Her Last Best Fling

by Candace Havens

  “Just let me change. Am I still in the lounge?”

  He nodded.

  “’Fraid so. But until our female membership takes off, you’ll practically have that new locker room all to yourself once it’s finished. Though I’ll warn you, it’s tiny. You wouldn’t believe the loopholes we had to squeeze through to even get planning permission to retrofit it.”

  “I’m sure it’ll do.”

  She crossed to the room beside the gym’s office and closed the door. There was no lock, so she pushed her bag against it, rooting through her workout clothes, swapping her winter coat and jeans for warm-ups and a jog bra. She tugged on the latter, untwisting the straps as she dug for a top. Then—bonk.

  The door was shoved in, whacking her in the nose.

  “Ow, Jesus!”

  No matter how many times she took a punch there, the startling, white pain of it never got easier. She cupped her hands to the spot as she straightened, suddenly face-to-face with one of the construction guys. His recognition dawned slowly.

  “Oh, sorry. Did I just thump you in the head?”

  “Yes.” She drew her fingers away. When his blue eyes widened, she glanced at her palm, covered in blood.

  “Holy shit. I’m sorry. Uh, here...” He muscled his way through the half-open door, toppling the contents of her gym bag, tools from his canvas belt clattering and clanging against the metal frame. He unbuttoned his flannel work shirt, offering it to Steph.

  Not wanting to drip blood on her own clothes, she wadded it against her nose.

  “Sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t know anybody’d be in here. I’m supposed to wire your new TV.” He nodded to a big box leaning against the wall, splashed with a picture of a flat-screen. “I’m the electrician.”

  Preoccupied with pressing her bridge, scouting for a break, Steph didn’t reply.

  “Should I get on with it, or...?”

  She abandoned her nose, spreading her arms to showcase the rather obvious fact that she was dressed in her bra. “I’m kind of changing, here.”

  “Oh jeez. Sorry.”

  “Never mind.” Steph wasn’t modest. She’d changed in far less private venues than this, and once a warm-up banished the January chill from her muscles, she’d be back down to her bra for training. “Just shut the door and get on with it.”

  He did, sidestepping the mess he’d made of her clothes. “I won’t look,” he assured her, busying himself with the box. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

  She checked to make sure the bleeding had stopped, then tugged on a long-sleeved compression top. She cast her hapless assailant a glare as he crouched to organize TV components on the carpet.

  He looked like every guy she’d taken shop class with in high school, the very epitome of Massachusetts working-class guyhood. Sandy brown hair that managed to look messy despite its short cut, caramel-colored Carhartt pants, work boots, a forest-green tee whose front Steph was positive would bear the logo of a contracting company. The cotton was pulled taut between his broad shoulders, but she was through being seduced by such sights.

  She knew this guy too well already. He’d have a truck parked along the curb outside with a Sox decal on one side of the rear window, Pats on the other. He grilled a perfect burger and owned a large, happy dog, and played touch football with his buddies on the weekends, come rain or snow. His name was Ryan or Mike or Pat or Brendan. Brendan Connolly, Doyle, McCarthy, McAnything. Sully, Smitty, Murph. His hands felt like sandpaper and his skin smelled of Lever or Zest.

  She knew these things, because she’d already dated this guy ten times over. Guys as comfortable as a broken-in pair of sneakers, but Steph wanted something more. She wanted to be swept off her feet, not pulled onto the couch for an afternoon of SportsCenter, with Coors-flavored makeout sessions during the ads.

  “My name’s Steph, by the way,” she said, angling to learn his.

  He kept his eyes on his task. “Sorry again, about your nose, Steph.”

  “I’ve got a shirt on now.”

  He turned and got to his feet, the promised logo from J.T.’s Contracting greeting Steph. He was tall, six feet or so, and had a handsome, honest face, the kind that advertised a man’s every emotion. Strong jaw behind a couple days’ stubble. And those blue eyes were so...blue. Steph wanted to slap herself for even noticing.

  The guy frowned, squinting at her nose. “It’s not broken, is it?”

  She shook her head and tossed him his button-up. “Just a nosebleed. I’ve had worse.” Though usually she at least got paid for it.

  His eyes rolled back with relief. “Oh good. I mean, not good. But you know.”

  “I know.” She cocked her head at him. “What’s your name?”

  “Patrick.”

  Of course it is. “I’ll see you around, Patrick. Maybe next time you’ll knock.”

  “I will, don’t worry. Again—sorry. Seriously.”

  He wore the guileless look of a scolded puppy, and Steph felt some annoyance lift. She offered a half-assed smile and turned away, tucking her gym bag in the corner.

  Rich spotted her as she approached the mats, dark eyes widening. “Jesus, what happened to your nose?”

  “Your electrician punched me in the face with a door.”

  “You punch him back?”

  She smirked. “Thought I’d save that for the ring.”

  “Is it broken?”

  “No. Just tell me if it starts bleeding again.” Steph could sense the well-groomed professionals forming an orderly queue outside the gym, just dying for a chance to woo such a glamorous woman as she.

  Rich asked her to take the lead on grappling drills and she was relieved to find Patrick gone from the lounge when she went to pull on her gi. Wilinski’s didn’t have a proper jujitsu program yet—her arena, now—but she did her best with the ragtag group of uniformless members.

  If the guys were feeling weird about having a woman in their ranks, they didn’t show it—no leering, no skepticism. Some men could be royally macho pricks, but on the whole, fighters were a sensitive group. Theirs was a humbling, emotional sport, most of the bravado reserved for the cameras.

  She’d had better offers than Wilinski’s, money-and profile-wise, but there was something appealing about the challenge. She could step in as it went co-ed and feel like a part of the evolution, feel invested and valued. Feel rooted to something after way too many years of going wherever the fights were. Stability, after all that transience.

  Once the lunchtime sessions wrapped, Rich showed her around the office and the computer system.

  “Mercer’s better with this crap,” he said, frowning as he clicked through folders on the laptop. Mercer was the gym’s general manager.

  “His wife owns the dating service upstairs, right?” Spark—a slick-looking operation whose glass-fronted office shared the foyer with the gym. The most mismatched neighbors in small-business history.

  “His fiancée,” Rich corrected, managing to find and print the form he’d been looking for. “Jenna Wilinski.”

  “Wilinski?”

  “Her dad opened this place in ’82. She inherited both floors.”

  Her brows rose. “The plot thickens.”

  “She nearly gave the gym the chop, but luckily Mercer managed to seduce her away from reason.”

  “I’d have thought that was your job.”

  He grinned. “I know, right?”

  “Doesn’t your girlfriend work up there, too?” If memory
served, the woman was refreshingly down-to-earth, compared with all the glammed-out girlfriends-of-fighters Steph had met over the years.

  Rich nodded, fetching the papers the printer had spat out. “It’s all very incestuous around here. Must be in the water.”

  She held in the questions she was longing to ask, knowing Rich was the kind of guy who’d tease her mercilessly if she gave him the ammunition. So is she good, this matchmaker? What sort of guys might she find for a chick who’s spent the past decade scrapping in chain-link octagons? Would I look dumb for even asking if she’d want me as a client?

  Steph had grown up an hour’s drive from here. She didn’t know anyone in Boston, not outside this gym, and didn’t have the first clue how to go about meeting the kind of men she’d like to date. She was useless at the bar scene, given what a teetotaler training turned one into, and didn’t relish taking up tango or speed-dating or going it alone on some freebie personals site. If she was going to find a boyfriend, she’d do it the right way. Do it through a service that attracted sophisticated, grown-up men who were looking for something serious. Spark might be the perfect solution and a worthy expense, provided she could muster the balls to ask.

  “Autograph this,” Rich said, handing her a safety waiver. “And Mercer’s got tax and payroll forms for you, too, someplace.” He rummaged through a filing cabinet and Steph read and signed all the papers.

  “So, how you settling in?” he asked, relaxing back in the chair. “You find a place you like?”

  She shook her head. “Only a sublet. A nice one, but I have to find an apartment of my own by March first.”

  “Bummer.”

  “No, it’s fine. I couldn’t afford this place on my own for more than a couple months.”

  Rich knocked her papers into a tidy stack and slipped them in a folder. “My girlfriend’s looking for a roommate.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Bear in mind, I’d be your neighbor, one floor down.”

  Incestuous, indeed. Rich as her coworker, roommate’s boyfriend, neighbor? That was a lot of Rich Estrada. But it was a better lead than she’d found elsewhere.

  “On the plus side,” he went on, scribbling Need copies on a Post-it and sticking it to the folder, “you’d pretty much have the place to yourself.” No doubt. Rich didn’t seem the type to suffer an empty bed. “Though there may be a surly teenage girl crashing on Lindsey’s couch all summer,” he added. “I’m paying her little sister’s way to come train. If and when she graduates high school.”

  She smiled at that. “I’d never have pegged you for the mentoring type.”

  “Me neither. Anyhow, we’ll have you over some weekend, and you girls can see if you mesh. It’s in Lynn. Do you drive?”

  “No. I sold my car when I knew I’d be moving to Boston.”

  “You could catch a lift with me, when we’re on the same shifts. Plus there’s the bus and the train.”

  “Sounds doable.” Steph wasn’t opposed to a roommate—she’d shared a million tiny motel rooms with perfect strangers. And she wasn’t really opposed to living in the same building as Rich. Brash or not, he made her laugh, and most of the conversations they’d had on the road over low-sodium, fat-free training meals had been dominated by his laments about missing his Colombian mother’s cooking. She wouldn’t pass up an invite to an Estrada family dinner.

  “I’ll fix something up,” he said. “Maybe next weekend.”

  When he stood, Steph took his lead and they headed back into the gym.

  There was a mid-afternoon lull—no structured sessions, everyone doing their own thing. Steph wandered around, introducing herself, stepping in to hold targets or spot the guys working out with weights. Mercer arrived at four, freeing Rich to head home.

  Steph smiled and shook Mercer’s hand. “Hey, boss.”

  “Hey yourself, new girl.” He gave her nose only the briefest double-take. “I guess you didn’t find your right mind and back out, after all.” Mercer was a good guy. A few years older than her and Rich, with a stern, no-nonsense face, scarred up from his years as a boxer.

  “I like a challenge,” she said.

  “Clearly. The next class starts up at five. You need a break? Grab a snack or a drink or anything?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt.” Also wouldn’t hurt to go ahead and ask what she hadn’t been able to, with Rich. “Your fiancée owns the matchmaking business upstairs, right?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  She felt herself blushing, which given her complexion meant she was already red as a brick. “Is it only for business-type people, or...?”

  Mercer’s less-scarred eyebrow rose. “You want to join Spark?”

  She bit her lip. “Maybe.”

  “Good for you. I’m not sure what the exact criteria are, but you can go up and ask Jenna yourself. I know her last appointment’s already done for the day.”

  “What? Right now?”

  “We’re going out of town for a few days on Friday, so no time like the present.”

  “But looking like this?” She waved to indicate her bra and shorts, the hair at her temples and nape curled with sweat. Lord knew what her tender nose might be looking like by now.

  “Ah. Maybe throw on some warm-ups. But she knows what a mess we are, on the clock. Don’t worry about that.”

  Maybe not, but after Steph changed into yoga pants and a zip-up, she splashed her face with water and wrapped her hair in a bandanna. On the way out she made eye contact with the electrician, who was installing some device by the exit.

  “Looks better,” Patrick offered brightly, gesturing at his own nose.

  Damn it, he was good-looking. Had this been five years ago, Steph would’ve already succumbed to a terminal crush on him, dolt or not.

  He’s been sent to test you, with his big arms and blue eyes and stubble, and his tool belt all slung around his hips. Ooh, his hips. But she’d dated this man before—over and over and over—and it never worked out. It’d be the dating definition of insanity to fall again, expecting different results. The time had come to start picking with her brain, instead of...other parts.

  She glanced at his project.

  “New security system,” he explained proudly. “State-of-the-art. No more keys, same as in the foyer.”

  “Great.”

  “It’s so fancy I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing.”

  “That’s very reassuring.”

  “Not really my specialty, but hey—any work’s good work in this economy, right?”

  “Right.” She made for the doors, sidestepping the tools and plaster chunks cluttering the floor.

  “Hang on, let me—”

  He tugged at a tangle of thick orange extension cord, just in time to catch Steph’s ankle and send her stumbling to her knees and elbows, the meat of her hand slamming into the claw-end of a hammer.

  She swore as the pain bolted through her wrist and arm, jerking away as Patrick tried to help her up. “Don’t.”

  He hovered awkwardly as she made it to her feet. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m getting really tired of hearing you say that.”

  “Sorry,” he repeated, oblivious as ever.

  Steph studied the damage, blood beading along a nasty scrape on her palm.

  “Oh shit,” Patrick said. “Lemme find you something to—”

  “I’m fine.”

  But Patrick fished in his pockets and found a crumpled, if
clean, Dunkin’ Donuts napkin, offering it to her.

  You are... You are just so exactly who you are, aren’t you?

  Good ol’ Pat from Boston or Brockton or Woburn, with his electrician’s license and steel toes and his daily stop at the Dunkin’ drive-through. She took the napkin, wrapping it around her cut and skirting the mess. She didn’t dare stay in this man’s orbit another second. He’d probably manage to set her hair on fire.

  He called, “Sorry, Stacy.”

  “It’s Steph,” she shot back.

  “Sorry.”

  She jogged up the steps, imagining running into her dream man as he left Spark. Tall, with dark hair, crisply pressed shirt, warm smile, smelling of oak.

  And her with a swollen nose, bleeding hand, dressed for a jog and stinking of the effort. Please let there be no men around.

  She was in luck. Through the tall windows that faced the stylish foyer, she spied only a woman at a desk, typing on a laptop. She’d caught sight of Rich’s girlfriend on a previous visit to Boston—she had dark blond hair, so this brunette must be Jenna.

  Steph approached the open door, more anxious than she’d ever felt stepping into the ring. She knocked timidly on the frame.

  Jenna glanced up. “Hello!” She stood and rounded her desk, dressed in a smart skirt and tall boots, all shiny bangs and pink cheeks and white teeth. “Welcome to Spark. How can I help you?” If she was weirded out by a sweaty woman showing up in her threshold with no appointment and a bloody napkin in her fist, she hid it shockingly well.

  “Hi, I’m Steph Healy. I just started working downstairs.”

  “I figured that had to be you. I’m Jenna. I own Spark, and I’m engaged to Mercer.”

  “So I hear.”

  Jenna went in for a shake but Steph kept her hands clasped, letting Jenna see the napkin. “Little mishap.”

  “Oh goodness.” Jenna frowned and grabbed a water bottle off her desk, wetting a tissue. “Give it here.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Steph crumpled the napkin and offered her palm.