He reached for the pad, but she snatched it up before he could.
“Hold on. Let me check a couple of things first.” She started reading over the notes she’d written. After a minute or so, she looked up to find Jamar staring at her with a curious frown. “What?” she asked.
“Have you always done that? Mouthed your words?”
“Huh?”
“When you read? I noticed it at the restaurant the other day when you were looking over the menu. You were reading aloud—under your breath, but still aloud.”
Taylor’s defenses immediately went up. “So?”
“It’s just an observation.” He was quiet for a moment as he set the casserole dish on the coffee table. “Umm…Silas used to do the same thing. He said hearing the words spoken aloud helped him to comprehend them better than just reading the text.”
Well, that made sense to her. “I don’t understand what the big deal is,” Taylor said.
“It’s not a big deal. When we were in about the tenth grade, Silas was diagnosed with a learning disorder. It changed the way teachers—”
“We can go over your game plan later,” she said. She set the legal pad on the coffee table. “We need to get going. I booked us for an hour at this new CrossFit gym in the city. If we don’t leave now, we’ll be late.”
Taylor could tell by his pensive expression that he wanted to say more. She stared into his eyes, imploring him to drop it.
After a moment, he nodded and, in a subdued voice, said, “I’ll meet you outside in ten minutes. I’ll follow in my SUV so that you don’t have to ride all the way back up here once we’re done.”
An hour later, Taylor’s biceps burned like liquid fire as she counted down the last five hammer curls before instructing Jamar to stop.
“Holy shit,” she said. “We’re both going to pay for this in the morning.”
She set the twenty-pound kettlebell back into the rack, then rubbed it down with a sanitizing wipe. She pulled a few more from the plastic container and did the same to the rest of the surfaces they’d touched during the high-intensity full-body circuit Jamar had just completed. This boutique CrossFit gym had been on her radar for a while now, but none of her previous clients had been willing to spend the money they charged to rent the space to nonmembers.
As much as she appreciated Jamar’s personal gym, getting the chance to work him out on the gymnastic rings, rope-climbing wall, and monkey-bar rig was worth putting on a public show. Not that there was anyone here to watch the performance.
She’d chosen this particular place because they offered an exclusivity option on certain days of the week. They had two hours to themselves, and Taylor was going to make the most of it. They would both be exhausted by the time they were done.
She continued wiping down the surfaces, observing Jamar out of the corner of her eye as he replaced the athletic tape around his wrists and ankles.
Taylor had always considered herself a forearm kinda girl. Well-defined forearms on a man were her kryptonite. But Jamar’s powerful, chiseled thighs made a convincing case for switching to the leg camp. Watching the way his inner thigh flexed as it peeked out of the hem of his shorts had her wanting to take a bite out of it.
You cannot bite your clients, Taylor Renee.
Maybe repeating those words in her mother’s voice would help curb the unholy thoughts ravaging her brain.
“Doubt it,” she murmured under her breath.
All it took was one simple kiss in the rain to fully embrace the idea of hooking up with her client. Not that there had been anything simple about that kiss, but did it warrant the constant ache it had set off in her pants? No!
Well, maybe.
After a week of pretending as if everything was normal, acting as if that kiss hadn’t changed everything, Taylor was ready to climb the walls. Okay, fine. She was ready to climb him. But she wouldn’t do either. She would be a professional and handle this like an adult. She and Jamar needed to air this out if she had any chance of surviving the remaining month with her sanity intact.
He finished taping up his ankles and jogged over to where she stood next to the free weights.
“Are you ready to get back to it?” he asked. “We’re doing kickboxing next, right?”
“Um, yeah,” Taylor said. She moved the ten-pound dumbbell back to its correct position, then started for the freestanding punching bag. After a couple of steps, Taylor stopped and turned. “Wait.”
“Whoa.” He caught her by the shoulders to prevent himself from running into her. “Watch yourself.”
Taylor began to peel his fingers from her bicep before he quickly released her. She cleared her throat. “We need to talk about it. I’m ready to talk about it.”
“About?”
“The kiss,” she clarified. “We need to discuss it and stop pretending it didn’t happen.”
His brow arched a fraction as he took a step back, giving her space. “I agree,” he said. “But for the record, I never said that we should pretend it didn’t happen.”
“I know,” she said. She gestured to him. “Well…talk.”
“Me? What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry we kissed?” He shook his head. “I’m not. That I don’t want it to happen again? I can’t say that either, unless you’re okay with me lying to you.”
A ball of angst rolled around like tumbleweed in the pit of her stomach.
Did you think this would be easy?
“I guess what my dad says is true,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Don’t ask a question if you’re not ready for the answer.”
“What did you expect me to say, Taylor?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I did want you to lie. It would make things easier.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” He looked over both shoulders before leaning forward and saying in a muted voice, “People already think we’re a couple. If we both want this, why shouldn’t we go ahead and follow through?”
“Because it doesn’t matter what other people think.” She crossed her arms over her chest, cradling her elbows in her hands. “I won’t deny the attraction. We both know it’s there. But I can’t date you and work for you. It’s a line I’m not willing to cross.”
“So how do you explain that kiss?”
“That was…It was a one-time thing. I’d love to call it a mistake, but—” She shook her head. “I can’t. It wasn’t a mistake. But that doesn’t mean it can happen again.”
“Even though we both want it.” He didn’t frame it as a question, because there wasn’t any question that, if circumstances were different, they would both be open to sharing so much more than just a kiss.
“It’s not something I’m willing to even discuss.” After a heartbeat, she added, “Not yet.”
His brows peaked. “Yet?”
Taylor pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. She could only hope she didn’t live to regret dangling this small bit of hope, but an all-out rejection of there ever being anything between them was too harsh to bear.
She lifted her shoulders in a hopeful shrug. “My contract ends in a month.”
“So that’s our only option?” He expelled a gruff, exasperated laugh. “Working together and being together—like, really being together—are mutually exclusive?”
“Yes,” Taylor said with an emphatic nod. “That’s the way it has to be, Jamar. Once we cross that threshold, lines get blurry and it’s…it’s just not something I’m willing to do.” She lowered her voice, even though they had the gym to themselves. “Things are messy enough with this pretend dating thing. If we decide to explore a more…” She paused, trying to come up with the right word. Intimate? Real? “A personal relationship,” Taylor continued, “it will have to wait until after we’re done with our professional one.”
A muscle flexed in his jaw as he chewed over her words.
“What if I don’t want to give you up as a trainer?” he finally asked.
Taylor’s head jerked back, her eyes narrowing. “Are you
considering hiring me for longer than our original two-month agreement?”
“Why don’t you answer my question first?” He stayed her with a hand. “Wait, no. Don’t answer it.” He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, then dragged both hands down his face. “You’re right. Fuck.” He returned his gaze to her, his eyes fraught with frustration. “We shouldn’t blur the lines.”
“We shouldn’t,” Taylor said, as much as it pained her to admit it.
He huffed out a laugh. “You want some irony? I spent the entire drive here mentally rehearsing how to tell you this exact thing, how I couldn’t allow what happened on Mount Bonnell to let me lose focus of my goal.” He shook his head. “My trip back home put a lot of things into perspective for me, Taylor. I have so much riding on this. Not just me, but people I care about. I can’t allow anything to distract me.”
She folded her arms, grasping her elbows in her hands. “So? What does this mean?”
“That I’m back to taking cold showers that don’t work worth a damn,” Jamar said.
“They totally don’t,” Taylor agreed. She paused for a moment, then continued. “You mentioned possibly keeping me on as your trainer even after our agreed upon two months. Were you serious?”
“I would be a fool not to,” he said. “I had high expectations when I hired you, but did I think I would be able to crush an agility drill this early into our training? Hell no. That’s all you. The fitness regimen you created is as effective as anything the trainers I worked with both in college and the pros ever put together. If I get back into the League, I’ll need to maintain this level of conditioning, which means I’ll need you long-term.”
Taylor tried not to completely lose her shit, but her chances of spontaneously combusting from excitement were pretty high.
Calm down!
She needed to adopt Jamar’s more realistic approach to this whole thing. It wasn’t a guarantee that he would make it back into the League, so she shouldn’t get ahead of herself here.
Yet, Taylor felt the anxiety over having to take that college entrance exam melting away in real time. If he hired her as his full-time, long-term fitness coach, she would no longer need to put herself through the agony of getting her degree, not if she negotiated a rate similar to what he was paying her. Hell, she would even continue with the free meal prep. He could never fully understand what this promise of job security meant for her.
At the same time, Taylor had to acknowledge the ache of what might have been. Having an end date to their professional relationship had left a door open to them possibly exploring something real. If Jamar decided to keep her on the payroll, it would essentially close that door.
You can’t have it both ways, Taylor Renee.
Life was a hodgepodge of tough choices pitted against even tougher choices, and no one ever said you were guaranteed to like either.
“When I agreed to work with you, I never thought of these eight weeks as a job audition, but I guess that’s what they are,” Taylor said.
“I never considered it that way either. But, then again, I had no idea you would not only meet my expectations, but surpass them.”
“Thanks.” Her lips twisted in an apologetic grin as the reality of what they’d silently, yet mutually decided settled between them. They both knew what had to be done, just as they both wished things could be different. “So, are you ready to try your hand at kickboxing?”
Jamar nodded, obviously taking his cue from her. “Are you going to take it easy on me? I’ve never done kickboxing before.”
“I told you once before, you didn’t hire me to go easy on you.”
She walked over to the wall where boxing gloves in various sizes hung from silver hooks. She grabbed a pair from a hook and slapped them against his chest.
“Glove up. It’s time to get back to work.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jamar could only conclude that it was the need to burn off the absurd amount of built-up sexual frustration that had him kicking the ever-loving shit out of this punching bag. He backed away, then studied Taylor as she demonstrated an inside crescent kick, lifting her knee and swinging her leg in a fluid arch. Witnessing the power in her shapely legs—in her entire body—was the biggest turn-on.
How was he going to survive working with her indefinitely without losing his mind? He’d convinced himself that sticking to their fake relationship was the only way he could focus on his primary goal, but he now realized that it didn’t matter if the relationship was fake. His attraction to her was 100 percent real; there was no way of overcoming that particular distraction.
“Okay, now you try it,” Taylor said.
Jamar snapped to attention. Drawing his body into position, he followed her instructions, striking the bag with the side of his foot.
“Double jab,” she barked.
He struck out with a one-two punch, reveling in the satisfying thud of the glove connecting with the bag. He knew several former teammates who swore by kickboxing as a form of training, but Jamar had never been drawn to the sport. He hadn’t known what he’d been missing out on. The precision that went into hitting the bag at just the right angle appealed to the perfectionist in him.
“I don’t care what you claim, you won’t convince me that this is your first time kickboxing,” Taylor said.
“I promise you, it is,” Jamar said. He’d taken flack for his drive to be perfect over the years, but if it meant wowing his hot fitness instructor with his quick-learning kickboxing skills, he’d take all the flack in the world. “I’ve only seen it done, but never tried it.” He tilted his head to the side. “You know, with all the trash-talking you were doing earlier, I expected this to be a lot harder. This is nothing.”
She plopped her gloved hands on her slim hips. “Oh really?”
It was so easy to get her riled up.
He shrugged, playing up his nonchalance. “I’m not saying it hasn’t been a good workout. It’s just not the challenge you made it out to be.”
“That’s because I was taking it easy on you, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I didn’t hire you to take it easy on me. Isn’t that what you said?”
Her eyebrows hiked. “Hmm…I guess it is.”
She strolled around him in a slow circle, her gaze traveling from the top of his head to his feet, sizing him up. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if she liked what she saw, but flinging around sexual innuendo wouldn’t help when it came to sticking to the rules they’d just laid out for each other. It was a pity, because flirting with her was so damn much fun.
“Are we done for the day?” Jamar asked.
She snorted. “You wish.” She snapped her fingers. “Pay attention.” She placed two front kicks to the middle of the bag and followed them with a roundhouse. “Your turn.”
He mimicked her actions, hitting the bag in the same spots she had. It progressed in that fashion for ten minutes, with her executing increasingly difficult moves and ordering him to repeat the sequence. Jamar found himself having to hide his huffing. Taylor wasn’t even winded. She was a beast when it came to this shit.
“Okay, so that was a good warm-up,” she said.
“Warm-up?”
“Oh, you thought this was the workout? Nah, boo. That was playtime.”
She continued with another series of strikes to the punching bag followed by power kicks. As Jamar performed a straight kick to the bag, a sharp pain shot through his knee.
“Fuck!”
“What’s wrong?” Taylor asked. “Is it your knee?”
“No, no.” He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, trying not to grimace when another twinge resonated from the joint. If he told Taylor about the little tweaks he’d started experiencing in his knee, she would blow things out of proportion. She’d probably insist he call Dr. Hoffman. And she would definitely pause their workouts.
He couldn’t afford a break in his training, not without the risk of falling behind. His knee would be
fine. It was nothing he couldn’t handle.
“I think I have a blister forming on my foot,” Jamar said. “It stung when I made contact with the bag.”
“Do you want to call it a day?” she asked.
“No way. I’m not letting you off that easy,” he said with a teasing grin.
“Oh yeah? Here’s one for you.” She struck the bag with a jab, then an uppercut, but when she followed it with a twirling back kick, she let out a howl like an injured animal before crumpling to the floor.
“Taylor!” Jamar rushed to her side.
She rolled around on the rubber flooring, clutching her ankle and writhing in pain.
“Shit! Where does it hurt? Do you think it’s broken?”
“I don’t know.” She grimaced. “I don’t think so.” She stretched out her hand to him, signaling for him to take it. “Here, help me up.”
He walked behind her and hooked his arms underneath hers. “Can you stand on your own?” he asked as he lifted her from the floor.
“I think so—” she said, but she cried out the moment she tried to do so. She would have slumped to the floor again if he hadn’t been there to catch her fall. “I guess that’s a no,” she gritted through clenched teeth.
“We need to get you to a hospital.”
“No!”
“Hey, is everything okay here?” It was the guy who’d checked them in at the start of their session. “I saw that fall you took. It looked pretty bad.”
“No worries. I’m fine,” Taylor told him.
“I’ve got her. Thanks,” Jamar said. He turned his attention back to her once the attendant left. “What do you mean no? You need to get an X-ray. Your ankle’s probably broken.”
“It’s not broken. And I don’t need to go to a hospital. I just need some ice.” She pointed to a padded bench. “Help me over there.”
He held her upright as she limped toward the bench, emitting a tiny yelp with every step she took. She was one of the toughest people he’d ever met; for her to openly show such discomfort meant she was in excruciating pain.
The Dating Playbook Page 17
