was—one night of sex, my first orgasm by another human in ages, but nothing more. Because if it wasn’t a one-night stand to him, why did he wait twelve days to pop back up in my life? I shouldn’t get my hopes up just because he’s here now. He probably just needs a place to work out before his next triathlon or Iron Man or whatever extracurricular activity gives him that body. I need to keep my irrational hope in check.
He’s exactly where he said he’d be when I emerge from the women’s changing room. Just sitting on a stool, leaning on the counter, sipping one of our Green Giant smoothies and looking like sex on a stick. Damn him. I walk right by him with no acknowledgment and head into Trey’s office. Trey frowns at my entrance, and I know exactly what he’s annoyed about.
“I’m sorry. My car wouldn’t start,” I say honestly and give him a little shrug.
“When was the last time you had it serviced?” he asks gruffly.
“Two, maybe three years ago?”
“Years?! Christ, Shayne.” He frowns and runs a hand over his buzz cut. Trey is and always has been big, burly, loud and gruff. He’s a born-and-bred hockey jock. Really, my father never gave him any other choice. But deep down he’s more than a bulky body and a loud mouth. He has a sensitive side, a vulnerable one, which is why when he suffered a career-ending injury in college, he couldn’t handle it. But after rehab it became clear Trey was a smart businessman, and he worked hard to save money and create a business plan investors would get behind. On top of all that, despite our constant bickering, I know he’s got my back, and I think I’ve proven I will always have his.
“I don’t have anyone else who can cover for you, Shayne. You’re our only yoga instructor right now,” he reminds me with a stern look in his dark blue eyes.
“I know. And it won’t happen again, cross my heart.” I use my finger to trace an X over my heart.
“Will that happen again?” His gaze shifts to the wall of his office that faces the juice bar. I follow his gaze.
I flush and drop my gaze to the polished concrete under my feet. I inwardly curse Sara, who told him that she caught me and Sebastian in the laundry room. “Definitely not. No.”
“Definitely?” he repeats, and when I look up at him his eyebrows are raised skeptically.
“Yeah. I told you before; it was just a one-time thing.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it only happened once,” I reply smartly and cross my arms. “Listen, Trey, my personal life is personal. And your rule about not banging customers wasn’t broken. He wasn’t a customer. In fact, I could have banged everyone at that event because no one had signed a membership agreement yet.”
“Stop! Please do not talk about banging anyone, let alone everyone.” He closes his eyes and tries to shake some clearly uncomfortable image out of his head. After taking a deep breath he looks at me again. “Well, the ‘no sexual contact with members’ rule applies now. He just bought a yearlong membership.”
“What?!”
He nods. “Yep. And clearly he intends to use it. He’s a nice guy too. If he hadn’t boinked my sister, I’d probably like him.”
“Yeah, he’s a charmer. He’ll charm the pants right off you.”
“Apparently.”
Our eyes meet and embarrassment washes over me. I know I’m the color of a fire truck right now, but I ignore it and act inappropriately indignant anyway. Because that’s my go-to when I’ve got no leg to stand on. “Whatever. If you’re going to fire me for something that happened with him before he was a client, then I’ll sue your ass, bro. And I would hate for my future niece or nephew to have to live in a cardboard box while I own your empire.”
He cracks a smile. “You have such a smart mouth, you know that?”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and your child will inherit it,” I say and wink before turning and exiting his office.
Sebastian is still sipping that damn smoothie. I slip behind the bar because I’m covering it while Sara teaches a Pilates class, and I start to clean up the area. It’s pretty immaculate but the alternative is to turn around and just stare at him, and possibly drool, so cleaning it is.
“Come on…” he says to me cajolingly. “Tell me you thought about me. You know you did.”
I pull my eyes from the sink where I’m scrubbing a nonexistent stain. “What are you even doing here? You must be a member at a gym somewhere already.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The fact that I could bounce a quarter off your ass,” I blurt out. “Or your pecs. Or your biceps.”
“Ah, so you have been thinking about me.” He winks. I fight another hot flush.
“Why are you working out here suddenly?”
“I’m not working out.” He shrugs. “I’m doing yoga.”
I give him a glare. He chuckles. “At least now I know how you were so flexible that night.”
I blush instantly. It surprises him. “You’re shy? Now?”
Yes, now. Because you’ve seen me half-naked and twisted up like a pretzel. And you’re referring to it!
“I’m hardly shy.” I look up, trying to give him a hard stare. He is sucking gently on his straw, his eyes twinkling. When he pulls away, a tiny dollop of the smoothie drips onto his bottom lip, and that tongue of his—the one I am intimately acquainted with—slips out to lick it up.
“You’re purple,” he whispers and grins triumphantly.
“I’m still hot from my workout,” I lie and turn my back to him as I organize the trays of fresh fruit behind me.
“I have to get going. Gotta get to work,” he says, and I nod without turning around. I wait but I don’t hear him leave. Finally, I can’t help but turn around. He’s still sitting there, eyes glued to me. He shakes his empty smoothie cup and I reach out with just my arm to take it, keeping my body as far away as possible. Our fingers brush and he takes his other hand and wraps it around mine on the plastic cup. He tugs until I take a few steps forward. Now the only thing separating us is the granite bar top. He smiles. It makes me smile, but my knees are shaking.
“I thought about you, Shay,” he says softly and then he lets go, jumps off the bar stool and walks toward the exit. I stand there watching his cute little butt leave, my hand suspended in midair holding his empty cup. I fight the insane urge to wrap my lips around the straw he’d been sucking on.
Chapter 6
Sebastian
Six hours later I’m leaning against the light post directly outside the front doors to the gym, waiting. The weather’s unseasonably warm. Winter broke early in Seattle this year and it’s already flip-flops and T-shirt weather in April. I’ve never been a fan of the rain here, but Seattle has brought me a lot of joy.
My mom met her new husband here, I have deep bonds with my teammates, the fans are great, Stephanie got clean here, I won a Cup here. I’ve actually started to think of Seattle more
as my home than my hometown in New Brunswick or where I grew up in Quebec.
I play aimlessly with my phone as I wait and try not to stress. I don’t usually do this, chase a girl. But she looked incredible this morning in yoga. And Audrey was so excited last night when she suggested I surprise Shay at work this morning. I was full of confidence, and a little whiskey, when I agreed. When I walked into the bar with Chooch I had no idea Audrey worked there. To be honest, I forgot I’d even met her at the gym opening.
We’d just gotten home from our road trip and I was wiped, but Chooch was dealing with some relationships issues. He and his fiancée were not doing well and he didn’t want to go home right away. He asked me to meet him near his house for a drink. Audrey recognized me and reintroduced herself. She was friendly and welcoming, even bought Chooch and me a round of drinks. I’d managed to bring the small talk around to Shayne without being pathetically obvious. Long after Chooch left, I was still there chatting to Audrey. And then her boyfriend, Josh, showed up and he recognized me. I had just hired Sutter Brothers Financial Group about four months ago and Josh works with Paul, my financial advisor. He’d seen me in the office and he knew I was a Winterhawk. He and Audrey both invited me to the barbeque.
How could I say no? Shay was all I had thought about on our road trip. I’d had more than my fair share of hookups in places a lot weirder than a gym laundry room. But there was something about doing that with Shay that made it somehow dirtier, sexier, hotter than I’d ever experienced. I think it was the conflict I could see on her face. She wanted me as much as I wanted her, but there was a glimmer of nervousness in her eyes that intrigued me. She was all smart mouth and tough words, but something soft and innocent was underneath. I really wanted to discover it.
Winning It All (Hometown Players Book 4) Page 4