“Well, Nicole, I think we’re done for the day,” she announced. “Good job.”
Felicia was about to hand the older woman a towel when the sound of a door being slammed somewhere on the premises echoed through the area. Startled, she gasped and looked as if she was about to jump out of her skin. Embarrassed, she avoided making eye contact with Aaron as she picked up the towel she had dropped.
“Sorry, I guess I’m a little skittish today,” she murmured, although there really wasn’t a reason for that. Today was no different than any other day.
Aaron was about to comment that he’d had days like that himself, in an effort to gloss over the incident, when, quite by accident, he caught a glimpse of several deep scars on Felicia’s back. She had moved a certain way, and the scars were visible with the halter top she was wearing.
It took him totally by surprise. Aaron put that together with the uneasy look on her face. Now that he thought about it, while he had been observing her during the session, he realized that Felicia kept looking over her shoulder. It was as if she was expecting someone to pop out of the shadows.
But why?
And who?
Aaron had dealt with enough runaway teens in his time to spot the behavior of someone who was afraid of something or someone. Felicia’s skittishness, along with the scars he had seen on her back, suggested that she might have been abused, and not all that long ago in his estimation.
He also knew that asking Felicia about it directly would only spook her, or worse, even make her clam up totally and leave. And that would be a bad thing. He wanted her to feel safe here.
In the blink of an eye, Felicia had gone from someone he wanted to question to someone he wanted to help.
His gyms had programs that were meant to help at-risk teens raise their self-esteem and also learn a few self-defense moves so that if they needed to, they could protect themselves. That went a long way in building up their confidence, not to mention keeping them safe.
There was no reason these same programs couldn’t be used for other people, as well. Because he had challenged her to begin with, Aaron felt he needed to build up Felicia’s trust if he was going to be able to reach her.
“You know, that was really impressive,” he commented as they all walked out of the makeshift gym and went back downstairs.
“What, my nearly jumping out of my skin?” Felicia asked with what she hoped was a convincing, lighthearted laugh.
She was afraid he was going to start asking her uncomfortable questions and she definitely didn’t want to explain her behavior or tell him anything about her ex-husband. She was ashamed that she had let that situation go on for so long. Looking back, she knew she should have walked out on Greg when his behavior had started changing toward her, not lingered around with the hope that he would go back to being the man she had first fallen in love with.
The fact that she hadn’t left, that she had allowed herself to become a victim, bothered her down to the very bottom of her soul.
Aaron felt his best course of action was to just wave away the incident. When she grew to trust him, they could revisit the reason why she’d seemed so afraid. Right now, he focused on making her feel more secure.
“No, I’m talking about what you’ve managed to accomplish with my mother.” It helped that he meant what he was saying. “It’s great that you have her going through her paces so well.”
Felicia was relieved to talk about his mother and her progress. “Like I said, your mother is really willing to work and I’ve learned that that is really more than half the battle right there.” Her eyes crinkled as she smiled at Nicole.
Aaron nodded. He was searching for a subtle way to offer to teach Felicia some self-defense moves. He was certain that it would do a lot to help her stop being as edgy and nervous as she was.
It occurred to him that the simplest way was probably the best one.
“Say, why don’t I take you over to my gym?” he suggested. “The big one,” he clarified. “I can show you around and that way, you can judge for yourself if there’s anything there that you might be able to incorporate into my mother’s treatment routine. How about it?”
He saw his mother looking at him, and from the expression on her face, he could see that she knew exactly what he was doing. There was no putting anything over on his mother, he thought with a smile. The sharp woman must have noticed Felicia’s nervous reaction to the sudden noise and put two and two together.
For her part, Felicia was surprised by Aaron’s suggestion, but she could immediately see the merit in it. In addition, she was gratified, not to mention extremely pleased, that Nicole’s handsome son had apparently done an about-face and now seemed to approve of her. She would have loved to relax, but she knew better than to do that. She had learned that the hard way.
Greg had kept her on an emotional roller coaster perpetually. One moment he would be attentive and loving, then suddenly, just one wrong word and he would become furious and abusive. Felicia never knew what to expect, except that she would end up paying for every sweet moment in her life with a dozen moments of pure anguish, if not hell.
Before she was finally able to make good her escape, she’d come to realize that she couldn’t attempt to cling to the good because it would always, always be followed by the bad.
Still, wary though she was, Felicia felt she couldn’t just turn Aaron down. But old habits had her making sure that she would be safe.
“Will there be anyone else at the gym?” she asked, trying to sound casual. It wasn’t that she was suspicious of him, but until she felt assured that she wasn’t making a mistake by being too trusting, it was better to ask questions.
Her question made him smile. “Well, with any luck, yes. I do run my gym for profit,” Aaron reminded her. “So there should be people there.”
“Yes, of course. Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that your gym was empty.” Damn it, she was tripping over her own tongue. Right about now, she really wished that the earth could just open up and swallow her whole.
“No apology necessary,” he told her good-naturedly. “There was a time when I first opened that I was actually afraid no one would come,” he admitted.
Nicole laughed at the image he was presenting. “You were a champion boxer who had more than three dozen wins under his belt. Would-be prizefighters wanted to rub shoulders with you just for luck,” she reminded him. “Don’t let his modesty act fool you, Fee. He knew they would be knocking down his door the moment he opened his gym.”
Felicia didn’t follow sports in general, but she knew that you didn’t quit when you were at the top of your game. “Why did you quit professional boxing?” she asked, curious.
“I’ll tell you why,” Nicole answered. “He did it for me.” She looked at her son, nothing short of gratitude in her eyes. “He knew that every time he entered the ring, I died a little bit, terrified that this time, he wouldn’t be able to walk out on his own. That this time he would sustain a blow to his head that would render that wonderful brain of his incapable of carrying out a single thought—or worse.”
Cupping Aaron’s cheek affectionately, she smiled at her oldest son. “If anything ever happened to Aaron, I know that I wouldn’t be able to survive the terrible ordeal.”
Aaron winked at Felicia. “My mother tends to be a little melodramatic.”
“But nonetheless right,” Nicole told Felicia. “Everyone is always focused on the fighters who emerge as champions,” she pointed out. “No one ever keeps any real record of the fighters who wind up severely impaired because of a fight that went wrong.”
“Don’t mind her,” he advised Felicia. “She does tend to exaggerate.”
“Be that as it may,” Nicole continued, “Aaron humored me and gave up the ring. I know what that had to cost him. He did leave the arena as an undefeated champion and, like I said, for that I will be forever grate
ful.”
Realizing that she had gone on and on without meaning to, Nicole apologized to Felicia. “Sorry, I just wanted Aaron to know how very thankful I am that he did that for me. I have no doubt that any other son would have just told me to let him live his life the way he saw fit and be done with it.”
“Ha,” Aaron interjected. “I’d have never heard the end of it if I had done that—or if I had gotten really hurt in the ring. I figured that stepping away from the professional ring was a small price to pay for peace and quiet,” he told Felicia.
She found herself believing him. And, in the short span of time that she had spent being filled in on Aaron Colton’s background, she’d started admiring the man.
From all indications, Aaron Colton seemed to have been on the fast track toward a world championship. He had given it up because continuing would have placed his mother in perpetual agony.
“So you gave it all up for your mother,” Felicia said out loud. There was no mistaking the respect in her voice.
Aaron shrugged. Outside the ring, he wasn’t comfortable with having attention focused on him. “Something like that.”
“He’s being modest again,” Nicole told her. “It was exactly like that, and no matter what else comes to pass, I can’t forget that my oldest-born found it in his heart to turn his back on the potential pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and humor his nervous mother’s wishes.”
Nicole could see by the way the young woman smiled at her son that Felicia saw it that way, as well. She found herself entertaining thoughts about Felicia that had nothing to do with a physical therapy program.
Nicole turned her attention momentarily toward her son. From his body language, she could tell that he was getting ready to leave. “Are you sure I can’t fix you something to eat?”
“I’m sure, Mom.” He glanced at his watch. It was a gift he’d given himself when he won his very first match. “It looks like I’m overdue at the gym.” He dropped a quick kiss on his mother’s temple. “I’m really glad you’re doing as well as you are.”
And then he looked at Felicia. “And if you don’t mind, I’ll give you a call to arrange a tour of my main gym.”
Felicia felt herself responding to Aaron’s smile and warned herself to keep things in perspective. At the very most, he was just being courteous. As for the least, well, she knew where the least led.
Inclining her head, she told him, “I’ll be looking forward to it. As long as it doesn’t put you out.”
She was grateful for the job and for the fact that he had decided not to challenge her the way she had initially believed he was going to. But she didn’t want him feeling obligated to do anything more than that. She was content just doing her job and staying out of everyone else’s way. Not for the first time she thought of this job as a dream come true.
“See you around,” he said to his mother and Felicia. “And tell Aunt Vita I said goodbye.”
The moment the front door closed, Nicole turned toward Felicia. “He seems to be quite taken with you.”
“It’s not me,” Felicia denied. “He just wants to make sure that I take good care of his mother.”
“I know, but you have to understand, Aaron is a very skeptical young man. He doesn’t just give his seal of approval lightly. And, heaven help me, he is very protective of his mother—to the point that there are times when he acts as if he believes I’m incapable of making the right decisions for myself.”
It was obvious she would have been annoyed if that same set of circumstances didn’t point to the fact that her son was fiercely protective of her.
“Oh, I’m sure he knows how capable you are,” Felicia assured her.
Nicole laughed. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she asked, amused. “But he does worry about me a bit too much. And it’s not just because I took an unscheduled fall on the floor. I think ever since his father walked out on us and then turned out to be so much less than an honorable man, Aaron has been leery about all the things that could go wrong in life.
“Maybe having you here might help him to calm down a bit, perhaps even convince him that things are really far more in sync than he initially believed.”
Nicole stole a glance at Felicia to see if she was buying any of this. She wasn’t able to tell, but that just meant that she was going to have to work harder to get things moving.
Because, in her mind, Nicole had already decided that her physical therapist needed to get together with her firstborn.
For both their sakes.
Chapter 8
Because he was training a boxer for his second professional match, Aaron wasn’t able to make good on his promise to bring Felicia to his gym for several days.
But the first opportunity he got, he called her to make arrangements for her visit. However, first he needed to synchronize their schedules, something that took more of an effort than he had initially thought it would.
“Don’t wear her out,” his mother warned him when he finally came to pick Felicia up. “I need her. On second thought,” she said as she walked out with the pair, “wear her out. That way maybe she won’t work me so hard.”
“Don’t let her fool you,” Felicia said fondly as she walked toward Aaron’s car with him. “Your mother’s hip is getting really strong. A lot faster than her doctor even anticipated.”
“I don’t think there’s any danger of my wearing Felicia out, Mom. I’m just showing her around the gym for now.” He saw the smile playing on his mother’s lips and wasn’t really sure what to make of it. But rather than ask what she was up to, for now, he decided that it was best to let the whole matter go.
“It’s not far from here,” Aaron said when he finally started up his vehicle and began to drive away from his mother’s house. “It’s located in the North Loop of town,” he added.
Felicia was just beginning to familiarize herself with the different areas in Chicago. “What made you pick that location?” she asked, curious.
That was easy. “Convenience,” he told her. “It was the only gym in the area that had a loft above it. I converted that into my living space. That way I can be at the gym ten minutes after I get up.”
“You live above the gym?” Felicia asked. This new piece of information made her feel vulnerable, not to mention uneasy, even though she told herself it shouldn’t. After all the man had been a perfect gentleman up until now. Right?
Aaron didn’t notice the look on her face. He was focused on the exchange between them and what he had just told her. “Yeah. Like I said, it makes getting to work really easy.” And then he laughed to himself, explaining, “I’m not exactly what you call a morning person.”
The man lived above the gym.
The words replayed themselves in her head. She wouldn’t have agreed to come see it if she had known he had living quarters above the gym. He seemed like a nice guy and she didn’t really expect him to try to take advantage of her...but then, she hadn’t expected Greg to turn into a monster, either. When they had first met in class six years ago, he had been so sweet and thoughtful. They were both taking physical therapy classes together, and Greg had been funny, charming and just everything she thought she could have ever wanted.
It wasn’t until after she had married him and he began drinking that she found herself blindsided by his darker side.
Really darker.
Sitting in Aaron’s car beside him, Felicia could feel herself growing progressively anxious. She tried her very best not to let him see the change, but she had a feeling that he did anyway. That he saw through her became really obvious when she suddenly heard Aaron’s question.
“Are you all right?” He had pulled up in front of his gym and turned the engine off.
Felicia heard the concern in his voice and almost felt guilty.
Almost.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she answered defensively. Then
, getting herself under control, she asked casually, “Why?”
Aaron couldn’t help wondering if the close proximity between them was making her nervous. There didn’t seem to be any other explanation for the shift in behavior.
Well, there was only one way to find out, he decided, although he doubted that she would give him an honest answer.
“You just seem a bit jumpy,” he told her. “So I thought I’d ask.”
She felt guilty lying, but she fell back on a standard answer and hoped that would satisfy him. “It’s just that I have a lot on my mind.”
Maybe there was a problem he could help her with, Aaron thought. It was worth a try. “Mind if I ask what?”
So much for her being able to fluff off the questioning, Felicia thought. She got out of Aaron’s vehicle and closed the door behind her.
She was stalling now and she knew that he knew it. But there was no way she was going to tell him what was actually bothering her: that on two separate occasions, she could have sworn that she saw Greg following her.
She knew exactly what that would have sounded like to Aaron—like the delusional rantings of a paranoid woman.
Added to that, every time she had turned around to look, Greg wasn’t there. It was just a case of her imagination running away with her. Felicia knew she was stressing out. Logically, there was no way Greg would have known that she had moved to Chicago, much less been able to follow her here. If nothing else, Chicago was a big city. There was no way he could have located her. She was just making herself crazy, imagining things.
What she needed to do, Felicia told herself, was to just relax.
She took in a deep breath and then slowly released it. “Nothing important,” she told him, responding to his question as to what she had on her mind. Switching subjects, she said to him as cheerfully as she could, “So, impress me. Let’s go in and see this gym of yours.” She flashed him a broad smile and added, “The one that turns boys into men.”
Colton 911: Secret Defender Page 7