“I can’t do math right now,” he huffed, wide chest rising and falling.
“Why didn’t you ask me to slow down or take a break or something?”
He shot me a disbelieving look. “Would you have actually stopped?”
“Well, sure. If you were this miserable.”
Ian croaked out a laugh. “You used to take great pleasure in making me miserable.”
“That was before,” I argued. “We’re training now. I’m trying to get you ready. But you have to be honest with me, or you could hurt yourself. If you weren’t up for the distance or the pace, I don’t know unless you tell me. What’s really going on here, Ian?”
“How are you not even breathing heavy right now?” he asked, exasperation evident.
“I run every day. My body is used to it.”
At my pronouncement, Ian’s eyes fell away from my face, as if he needed to check for himself. His bright blue gaze traced the length of my torso and took a slow and steady detour over my hips and down my legs. The running tights I wore felt very indecent all of a sudden. I shifted, ignoring the sudden awareness in my middle.
“Yeah, well, my body isn’t used to it,” he finally said, pushing himself into a sitting position. His breathing had evened out for the most part, but his cheeks were still flushed from exertion. “I told you I don’t do cardio.”
“No, you told me you’re bad at cardio.”
“I am. Plus, I hate it. So I don’t do it.” He propped his forearms on his bent knees and looked away.
It was my turn to catalog the hills and valleys of his big body. Whereas I was mostly flat, straight lines, Ian was a study in dips and arches, swells and valleys. When I couldn’t take all the muscles straining his pullover and joggers, I flung a hand out and said a little shrilly, “But look at you!”
He looked sheepish. “Those are just muscles. I lift weights, and I’m on a pretty intense nutrition plan. Having a high metabolism doesn’t hurt either.”
“So you don’t do cardio, but you wanted me to train you.” It was a statement. That was exactly what had happened, but I didn’t understand it.
“I wanted to spend time with you,” he corrected gently.
I shifted on my feet. “You wanted to spend time with me ... while running?”
Ian huffed a laugh. “No, not ideally. But I’ll take what I can get.”
I stared at him, hoping some sort of understanding would come to me, but at this point, I would need divine intervention or to phone a friend to figure out what the hell was going on right now.
“Why? I don’t get?—”
“Because I like you, Joan. I like you,” he repeated, voice tired in a way that had nothing to do with running three miles at six in the morning.
Then what he said registered, and I took a step back.
“I wanted to get to know you,” he explained. “You didn’t seem very open to hanging out with me. Hell, you wouldn’t even tell me your name. I thought if we worked out together, you might ... I don’t know. I don’t even know what I thought.”
Confusion had me frowning. I put my hands on my hips and stared down at Ian. He squinted up at me in the early-morning light.
“You’re—you’re a movie star,” I said, voice sharp, tone clipped. It sounded like an accusation.
“You’re a farmer,” he replied dryly.
I gave him a flat stare.
It wasn’t that I had low self-esteem or something. I knew that I was good at a lot of things. I also knew where I was lacking. Realistically, there was no reason for an A-list celebrity with his own fragrance line to want to run with me because he liked me. It just didn’t make sense.
No part of me believed that any one person was better than another. Ian didn’t deserve more respect or to get away with traffic violations because he was famous. But our places in the world were very different. What was normal for him—galas, movie premieres, award shows, paparazzi—was not normal for me.
So, for the life of me, I couldn’t understand what this was. What his motivations were.
