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Ugh. This man. Grrr.
He rendered me incapable of coherent thoughts he was so frustrating to deal with.
“Are you threatening to press charges against your own child right now?” I shot back, astounded that Eduard was even capable of disgusting me more than he usually did. “Is this a joke?”
“If I had known, if I’d had any clue, that you were vindictive enough to turn my children against me—”
I hung up in the middle of his tirade.
“Assault?” Heath’s tone was sardonic.
I looked up at him, smiling ruefully. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m here all day.”
I sighed, and let it spill.
“For the record, I’m normally a pacifist.”
“Noted,” Heath drawled.
“But, and I guess you know this, or at least part of it, I caught him cheating on me. He butt dialed me while he was having sex with my ex-best friend. I heard enough to be certain that it was them and what they were doing.”
I paused, trying to read his expression. “My reaction, more than anything, was fury. I became so furious that I did assault him.”
“How?”
I always felt like a psycho retelling this story, especially now that I was so completely free of my ex. But I told him. If you wanted someone to open up to you, of course you had to reciprocate.
“I waited until he got home, honestly not knowing what to say to him, and he acted like everything was normal when he greeted me. He went right away to take a shower, and that was when I lost my temper. You see, he’d done that a lot, come in from wherever and gone immediately to shower. He must have been stepping out on me for ages, and I hadn’t a clue.”
I studying him a while, trying and failing to gauge his reaction, and finally continued, “I grabbed the Fabuloso and his belt.”
“I like where this is headed,” Heath noted, and it made me smile. At least he didn’t think I was a complete nutcase. Yet.
“I sprayed the ground right in front of the shower. It’s very smooth marble. The second he stepped out, he slipped, cracked his head hard on the counter, and landed on his ass.”
“Good,” Heath said succinctly.
I smiled. I should have known this wouldn’t remotely shock him. “That’s when I took a belt to him, buckle first.”
“Good,” he repeated.
“I beat the shit out of him, beat him until he ran out of the house, naked, just to get away from me. Then I locked him out. Filed for divorce as soon as humanly possible.”
“That doesn’t explain why he’s threatening your son with assault charges.”
“Rafael, my oldest, beat him up rather severely when he found out what his father had done. Still, I can’t believe Eduard would threaten his own child like that.”
“He’s a scumbag. Want me to take care of him for you?”
I felt my eyes growing wide. If it were anyone else, I’d have assumed they were joking. “Do you mean . . . ?”
“I’m not talking about killing him. I guarantee I can get him to leave you alone without resorting to that.”
Now that was half tempting. But I restrained myself.
“He’s nothing I can’t handle. To be perfectly honest, he just annoys me at this point. And the assault charges are bogus. If he was going to do that, he’d have done it ages ago, when he could’ve proven it.”
“Why do you think he’s still harassing you? And why is he so concerned about who you’re seeing? Do you think he’s trying to get you back?”
“God, no. But, you know, it’s started to occur to me that there’s a motivation behind it, and it’s not that he wants to see more of our sons.”
“What then?”
“I . . . ” God, I hated talking about this. “Well, you see, I’ve always had I guess what you could call a trust fund, for lack of a better word. From my father. And I’ve had a few successful careers over the years. Long story short, I’ve got a bit of money saved up.” Several hundred thousand, to be exact. “And my ex knows it. He thinks he can use this to somehow get more money from me.”
“Motherfucker.” Heath’s voice was low, and his tone managed to achieve a rather intriguing combination of being both blank and succinct. “You let me know if you change your mind, okay? I’d have no problem whatsoever putting that guy in his place.”
I nodded, wondering what to do with him.
We started walking again.
“You should show me your house. Didn’t you say it was around here?”
He took a deep breath, and I just knew he was about to lie to me. “It’s a mess,” he hedged. “I’ll take you there on another day, after I’ve straightened up.”
“Are you telling me that you’re a slob?”
“Yeah,” he said, no hesitation.
I didn’t believe that for one second, not any of it. He either didn’t live around here, or there was another reason he wasn’t bringing me back to his place.
Dammit. And we’d been doing okay, making progress. But at this simple lie, some seeds of suspicion were planted.
What if he had a live-in girlfriend?
Fuck. What if he had a wife?
“Do you have a girlfriend . . . or a wife?” I asked him point blank, watching his face carefully.
A look of very pure annoyance crossed his face, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. He was genuinely offended at the question, and I found that boundlessly reassuring.
“No. Of course not. I wouldn’t be with you now if I did. Is that what you think of me?”
Now I was on the defense. Oh, he was good. “No,” I said carefully. “It’s just never bad to be clear, I figure.”
He grunted (this one was annoyed, I thought), and we started walking again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Next, I took him to my gym, because he asked what I liked to do on my day off, and my first and favorite choice, spending time with my boys, seemed inappropriate. I didn’t even want to guess what my sons would think of Heath and our age difference.
My next few choices were shot down emphatically. Shopping was not his thing, and I had a good feeling that I wouldn’t be changing his mind about that.
And no, he hadn’t changed his opinion about me photographing him.
So we settled on a plan. We’d hit the gym, then I’d head back to my place to shower, and he’d go grab a few things from his place, make a few phone calls (for work), then come to pick me up for our date.
We actually went over all of this, every detail. Heath seemed to think the day needed to be handled with a well thought out strategy. I figured this was just another one of his quirks.
“I’m guessing you’ll head straight to the free weights,” I said, after I’d checked us both in. I got a few guest passes every month, so Heath had been able to accompany me without a hitch.
“I’m guessing you’ll start out with cardio,” he returned.
We smiled at each other. So we did have a few things in common that didn’t involve a bed.
I found a treadmill with the best view of the free weight area, tossed my hand towel across the top, and started stretching, my eyes on Heath. I figured that watching him workout would be a treat.
And he did not disappoint.
When we’d been going over the day’s plans, he’d mentioned to me that he didn’t have a gym membership anywhere, or even a home gym, and I’d had a hard time believing it. He was in perfect shape. Beyond perfect into mind-blowing, to be precise. No one got that way without work.
But, watching him work out, I quickly caught on why it made sense.
I’d clocked him as military, and his workout was surely proof of it. It was grueling, but called for little beyond some room on the floor and a pull-up bar that took a lot of weight.
I didn’t even realize I was counting his pushups in my head until a voice from the machine next to me started counting off the numbers in a mutter. They were that impressive.
I was running by then, but I shot a glance to my right, taking in the other woman who was shamelessly watching Heath go through his routine.
She was pretty. And at least ten years younger than I was. And clearly into Heath.
I started looking around the room, noticing all of the female attention he was getting.
I could certainly see why.
He didn’t pace himself at all, going through his routine at full speed, and in a way that could only be described as punishing. Even in a large building full of people in excellent shape, his body and methods caught the eye.
When he got to the pull-up bar, I even heard one of the fawning women gasp, and I couldn’t really blame her.
His pace was astounding. If this was the end of the world, and the only way you could save humanity was to do as many pull-ups as possible, Heath was definitely going to save us all. And it wasn’t just the pull-ups. This was how he approached every new maneuver.
