Against the Ropes (10 page)

Graham just shook his head, then worked on his forward bend.

“Oh.” Greg did another quick check at Kara, then back to his friend. “Oooh. Right. Okay then.”

“Shut up,” Graham muttered, sounding strained.

“Ohhhhh,” he said again, a little quieter. Graham just
focused on folding himself as tightly in two pieces as he could.

“Easy there, cowboy.” Marianne tapped Graham's back. “Don't overstretch or you'll pull something. Ease back, and stop when your body shouts uncle.”

Graham scowled at him, then at Marianne, before storming off toward the locker room. Greg imagined he had a decent excuse worked up if someone asked. Had to take a leak, forgot to lock up my stuff, got bored and wanted a minute alone.

He knew better. His friend had the hots for the yoga instructor. And was none too happy about it.

A flash of light from the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned his head. Not easy in warrior pose, but he managed.

And found Reagan, camera in hand, taking photos of the group from different angles. When they transitioned, he sent her a quick wave, and she raised her hand in acknowledgment, but didn't smile or take her eyes off the shot.

He liked a woman on a mission. He just wished it didn't put such a pinched look on her face. He hated the thought that something wasn't working out for her. Hated more that he wasn't sure how to fix it. And knew, even as he thought it, she'd disagree there. She wouldn't want a man to fix something for her. She'd fix it herself. Rawr, woman power and stuff.

Fine then. But the longer she looked frustrated, the antsier he would get about stepping in and solving whatever it was that irked her. Starting with the damn reporter.

10

R
eagan finished typing the last of the editorial article she'd begged from the local paper to write. It had been a near thing, and she'd been ready to promise some sexual favors if it came to it, but luckily it hadn't. She had just enough space, plus one photo, to write up a rebuttal on the article from that morning.

David Cruise—aka Mr. High-And-Mighty “Journalist”—had dodged her calls all morning, and refused to call her back. Oh, but others called. A larger paper from the Wilmington branch, plus several touchy-feely blogs that dealt with anti-everything not fluffy kittens. They were against violent sports, violent hobbies, violent careers—military included, of course—violent acts, violent protests, violent thoughts, and violence.

Duh. Way to narrow it down there, bloggers.

She'd done her best there, working hard to make the reporter's story sound overdramatized without directly calling him a pansy-ass good-for-nothing. Fine line, but she was pretty sure she walked it well enough.

Hopefully the work she'd done that day, combined with this decent PR she'd written just now and would—please God—show up in tomorrow's paper, would help. Everyone wanted to see a softer side of Marines, right? She'd worked hard to strike the right balance between pride for the sport, a love of service and also some good-natured humor without overstepping any boundaries.

Her entire job was about fine lines, as it turned out.

Sliding her feet into the slippers Marianne kept in the office and said she could borrow, she turned in Marianne's desk chair and surveyed the training room. Marianne and her interns had packed up a bit ago and headed out. The gym was quiet now, with all but the emergency lights shut off outside of the training room. Reagan could have used Coach Ace's office, but his desk was a mess so she had borrowed her friend's room instead. And though she'd never admit it to anyone, she'd needed to get out of the heels. They were killing her.

Her phone beeped, and she glanced at the text message.

Greg:
Hungry?

She rotated her head a little, stretching the neck muscles and giving her shoulders a bit of relief. She could so go for a cheeseburger right about now. But she still had way too much to do to contemplate leaving yet. If she went home, she'd just crash on the bed. Too tempting.

Reagan:
Starving. But I've got too much work to worry about.

Greg:
How about I bring the food to you?

She thought about it for a minute. But again . . . too tempting.

Reagan:
Thanks for the offer, but I'll be okay.

Greg:
Too late.

Too late? What did that mean? She hadn't even told him where she was.

“Knock, knock.”

She shrieked and bobbled her phone a little. Catching it,
she put it down on the desk and glanced up to see Greg standing in the doorway, holding two brown sacks. Their bottoms were dark with grease, and her stomach rumbled just thinking of the deliciousness hiding inside.

“What are you doing here?” She thought for a second. “Actually,
how
did you get in here?”

“Marianne. When we were all leaving, I mentioned asking you to dinner and she said you were working late here. So she ran back by to let me in.”

“Sneaky lady,” Reagan muttered, pushing away from the desk and standing. The food smelled so good, her stomach actually started to rumble. She covered it with one hand. “Well, you're here now. Shouldn't let the food go to waste.”

“That would simply be criminal,” Greg agreed. He walked in and set the food down on one of Marianne's tables. Reagan winced, then silently vowed to wipe it down again with the disinfectant like she'd seen the interns do before. Good as new.

“You struck me as the kind of lady who would want a cheeseburger, but order a salad. Am I right?” He started pulling out paper sleeves of fries, a few plopping to the plastic table top as he did.

“That might have been insulting, but I'm too hungry to care.” Her eyes strayed, though, from the fries on the table to the man holding the bags. He wore cargo khaki shorts, running shoes and a simple graphic tee. Nothing flashy or out of the ordinary.

But she started feeling a hunger of an entirely different sort after watching his forearms flex with each reach into the bag.

Down, girl. Not while you're working.
She forced herself to walk with ease to the table and pick up a fry. He crumbled one bag, threw it in the other and set it down on the second table. So now she'd wash down both table tops before she left.

“Are we going to eat standing up?” she teased.

“Good for the digestion.” Greg unwrapped a burger, checked what was in it, then handed it to her. “Just a plain old cheeseburger. You good with that?”

“More than good. Great. Thrilled, actually.” To prove it, she took a healthy bite. “See?” she said around the gloriousness.

He smiled, then leaned in a little. Then a little more . . . then more . . .

Oh, God. He was actually going to kiss her now. A real kiss. And she had half a cow stuffed in her mouth. Her eyes widened and she froze as he inched in, as his fingers caressed her jaw and tilted her head, as his thumb brushed over the corner of her mouth . . .

“You had a little sauce there.” He straightened and sucked the sauce from his thumb. “Good stuff.” Then he unwrapped his own burger—twice the size of hers—and started eating.

Reagan's eyes narrowed, and she hoped he felt the daggers she was sending him. From the way his eyes danced above the massive burger, she knew he felt them and found them completely ineffective.

Finally able to swallow, she said, “That was low.”

“No,
you're
low.” He bumped her hip with his. “First time we're not eye to eye, or me looking up an inch or two.”

Oh, crap. She looked down, and realized she was still wearing Marianne's slippers. And no, of course they weren't something adorable and sassy like leopard print or something. They were
Family Guy
slippers, Stewie on one, Brian on the other. Ugh. She actually debated rushing back to the desk for her heels when he wrapped one arm around her waist and squeezed.

“Don't. You're comfortable. I like it.”

It took everything she had not to do it, but she managed to resist the siren song of her heels. When was the last time she hadn't been in heels in front of a man?

That was embarrassing to admit, so let's not go that direction.

“I think,” Greg went on, picking up a piece of fallen bacon,
“that you in heels is sexy. I like your suits. I like your hair up in that tight school-principal bun. You make business look sexy.” He winked. “But you make slippers look pretty damn hot, too. You're not a one-trick pony.”

“Hmm,” was all she could manage. Finishing off the burger—her thighs were so not going to thank her for that—she dug into the fries. Then she grabbed the bag off the other table and rooted through it. “Ketchup, but no mayo?”

He blinked. “I'm sorry, mayo? Wasn't there mayo on your burger? Which, I have to point out, you've already polished off.”

“I was hungry, shut up. No, not for my burger. For the fries.” When he just stared at her, silently chewing his food, she sighed. “Does nobody outside of the Midwest know this? You mix the mayo and the ketchup and then dip your fries in it.”

He swallowed another huge bite of burger before asking, “Could they think of anything more disgusting?”

“Don't knock it until you've tried it.”

“Okay.” He wrapped the last three bites of his burger up and tossed it in the bottom of the bag. Grabbing the fries from her hand, he tossed those, as well as his, into the bag, too.

“Hey! I was going to eat those!”
Sorry, thighs. We'll do lunges later, okay?
“What's the deal?”

“Get your shoes on, unless you want to walk out in your slippers.”

“Not mine, Marianne's.” She hustled at the excuse to put her heels back on. “Where are we going?”

“Just come on.” He grabbed her hand and, barely waiting for her to lock up the training room, pulled her to the parking lot. He impatiently waited again as she locked the gym itself, then pulled her to his car and opened the passenger door for her. When she was settled, he tossed her the bag and raced to the driver seat.

Reagan held the bag up a few inches off her lap. Much as she loved the food, the grease did not agree with her wardrobe. “Are you going to tell me now where we're going?”

“Going to get some mayo.”

“All this, for mayo?”

“The lady wants mayo, and I live to serve the lady.”

*   *   *

REAGAN
sat on Greg's bed, looking supremely pleased with herself. “Tell me I'm right.”

He hedged, wanting to play it out longer. “I dunno . . .”

She kicked at him with one bare foot. He'd gotten her to dump the heels once they were in the privacy of his bedroom. No slippers necessary here. He grabbed her foot and squeezed. She closed her eyes briefly, but opened them again. “Tell me.”

“As shocking as it is, you were right.” She kicked with her other foot. He dodged easily. Using the non-foot-holding hand, he swiped the last two fries through the mayo-and-ketchup creation she'd made for him and popped them in his mouth. “I wouldn't use it every time, of course, but it's definitely not bad.”

“Not bad.” She snorted. “The first bite, your eyes lit up. Don't lie.”

“Unexpected,” he went with.

“Unexpected that I kicked your ass in the taste department.” When he just stared at her, she shrugged. “Call 'em like I see 'em.”

He squeezed her foot once, then let it fall to the bed. “How was your day? You know, besides the whole kicking-my-ass thing.”

Her smile dimmed a little, and he regretted that. But he also needed to know if she was ready to start trusting him, talking with him about her day. If she was ready to let loose on everything that built up inside her.

“It was . . . hard.” She set her drink on the nightstand and stretched her arms up. The hem of her shirt rode up to reveal a delicious strip of pale skin, marred by pink lines from her waistband. He wouldn't mind kissing those marks away. “It
was harder than anything I thought it would be coming into this job.”

“What'd you think?” When she gave him a blank look, he rephrased. “With the job, what were you expecting?”

“Fluff,” she answered immediately, then blushed. It was adorable. “That's probably rude to say, but it's true.”

“Well, it's a well-known fact Marines are the fluffiest of the services.” When she laughed, he shook his head in mock disgust. “We're just so cuddly and lovable. About as innocent as a teddy bear and a bedtime story.”

She laughed at that, sitting up enough to clutch at her belly. “Oh yeah,” she said through gasps. “You're regular stuffed animals, all of you. So harmless, so tame.”

“Exactly.” When she'd calmed down, he added, “No fluff jobs closer to home?”

“Oh, there's fluff, but . . .” She picked at the edge of his pillowcase for a moment. “I needed to get out of there. Suffocating family, you know?”

He didn't know. He couldn't even begin to fathom what that felt like. To not only know who your family was, but to feel their presence so keenly in your life that you wanted to escape it. “Yeah,” he said, throat tightening. “Sure.” To buy him time, he added, “What's so fluffy about this job?”

“Oh, I don't know.” She picked up her drink, set it down again. “Keep you all in line, make sure you didn't completely lose your minds when traveling, arrange simple media stuff, not screw up ordering the travel bus for the right day. Basically, idiot-proof junk. At least, I
thought
it would be idiot proof.”

“Is that what you wanted?”

“No.” She gritted her teeth, then sighed. “If I tell you this . . .”

“It stays here.” He did some halfhearted attempt at a cross. “Confess your sins, my child.”

She groaned, turned her face into his pillow, then popped back up again. This playful side of Reagan, in his bed no
less, was seriously turning him on and making him think decidedly unpriestly thoughts. “I only took the job because I couldn't get anything else. I wanted to be Olivia Pope from
Scandal
. I wanted to be out there, tackling the world's toughest, most ugly PR scenarios. I wanted to be hiding a politician's love child behind my back while kicking the bra he wore last night at the drag show under the bed with my foot and smiling through it all for the press.”

“That's . . . an interesting occupation aspiration.” He wasn't sure what to say about that. “Do people actually act like that?”

“Of course they do. They just have Olivia Popes to hide it. But of course, Olivia Popes don't come from Nowhere, Wisconsin, with a 5-point-5-year degree and zero experience. So . . .” She let her arms lift, then fall into her lap. “Here I am. And as it turns out, the moment this job turns into more than fluff, I'm floundering.”

She looked so disheartened, he wanted to change it immediately.

“Well, if you ever have to hide Coach Ace's bra, please tell me where you put it.” She snorted a laugh, and he grinned. “I'm glad you took the job.”

She sighed and let her head loll against the headboard. “For all I thought it was just a filler . . . I'm glad, too. Half the time, I think I'm in over my head. And the other half, I'm running so hard on adrenaline that I'm pretty sure if I got enough of a running start, I could leap off the catwalk and fly.” She patted her stomach. “Apparently, a belly full of comfort food makes me mushy.”

That tired contentment, the sight of her sighing in happiness and exhaustion in his own bed, surrounded by his things, after they'd spent an evening together, filled him with his own brand of contentment. Crawling to her, he hovered over her. She blinked her eyes open and waited very still for him to say something.