Theo laughed. He’d always appreciated how Tyson cut to the chase. That’s probably why the athletes enjoyed his help as an assistant coach-he gave it to them straight. “It is what it is,” had become the unofficial slogan of the Special Olympics of Miami-Dade track-and-field team, thanks to Tyson’s all-purpose application of the saying.
“Yesterday at the high school track. I’m not sure what happened.”
Tyson laughed loudly. “What do you mean, you’re not sure what happened? Your lips don’t go running around smacking into women without your knowledge, do they? Where’s the popcorn?”
“Second cabinet to the right. Set the microwave on three minutes or it’ll fry.”
“Gotcha.”
“I will come after you if you hit on her.”
Tyson tapped the buttons on the microwave and chewed on the inside of his cheek, clearly trying not to laugh again.
“Lucy is more than one of your flavors-of-the-week.”
Tyson shook his head. “Ramona doesn’t want us dating anyone on our own roster.”
“I’m not dating her.”
“But you’re kissing her.”
“I kissed her once. And it would be a lot simpler for both of us if it doesn’t happen again.”
Tyson spun around. “So your plan is to kiss the woman one time, Walk away, and then forbid anyone one else to date her?”
“I knew you’d catch on.”
“Dayum, bro. That’s just not right.” Tyson grabbed the big plastic popcorn bowl out of Theo’s hands. “It’s plain selfish, in fact.”
Theo sank down onto a kitchen chair. “Yeah? Well, I think there’s something going on with Lucy that she won’t talk about-maybe some unresolved issues about men. I feel like I should… I don’t know… look out for her.”
Tyson frowned. “You mean she’s got sex hangups?” He smiled. “I have experience working through those things. I even got references.”
Theo laughed softly. “Exactly what I was afraid of.”
“You know, it’s not your job to fix everything about her, Theo-just help her get in shape.” The microwave dinged and Tyson got up from the table. “You don’t have to go around carrying everyone’s burden like it’s your own.”
“I know.”
“Well, sometimes you don’t act like you know. You’ve got to learn to del-e-gate.” An explosion of cheers came from the living room. “I’ll be right back.”
Theo listened as the popcorn was met with great enthusiasm in the other room. As Tyson chatted with the kids about basketball, Theo realized his friend had a valid point. Theo’s only responsibility toward Lucy was getting her to lose the weight-what she did or didn’t do with her issues after the fact was her own affair.
Of course he and Lucy should keep it strictly business. He shuddered at the thought that come December, she’d be completely in love with him, right as he went back to medical school. She’d expect to keep seeing him every day, which would be a scheduling nightmare. Maybe she’d even want a commitment, which would be impossible-not when he was about to immerse himself in the pursuit of his dream. Medical school and residency was hell on even the strongest established relationships. He’d only end up disappointing her. He’d only end up not being enough for her.
Theo rested his chin in his palm and slumped. The immediate problem was that kiss. Oh God, he’d never felt anything so good in his life. She was so hot and sexual, and if the camera van hadn’t pulled up in the parking lot there was no telling what would have happened! Since when did a single kiss make him lose it completely like that? What was his problem?
He needed to think. He needed to stop remembering how it felt and start developing a plan for damage control. If he simply pretended the kiss had never happened, it would come off as rejection, which would mess with Lucy’s head, chip away at her confidence, and possibly set her back. Which made it his problem, too.
He should never have kissed her…
“Now what was I saying?” Tyson returned to the kitchen chair.
Theo stared at his friend for a moment. Then smiled. “I believe you were saying that you’d take Lucy out every once in a while, give her a lot of attention, make her feel special and make sure she has a great time but not do anything to make her uncomfortable.”
Tyson’s eye twitched. “I don’t remember saying any of that shit.” “Ah, but you were going to.”
“I was?”
“Yeah.” Theo laughed. “I will come after you if you don’t hit on her within the next week.”
Tyson shook his head. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you have just del-e-gated my ass.”
Office of Doris Lehman, MSW, PhD
“Have there been more kisses?”
“No.” Lucy couldn’t sit still that morning. She paced in front of the love seat, her hands fidgeting, her teeth digging into her bottom lip. She stared at the kimono girls for advice, but their small red mouths remained closed.
The little bitches.
“Have you talked about the kiss?”
“He apologized right after, when the camera crew arrived. Then last week he said I was wonderful and special but that we needed to stay focused on our goal. He hasn’t said another word about it since.”
“Do you want to kiss him again?”
“I’ve thought about it, and I’ve come to see that Theo kissed me because he didn’t know what else to do. You know how men hate it when women flip out- they feel kind of helpless.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Lucy stared at her therapist. “Sure. I’d kiss him again if need be.”
“Hmm. As I recall, you once referred to Theo as…” Doris flipped through the chart balanced on her knee. “Hot.” She looked up at Lucy. “Was the kiss hot, too?”
Lucy’s mouth fell open in astonishment. “You want his phone number or something?”
“I have his number and he has mine. What do you find most attractive about him?”
Lucy cocked her head and stared at Doris, wondering about her therapist’s personal life, about Mr. Doris. She hoped to God Doris wasn’t getting her ya-yas out by asking these questions.
“If you must know, Theo Redmond is downright biscuit-worthy,” Lucy said.
Doris hitched up her left eyebrow. “Care to elaborate on that?”
“Sure.” Lucy grinned. “Have you ever met a man who looked so damn delicious that you wanted to sop him up with a hot buttermilk biscuit and inhale him in one gulp?”
“Why, yes, I have,” Doris said.
That was a shocker. “Really? What happened?”
“I married him.”
The angle of incline on this particular machine had always annoyed Lucy. She didn’t like the way her legs fell open a little too lewdly and how her boobs seemed to stick out like boulders, and she really didn’t like the way Theo always put his fingers just under her upper arms.
If there was one place on her body she didn’t want him fondling, it was the underside of her upper arms. Or her stomach. Or her thighs. Or the pads of flesh on her hips. Or her waist, because it was still so soft.
“You rock, Cunningham. Exhale on the extension.”
“Stop doing it for me!” She would have batted his hands away, but she was busy pushing the stupid bar up over her head. Theo kept his fingers on the vulnerable bare flesh of the underside of her arm.
“I’m not doing it for you, Lucy. You’re doing every bit of the work.”
She exhaled on the extension, feeling her shoulders and arms shake with the weight on this last of fifteen repetitions, her abdominals contracting to provide the stability for the movement. “Then why are your hands all over me? Take your hands away and let me do it.”
With great relief she returned the bar to its berth and sat up. Theo guided one of her arms up over her head and bent it at the elbow so that her fingertips touched between her shoulder blades.
“Breathe into the stretch and chill out, Luce. I’m not doing anything for you. I�
�m just here if you need me. That’s my job.”
She harrumphed.
“That was an excellent workout. You’re a machine, Luce, a lean, mean fitness machine.”
She stood and grabbed her gym towel and water bottle from the floor and glared at Theo while she chugged. Then she wiped the sweat from her face.
“That might be overkill,” she said into the terry cloth.
“The man has a valid point, Lucy.”
It was Tyson. She peeked around the towel to see him standing at Theo’s side, and it was the first time Lucy had noticed that Tyson was at least two inches taller than Theo.
She immediately felt self-conscious. The sweat stains under her pits were so big they had blended with the sweat ring around her neck, which ran all the way around to her back and down into the seat of her yoga pants. She was basically one large, wet rag. Her hair was pulled up in a clip that had long ago lost its fashionable position and was now balanced on her shoulder.
She took another swig of water for fortitude, then fixed her hair clip as best she could. “Hey, Tyson. How’ve you been?”
“Fine, except I don’t get to see you much around here. Our schedules don’t seem to mesh.”
He was one handsome man. Deep-set dark eyes with decadent eyelashes and a nicely trimmed mustache over one beautiful set of lips. Big and hard and bald and black. And he’d just smiled at her, and Lucy wasn’t sure she’d be able to stand up much longer.
“Well, it’s nice to see you, Tyson. And I’ll catch you tomorrow, Theo. Thanks for the workout.”
She turned to head to the locker room and Tyson was at her side. “Mind if I walk with you?”
She shrugged and tried to appear nonchalant. She could feel Theo’s eyes on her. He was staring at her, sending heat her way, from his increasingly distant position behind her. She felt it. She felt him. She was so tempted to look back…
“I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me some evening. I’ve been meaning to ask you for quite a while.”
Lucy stopped and grabbed the towel from around her neck and wiped her face again. She glanced up to Tyson and saw him waiting patiently for her answer, a hint of a smile on his lips.
“Look, I’ve got to ask you this one little thing.” Lucy took a quick sip of water. “Are you sure you want to go out with me?”
Tyson’s laugh was sexy. She liked the sound of it. “I’m very sure. So is that a yes?”
“No. I mean… I have one more question.” She took a steadying breath. “Weren’t you a Division I football player in college?”
“Uh. Yeah. University of Florida. You got something against bigger schools?”
She could tell by the way his eyes sparkled that he found her amusing. Nothing about this subject was amusing to Lucy. And she just knew that if she accepted his offer, Doris was going to have a field day with the deeper meaning of it all. “I have nothing against the schools themselves, just the football programs.”
“Is that right?” Tyson put one of his huge hands on her soaking wet shoulder and encouraged her to continue her walk to the locker room. “Well, how about you shower and change and we’ll go have a cup of coffee across the street and you can tell me all about the activities you do like.”
“Parcheesi. I like Parcheesi. Nobody ever gets hurt playing Parcheesi.”
“You haven’t played Parcheesi with me.”
Lucy giggled. Her worry was ridiculous. Tyson went to school down here, not in Pennsylvania where it was news. He didn’t recognize her. That was paranoia. Plus, maybe going out with Tyson would accomplish two things at once-she could face her fear of jocks and end her dating drought all in one fell swoop.
She looked up at him and realized the most important reason for her to say yes was that Tyson seemed genuine, had a fine sense of humor, and was an incredibly attractive man. It might also help her to get over her completely irrational and dead-end crush on Theo.
“I’d love to have a cup of coffee and talk about Parcheesi. Twenty minutes?”
“Absolutely.” Tyson smiled big at her. “I’ll see you in the lobby.”
Lucy dared to turn around before she entered the locker room, and there Theo stood, right where she’d left him, an expression on his face she swore looked just like jealousy. He gave her a wistful smile, tapped the clipboard against his thigh, and walked away.
You snooze, you lose, Redmond.
Tyson turned out to be the kind of man who liked to laugh and dance and be in the company of women. He seemed to know quite a lot about the female species, and Lucy figured it was knowledge that came from years of intense hands-on study of the subject matter.
In fact, Tyson had his hands on her during much of their first date. A hand on her elbow. A hand wrapped around hers when they walked. A hand on her knee to illustrate a point.
She enjoyed it. She enjoyed his laugh and the easy way he had with everyone they encountered. When they strolled together toward Bicentennial Park for the reggae festival, she relaxed into his strong arm and leaned up against him.
At one point, she turned her head to look up at Tyson, only to find him smiling down at her with that bright, devilish grin of his.
“What’s on your mind, Tyson?” She smiled back at him.
“Just thinking that you’re the sweetest woman I’ve met in a long time, Lucy. Are they all like you in Pittsburgh? ‘Cause if so, I may be relocating.”
She laughed. “There’s only one of me.”
Tyson moved his hand to her waist, pulling her tight against him. “You’re damn cute, Lucy. So tell me, how many other men are you seeing these days? I mean besides Theo of course.”
Lucy stopped and wrenched away from Tyson’s embrace. “I’m not seeing Theo!” She realized she sounded huffy.
“Whoa, girl. Relax.” He pulled her close again and resumed walking. “That was a little joke, you know? Because everybody knows you see Theo every damn day. Unless-”
Lucy shook her head. “Don’t go there.”
“You got a thing for our man Theo?”
Lucy brought her arm up around Tyson’s waist and squeezed. It was a bit of a shock. Tyson’s body was more than buff, it was carved out of granite, and she felt his muscles ripple under her fingers. “Dear God,” she whispered.
“You like that?”
“It’s impressive. What’s your percentage of body fat?”
“You gonna tell me yours if I tell you mine?”
Lucy tilted her head back and laughed. “Like you and the rest of Miami don’t know it already.”
Tyson stopped this time, pulled her close to the revolving door of an office building, and held her steady in front of him. “Listen, Lucy, I like you a lot.” The feel of one of his big fingers stroking the side of her cheek was very nice. Very nice indeed. She felt her eyes close. “But all you have to do is say the word and I’ll back off. Theo’s my friend. I respect him and like him and I’d never want to get in the middle of something you two are working on.”
‘The only thing we’re working on is my body,“ Lucy said.
“Sounds like nice work if you can get it.”
Lucy smiled up at him, stood on her tiptoes, and brought her lips to his. She wanted to thank him for being so considerate and figured a nice kiss was a way to do it.
Their lips touched. His were warm and cushiony. They welcomed her, moved on her, felt so nice and smooth. And Lucy stood there on her tiptoes, waiting…
And waiting…
She waited patiently for the zing! she’d felt when she’d kissed Theo. She counted to herself, One, two, three… but there was no zing. Where the hell was the stupid zing?
“You feel good, girl.”
Tyson’s lips went back to hers and his arms went around her and she was off the ground. He was lifting her up off the sidewalk! She started kicking.
“My God, put me down! You’re going to snap your vertebrae!”
All he did was laugh and try to get his lips back on hers.
“Ty
son! Put me down!”
He did, and she stood there out of breath and bewildered, his hands still gripping her around the waist. She watched a little smile play on his lips.
“Baby, I’ve been known to bench press three hundred. I could lift you with one hand.”
Lucy did the math, and knew he was sort of close to being right.
Tyson laughed hard and grabbed her hand in his. “C’mon. Let’s go hear some music.”
The outdoor music festival was loud and joyous and he kept her close in the throng. Lucy felt safe and relaxed with Tyson and enjoyed the feel of his arms around her as he swayed to the beat.
Many people came up to her to congratulate her. One woman gave her a bear hug and began to cry, explaining that Lucy’s success had inspired her to lose ten pounds and quit a dead-end job. Tyson took all the attention with grace, yet Lucy noted how he stayed right by her side.
“Are you my bodyguard?” she asked him at one point that night.
“Like I said, sweet Lucy, nice work if you can get it.”
“Delivery for you, Lucy.”
Veronica tilted the dolly on its back wheels and used her sandaled foot to steer it though the door of Lucy’s office.
Lucy looked up from her food journal, where she’d just had to fess up to eating an entire multigrain bagel for breakfast instead of just the half she’d intended, and stared at the dolly. Three nondescript shipping cartons were stacked on top of one another.
“I’m not expecting anything.”
Veronica shrugged and tossed an invoice on Lucy’s desk. “The UPS guy just brought them up. They’re all addressed to you. From the Palm Club. They’re not all that heavy. Want me to open them?”
Lucy frowned. “No. It’s OK. I’ll unload them in just a second.”
She wondered what Theo could be sending her- new workout clothes? A lifetime supply of food journals? Several exercise balls? A self-help book for women who never get kissed a second time?
He Loves Lucy Page 9
