A few second later someone ran up, hit the emergency stop, and braced her until the torture device stopped spinning its belt.
“You didn’t have to do that,” grunted Poppy. “I was kind of looking forward to having my back covered in skin grafts.”
“Here,” said a man’s voice. A hand reached through her tangle of legs and grabbed her hand. It was a man’s hand for sure, solid and much larger than hers. “Lean to your left and we’ll get you right-side up.” Another hand rested against her knee and moving in harmony, they guided her so that she was lying on her side, finally able to breathe normally.
Poppy’s ponytail had exploded and her hair now obscured everything. “Maybe I’ll just breathe for a minute?” It was impossible to tell if the labored breathing was due to the exercise or the feat of unimaginable poise.
“Let me just …” Someone started adjusting her shirt, pulling it down over what Poppy’s mother referred to as her “disproportionate roundness”.
“Okay, then,” said Poppy, shooting up to a sitting position, realizing abruptly how exposed she was. She did a quick check to make sure her sports bra hadn’t somehow been splattered across the wall behind her, and breathed a little easier when her hand brushed the strap. While she pulled her shirt to a state of public decency, she flipped her head back to clear her hair out of her eyes.
It smacked the hot fireman in the face. The hot one with the eyes.
For a second he sat there, eyes closed, mouth open. Stunned. Then he lifted an arm to wipe the residue of her sweaty hair off of his face.
Nice one, Poppy. You’ve reached an entirely new level of smooth.
“Well, Cap,” said the huge-fat fireman to the huge-muscular fireman. “Looks like Booter gets to fill out his first exposure report when we get back.”
“Funny, JFK,” said the man she had drenched with her mop. Looking back at her, he said, “I’m Slade. I’m an EMT. Did you hurt yourself?” He was crouching next to her as the rest of his crew gathered behind him.
Poppy somehow looked away from his dark blue eyes. “Hurt myself? What do you mean? Isn’t that how everyone dismounts from these instruments of torture?” The abrasion on her back stung, especially with her sweaty shirt laying across it, but there was nothing the fireman could do about the pain.
“It’s one way to do it,” said Slade. “I won’t judge. Here, lean back against the wall.” He had a small grin on his face and Poppy realized she was smiling through the blush on her own face.
With his help, Poppy was able to relax against the wall, keeping the raw skin on her lower back arched away. “I’ll just finish my workout down here. Since you didn’t let me complete the dermabrasion session.”
“She seems fine,” said the one Slade had called JFK.
When Slade looked over his shoulder at him, Poppy couldn’t prevent her eyes from quickly dipping to Slade’s arms. The t-shirt wasn’t skin tight, but it was tight enough to tell that the gym wasn’t the torture chamber to him that it was to her. Was he flexing? He had to be flexing.
As he turned back to Poppy she brought her eyes up to his face.
“Would you like me to check you out?” he asked.
Check you out? Had he noticed the way she had ogled him when she thought she could get away with it? As in, My eyes are up here, ma’am. The lady firefighter and the muscle head looked at each other, focusing.
Oh no. They saw me checking him out.
The muscle head bent his ear toward the radio, which was blaring something that Poppy couldn’t follow. “That’s us,” he said.
The female nodded. “Behind the Rite-Aid.”
They all started jogging toward the exit. Except for Slade, who was still looking at her. “Are you sure you’re okay? We can send another unit to that call if you need us.”
From the doors of the gym, JFK yelled back, “Get on the rig, Boot!”
Slade didn’t budge, still waiting on her expectantly.
“Go,” said Poppy, smiling and hoping it looked thankful and not like a creepy Joker smile. “I’m fine.”
“Okay,” said Slade, rising. “Call us back if you change your mind. You know our number.”
She watched him jog with the grace of a dancer to the door. Oh man did she watch him. Why, in the name of all the exercise gods, did that have to happen at that moment? Riding the treadmill wave like an epileptic cow in front of the gym-goers was bad enough. But no, that wasn’t good enough for Poppy Mercier. She had to do it in front of a gaggle of good looking men. A herd of hotties. A flock of fire—
“Can I give you a hand up?” Alta was back, offering a hand.
Nice of her to wait until Poppy was done admiring Park City’s Finest. No wait, Finest was for police, wasn’t it? These guys were the Bravest. Though Poppy hadn’t met many finer than that Slade.
“I love it when they come in,” said Alta with a sly smile, helping Poppy to her feet.
“Oh, they’re regulars?” Poppy tried to sound casual.
“Yeah, they come in and play wallyball about once a week.”
“Oh good,” said Poppy. “I think that dismount was only about an eight-point-five. Next week I think I can pull off a ten if I land face down on the treadmill instead of head down on the ground.” She reached up and felt the goose egg forming on the back of her head. At least she hadn’t cracked her head all the way open. But hey, Slade would be back in a week or so. That might be enough extra motivation to keep Poppy coming back here.
“It looked pretty painful,” said Alta.
“Yeah, but in an agile, attractive sort of way, right?” The sting of sweat on raw skin hadn’t faded much.
Alta laughed. “Yeah, you were as nimble as an elephant in ice skates.”
“My mother’s right.” Poppy groaned. “I’ll die single for sure.”
Alta laughed again. “There’s no way. A funny girl like you with such a gorgeous smile? How have you not been scooped up yet?”
It was no surprise to Poppy that she was single, but it also wasn’t the time to recite the Litany of Lack. “That’s nice of you to say.” Especially since you look like you should be on a magazine cover.
“Are you feeling alright?” asked Alta. “Need to sit down, or need someone to check you out?”
“I think everyone in the gym already saw more of me than they wanted to.” When she made it back to the shelter, Daria could bandage up the abrasion.
“Okay. I have some first aid training, and they give all of us a concussion class when we start working here, so I know a little bit about some danger signs.”
“That’s really nice of you, Alta. I’m actually a vet, so if I start walking in to glass walls or barking incessantly I’ll have a pretty good idea what’s wrong.”
With a chuckle Alta nodded and started toward the front desk. “I’ll be up here if you need anything.”
Quiet enough so no one else could hear, Poppy said, “I need to show you that you can’t throw me around.” She put on her pit bull face, the dog, not the singer. Her enemy couldn’t know that, like every one of the Pitties that had come through her rescue, Poppy was a softie inside.
Show no fear, feel no compassion.
Poppy hit the start button and took a deep breath as the machine taunted her with the three-beep countdown, and started sliding.
“Yeah, well your mom was probably a conveyor belt, and not like the cute little one at the all-you-can eat sushi. She’s … an industrial sized one in an Amazon warehouse or something.”
Before the treadmill was up to speed, Poppy was too out of breath for any more insults.
I got this. Only three miles to go. Don’t look down.
Miraculously her Bluetooth earbuds were still around her neck, so into her ears they went. Without crashing and burning, she found the play button and the narrator’s voice picked up again.
For a while Poppy lost herself in a fictional world—a world about a running protagonist interestingly enough—and continued to remind herself to not look d
own. A watched pot never boils and a watched treadmill logs no miles. The rivulets of sweat started running again. She had brought a towel to wipe up after her run, but maybe that fireman would be back and she could just use his face again.
Don’t look down.
If she wasn’t so scared of crashing and burning again, she’d grab the towel and lay it over the display to hide it, but two catastrophic failures in one day might make it hard to show her face here again. No, the gym would probably refund her money and tell her she was too much of a liability to work out there.
Don’t look …
Poppy looked down at her adversary, expecting to be in the mid twos. Its beady little display numbers sneered back a measly .9 miles.
“Oh … now you’re just lying.” Feeling like a failure, Poppy decreased the pace to 5.5. “But you know what? You can’t beat me. Winston Churchill … would give up … before I will. I might die here, but you can’t, make me stop, pounding you, until I get my, three point one.”
Focus on breathing, Poppy told herself. And don’t look down.
________
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How to Heel a Wounded Heart (Must Love Dogs Book 4) Page 12