Table of Contents
No Rep
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Text copyright © 2022 Lani Lynn Vale ®
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To my husband, for forcing me to do CrossFit. I love it, even though I thought I’d hate it.
Acknowledgments
Golden Czermak—Photographer
My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing—My editors
Uplifting Author Services—Cover Artist
My mom—Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred and forty-seven times.
Alyssa, my PA, for doing all the crap I don’t want to do when it comes to my books.
Kendra, Tara, Jessey, Laura, Penney, Brandi, Jen, Kathy, Mindy, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No
My Bad
One Chance, Fancy
It Happens
Keep It Classy
Snitches Get Stitches
F-Bomb
The Southern Gentleman Series
Hissy Fit
Lord Have Mercy
Quit Bein’ Ugly
KPD Motorcycle Patrol
Hide Your Crazy
It Wasn’t Me
I’d Rather Not
Make Me
Sinners are Winners
If You Say So
SWAT 2.0
Just Kidding
Fries Before Guys
Maybe Swearing Will Help
Ask Me If I Care
May Contain Wine
Joke’s on You
Join the Club
Any Day Now
Say it Ain’t So
Officially Over It
Nobody Knows
Depends Who’s Asking
Valentine Boys
Herd That
Crazy Heifer
Chute Yeah
Get Bucked
Souls Chapel Revenants
Repeat Offender
Conjugal Visits
Jailbait
Doin’ A Dime
Kitty, Kitty
Gen Pop
Inmate of the Month
Shakedown
Madd CrossFit
No Rep
Jerk It
Chalk Dirty to Me
Blurb
Taos was tired.
Tired of everything that came with living. Not to the point where he was suicidal or anything, but tired enough that he just didn’t give a crap anymore.
He’d seen all the ugliness this world had to offer due to his job as a police officer for way too many damn years of his less than stellar life. After finding a way to sustain his spending habits that didn’t include having criminals point guns at his face, he quits without a backward glance.
Only, he just can’t step away from old habits.
Old habits that have to do with a beautiful young woman that makes his heart feel like it isn’t nearly as broken as it is.
Fran has experienced more than her fair share of crap. After an attack that nearly took her life, she stays hidden in her house, fearful that stepping out of her comfort zone will be the final nail in her coffin.
Then her sister forces her to face her fears, and she joins Madd CrossFit.
There, she meets the man that saved her life a year ago, and realizes rather quickly that he doesn’t even realize who he is to her.
He’s everything she ever thought a man should be and wants nothing to do with her.
Maybe she’ll have to give him a reason to look her way.
And damned if she doesn’t find a way to do it.
She didn’t plan on nearly getting killed for that to happen, though.
At least not again.
CHAPTER 1
Will work out for food.
-t-shirt
TAOS
“You ready?”
I grimaced at those words. “I guess.”
Madden grinned. “Come on, it’s not going to be that bad.”
I rolled my eyes.
Ten years ago, I’d never have thought that I’d go into business with my best friend. I thought that I’d always be able to hide in the shadows, get my work do
ne, and go home.
Madden had forced me out of the shadows. He’d also forced me into instructing a bootcamp class at our CrossFit gym.
I didn’t teach classes. At least not with any consistency. Madden taught them, and, if upon occasion, he needed an assist, I would reluctantly take over. But only until he was able to do his job.
I was a silent partner.
I lurked. I worked in the office. I worked out on my own when there were no other classes or people there. I went home and worked some more. What I did not do was teach classes until forced.
Why I’d agreed to teach this bootcamp, I didn’t know.
Call it a weak moment. My friend since we were kids had shamed me into doing it.
I can’t do it myself. Everyone else is busy. This will be good for business.
All things that he had thrown at me to get me to do it.
Madden didn’t beg.
But there’d been one woman, one of our veteran members, who’d all but implored us to start the bootcamp class so that she could have her sister join. And Madden, into her since she’d joined, hadn’t had the heart to tell her no.
“It’s going to be really bad.” Sophia, Madden’s daughter, and my might-as-well-be daughter, looked over between the two of us. “Dad, Tay doesn’t teach classes. He works, works out, and then goes home where he works some more. You’re actually taking him away from another bestselling book right now.”
I rolled my eyes.
I was an author of horror fiction.
At first, writing had been a way to get me the fuck out of my own head and into someone else’s. Someone that had a hell of a better life than me.
But eventually, when I sent my book to the publisher and it got accepted, my entire life changed.
Well, the money in my life changed.
Though, at this point my thoughts and scary dreams were serving a purpose. I just wrote those into my manuscripts rather than allowing them to continue to scare the absolute shit out of me.
The door to the gym opened, and I groaned.
I didn’t look behind me, mostly because I didn’t want to fuckin’ do this.
But Madden would do the dirty work, he’d promised.
Getting them signed into the system, signing their waivers, getting them ready for their first day.
All I had to do, according to him, was teach the class.
I could do that.
“You’ll be okay, Tay,” Sophia whispered into my ear.
I looked over to find her staring at me with the biggest blue eyes I’d ever seen.
“I know,” I grumbled.
When I’d first come into Sophia’s life, she’d been a baby. A tiny, very small baby.
Her dad had become part of my extended family. Madden, Sophia, his daughter, and Jasper, his son. Our other best friend Haggard, and his kids, Clem and Boston.
I wasn’t sure why I’d latched on to Madden so hard. I had just been adopted by my current family, just like Madden had been taken in by his foster family. After years of insecurity, I had needed a friend.
I’d been just a teen myself, but the moment I’d seen Madden, so fuckin’ mad just like me, I’d instantly stuck out my hand and introduced myself.
Then I’d told him that he needed a haircut because he looked like a douchebag.
That’d been the start of our best friend relationship. And the start of his kids being in my life.
There were times over the years that Madden—like Haggard, who’d entered the military young to help support his young kid and wife—had gone his own way, but we always made our way back to each other.
After Madden’s divorce, he’d come home and moved into my place. After my divorce, I’d gone to his place. When we’d graduated from college, and neither one of us really knew what we wanted to do, we’d moved in together.
Though we both always left, we never went far, and we never went long without speaking or seeing each other.
And that included his kids.
I didn’t have any of my own, and though his kids were both adults now, that didn’t change how I treated them.
I was the really cool uncle.
The one that would give them absolutely anything if they only asked.
“So, Dad wasn’t going to say anything, but I think you need to know.” Sophia bit her lip.
I grumbled under my breath. “Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say.”
I had a feeling. That was why Mad had asked me to teach this class. Begged me.
He’d also begged me not to ask any questions.
I hadn’t been able to tell him no.
“Maria is going to be in this class,” she whispered.
I cursed underneath my breath. “You’re fucking joking.”
Sophia grimaced. “Nope.”
“Nope, what?” Jasper asked.
I looked over to find him, in uniform, coming into the gym headed straight for us. Taking great care to go the long way around his father that now had three new members crowded around him.
“I just told Tay that Maria’s going to be in this new bootcamp class,” Sophia explained, looking her brother up and down.
I looked at him, too, making sure there were no signs of injury.
Jasper, like I had once been, was a police officer for the city. There were times he came in and looked like he’d gone three rounds with a brick wall. There were others, like now, where he looked tired.
I remembered those days, and I didn’t care to repeat them.
Not one single bit.
“Fuck.” Jas shook his head. “That fuckin’ sucks.”
He looked at me sympathetically.
I rolled my eyes and turned when a familiar voice filled the room.
Maria’s. My ex-wife.
The woman who, no matter how hard I tried, never wanted to do CrossFit. She’d said it would ‘bulk her up’ and she ‘refused to look like a man.’
Well, apparently, she didn’t care anymore.
Evidently, she liked to make my life a living hell no matter what.
“That was why he didn’t tell me anymore info,” I grumbled. “Because he knew I’d find out she was going to be in this class, and then refuse to teach it.”
“She’s not really supposed to be in the one you’re teaching after today, if that helps,” Sophia admitted. “This is only the first introductory class. The one where you learn the basics, the gym, and then do a short WOD—workout of the day—and go home.”
I rolled my eyes.
The gym door opened again, and a woman’s voice instantly had me turning toward her.
“Oh, aren’t you just adorable?”
Her voice was whispered, almost hesitant, as she bent down and petted the gym cat, Rogue.
Rogue, loving the attention that he hadn’t gotten from any of the other new bootcamp members, twirled around her leg.
Her shapely leg that was encased in a tight pair of black leggings that made her ass look phenomenal.
The cat rubbed hair all over them, and she didn’t even seem to care.
Mavis, Madden’s gym crush, walked in right behind her, and then stuck her knee out to attempt to knock over the new girl. The new girl caught herself before she could tumble forward and then tossed a glare at Mavis.
My eyes took in the two women, and it wasn’t hard to see the resemblance.
This was the girl that Mavis had begged Madden to do the bootcamp for.
I hadn’t heard the exact ‘why’ of her wanting it, but I knew that Madden would do absolutely anything for Mavis due to his crush on her.
“Why did she want you to start this class?” I quietly asked Madden who had come over to my side, watching Mavis interact with the new girl.
Mavis bent over and caught up two foam rollers, then tossed one at her sister like a javelin.
The girl caught it and grinned.
“I wondered how long it would take you to ask me that.” Madden smirked. But that smirk faded. “From what I underst
and, something really bad happened to Francine. To the point where she was scared to work out anywhere. Mavis finally talked her into working out here, but she wanted to wait until there was another bootcamp. And Mavis didn’t have the heart to tell her that there wouldn’t be any more because we didn’t like them very much. That was why she begged.”
I sighed.
“Shit,” I grumbled. “Now I feel bad for giving you shit.”
Madden grinned. “She’s a cute little thing, isn’t she?”
She was.
The girl, Francine, wasn’t much taller than five-foot-three-ish. If not smaller.
She had a high ponytail on the top of her head, with white-blonde-colored ringlets cascading down around her face, down her back, and over her shoulders.
She had a navy-blue headband on that matched her eyes, and the cutest little nose that I’d ever seen.
She wasn’t what I would consider ‘in shape.’ Though, saying that, I knew that if she stuck with this, it wouldn’t take her very long to get there. Looking at her, however, I could see muscle definition in her legs that spoke of once being in very good shape.
The six-week bootcamp might very well do a lot for her.
Though, I quite liked the small little roll that I could see poking over her tight leggings. A roll that was exposed by the crop top that she wore, revealing the cute little thing.
“That she is,” I said as I let my eyes roam over her body.
Then she turned fully, leaving Rogue the gym kitty behind, and made eye contact with me.
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.
I’d felt that one other time before, when I was saving a woman from an assault a couple years ago. Just like back then, now I felt my heartbeat starting to pick up speed, and I had the almost violent urge to stomp over there and demand she be mine.
That, or tell her to hug me because she looked like she could really use one.
“Calm it down a notch, bro,” Madden whisper-hissed from beside me. “You’re giving her the ‘cop’ stare.’”
I blinked, trying to rein it in.
I couldn’t help it, though. Once a cop, always a cop.
I saw threats where there weren’t any. I looked at every single person that walked in my door, sizing them up, wondering if I could take them down and protect myself as well as everyone with me.
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