by J. K. Coi
“Didn’t you already spend a ridiculous amount of time on that treadmill this afternoon?”
“That was just to keep me from clawing at the walls. I don’t react well to prolonged periods of inactivity.” His voice lowered an octave, making it clear just what kind of activity he preferred most.
“You could meet me at my apartment later if you’d prefer, and I would be more than happy to hand over the notes then.”
“You know I can’t do that. Until you’re tucked safely in bed for the night, I stick to you like glue.”
“That should be fun.” He waggled his eyebrows. It was such a goofy thing to do, she struggled not to laugh. This wasn’t a date. This was a job.
She might be fairly new to the bodyguard business, but she’d been trained to expect victims of this type of personal invasion to be frustrated and scared, which usually translated into misdirected anger or paranoid hermit behavior. Either Steve Nolan was exceedingly adaptable, or he was no stranger to unwanted attention, and none of this even fazed him. Probably a combination of both.
“How long do you plan to be at the gym?” she asked.
“It depends how I feel.”
Did the man even know what a schedule was?
“Don’t worry.” He raised his right hand, palm out. “I promise to go straight to the gym without passing Go, and I won’t even cross the street unless you’re there to hold my hand.”
His posture shifted, and there was a subtle tension in it. Beyond all the jokes and the wantonly unprofessional sexual advances, he wasn’t as indifferent about all this as he pretended. He was pissed about having to answer to her, just better at hiding it than most, so she tried not to bristle beneath his teasing condescension.
“I’m just trying to do my job,” she reminded him gently. “And I’m not your mother.”
His jaw clenched, and she held her breath as his gaze narrowed and slid over her body. Slowly, casually, purposefully. A visceral perusal that left her buzzing from head to toe. He could have used his hands and it wouldn’t have felt any more intimate.
“No, you’re definitely not,” he finally said with a cocky, lazy smile. “I wouldn’t make that kind of mistake.”
He was purposely trying to make her uncomfortable, to test her limits. It was all just a game to him, one that he was used to winning, but she’d played that game before and lost, and it wouldn’t happen again.
The arrogant curve of his lips made her whole body tremble.
Okay, so she might consider playing…but she knew the rules now, and nobody would be taking her heart as the prize.
She squared her shoulders and stepped away from the door. “Where is your gym? Wait for me outside the garage, and I’ll follow you there.”
“Park Place, between Church and Broadway.”
She swore under her breath. “The boxing club?”
“You know it?” He sounded surprised, but she wasn’t in the mood to indulge his curiosity. She simply nodded and turned back to the stairwell.
“Oh, and Ms. Porter?” She glanced over her shoulder with raised brows. “I suggest you wait outside, or dress appropriately.”
“I can’t wait outside. However, I’ll stay out of your way. I’ll be fine as I am.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said earlier?” His imperious tone plucked at her temper.
“I heard you.” Her hand clenched on the stair railing. “But I don’t understand how my attire affects my ability to do this job.”
“If you stand around a place like that dressed in your ugly suit, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb, and we agreed that you would be completely inconspicuous, did we not?”
She bristled, forcing herself not to look down at her jacket and skirt. She was getting tired of him calling it ugly. It wasn’t a pencil skirt and stiletto heels, but her suit was clean, presentable, it fit properly, and it let her do her job.
“I have workout clothes in my car,” she bit out.
Chapter Three
The club was busy, but Steve and his buddy Leo had a standing reservation, and after a few minutes at the speed bag, their ring opened up. He looked around and frowned when he couldn’t find his sparring partner.
Leo Markham was a society divorce lawyer by day and boxed semi-pro the rest of the time. Steve didn’t know how he explained the bruises to his high-class clients, although the guy rarely had to worry about bruises. He was a rock-solid wall of Italian muscle that could go round after round and dealt more hits than he ever took.
As Steve adjusted his gloves, his gaze alternated between the double door entrance to the gym and the door of the women’s locker room on the other side of the large athletic facility. He’d signed in his new shadow as a guest, although he hadn’t seen her yet.
For someone who took her job so seriously, she hadn’t seemed eager to come to the boxing club. She was probably pissed because he’d refused to run home and hide behind his apartment door with the shades drawn. But until some real danger had been established—and he didn’t think that was going to happen—he wasn’t about to change his life around.
He didn’t see that black suit of hers, which was a good sign. But then, where was she? Had she called her boss already and asked them to send someone else? She hadn’t seemed the type to give in so easily, and he liked that about her. Maybe too much.
He grabbed his water bottle and took a big gulp, his gaze lighting on a woman coming out of the locker room.
This April Porter was nothing like the straight-laced, restrained professional who’d waited patiently in the uncomfortable chairs outside his office all afternoon. This woman was a fucking Amazon dressed in body-hugging Lycra, showing off a sleekly toned, athletic body designed to make men weep.
Holy shit, the difference a pair of shorts and a sports bra could make. He’d already suspected what lay beneath her ugly suit, but the reality made his mouth go dry, and it was sexy as hell.
She was immediately approached by Big Joey—the owner of the club—and her guarded expression transformed into a warm smile that lit up her entire face and sent Steve reeling with a fresh wave of desire. Surprisingly, it seemed they knew each other. Big Joey touched her shoulder, and suddenly her smile faded and sadness filled her eyes. He frowned and started forward, but she saw him and her shoulders went back like a soldier at attention, confirming Steve’s suspicion that she was only so formal with him. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, and by the hint of pink in her cheeks, she’d noticed.
She nodded to Joey and made her way over. “Are you already finished with your workout?” she asked.
Frustrated, he shook his head. “I was hoping to get into the ring, but it looks like it’s not going to happen. My sparring partner didn’t show up.” After a day spent thinking way too much about his prickly, intriguing new bodyguard, his body had needed the physical release of an intense, all-out fight.
She bit her lip and looked around the gym. Finally, she groaned and said, “I could spar with you.”
He raised a brow. “You know how to box?” She wasn’t wearing the proper shoes, and she hadn’t carried out a pair of gloves with her from the locker room.
“My dad was a fighter,” she said, looking as if it physically hurt to open up to him even that much.
“That doesn’t mean you can fight,” he said, egging her on.
“Try me,” she answered.
The challenge in her words hit him at multiple levels. Oh, he wanted to.
“All right. Then let’s go.” He caught the hesitant eagerness lighting up her eyes. Finally, he’d found something that could break through her icy shell. If only he had the same effect on her.
He reached down for a pair of rental gloves from the bin by the ring. “Are you okay with these?”
She nodded and put one on. She wrapped tape around her wrist with a practiced hand, and he knew she wasn’t just blowing smoke up his ass; she owned a pair of her own. When she tucked the second glove under her arm and slipped her hand in
side, he reached for the tape and grabbed her wrist. She was very still while he held her, and he found himself lingering so that he could touch her longer than was necessary.
When they climbed up into the ring, she alternated stretching her arms over her head and behind her neck and danced on the balls of her feet.
He went through the motions, too, but he’d already warmed up, so he was really just watching her.
A few minutes later, she nodded and moved to the middle of the canvas. “Ready.”
She threw the first punch. He cut back and turned to follow her as she slipped off to the left, but when he countered, he held back, and she had no trouble dancing out of reach. “What was that? I’ve seen children punch better than that,” she taunted him.
He grinned. “All right, you asked for it.”
His next shot landed true, but she shrugged it off and followed it up with a wide bolo punch. He blocked and responded quickly with a combo counterattack to the ribs which she deflected by catching him in the chin.
He was surprised by how good she was. Her stance was perfect and relaxed, her reaction time was quick. She knew how to judge her opponent’s next move and beat him to the punch. She knew when to take a shot and when to hold back and wait for a better opening. He marveled at the strength in her small bones. She was a natural, and before he knew it, both of them were breathing heavily. The cool, controlled Ms. Porter he’d met earlier today had melted away with the sweat of their exertion. There was a smile on her face—and that was maybe the biggest surprise. Her smile did things to him that should be banned out of the bedroom. It was like a lightning bolt to his gut.
He spat his mouth guard into his glove and grinned. “You’ve got moves, Ms. Porter.”
The color in her cheeks deepened beyond what could be blamed on the physical exertion, sending a bolt of lust through him so strong he wanted to tell everyone else in the gym to go to hell and throw her down on the mats.
She grunted and held her fists up in front of her face, but Steve had already gotten the workout he came for, and his body was now intensely focused on its other needs. He’d been guiding the fight just so he could watch her chest rise and fall when she danced away, and so that he could brush up against her as often as possible.
She took a rash, reckless swing at him, the kind of swing she never would have taken at the beginning of the fight. Was he wearing her down? And not just physically?
His grin widened, and he sidestepped. She doubled back, but tripped over her foot when he feinted, throwing her off balance and right into his arms.
Like a charm. She smelled like cinnamon even with the sweat beading her skin. Her breathing hitched as she tilted her face up, and those pouty full lips were right there, begging for the pressure of his mouth, the tug of his teeth. His forearm curled around her small waist, pulling her tighter to his body and taking her weight. She didn’t pull away, her gaze dipping down, down, to the spot where her Lycra-covered breasts pressed against his bare chest.
“Oh God,” she whispered, then jerked her gaze up to his in horror as if she hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
“What the hell was that?” someone yelled from the sidelines.
Big Joey.
Ms. Porter closed her eyes and stiffened. She shoved against him, but he was slow to release her. The club owner climbed into the ring and stalked toward them with smoke practically coming out of his ears. He looked like a monstrous bull next to her slim, catlike form, but she didn’t shy away from him.
Steve quashed the crazy impulse to step between them, frowning. Even knowing this woman for less than a day, he was certain she wouldn’t appreciate his interference.
“Your da would crucify you if he saw what you just did, dropping your guard in front of your opponent like a rank amateur.” Her gaze slid sideways back to Steve for a fraction of a second, long enough for him to see the regret pulling her face back into its stern, professional mask.
She slapped at his hand with her glove and stretched her neck out to the left and right. “Cut it out, Uncle Joe. We were just sparring.” She looked over her shoulder at the crowd that had gathered to watch their match and groaned.
Uncle Joe?
The club owner snorted and dropped his hands to plant both fists on his hips. “Don’t you talk to me as if I didn’t halfway raise you. Now…” He spun around and glared at the gawkers. “What’s everyone looking at?”
The men began to disperse. Big Joey turned back around and frowned. “By the way, April honey, you never did say what you’re doing here. I take it you’re with this guy?” He jerked a thumb at Steve with a sneer.
“Just doing my—” she started, then sputtered as she remembered that she couldn’t tell anyone that she was on a job. “Well, actually I’m…uh…”
Steve stepped in. “We met last night, and April here promised to give me some pointers in the ring,” he said, suggesting that they’d met on very personal terms. Beside him, she winced, but true to her word not to let anyone know her real purpose for being with him, she didn’t contradict him even to someone who was obviously a friend.
Big Joey frowned and crossed his arms. Her lips pressed together in a thin line. The engaged light that had glowed in her eyes during their sparring match had faded. In fact, the air around her was cooling by the second, as if she was mentally putting on her ugly suit again, distancing herself.
He was lost as to why. After seeing the way she’d brightened in the ring—from a utility bulb into a freaking strobe light—he honestly had no idea what April Porter was all about. She was a dichotomy, but one he ached to decode.
Big Joey looked Steve up and down, but there were no jokes about his getting boxing pointers from a girl. “Well, there’s nobody better than April Porter… Just as good as her da, she is.”
Steve glanced at her. Was his bodyguard blushing? “I suppose I can’t disagree with that,” he said, although he had no idea who her father was, except that he’d been a fighter.
She cleared her throat and gave Steve a properly contained smile. “Thanks for the sparring match. If you’re finished your workout, I’ll change now and be ready to go in ten minutes. Please don’t leave the gym without me.”
Her voice dripped with that professional stiffness, but he nodded. She turned away and ducked beneath the ropes, jumping down out of the ring. She unwound the tapes on her gloves like a pro and peeled them off, then dumped them on the bench and made her way to the locker room.
Damn, she could bounce quarters off that tight ass.
Beside him Big Joey cleared his throat. “What do you think you’re doing with that girl, Nolan?”
Steve had been a member of the boxing club for three years, but he’d never been on the receiving end of a look from Joey quite like the one he was getting now—a look full of warning and protectiveness.
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s just like she told you. We’re just hanging out for a while,” he said. “Then again, if I was doing something, I’d be doing it with a mature, adult woman who knows her own mind and makes her own decisions…don’t you agree?”
Big Joey leaned close and spoke softly. “Listen up then. I’ve known her since she was a kid running around this gym. April’s been through enough from guys like you. If you do anything to hurt her…”
Interesting. He never would have pictured Big Joey as the type to make threats, but he sure was protective of Steve’s new bodyguard. “From what I just saw, I think she can probably take care of herself,” he said with a shrug.
“Just keep what I said in mind.”
Fifteen minutes later, Steve came back onto the floor, hair still damp from a quick shower. The gym had quieted down a bit, and Ms. Porter waited just outside the men’s locker room door. She was once again dressed in her suit. Her gym bag was thrown over her shoulder, and she stood beside one of the structural posts as if she had all the time in the world. It was hard to tell which had more steel in its posture; her or the post. The only evidence that anything a
t all had changed since they’d left the office was the fact that her hair now hung down to her shoulder blades in a thick, damp ponytail instead of rolled up on top of her head.
Standing like that, dressed like that, she was definitely Ms. Porter again. Steve could find no sign of a boxing spitfire named April with the world’s most amazing smile.
She stepped forward. “Are you ready to go home?”
He shook his head. “Actually, no. I have dinner plans,” he said.
Her lips thinned as she narrowed her gaze, but he wasn’t intentionally trying to be difficult…this time. With all the distractions today, he’d forgotten he had a date until the reminder had popped up on his phone while he’d been changing. He checked his watch. There should be just enough time to make it to the restaurant.
April pulled up to the curb across the street from the classy restaurant and watched Nolan get out of his car and hand his keys to the valet. Before he proceeded inside, he actually looked her way. She could swear he was even making eye contact through her car window.
Not only was she not dressed for dinner at the fanciest restaurant in New York, joining him inside would be oodles more awkwardness in one evening than she’d signed up for.
She was surprised he’d even bothered looking for her car. The few other clients she’d protected had quickly gotten used to her presence and simply accepted that she was always there somewhere. Otherwise, they’d forgotten about her until they needed something. She was like a statue and hadn’t warranted human interaction unless it was absolutely necessary.
Before they’d left Big Joey’s, she’d asked for the name of the restaurant. There’d be no way to remain inconspicuous at a table by herself, especially dressed as she was and especially if she didn’t order something. Staying outside in the car had been a calculated decision, but he’d promised to text “911” to her number—which she’d programed into his phone back at the gym—if absolutely anything looked suspicious. She’d written down his license plate number and would make a point of checking over the car when he came back out to retrieve it from the valet, but for now there was nothing to do but wait…and think.