She was obviously still in pain. She locked herself away in her room and hadn’t even come down for dinner. He had seen the light barely shining from beneath her bedroom door, she had still been up when he went down for dinner, but her lights were off by the time he came back up. Janet had ordered a pizza, something he was sure Clair probably wouldn’t have eaten. She never cared much for pizza before, he didn’t think ten years would have changed that, but he had wanted her to come down and eat something. He didn’t push. He had done enough damage for one day, he’d do better tomorrow.
Actually, Clair’s absence had provided him with the time he needed to get a few rules straight with Janet. His first rule was no take out. If she was hungry she’d need to pick up something tomorrow on the way in, but there was no way in hell he wanted any delivery men showing up at the front door. He had his reason, none of which Janet needed to understand; she just needed to follow the rules.
Reluctantly she agreed to do things his way. She hadn’t agreed because she thought he was right. She agreed because he told her if she couldn’t follow the rules she could go home. She obviously didn’t want to go home.
He was cantankerous, and getting more so by the minute. The more he thought about Clair and the ten years he’d missed with Clair, the more he resented himself and Janet.
By morning he heard Clair moving around in the bathroom. He looked at the clock. Two o’clock on the dot. He wondered how she kept up with the pace she set for herself, and why she had set it in the first place. So far he knew her schedule seemed to be packed with activities, even on her days off from work. She needed to learn to relax and have fun. He wondered if she had relaxed or had fun since she and Amy were kidnapped. He doubted it. The time she had spent with him, post kidnapping, her mood always seemed to be on the solemn side of the spectrum. She tried to smile, tried to keep up the conversations they use to have but she hadn’t been able to. Then she decided not to finish college. She just seemed to give up. And when he finally thought there was some progress, some hint of healing, the damn appeal trial came up and she had to face it all over again.
No, he doubted that fun was actually in her vocabulary. She worked, prepared for work, slept and worked some more. That was her schedule, her life, and she didn’t seem eager to change it.
She hadn’t come in to wake him up, not that she needed to because he was already awake, but she couldn’t have known that. By three, she still hadn’t come to wake him up so he crawled out of bed and went into the bathroom. He was sure she could hear him moving around just as he had heard her moving around. It didn’t take him long to get ready, a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt was all he needed to workout in. He had a small gym bag with a towel, his badge and his gun already packed. If he needed to, he would be prepared for whatever went down today.
When he came out the bathroom he noticed her light was off in her room. She had either gone back to sleep or she had gone downstairs. He figured sleep wasn’t on her itinerary until tonight so he opted to go look for her downstairs. If she had left the house, after he told her not to leave without him, by God he was going to give her the tongue lashing of her life.
“Good morning,” she whispered as she prepared a tray of fruit and cheeses.
He saw strawberries, blueberries, grapes and watermelon, two small square slices of cheese and nothing more. She called that breakfast?
“’Morning,” he mumbled.
Her eyebrows rose. “Not a morning person I see. Too bad, because my days start about this time everyday.”
“And goes until when?” This was early for him, but he could adjust given she slowed down at least a little. Of course he hadn’t exactly gotten the impression that she planned to slow down any.
“Until everything is done. On the days when I don’t have something at night I’m usually back at the house by six at the latest. I don’t go to sleep right away, but you can if you’re tired. Older people need more rest,” she said so smoothly that he almost missed the insult. Or maybe it wasn’t an insult. Maybe he just took it as an insult because he didn’t want her thinking of him as somebody old. “I’m only ten years older than you; in case you forgot.”
She shrugged. “Age is a mental thing. I have some students in my yoga class who are over sixty and sometimes they can do more than the twenty-something crowd. It’s all in your outlook. If you think you’re old, then you’re old.”
“And you think I think I’m old?”
She took a small plastic container of ice cream from the freezer. She was obviously still making her own. If he remembered history accurately she made the best ice cream in Colorado.
“I never said that.” She put a scoop of ice cream in the blender, added some orange juice and a little milk before putting the lid on and pressing the blend button. She effectively ended the conversation. He realized this was another thing that had changed about her; she now seemed to need to have the last word.
When the blender stopped she poured herself a glass of her drink and offered him the remaining portion. “Sure, why not?” He shrugged. “There’s none of that protein stuff in there is it?”
She shook her head no. “Just because I’m into fitness doesn’t mean I’m a fanatic. I get my protein and dietary needs the old fashion way.”
“You mean you eat,” he sounded more surprised than he intended and she seemed to take great offense to that.
“Look, just because you don’t like my body doesn’t give you the right to make accusations…unfounded accusations.” She grabbed her plate of fruit and cheese in one hand and held her drink in the other. “Go wake your partner up, Agent Harland, because we’ll need to get out of here soon.
“I thought you weren’t leaving until around five.” He tried to ignore the Agent Harland remark.
“Yeah well, anything that gets me away from you right now is an excuse worth leaving early for.” She walked away, leaving him in the kitchen to mull over his thoughts. Hell, he’d said the wrong thing—again.
He liked her body, he did. He just had to get use to it. For the last ten years he pictured her exactly the same as he’d left her. He never thought about the changes her looks would have taken. He could have came to her door yesterday and found spiked out pink hair for all he knew, but he had assumed one thing and his mind was having a hard time accepting something different.
He expected to find the same vulnerability, in looks and spirit, that he had left her with, but he hadn’t. She had to grow up fast, deal with things she should have never had to deal with, and when he left her there, alone, without family or friends, she had to adjust or die trying. She had obviously adjusted, became stronger, different. He didn’t dislike anything about her; he just couldn’t get use to the changes in front of him.
When she made it to work she spent the morning avoiding him. He tried to tell himself her avoidance was okay. He had work to do and he didn’t need her hovering over him, but it wasn’t okay. He missed the girl who did hang on to his every word, the one who seemed to stay by his side as much as she could. Even before the abduction she had clung to him, looking at him with those doe eyes of hers. She always looked as if she had magic lights sparkling in her eyes whenever he saw her. She had youth, vitality, happiness, but sometimes there was something else, an air of longing…maybe even loneliness.
Clair had been right about Janet not being able to keep up with her classes, but she had lied about one thing. She had actually danced her way back to the back of the class to try to help Janet. She spent a few minutes in back taking her through the routine a little slower and then trying to get her up to speed, but Janet was not a dancer by any means. Eventually, Clair danced her way back up front and took over her class. She shook her hips, rolled her body and did the sexiest moves he’d seen…God, ever. There was that one move, where she went from a body roll into a squat and transitioned by opening her thighs and turning to the other side, all the while holding the squat position. She’d have to have strong leg muscles to hold that move. Ja
net had fallen on her butt while the rest of the class had smoothly transitioned.
Greg’s eyes hadn’t exactly been on Janet. He’d seen a few of her really embarrassing moves, but his focus had been Clair. She could move, and in those fitted black workout pants and baby pink polka dot sports bra she looked…hot. God, he thought she looked hot? He was sitting there on the bench press machine staring at Clair McPhee and he thought she looked hot. Where had that come from?
She was too young for him. Not that he saw himself as old, but…God, he was in trouble. Clair obviously had resentment toward him now. She wasn’t that clingy teen he had met fourteen years ago, nor that sixteen year old he had helped survive hell. She wasn’t the eighteen year old he had abandoned ten years ago either. She was woman, a grown woman who he was now noticing in ways he never would have imagined he ever would. Yeah, he was in trouble. He wanted her and she had an obvious disdain for him now.
Everything he said seemed to be the wrong thing, and probably always would since he’d abandoned her. She had counted on his friendship, clung to it because it was all she had, and he should have recognized that. If she had her parents, or even other friends at that time, friends she felt comfortable talking with, then she wouldn’t have attached herself to him as if he were glass and she was a suction cup.
She had changed, but there was still that hint of the Clair he knew left in her. He had thought she was serious about not stopping to help Janet, but she had. Despite her obvious dislike for Janet, even the degrading tone Janet used when she made that comment about Clair’s job, Clair had still stopped to help her. Clair was mature and kind despite the hard shell she tried to put on for them. He didn’t have any doubt that she could handle her own now, but still, he was happy to see the honest goodness in her. A glimmer of vulnerability was there too; he just had to look hard for it. Maybe there was a chance she could forgive him. He hoped she could because having her back in his life was exactly what he wanted, and now that she was right there within reach he didn’t want to lose her.
Watching Janet for a moment, he almost laughed. She was awkward, but it wasn’t that fact that had him near pain trying to hold in his laughter. He was thinking she might want to rethink her “how hard can it be,” stance because it was obvious Clair’s classes were no cake walk.
His eyes focused back on Clair again. She was doing the same move as before, but this time she wasn’t looking at her class in the mirror. She was looking at him. He could tell she was because when his eyes met hers in the mirror there was that old, familiar since of adoration…briefly, and then it was gone and she was back to being business as usual. He was going to have to change the dynamics in their relationship, and fast, because this was the one change in her he could not accept. He had screwed their relationship up, and now he was going to fix it.
It felt as if the entire day had consisted of working out, not on his part because he did about an hour of working out and the rest of the time he sat back watching her. He moved from machines when they were needed, but he hadn’t moved far. Clair had taken a short lunch break in which she ate something she brought from home, but she hadn’t sat with them while she did it. She sat with a bubbly girl from the front desk, who seemed to be questioning her on how she got started as an instructor.
He could hear the entire conversation and there were a few things that stuck out to him. First, Clair was a sensational mentor, whether she knew it or not. Second, she had a sweet, yet sexy tone to her voice that seemed to put people at ease, and arouse every man within ear shot. He hadn’t missed the lingering glances from some of the other patrons at the smoothie and health food bar area. Third, she knew what she wanted out of life, and she wasn’t ashamed for not wanting more.
Most of the people he knew clawed their way to the top of some invisible ladder. Clair found her place and she didn’t knock anybody over trying to get some place she didn’t want to be.
“It’s really simple,” she had said. “You just have to know what you want to do. For me, when I was younger I would have sworn I was going to be some hotshot famous photographer…”
“Well you have the hot part down,” the girl said and Clair laughed.
“Well thank you. But the point is, my direction in life changed and for a couple years, I guess you can say I didn’t have much direction. I didn’t know what I wanted. I had a friend to keep me from doing anything really stupid, but then…well friends come and go sometimes. Eventually, when I was at home one day doing my Pilates workout I decided, I can do that; I can teach people. So I did my degree, finished my training and certification courses and I never looked back. I knew I loved to dance, I had done yoga since I was about eight…”
“Eight? Oh my God, at eight I was still playing with Barbie.”
Clair laughed. “Oh, I played with Barbie from time to time, but I always seemed to be making her do splits, and trying to make her dance. She wasn’t exactly a willing participant so eventually I gave up.”
Both women laughed. “Anyway, I started like most people do. I worked the chain fitness centers and hated it. It’s great for some people, but you tend to feel like a number instead of a person to head office. Then this place opened and I told Kevin what I wanted to teach and he made a place for me here.”
“And how long have you been here?”
“Five years now.”
“And you love it; no plans to move on?”
“I love what I do. And right now there aren’t any real plans to move on, but you know, I may move and I might want my own studio one day. I love dance and if I could focus on that I’d be okay with that change of events. For now though, I’m here to stay.”
The girl leaned in closer and half whispered. “If you go, and if you open your own studio, will you take me with you?”
“I…”
“I want to instruct and I just don’t get the vibe I’ll ever be able to do that here.”
“Well, if that time comes I’ll let you know and then you can decide where you really want to be. But if you’re interested in instruction you really need to do your certification courses.”
“They won’t sponsor me and I haven’t been able to get into the class on my own.”
Clair sat back and he could tell she was thinking. “I’ll sponsor you.”
“Really? No, I couldn’t ask you to do that. It’s not why I wanted to talk with you.”
“I know it’s not. And you didn’t ask. I offered. I love helping people find their path in life and you seem to be sure fitness is what you want.”
“I know it’s what I want. I dream about it at night. It’s crazy, but I see myself helping people get fit.”
Clair laughed. “Oh yeah, you’re a goner. No other profession will do,” she winked. “I know the guy who directs the program you’re trying to get into. I’ll give him a call and put in a good word for you. The rest is up to you, but I’ll help in whatever way I can.”
“Oh, God. Thank you Clair.” She jumped out of her chair, ran around the highboy table and hugged Clair. Clair laughed with a hardy, “you’re welcome” before cleaning up her area.
“Get back to work before we start trouble.”
She turned to him and Janet. “I still have two more classes.”
Janet moaned. Clair smiled. “I think maybe you should sit the next two out Janet. I’ll be fine in there by myself.”
Janet easily agreed, and for once Greg hadn’t been thinking of protesting the decision. In fact, he thought, for Janet’s sake, it might be best if she sat all of the classes out.
“Hey beautiful,” a tall Viking-like man with long blonde curly hair brushed a finger down Clair’s arm. Greg was nearly out of his chair when she held up her hand to stop him.
“Hank,” she smiled. “This is…”
“Greg and Janet,” he supplied, because he didn’t want everybody knowing he was a fed there protecting her. He wanted to keep her past as confidential as possible, although that was difficult to do given the fact the kidnappin
g, murder and trial had been in all the papers from Colorado to New York.
“Hey, man,” he waved. “Listen, I overheard your conversation.”
“Oh, you just happened to overhear my conversation.” She grinned.
“Of course, because you know I wouldn’t listen on purpose.”
“Of course not; not you Hank.”
He laughed. “Take me with you.”
“Oh no. We’re not starting this rumor that Clair is leaving and she’s taking the entire staff with her.”
“I won’t say anything to anybody, honest.”
“I trust you.”
“You do.”
“You need the money and the job; why would you shoot yourself in the foot?”
“Exactly,” he said. “But seriously, you know what’s been happening to this place lately. Ever since Kevin took on that corporate partner things have been changing. Change is not always good.”
“Don’t I know it,” she mumbled.
“Please take me with you?”
She sighed. “If, and I do mean if, I open my own studio there’s a place for you there. Although you could open your own gym.”
“Nah,” he shook his head. “That’s more work than I want.”
She laughed. “You are such a—”
“Don’t I know it,” he cut her off.
“Fine, you and Shell, but that’s it…actually it would be perfect because you’re great at training. I hadn’t really planned on weights.”
He gasped and looked offended.
Dangerous Obsessions Page 4
