It was such a sweet little thing. I absolutely would have taken her if I could have. I directed Brad to my favorite pet supply store and helped him pick out everything they’d need, and then some. He kept picking out toys for her, and treats. I explained that she was too young for treats. He selected the most expensive little cat bed, despite grumbling that he really wasn’t prepared for this sort of thing.
As he drove back to his place, I said: “You’ll have to name her. Any ideas yet?” Do not say Britney Spears.
“Britney Spears comes to mind.” He glanced over at me, smirking. “But I think I’ll wait and see what kind of a personality she has before branding her.”
“Good idea.”
“Why is your cat named Justin Timberlake?”
“Well, if you saw him you’d see the resemblance immediately, but also when I adopted him he came from a litter of four other boys. Once he was on his own he really flourished.”
“Got it. Cute.”
“And he’s also a remarkably good dancer.”
“Uh huh.”
“And he loves to wear vests and hats.”
He shook his head and looked at me like I was a weirdo that he probably should never have sex with, so I stopped talking. But I could have gone on.
When he parked, I got out of the car and handed him the cat carrier. He looked so worried. “You’re coming in, right?”
“Sure. I wasn’t sure if you’d want me to.”
He nodded. “Can you help me feed her? I mean, I can YouTube it, but…”
“I’ll help you with whatever you need, Brad. Let’s go, she’s hungry.”
I burrito-wrapped the kitten with a towel and bottle-fed her, sitting on Brad’s sofa, looking around, while Brad’s attention was fixed on the fur baby. His apartment was quite large. There was a lot of floor space, for working out on, I assumed. He had a massive TV, the requisite Portland hipster record player and record collection, and—thankfully—an even larger collection of books than he’d had in his basement when we were friends. I was very glad to see that he was still a book nerd.
“This is a great place,” I said. “It’s so weird that you live so close to me.”
He just shrugged his shoulders, didn’t even look at me. He was too busy staring at the kitten. They had the same mesmerizing green eyes, but the kitten had more blue in hers. He was trying not to smile, but he was completely taken with her, it was obvious. Why was it so difficult for him to just show this cat that he wanted her? Men are weird.
“Do you want to try feeding her?”
“Not yet. I don’t want to make her stop eating. She’s so hungry, poor thing.”
I zoned out after that.
“You’re awfully quiet for the first time in your life.”
I looked over into his gorgeous eyes. They were friendlier than usual. I hadn’t noticed that he had sat down beside me and Lady Kitten.
“Sorry.”
“Do you need to go?”
“No, I was just thinking…”
“What?”
“My ex-boyfriend sent me a letter. In the mail. I got it yesterday.”
“Oh. That’s weird. Have you been in touch with him since he left?”
“Not at all.”
“That’s weird.”
“Right?!”
“What did it say? You don’t have to tell me.”
I recited the contents of the letter, word-for-word. It wasn’t hard to memorize it because it was so brief.
“I bet you anything there was a much longer version that he threw out.”
“Really?”
“It’s a lot harder to write a short letter to someone you haven’t talked to in a long time, than a long one.”
I felt him giving me a meaningful look, but when I turned my head towards him he looked away. Had he tried to write to me over the years? He was such an enigma now. I knew better than to ask him. Kitten had fallen asleep. I carefully pulled the bottle from her without waking her.
“Why would he send me a letter and not an email or text?”
“Because he’s afraid his fiancée will read it. She probably checks his emails and texts. She’s probably nuts.”
“She’s definitely nuts.”
“Maybe it was a cry for help.”
“No. I doubt it.”
“Can I ask why you were with him? You don’t have to tell me. It’s just that he sounds like kind of an asshole.”
“He is. I mean, now he is. He wasn’t at first. He’s really smart. He’s pretty funny. Good-humored. Bit of a control freak. But he could be very passionate. He was. About me. The first few months we were together. Which is why I decided to move here with him. But things changed after we started living together.”
Brad nodded. He seemed uncomfortable, looked away. I could tell he didn’t want me to go on.
“Here,” I whispered. I moved the sleeping kitten into his arms before he could protest. “Just hold her like this, it’s okay. I’ll go set things up in the bathroom.”
“Okay. Thanks. If you hear me scream it’s because she’s woken up.”
I laughed.
“Also, if you ever tell anyone that I was afraid of a kitten, it will be the last thing you ever do.” He gave me a threatening look.
“Well, I definitely wouldn’t want that to be the last thing I ever do.” Dying of a heart attack after seeing you naked would be okay, though.
He had a good-sized guest bathroom, which would be the kitten’s room for the first few days at least. It’s best to give a cat a small space to live in at first, until it’s used to being inside. I set up the small litter box, spread newspapers on the floor, and set up the cat bed and a bowl of water. I made Brad give me a pair of his socks to put in her bed so she could get used to his smell, and I considered slipping my own socks into his bed so he could get used to my smell—just in case that was why he was so edgy. If I didn’t have to go home to feed Justin Timberlake and clean his litter box, I would have insisted on staying the night to help with the feline caretaking duties.
But I had every intention of returning very soon.
Chapter Seven
BRAD
Now I had two unpredictable, irresistible females making trouble and demanding my attention all of a sudden.
After Vivian left, once we’d put the little one into her bed in the guest bathroom, I started doing some online research about how to tame a feral kitten. One website recommended reading to feral cats, to get them used to your voice. When I heard that the kitten had woken up, when she started meowing and scratching against the bathroom door, I sat down by the closed door and started reading my book aloud. I was in the middle of You Are a Badass by Jen Sicero. I felt obligated to read all the popular self help books, because it was part of my job to challenge and inspire people on many levels when they were seeking positive change, and I needed to know what kind of language personal coaches were currently using.
If you had told me even twenty-four hours earlier that I’d be on the floor reading aloud to a kitten through a door, I would have laughed in your crazy face. But it seemed to work. After about a minute, she stopped the incessant meowing. I was a little worried she had died of boredom, but when I stopped reading and pressed my ear against the door, she started meowing again. It was like she was telling me to get back to it. So I did.
I realized—who better to transform a feral feline than a personal trainer? I just had to apply my skills and motivate her to want to live with me. I would give her clear guidelines for how to be a good healthy indoor cat.
Easy. I would cradle her in my muscular arms, compliment her, give her a hot look and watch the magic happen. I just had to remember to wear rubber gloves before picking her up.
I was so grateful to Vivian for helping me out, but I doubt I had conveyed it, even a tiny bit. I knew I was overcompensating by being a dick to her, but if I didn’t watch myself I would cross every boundary there was. Obviously it was fine to be friends with a client, and it happe
ned all the time, but if she were merely a friend my life would have been very different.
I wished she hadn’t told me about her ex and I wished that I hadn’t asked her. I had been totally conflicted about her before that, but now I was going back and forth every few minutes. If I hadn’t suddenly become a cat caretaker I would have thought about it non-stop. Part of me felt like it was now or never if I wanted to get physical with her, because I had a feeling her ex-boyfriend would want her back and I needed to make her forget about him ASAP. Part of me didn’t want to get any more attached to her than I already was in case she actually got back together with the idiot.
I was usually so good at deciding what I wanted—articulating goals and then figuring out the most effective and efficient ways of achieving them. I had gotten good at trusting my own instincts. But my instinct was to call Vivian as soon as I realized I’d have to deal with the kitten in the garage, when I could have called any of my female employees who had the day off.
I only wanted to see her.
Just as I was starting to worry about how I was going to bottle-feed the kitten on my own, I got a call from her, offering to come back and help with that. I didn’t want to sound too eager, so I suggested she use it as an opportunity to go for a run. It was a nice day out, and it should only take her about ten or fifteen minutes to get to my place from hers. She balked, of course, but I didn’t let her refuse. I told her to stretch first and to give me at least twenty minutes because I needed to hop in the shower, and then I hung up.
Needless to say, the shower I took was a cold one.
I don’t know why I decided to answer the door naked with a towel wrapped around my waist.
I could have made her wait outside while I got dressed.
But I didn’t want to.
When she saw me, the look on her face was priceless. The look on her face after she’d started breathing again made me think that she was the one who was naked, not me. She seemed so vulnerable. I felt totally at ease. It was pretty great.
I got dressed in jeans and a plain white T-shirt while she was in the bathroom with the cat. I was glad that there’s nothing unsexier than bottle-feeding a feral kitten, because when she took off her hoodie, she had revealed her fitted tank top, which was very tight and pushed up her breasts in ways that just begged to be savored, and the outline of her hard nipples were practically screaming for attention. Attention that I really shouldn’t have given them, unless I was prepared to deal with the consequences.
When she came out of the guest bathroom, she looked both disappointed and relieved that I was wearing clothes. I knew how she felt.
“How’d that go?” I asked.
“Pretty good. She seems calmer already. What’d you do? Wear her out by making her do crunches and push-ups?”
“Something like that. She was meowing a lot for a while, but…it’s not that bad. You think we should let her out?”
“Not yet. Your apartment is pretty big, and there are a lot of places she could hide.”
“Right. I should kitten-proof it first. Good point. Thanks.”
“You know,” she said, “If you decide that it’s too much for you, I can ask around at work. My friend Frankie loves cats.”
“No.” I snapped. “I found her. I took her in. I feel responsible for her.”
She smiled. “Okay. Good.”
I think she was just testing me.
“Have you thought of a name for her yet?”
“I was thinking…Lady Badass.”
She laughed. Her face lit up.
“Little Badass for now. LB for short.”
“I love it.” She smiled at me, her eyes were warm and bright. “She’s like a teeny tiny superhero.”
In the few seconds of silence that followed, her eyes became hooded and hungry. She bit her lower lip. She didn’t move, but it felt like she was suddenly an inch from my face. I took a step back. She grinned. She knew she was having an effect on me. I couldn’t have that. I retreated to the kitchen, to grab her a bottle of water.
When I returned to give her the bottled water, she was fidgeting with her tank top. I cleared my throat and handed her the water. “You should never go running without a bottle of water.”
She took the bottle, opened it, guzzled down about half of it. “You’re right.”
“You should probably get going. While it’s still light out.”
“Right again, coach.”
She bent over to tie her shoelaces tighter, placing the water bottle on the floor, giving me a fantastic view of her voluptuous cleavage. When she stood up, she raised her arms, to fiddle with her ponytail, while looking directly at me. When she picked up the water bottle and turned towards the door, I stared at her beautiful round ass and I just couldn’t stop myself. I reached out and put my hands on her hips. She immediately stopped, dropped the water bottle, turned around, put her hands on my face and pulled me to her.
I pushed her up against the door, and we kissed. But it was nothing like in high school, because she was kissing me. She wanted me.
She moved her hands under my T-shirt, then pushed me to the chair and straddled me. I ran my hands up the sides of her and grazed her nipples with my thumbs, kissed her neck and kissed every inch of smooth warm flesh that was pushed up and out from the top of her tank while she tried to pull off my shirt and grind away on my crotch.
“God, you smell good. You’ve been running, why do you smell so good?”
“Because I’m delicious.”
She really was.
I groaned. “You smell like vanilla…And caramel. Have you been eating ice cream, you bad girl?” I gripped her ass and pushed her down on me, close as I could.
“What if I have been a bad girl?” Her voice was husky. She took my earlobe between her teeth then sucked on it and whispered: “Are you going to punish me?” She was so hot.
I wanted to, believe me. “No. Stop. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I lifted her up and stood up, tore myself away from her, trying to keep my balance. All the blood had rushed to a certain region of my body, and one more touch from her would have knocked me over in more ways than one.
She reached for my arm and I pulled it away.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“If I wasn’t clear enough—I want to do that.”
“No—I need to apologize. That was totally unprofessional.”
She took a step towards me and I stepped back.
“We can’t do this. Please don’t tell anyone about what just happened. I don’t date my training clients. It’s gym policy.”
“Jim who? Let me talk to him…I’m kidding.”
“It’s a strict gym policy that I expect my employees to adhere to and that I myself have been adhering to.”
“Easy fix. You’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me. Your sister hired me.”
“I’ll tell her you suck at your job and that she should hire someone else. Or—wait a minute—if I didn’t hire you then I’m not technically your client. Right?”
“Vivian. You’re a corporate paralegal. It’s your job to ensure that businesses run ethically.”
“Exactly. I just found you a legal loophole. For free. You’re welcome.”
“But I’m the owner of the gym. Anyone who’s a member of my gym is my client.”
“Is that the wording in your resolutions? Is there a formal code of conduct? About not dating clients?”
“It’s not in the resolutions, it’s an unwritten policy.”
She smiled.
“I think.”
She frowned. Then she looked relieved. “So you’ve never dated any other members of your gym?”
“No, never.”
“Really?”
“I’m not lying to you.”
“Get me a copy of all of your corporate documents, I’ll read through them to make sure there’s nothing in them that would get you into trouble, and if necessary you can have you
r lawyer change the wording.”
“Won’t that create suspicion?”
“You can either relieve yourself and your employees of paranoia and angst and blue balls, or your can run the risk of creating suspicion—those are your options. Personally, I doubt that your lawyer’s paralegal has enough time in his or her schedule to wonder whether or not you’re boning your gym’s members. Unless, of course, he or she has eyes and can see you with them.”
She was exhausting, but I wasn’t going to let her wear me down. “I don’t want this to change the way I run my gym. I didn’t set out to open up a nightclub with exercise equipment. This isn’t Crunch Fitness.”
She covered her mouth to suppress a laugh.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “I’m serious. Look, exercise causes the body to release hormones, one of them being oxytocin aka ‘the love hormone.’ Add to that the feel-good endorphins, and the fact that men release pheromones when they exercise and you’ve got a situation where women are just physically primed to feel attracted to their personal trainers. I just want you to be aware that that may be what’s going on here.”
She paused to process my rant, and then burst out laughing. I had been earnest, and it pissed me off that she found it all so amusing.
“I think you’re over-thinking it and being way too rigid. Sex is healthy and the healthier people get the more they’re going to want to have sex.”
“I know that. Obviously I know that.” I was getting grouchier by the second. Trying to argue with Vivian while I had a throbbing hard-on that I refused to take care of in her presence was not fun, and I needed her to leave as much as I wanted her in my bed.
“Then why are you outlawing sex in your gym?”
“I haven’t outlawed it. You know what—this is not your business.”
“It really feels like it is. Didn’t Madonna have a baby with her trainer?”
“She also made a coffee table book called Sex with naked pictures of herself. Are you going to start basing your life choices on Madonna’s?”
Every Inch of You Page 6