“Let me get that for you.”
I looked up and saw an attractive man looking down at me. “Um, thanks.” He opened the door, and I stepped in.
“First day?” he asked while he took his coat off.
“Um, no. I’m just dropping this off for Kellan. Your first day?” I had no idea why this man was making small talk with me. Did I actually look like someone who was about to do karate? I was still in my coffee-stained apron, and I’m pretty sure I looked like I had just rolled out of bed.
“Oh, too bad. It would have been nice to have some more people out on the mat.”
I laughed. “I’m the last person you want to see out there. Two left feet.”
Handsome smiled. “Well, I’ll see ya around, and I’m Gavin by the way.” The man made his way further into the studio before I could tell him my name, and I finally took the time to look around.
It was twenty to nine, and if the schedule I had seen online was correct, the adult cardio class was about to begin. I giggled to myself and set the boxes on the counter.
“But I have a flyer.”
“You have to do it.”
“I want my money back.”
A huge grin spread across my lips, and I knew my surprise for Kellan was in full swing.
I moved closer to the mat and saw Kellan surrounded by six of my regular customers from the cafe—Bess and Frank included. “I’ve never seen that flyer in my life before.”
Bess held the flyer in his face. “But it says right here you have senior citizen cardio at eight forty-five.”
Kellan grabbed it and balled it up. “I know it says that, but I didn’t make the damn thing.”
“You have to do what the flyer says.” Frank was dressed in clothes that I wished I could unsee. He had on shorts that barely came to his knees, a baggy white tank top, and to top it all off, he had sweatbands on his wrists, and one on his head. He looked like eighties aerobics come back to like.
I grabbed Sage’s phone out of my pocket and quickly snapped a picture.
“You!” Kellan boomed.
Everyone turned to look at me, and I slid the phone back in my pocket. I pointed to my chest. “Me?”
Kellan stalked over to me and grabbed my arm. “Yes, you. In my office, now,” he ordered.
Kellan towed me to the office and slammed the door shut. “Undo this.”
I slowly blinked. “Undo what?” I wasn’t going to cop to anything.
“I know you did this, Molly.”
I peered out the large window that overlooked the mats. “I’m still not sure what ‘this’ is.”
“You think you’re funny, don’t you? Fucking cute just standing here in your damn apron acting like you have no clue that fucking flyers are going around with the Powerhouse logo on them advertising one free senior cardio class.”
“Wow. That’s awfully sweet of you, Kellan. Now that you do mention it, I did see the flyer and showed Bess yesterday.”
Kellan growled. “I didn’t make the fucking flyer.”
“Oh really? Then, I wonder who could have done it.” I tapped my finger on my chin and tried desperately not to smile. “Did you ask Dante?”
“This is really how you are going to play this?” A vein in his neck throbbed, and he took a step closer to me. “This wasn’t Dante, and I know for damn sure it wasn’t Tate or Roman before you suggest them.”
I held my hands up. “Then, I’m at a loss. You must have really pissed someone off for them to do this to you.”
Kellan looked me up and down. “If you didn’t come over to see your handiwork, then why are you here? You didn’t step foot into Powerhouse until you have a problem with us. I find it hard to believe that you just came over for a friendly visit.”
I beamed and clasped my hands in front of me. “I brought cookies, and coffee for you.”
Kellan took another step towards me, and I scurried backward, slamming into the door. He caged me in with his arms and looked down at me. Kellan was only a couple inches taller than me, but he was rather imposing when he was this close. “Molly.”
“Kellan,” I gasped. My body betrayed me, heating at the one word that escaped his lips.
“Admit it.”
I cleared my throat and looked him in the eye. “Admit what?” There were quite a few things I could accept at that moment, one of them being I was thinking things about Kellan that should not be crossing my mind.
“You made the flyers.”
“No, I didn’t.” I really hadn’t. Sage was a computer guru and had made them. I just told her what I wanted them to say, and she had done the rest.
Kellan growled.
“Is growling really necessary?”
“It seems to be my natural reaction when I come in contact with you.”
I looked to the left. “Odd.”
Kellan leaned in closer. “What’s strange is you think it’s okay to mess with my business and life.”
I scoffed. “Me? You’re the one who sent eight guys to the cafe yesterday!” He had a lot of nerve to think what I did was worse than the stunt he played yesterday. “You could have been sending psychopaths to kidnap me. All I did was show Bess, Frank, and a couple of their friends a flyer. It’s not my fault they thought it was a good idea.” I might have pushed them into coming today, but that was another thing Kellan didn’t need to know.
“I’m running a business here, I can’t afford to be giving free lessons to every Tom, Dick, or Harry who walks in the door.”
“It’s one lesson.”
“One lesson for eight people I didn’t agree to. Hell, Molly, I don’t even offer a senior citizen class. I’m liable to break one of their hips.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please, Bess is in better shape than I am.” Kellan didn’t say anything, just stared me down. “And Frank ran a half marathon last month.”
“I can’t believe I’m about to do a cardio class for senior citizens.” Kellan pushed off the wall and ran his fingers through his hair. “You do know I’m going to have to get you back for this.”
I put my hand on the door handle. “You don’t have to. Just stop being so damn loud.”
Kellan threw his head back and laughed. “Oh no, you’re not going to win that easily.”
I struggled to swallow. I had been hoping this would be the end of whatever was going on between Kellan and me. I hitched my thumb over my shoulder. “You think you have something better up your sleeve than eight old people wanting to aerobicize?”
Kellan sprung towards me and caged me in again. I cowered, and it only made Kellan even more imposing. “Last chance to back out, Cookie. You take your customers with you, cancel the meeting, and we’ll call this even.”
I narrowed my eyes, pursed my lips, and tipped my chin up. “Why am I the one who has to back down? All that really needs to happen is you just keep it down. I’m not asking for a lot.”
Kellan leaned in close, his nose almost touching mine. “Do I walk into your coffee shop, and tell you how to make coffee?”
“No, that would be a ridiculous. You know nothing about coffee, let alone making it.”
A sly smile spread across his lips. “And you know absolutely nothing about karate, so why do you get to come in here and tell me how to run my classes?”
“I’m not telling you how to do karate. I’m saying you need to be courteous to my needs.”
Kellan licked his lips. “I need to be courteous to your needs, Cookie?”
“Y…y…yes,” I stammered.
He stepped in closer, his chest rubbing against my breasts, and whispered in my ear. “But who’s going to take care of my needs?”
I closed my eyes. “Stop playing games, Kellan.”
“I think we’re on a two-way street here, Cookie. I stop; you stop.”
My eyes opened, and I looked into his green ones. “I don’t need to stop anything.”
“Then, I guess I don’t need to either.” He pushed off the wall and out of my space.
I yanked on my apron,
pulling it down. “So, that’s it? What are you going to do now?”
Kellan tilted his head toward the group of people out in the studio. “Looks like I need to figure out how to teach a bunch of seventy-year-olds.”
I cleared my throat. “What about after that?”
“After that, I have three more classes, sparring, another class, and then about three private lessons.” A smirk spread across his lips. “But you shouldn’t worry about any of that. It’s what comes after all of that you should worry about.” He put his hands on my shoulders, moved me to the side, and opened the door.
“Kellan,” I called before he stepped out of the office.
He looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, Cookie?”
I took a deep breath and pointed to the desk. “I brought you a coffee and some cookies. Sounds like you’re going to have a long day.” I patted him on the shoulder as I skirted around him.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me into him. “I mean it, this isn’t over, Molly.”
I nodded. “If that’s what you want to think.” I stood on my tip toes and leaned into him. “Hit me with your best shot, Mr. Karate.” I pulled out of his grasp, waved to Bess and Frank who were waiting on the mat for Kellan, and ducked out the front door.
I sprinted back to the cafe and barreled through the door.
Sage’s eyes bugged out when she spotted me and scurried over to me. “Well, how’d it go? How ticked off was he?”
I swallowed and leaned against the door. “I think I just started World War III.”
Sage patted me on the shoulder and pressed her cup of coffee into my hand. “I believe that you're going to need this more than me.” She sauntered over to the counter, and I closed my eyes.
My head was all over the place right now. Kellan had been close. I’m talking the close where my body noticed and thought how nice it would be to be that close with no clothes on.
There were rules to this kind of thing, and I’m sure I had just broken one picturing the enemy naked. I shook my head and took a sip of Sage’s coffee. It was the blah black coffee she liked to drink, and I cringed. I needed flavor in my coffee, preferably hazelnut, but her black coffee was going to have to do.
Kellan was going to retaliate, and I needed to be prepared. How? I had no freakin’ clue, but I needed to figure it out, and quick.
**********
Kellan
“She did what?”
I grabbed the flyer off the desk and thrust it into Dante’s face. “The little shit did that.” He grabbed the flyer out of my hand, and his eyes scanned it.
“Holy fuck, this is fucking brilliant.”
I yanked the flyer out of his hand and tossed it in the garbage. It was fucking brilliant, and that was what had pissed me off the most. Who would have thought she had it in her? “We need to figure out what we’re going to do next.”
“Hold on.” Dante grabbed a cookie out of the box she had brought over and moaned. “Jesus Christ.”
I snatched the cookie out of his hand and tossed it back in the box. “Do you think you could focus for five minutes? That is from the enemy, and we can’t be moaning about it like it’s the best thing since sliced bread.”
“Well, they’re pretty fucking close to being better.” Dante wiped his hands on his pants. “Well, let’s hear it. I’m sure you’ve already thought of what you’re going to do next.”
I grabbed my sparring gloves out of my bag and pulled them on. “That’s the fucking thing, I don’t know I’m going to do next.” I bowed onto the mat and squared up in front of the punching bag. All morning, I was distracted thinking of Molly. I had managed to make it through the disastrous senior citizen class and was on autopilot through my other classes and lessons. Thankfully, Tate and Roman had shown up halfway through the day and helped out.
“So, what did you do with all of the old people?” Dante slipped off his shoes, bowed onto the mat, and stood behind the punching bag I was about to beat the shit out of.
“We basically stretched the whole time. One of the ladies, I think her name was Bess, insisted on hitting one of the bags.” I shook my head, and side-kicked the punching bag.
“How’d she do?”
I shook my head and jabbed left, then right at the bag. “She actually did pretty well. Once she hit it, everyone else wanted to. Gavin was here today, so I had him work off to the side while I dealt with the everyone else.”
“Well, you were saying last week that we needed to get more adults into class. Maybe this is what we need.”
I bounced on the balls of my feet, ducked, then jabbed with my left hand followed by another sidekick. “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said that.” Dante hadn’t even heard the worst part yet. “They paid me, Dante.”
“What?”
I stood still, and my shoulders dropped. “They insisted on paying me for today, and said that they’ll be back next Saturday.”
Dante put his arm around the bag and laughed. “You’re shitting me. They actually liked class?”
They did, and I had no idea why. When I say all we did was stretch, I wasn’t joking. The last ten minutes is when Bess had insisted on hitting the bag, and that might have been what convinced them to come back for more. Taking your frustrations out on a punching bag was therapeutic, no matter what your age. “I couldn’t tell them no.”
“So, now you added a whole other class to our already insane schedule.”
I rolled my shoulders and put my hands up. “Move your head before I kick it.” Dante took a step back, and I landed a dropkick right where his head had been. “You tell these people next Saturday when they come in that they can’t take classes.”
“But what are you going to teach them?”
I ran through the delta combo, landing each punch precisely. “Same thing we teach the kids.”
“You’re telling me we’re going to give them white belts and make them go through belt promotions?”
I shook my head and bounced from foot to foot. “No. They all said they weren’t in it to be black belts.” Dante busted out laughing, and I had to admit when they had stated that, it was hard for me not to laugh. No one knew what it was like to become a black belt until they actually went through it. “I’m not sure what to call it. Kind of like a self-defense class mixed with a little karate.”
“So, you’re basically going to fly by the seat of your pants.”
Yeah, that was pretty much what I was going to do. I had so much going on planning lessons for all of the other classes, I wasn’t going to have much time for another one.
“So, while she messed with you, you still managed to turn it around and use it to your advantage.”
I threw a punch at the bag. “Yeah, but she still needs to get payback.”
“Well, when you figure out what you want to do, let me know. You know Tate, Roman, and I got your back.”
“Yeah, give me a couple of days.”
Dante walked over to the speaker and turned it on. “Until you figure it out, you wanna bug the shit out her by cranking the music?”
I chuckled and landed another dropkick. “Crank that shit up, and get out here with me. Roman was thinking of entering the sparring in that tournament coming up, and he wants me to train with him.”
“So, that means I need to whip your ass into shape so then you can whip his into shape.”
I wiped the sweat off my brow. “Yeah, since you two can’t seem to train together without one of you trying to kill the other, I’m stuck with him.”
Dante grabbed his bag and headed to the bathroom. “Let me change, and I’ll show you how it’s done.” The door shut behind him.
I grabbed my phone and turned on some music. I glanced at the clock and saw it was already after four. Molly had closed the cafe by now and probably wasn’t even there. I put on some Metallica and tossed my phone onto the small podium in the corner.
I glanced out the back door, and suddenly I knew just what my next move was going to be with Molly.
I knocked my hands together and bounced around.
Molly was going down, literally.
**********
Molly
“Can you help me bring these boxes to my car? I need to pick Sam up in five minutes, and I know I’m going to be late.”
I hung my clipboard up next to the storeroom door and grabbed the boxes next to Sage’s feet. “Sure. What are you taking these home for anyway?”
Sage grabbed the rest of the boxes and headed out the front door. “Sam has been bugging me to make a dog bed for Felly.”
“His stuffed dog?”
Sage popped the trunk and dumped in the boxes. “Yes.”
“He’s one stuffed dog, why do you need six boxes?”
Sage grabbed the boxes from me and tossed them on top. “Because once he sat down and thought about it, he needs houses for all of his stuffed animals, not just Felly.”
I patted her on the shoulder. “You need to write down all this good mom shit for me, so I have a handbook when I have a kid.”
Sage laughed and slammed the trunk shut. “I’m flying by the seat of my pants here, Molly.”
“Well, Sam is a pretty awesome kid. You’re doing damn good.” I honestly didn’t know how Sage did it. Taking care of a little human being by herself was one of the bravest things someone could do. To go from having a loving husband, and a little family, to doing it all on your own was something only seriously strong people could do.
“I’ll call you to remind me of that when he refuses to take a bath without his stuffed animals tonight.” Sage slide into her car and pulled out of the parking lot.
It was half-past three, and I still had all of the dishes and a load of dirty aprons to take care of. I had been debating taking them home or running them down to the laundromat while I did the dishes. My laziness won out, and I decided I would just take them home instead of walking to the laundromat.
I plunged my hands into the soapy water and hummed along to P!nk playing over the speakers. It had been slow today, and I had been able to do my inventory during the day, so I could cut out a bit early. The new flavor I perfected last week was on the order board, and I already knew what next week’s were going to be. I was, for once, ahead of the game and looked forward to an easy and peaceful week.
Dropkick My Heart: Powerhouse M.A. Series Page 7