Sexy Living

by Regina Cole

  That was good. So, why did the mirth make him want to jump out of his skin and break something?

  He had to tone down the scowl that knitted his brows. It was bad for business.

  “Hey, can you go to the Corner Café and get us some breakfast? I’ve been saving up my calories for one of those chocolate croissants.”

  Rob looked hard at her for a moment. “Why? You’re acting suspicious.”

  Brandi snorted, curling her hand around her coffee mug. “Don’t be stupid. You need a break; you’re making people nervous with that pissy look on your face. Go and sit down to eat. Just bring me my bakery treat when you come back, okay? And you can buy it for me.”

  Damn it, she was right. He didn’t bother to argue. “Yeah, okay.”

  Grabbing his coat from the office took just a moment, and then he was out the door and hustling down the windy sidewalk to the Corner Café. It was a cute little place, with vintage wooden floors, artsy décor, and a real community-hangout kind of vibe. Brandi was right. He needed to go chill for a while, forget that Stacey had basically stood him up, in a manner of speaking.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. It was a business problem, not a personal one. He needed to pull his head out of his ass.

  Alternative rock music greeted him as soon as he pushed into the warmth of the Corner Café. They were just starting to get really busy with the morning crowd. As Rob joined the line that stood three people deep, a somewhat-familiar voice met his ear. He turned and looked at the line to his right.

  “Yeah, seriously. I’m fine. It’s crazy that you’re even calling me on your honeymoon. And what the crap time is it there? Shouldn’t you be snuggled up in bed with your new husband?”

  Long strawberry-blond curls tumbled around the shoulder that was cradling the phone to her head. A purple scarf trailed one end down her back, the black wool of her coat grabbing onto the fringe and making it twist in odd ways.

  A grin stretched across his lips. Well, damn. If it wasn’t the phantom trainee herself. Stacey Hough was standing in line right next to him. If that wasn’t fate screaming for them to continue their association, in whatever capacity, he didn’t know what was.

  “Sorry, Bree, but I’m about to order breakfast. I know, I know. Seriously, I’m fine. No lasting effects. Yes, I’d tell you. Okay. Have fun, and don’t worry about me. Love you, talk to you soon. Bye-bye.”

  Stacey hung up the phone just as the customer in front of her took his muffin and left. She turned, looking down into her purse as she tucked her phone away.

  Rob waited. Three, two . . . She looked his way.

  “Good morning,” he said simply.

  Her jaw fell open for a second, and she blinked twice. “Uh, well, hi. ’Morning, I mean.”

  “Good to see you,” he said.

  “Ma’am, are you ready to order?” The cashier was waving at Stacey. Just then, the person in line ahead of Rob moved on.

  With a look that could only be defined as pure unadulterated spite, Stacey stepped up to the counter.

  “Yes. Can I get a large mocha, with double chocolate and extra whipped cream? Oh, and a cheese Danish. One of those big ones,” she said, pointing at the bakery case beside her.

  And then she looked at him again. The defiant tilt of her head was a definite challenge.

  One he didn’t intend to ignore.

  * * *

  Stacey wasn’t sure where the demon on her shoulder had come from. It was childish. Petty, even. But for some reason, the fact that Rob had greeted her without a word about her nonappearance at the gym today rankled.

  He was supposed to be irritated with her. Disappointed, even. But maybe he didn’t care that she’d humiliated herself in front of his entire gym yesterday? Well, in that case, he could go suck a—

  “Here you go, ma’am.”

  Stacey jumped as the cashier handed her change back. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah, can I get a large mocha, double chocolate, with whipped cream? And one of those big cheese Danishes, please.”

  Stacey whirled. What the crap?

  “Sure. You want that Danish heated?”

  Rob looked over to the other cashier, who was tucking Stacey’s Danish into the toaster oven. “Sounds good.”

  “That’ll be seven fifty-three.”

  As Rob handed his credit card to the cashier, he gave Stacey a broad smile.

  Anger flared to life within her. What was he doing? There were probably more calories in this breakfast than he allotted himself for the whole freaking week! Why would he copy her order like that? Was he trying to embarrass her again? She hadn’t taken him for an asshole, but maybe he was.

  As the cashier returned with Stacey’s coffee and her Danish, she turned away from him. It didn’t matter. His little game had nothing to do with her. She’d just grab her usual table in the corner, have her breakfast, and read the morning paper before work, just like usual. Like yesterday had never happened. Like the guy at the counter was just some stranger, not the person she’d knocked off his feet and physically crushed yesterday.

  Warmth climbed into her cheeks as she set her coffee down at the corner table. Ugh. Why’d she have to remember that again?

  “Is this seat taken?”

  Her gaze flew upward. Damn it. Damn it, damn it, triple damn. There he was, black hoodie framing his arm muscles, his V-necked shirt showing just a hint of chest hair.

  Why couldn’t he just leave her alone?

  “Actually, yeah. My, uh, cousin Bree is meeting me here.”

  “Oh, isn’t that the one who’s on her honeymoon right now? You were kind of loud on the phone earlier.”

  “Shit.”

  Rob laughed at that and set his coffee down. “I won’t bug you for long. Just wanted to have a little chat. If that’s okay with you.”

  She wasn’t okay with it. Not in the slightest bit. Not any more than she’d be okay with four root canals, or a monthly Pap smear.

  “Okay, fine. Let’s get this over with.”

  The chair scraped back, and Rob sat down across from her. His eyes were bright, his expression direct, and all she wanted to do was crawl under the table and die. Why wouldn’t he just give up? She’d obviously given up on her resolution. One whole day. That was all she’d lasted. And now she was fine with embracing her workaholic lifestyle. She was cut out for that. Working out at a gym? That had been a momentary lapse of reason, and she’d regained her senses now.

  “Wow,” Rob said, setting his coffee down after a brief moment at his lips. He coughed and blinked hard. “That’s incredibly sweet.”

  “Yup. I like it that way.” Stacey took a long, deliberate sip. The hot, chocolaty coffee coated her throat as she swallowed.

  “Why didn’t you come to the gym this morning?”

  There it was. The ten-ton elephant in the room. The billion-dollar question. The one topic she’d been dreading and the Band-Aid she wanted to rip off as quickly as possible.

  She decided to do the only reasonable thing.

  Lie.

  “Sorry about that. Had some car trouble this morning.”

  She couldn’t look at him. She’d never been a great liar.

  “Oh. That’s too bad. But you can come by this evening, and we’ll make up the session.”

  Shit. She stabbed her pastry with her fork a little too hard. The clink of metal on ceramic was so loud that several people in line looked her way. “Can’t. Have to work late.”

  “The gym’s open ’til nine.”

  “I’m working ’til ten.”

  “Well, we can go over now if you want.”

  “I don’t want. No gym clothes.”

  “We’ll just talk over your training plan. No change of clothes needed.”

  It was getting hard to breathe. Her anger was clogging her throat, but the way he stared right into her eyes was disconcerting, almost arousing. He was leaning toward her, looking at her, only her. She wanted to get even closer to him, but the logical side of he
r brain was still active. Attack him right back; that was the only solution. “Why are you pushing me so hard?”

  “Why are you pushing back?” he countered. When she fell silent, he took another sip of coffee, wincing slightly as he swallowed. Good. He should suffer for being such a pushy jerk.

  He set his paper cup down and folded his arms on the table. She tried hard not to notice the obvious muscle definition under his form-fitting jacket.

  “You paid for a trainer. A trainer’s job is to help you push past what’s stopping you and help you achieve your goals. So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m trying to help you achieve your goals.”

  “Well, this morning my goal is to finish this conversation, then my breakfast, and get to work on time.” Way more pointed than she’d have liked it to be, but maybe it would work. Why wouldn’t he just roll over on this? Her shoulders were so tight they were sending a throbbing pain up her spine into her brain.

  “But what about tomorrow morning? And the one after that?” His voice was low, insistent.

  “I’ll deal with them as they come.”

  “Stacey, look at me.”

  She stared down at her plate as hard as she could.

  “Look at me.”

  Damn it. Her eyes met his, and her resolve faltered. Just for a second. How could it not? His chiseled features were beautiful, and those incredible gray eyes were trained directly on hers.

  “The reason you came into my gym hasn’t changed, has it? You told me that you wanted to like yourself. Can you truly say that you’ve achieved that goal after a single session?”

  With him staring at her like that, she couldn’t lie, so she settled for silence.

  “Honestly, why didn’t you come this morning?”

  “Because I was embarrassed.”

  “Why?”

  She glared at him. “Seriously? You’ve got the gall to ask me that? You were there. You saw what happened. I can’t even run on the treadmill for five minutes without falling on my fat ass.”

  “Hey,” he said sharply, his brows lowering slightly. “Don’t talk about yourself that way.”

  She slapped the table so hard her palm stung. “But it’s the truth! Do you want me to lie to myself? I’m not interested in that. I’d rather see things for how they are than pretend everything is hunky-dory.” Her throat was thickening, but she fought the sensation.

  “You’ve got some things you want to change about yourself. Do you think that calling yourself names and hating your body is going to do that?”

  She didn’t answer, just flicked a crumb off the edge of her Danish. She didn’t want to look at him anymore. And not just because he was so handsome he made her teeth hurt. Because his words were too close to the truth, and she didn’t want to hear them.

  “Were you ever bullied when you were a kid?” His voice was soft.

  “Everyone was bullied when they were a kid.”

  A warm hand covered hers suddenly, and she looked up at Rob.

  “When that was happening, how did it make you feel?”

  She shook her head. “You ask the dumbest questions. It was fan-freaking-tastic. How do you think I felt? It was awful.”

  “It’s hard to be happy when someone’s being mean to you all the time, isn’t it?”

  Staring at him for a long moment, she searched his face. There was only sincerity written there, his gray eyes more like a cloudy day than cold steel this morning.

  “Yesterday you had a bad day. That was my fault. But what matters now is how you choose to react. Sure, you can quit and go back to what you were doing before.”

  He leaned forward and squeezed her hand. It was such a kind, friendly touch, not intimate at all, but for some reason a delicious shiver went straight up her arm and down her spine.

  “But what you were doing before wasn’t making you happy. Maybe you were right when you decided to try this. A change can make all the difference in the world in how you feel, how you see yourself. All I want is a chance to show you what you’re capable of. Can you give me a month? Just one month to show you the beginnings of what you can do.”

  Her chest had tightened, and breathing was a chore. Her eyes were stinging, but she didn’t dare rub them or close them for fear of the moisture spilling over. Why wouldn’t he just give up on her? Why did it matter if she quit after one day?

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I believe you can make this change.”

  She closed her eyes. She wanted so badly to believe that he honestly felt that way. It had been so long since someone had. At her job, yeah, people believed in her abilities. It was how she’d become so successful in the city-planning department in such a relatively short time. But she couldn’t stay at work 24/7, and there was the problem. Her family. Her friends. They just saw her as the girl who could be counted on to water plants or to pet-sit. Stacey’s never busy; she can house-sit for us while we go on a fabulous spring break vacation. Oh, Stacey’s single, we don’t have to invite her to this couples’ outing. Stacey doesn’t have a date; she can babysit while we go out.

  Nobody really believed her life would ever be anything different from what it was now. And she was sick of it. She’d been convinced for so long that life was the way it was, and that there was nothing she could do to change it.

  But this guy? She’d spent only an hour or so in his company. He couldn’t really believe in her, not the way she craved. He was a businessman. All he was doing was looking out for his bottom line. It wouldn’t look good to have a new client quit the same day she started, right?

  Even though it was the truth, a little bit of the newborn hope inside her dimmed.

  But she wanted so badly to believe. Maybe Rob was right, no matter whether it was a sales pitch or a sincere concern. Maybe she was capable of more. And this just might be the first step she needed to take to discover her potential.

  “Stacey?” He said her name softly—not quite a whisper, but not full-voiced, either. It was a sweet, inviting sound.

  She opened her eyes, and squeezed his hand back.

  “Okay. One month. I’ll give it a shot.”

  A smile broke out across his face like a break in the winter clouds. She smiled back, unable to stop the expression.

  “Great. Come by tonight. I’ve planned out a more detailed workout plan for you, and I want to get started as soon as we can.”

  Her hand felt cold when he withdrew his, and she put it in her lap. “You planned a workout schedule for me? After what happened yesterday?”

  A boyish tilt to Rob’s head made her heart flutter. “I wasn’t about to give up on you. Not for one second.”

  She bit her lip and glanced away. Oh boy. He was way too good of a salesman. If he kept this up, she was going to have a crush on him the size of the giant peach downtown.

  Of course, that wouldn’t take much. She was already imagining what he’d look like naked.

  Chapter 5

  The sun was out when Stacey pulled her car into her assigned space. Finally. A December miracle. Atlanta wasn’t exactly the snow capital of the world—it was her second winter here and she’d yet to see a flake—but the bleak and gray days had a bad habit of getting everyone down, especially her.

  She hummed to herself as she shouldered her bag and bumped the driver’s side door closed with her hip. Her heels clicked along the cracked walkway, keeping in time with her tune. The breeze was cold, but she didn’t care. The blessed sunlight more than made up for the chill.

  “’Morning,” Hannah called as Stacey pushed through the revolving door into the lobby of the city planning building. The dark-haired receptionist grinned as Stacey leaned on the front counter.

  “Good morning to you,” Stacey said, perching her sunglasses on top of her head. “You’re awful cheery.”

  “Walter isn’t here today.”

  “That is something to celebrate.” Stacey grinned back at Hannah. Walter was a typical city government bureaucrat—lots of bluster and guff, wit
h zero skills or management ability to back it up. Most of their department did everything possible to avoid him. Unlucky for Hannah, she had to operate as Walter’s personal assistant on most days. Lucky for Stacey, her own boss, Ed, was a jovial older guy who liked to laugh.

  “Want to grab lunch at noon?”

  Stacey unlocked her phone screen and checked her schedule. “That should be fine. I’ve got a meeting with Sky Power at eleven, but that’s only supposed to last thirty minutes.”

  “Great.” Just then, the phone rang, and Hannah rolled her eyes. “Duty calls. Catch you later.”

  Stacey waved and moved toward the elevators. Resuming her happy little hum, she punched the UP button and waited.

  What an unexpectedly good morning. She hadn’t thought she’d be able to feel this good after what had happened yesterday. Her job, which normally was her pride and joy, had been a chore the day before. All she’d wanted to do was go home, take a hot bath, and snuggle up on the couch with a bowl of ice cream and a Netflix marathon.

  But the project she was heading up, the installation of solar panels for low-income housing units, was too important to her. It wasn’t something she could just forget about because she’d made an ass of herself. So she’d knuckled down and gotten some work done.

  The elevator chimed as it arrived on the third floor. The doors glided open, and Stacey stepped out, nearly bumping into Vance Farmer.

  “Whoa, steady there, shortcake.”

  “Vance, how many times do I have to ask you not to call me that?” Stacey moved aside as quickly and politely as she could. Vance, who was at least twenty years older than she was, had a bad habit of not taking no for an answer. Of course, the only man who’d shown an interest in her in the last five years was a paunchy guy in his mid-forties with a receding hairline and the unfortunate habit of wearing Crocs. And shorts. Year-round.

  It wasn’t even that. She could forgive an unfortunate-looking guy, but the problem was that his personality was even less appealing than his appearance.

  “Come on, don’t be such a hard-ass. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  Stacey didn’t pause; she just walked down the hall, tossing her answer over her shoulder. “Vance, don’t make me talk to HR again.”