“Drew,” his new housemate prompted, letting him know he was doing it again.
“Damn it! I just don’t seem to be able to stop this morning. It’s worse than ever. Maybe it was the alcohol. I must have had a hell of a lot to drink last night after all. More than I’ve had in forever. I can’t remember the last time I had a night that I couldn’t remember the next morning. And I can’t remember anything from last night. I mean, I can’t even remember your name. How drunk do you have to be to invite a woman, a stranger, to live with you, and be your goddamn life coach and personal trainer and not even remember her name?” He paused long enough to realize what he’d said.
“Oh fuck,” he added for good measure.
To his surprise, she didn’t get upset. She didn’t slap him and call him an asshole for not remembering her from the night before—or at least not admitting to that when she’d first pulled him from bed. She didn’t even laugh at his admission.
Instead, she gave him a soft smile that almost seemed to light her from within until he got the same impression that had struck him in the bedroom—that he could almost see a halo of light around her head and shoulders. The sight calmed him, and he was able to manage to gulp down a refreshing breath.
“It’s Amity.”
“Amity,” he repeated, feeling almost light-headed after seeing . . . well, whatever it was he’d seen.
There was something going on that he didn’t understand. Perhaps he was still drunk. Maybe his drink had been spiked, but that wouldn’t really explain everything because his rambling had started long before he’d imbibed any alcohol the day before.
“That’s, um, a really pretty name,” he said, not sure how to move past the awkwardness that his rambling had interjected into the conversation.
“Thank you. I like it.”
“I guess you have to, don’t you? If you don’t like your own name, what hope is there?”
She laughed. Now, the sound of tinkering bells in the tone made Drew smile.
“Plenty of people don’t like their given name. In fact, don’t tell anyone I told you, but my real name isn’t Amity.” She winked at him.
“What is it then?” He hoped it wasn’t rude to ask. More than ever before he desired not to offend her. He didn’t know why he didn’t want to but was certain it had something to do with . . . with whatever that light had been that he’d seen.
“Amitiel.”
“That’s . . . a little more unusual. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.”
“You could say my father was a little old-fashioned.” She smiled in a way that hinted at some secret joke she wasn’t willing to share. He wondered if it has something to do with her not returning home. She didn’t seem overly upset by it though, so maybe there wasn’t a deep, dark secret, just an ordinary, boring leaving home story.
He wondered whether he should ask, push for more, but there was a guarded expression hidden beneath her soft smile. His career choice had left him fairly receptive to when to push and when to stop.
Except when it came to Becca, he thought bitterly.
“Mine too,” Drew said to keep the conversation moving. “He’s one of those people who think a woman should stay at home when the kids come along. He pushed Mom to do that and she was happy for a while, but once I started school and she was alone for long hours during the day, she went a little stir-crazy. That’s when she got the offer to help— Goddammit, I’m doing it again.”
Amity backed away from his outburst. “Maybe it’s best if you head off to work soon,” she said in a voice that was surprisingly less scared than anxious. Almost as if she was worried about him for his benefit, not because she was concerned for her safety or questioned his sanity. “Before you spill any secrets you wouldn’t want me to know.”
“How can I go to work like this? It’s hard to stay tactful and have a good bedside manner when you can’t stop yourself from having bouts of verbal diarrhea.”
“Maybe you just need to spend some time away from the hospital to work out your feelings then?”
He frowned, the last thing he needed was a day of girly conversations about his feelings. He’d clearly done that last night, albeit while he was drunk, and that obviously hadn’t worked.
Amity didn’t know how to make Drew better. Not in the sense of helping him to help himself. Not like she used to at least; like she wanted to. She was out of practice. The last time she’d done that, there were people who still worshipped cats as gods. Although, from what she’d seen on her vacation, some single women still did.
After seeing the look on his face each time her influence hit him in force, and made him spill secrets he’d never intended to share, she was almost inclined to use another miracle and try to fix him despite the potential risks. She couldn’t though. She didn’t want him to be killed at her hand. Of course, there was a chance he could survive, but he’d be unlikely to do so without scars.
In the long run, it wouldn’t matter if his soul was a little scarred and beaten up. It wasn’t like Lucifer would mind a little damage. In fact, he seemed to prefer them that way. Going up was all about forgiveness and divinity. Heaven swore to accept the righteous in every form, regardless of what scars they might bear.
She sighed. The simple truth was that if he survived another miracle so soon after the first, any scars left on his soul wouldn’t affect his afterlife. They would however affect his life up until the moment of his death. He would have trouble opening up to others for the rest of his days. If he didn’t heal himself, he would most likely end up alone and miserable. He’d probably have a string of meaningless, casual affairs, never settling down with anyone. Then he’d probably buy himself a sports car and have a full-blown mid-life crisis. She didn’t want that for him. It wasn’t the plan Heaven had laid out for him before the cupid had been pushed into his path. And stopping it was why Michael had put her onto Drew’s case.
True, she hadn’t been granted even a single glimpse at that plan when assigned to said case, but she knew enough about how they operated behind the pearly gates to realize that if angels and cupids were involved, there was a bigger picture at work. Of course, like all matters of faith, it would be too easy if she was simply told what that was.
“Work out my feelings?” Drew laughed. “What is this? A chick flick?”
An idea hit her as he spoke. She had said she was a personal trainer after all. It was time to build on that persona. “No, I mean literally work them out. When you get home from your shift, we’ll have our first session.”
He smiled at her and nodded. “I like the way you think. If I make it through the day, you’ve got yourself a date.”
Chapter Nine
Drew found himself thinking about Becca a little less during his day at work; instead, his whole mind was focused on his non-date with Amity and her promise to work out his emotions in the form of physical exertion. It was what he’d tried to do when he took out his initial agony with his punching bag, but he had a feeling doing it with professional eyes on him—especially professional eyes which were a pretty, azure blue—would be even more helpful.
In that way, he managed to get through the day mostly unscathed. He did have an incident where he spent a full fifteen minutes telling his father all the details of Amity’s arrival in his life, and the agreement they’d come to. Which probably would have been fine, and not any cause for concern, had it not been for the fact that five of those minutes had involved Drew describing his precise thoughts about her breasts and a healthy debate with himself over whether or not they were natural. It was a subject he’d questioned when he’d first caught sight of her and which he had pondered over a little too intensely all day, but also one he didn’t plan on trying to clarify with Amity. Not with the strength she’d shown or the fact that she was going to be doing at least some of the cooking around the house and would easily be able to poison him.
After Drew’s discourse on Amity’s breasts, his father had muttered something about re
bounds and the possibility of an appointment with Dr. McGregor before letting Drew get back to his rounds.
By the time Drew finished with all of his patients for the day, he had a spring in his step. He could have tried to convince himself that it was just because he’d had a decent day at work with no major Becca incidents. He could have pretended it had nothing to do with what waited for him at home. He would have been lying to himself on both counts though. The truth was he was looking forward to Amity running him through his paces and more than a little excited about spending some one-on-one time with her. He hadn’t worked out with a personal trainer since he’d left Orange County and he was looking forward to working himself until his muscles ached and were at the point of collapse.
Amity was already waiting for him when he arrived home. His garage door stood wide open, revealing that his small makeshift gym had a new addition. A brand-new weight bench sat a little to the left of the treadmill. Standing in front of the new equipment, was Amity.
“How was your day?” she greeted as he climbed from the car.
Her hair was set in a high ponytail and she wore a loose, translucent white shirt over a tight tank, and a pair of the shortest running shorts he’d ever seen—and there were short ones in L.A. Her shirt slouched to one side, revealing the smooth sloping curve of her shoulder. She was a glorious sight to behold, like something off the pages of a fitness magazine.
“Ready to get your ass kicked?”
His gaze snapped up from where he’d been staring at the way her ponytail trailed down underneath her loose shirt and over the curve of her breast. For a moment, he thought maybe her statement was a sign she’d caught his blatant staring and was unhappy. Then he noticed that she bounced from side to side, as if warming up, and he understood it was a prompt that she was ready to get started.
The sight of her movement, and the way various parts of her body bounced in time with her actions, forced improper thoughts into Drew’s head. He couldn’t deny that he harbored something of an attraction toward her. After all, he was a heterosexual man with a fully functioning body and she was hot. In fact, he would have gone as far as to say that without a doubt, she had one of the sexiest bodies he’d ever seen. It was more than just that which made her attractive though. Even though he hadn’t known her long, he could tell there was much more to her than just that. His early assessment of her was that she was beauty, brains, and compassion all rolled into one. She wasn’t easily offended and she’d held her own in conversations with him. Granted it had only been minimal conversation so far, but she’d easily held his attention each time they’d spoken. She was, as they say, the complete package—at least she appeared to be.
He was certain that as he spent more time with her one of two things would happen. He’d either grow to realize that she was vapid and lose interest, or he’d grow ever more attracted to his blonde houseguest. Which was honestly the exact opposite of what he needed. After all, he already had one awkward post-relationship fallout to deal with at work—did he really want one at home too? Could he deal with an ex-girlfriend at every turn?
The answer was simple. It was a big fat resounding no.
Much better to never get involved in the first place, he decided.
It was clear that he needed to put all of his thoughts about Amity into a big box marked, “Friends Only,” and leave it at that. Although, that didn’t mean he couldn’t admire the way her chest moved. Or the long, lean legs that poked out of the bottom of her ultra-short running shorts.
He tried to push those unhelpful thoughts aside and nodded. “Sure. I’ll just, um, go get changed.”
Amity had spent her day learning everything she could about personal training. Although she’d only made the suggestion as a ruse for why she’d be staying, she genuinely wanted to do the best she could to help Drew. It was in Heaven’s interest for her to do what she could to help him, after all.
When she’d checked out his exercise equipment, she’d noticed he didn’t have a weight bench. Truthfully, she could have trained him on the equipment he did have, but she’d decided she was going to do her best for him—which meant giving him the best equipment.
He’d returned from his bedroom wearing nothing but a pair of basketball shorts and a towel draped over his right shoulder. All of the muscles Amity had admired through the slightly see-through cover of his white business shirt at the bar the previous evening were on display. Once more, she took a moment to scrutinize his body. Dressed, he’d seemed to be muscular but slender, with a sinewy, leonine build. Now that his upper body was exposed, she could see he was more bulked than her imagination had considered he would be. His shoulders were round and solid, his upper arms thick and defined. His six-pack and abs were perfectly outlined, the bottom forming into a little “V” that pointed the way down into his shorts. Despite Heaven’s edict on angels and physical contact with humans, the sight of Drew ready for a workout pushed all thoughts of personal training out of her mind. She wanted to do other personal things instead. Things that would most definitely be frowned upon by her brothers. It took her a moment to even realize Drew was speaking to her.
“Amity?” he queried. His voice was almost concerned.
She cast one more glance over his semi-naked state before shaking herself out of her stupor. It was all the stuff that she probably should have noticed that morning when she’d dragged him from bed, but she’d been far too concerned with making up a decent cover story for why she was there to watch his body. Now though, now he moved confidently; in fact, it struck her that he almost seemed to preen like a peacock just a little.
“Sorry, what?” she asked.
“I said, ‘Where do you want me?’”
“Oh.” She blinked as she waited for her mind to catch up with his words and all the lewd thoughts they sparked within her. “Oh. Oh! Uh, over there!” She pointed at the treadmill.
The twitch at the corner of Drew’s mouth confirmed he’d stifled a smile at her discombobulation before jumping onto the treadmill. He must have seen her open-mouthed staring. Not that it would have been hard to notice. She’d have to be more discreet in the future. Surely seeing him so barely dressed a few more times would help—it certainly couldn’t hurt.
Once he was set-up, she started him off with a slow pace, slowly warming his body, and increasing the speed and incline until Drew’s body was pushed as hard as she dared push him. She needn’t have worried though—whatever she threw at him, he took without complaint and without a single missed step. His breath remained steady and even throughout the warm-up.
It was Amity herself whose breath grew short as her heart pounded in her chest when she walked from the front of the treadmill to the back, purportedly to check his technique. Instead, she was watching the tiny muscles all the way down his spine twitch, stretch, and flicker as his legs pounded away at the belt beneath his sneakers. The barely constrained power in his arms was on full display as he pumped them in time with his legs on each of his long strides. Just above the waistline of his shorts, two dimples rested either side of his spine and she got flashes of brushing her fingertips over them.
It was almost a shame when she had to move to the front of the machine again and slow the pace down to give him a break from his cardio workout. Once he climbed off the machine, the first thing he did was down a few gulps of water. His Adam’s apple bobbed in time with each swallow, causing Amity to swallow reflexively. He grabbed the towel and patted his face, but didn’t do anything about the beads of sweat that glistened across his chest. Not that Amity minded. She appreciated it in fact. After all, it was just the human body doing one of the little miracles it did daily.
Without missing a beat, she directed him onto the weight bench. As he rolled himself underneath the bar, each of his ab muscles contracted in turn. It took everything in Amity’s power not to make an audible noise of appreciation or run her fingers across his six-pack once he was lying flat in front of her. She almost lost her cool entirely when she was spo
tting his bench press and therefore was forced into close proximity to his flexing biceps while his head—his mouth—was so close to her pelvis.
After an hour, with another round on the treadmill and a number of reps of increasingly greater weights on the bench, Amity finally called a halt on the session. When she did, Drew didn’t collapse in a heap like she’d thought he’d might. He had a strength and a stamina the like of which she hadn’t seen for years. Like the heroes of old, back when she’d been able to walk free in the human world, as her heavenly self with her resplendent wings on display for all to see, and had been worshipped as Themis by the Greeks and Justitia by the Romans.
“Wow, you really did kick my ass,” Drew said as he wiped his face with the towel again. His voice was just a little breathless and a bright smile lit his face. His muscles, engorged with the blood racing through his system, flickered and twitched as they slowly cooled. “But you were right. It’s just what I needed to work out some of my feelings.”
Amity had to admit that exercise looked good on him—no, it looked great on him. Thankfully, she’d spent the last hour growing ever more accustomed to the sight of his semi-naked body, so she was able to keep her tongue straight and speak properly—just.
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