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“It’s rare to see you both at the front desk.” Her smiling gaze moved back and forth between the two trainers. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”
“Not at all. I’m doing a bit of quick computer housekeeping and Sam’s saying goodbye to his girlfriend while he waits for his next client.”
“Sam has a girlfriend?” She turned her head, a pair of green eyes as gorgeous as the rest of her landing on Leigh’s face. “My grandmother will be devastated to hear Sam is off the market. He’s my grandmother’s personal trainer. It’s fair to say she has a bit of a crush on him.”
“Then she and I both have excellent taste.”
A husky laugh slipped through the woman’s fire-engine-red lips. “She’d like hearing that.” She extended her right hand. “I apologize for interrupting,” she said, smiling as they shook. “Frances McKenna. If I’m lucky, we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.”
Sam met Leigh’s glance in his direction. “Frances is interviewing for a position here.”
“Interviewingusis probably closer to the truth,” Brian said, coming out from behind the counter to stand in front of Frances. “As far as I’m concerned, the space is yours, if you want it. If so, we can go through the contract.”
“Wonderful, I’m in. I can’t believe how quickly this came together, it’s so exciting.” More handshaking ensued, then the two tall redheads wandered off, toward the rear of the club.
Leigh turned toward the counter, her mouth already in the process of forming a question about the deal that’d just transpired. “You don’t look happy,” came out instead. She’d been studying Sam’s face since the day she first saw him at Iron Works. Over the course of their professional and personal relationship, she’d seen a host of expressions, but she’d never seen him grim-faced on the job.
At the sound of the door chime, the taut line of his lips morphed into a generic smile. “How’s it going?” He passed the incoming member a towel, exchanging nods with the middle-aged man.
Middle-aged. The term came to mind so easily. Too easily, since the man looked approximately her age. Middle-aged, as she was. As Sam was not. As Frances McKenna, Sam’s gorgeous new associate, was not.
“You don’t look so happy either,” Sam said, snapping her out of it.
“What? Oh, that’s nothing.” Just a pesky negative thought foolishly trying to steal her joy. She waved it off while stepping as close as possible to the counter. “I won’t press because you’re working, but if you want to talk about it later, I’m always happy to listen.”
A genuine smile gently curved his mouth. Reaching over the slick gray surface, he took her hands and brought them up top, where anybody could see, then held them tightly. “Mine’s nothing too, but I’ll tell you now anyway, because I don’t want to sacrifice any of our talking minutes later.”
Since Lennox had returned from the cottage, Leigh and Sam had had no private time together. Sam had popped into the bakery a couple of times. A nice treat, however, her daily workload didn’t permit more than a few quick kisses. The closest thing they’d had to a date were their late-night calls. Long ones that crept into the wee hours, front-loaded with conversation and ending with one or both of them getting off before they said goodnight.
She didn’t want to sacrifice any of those minutes either. Nor these ones, fleeting as they might be.
“Whatever it is, or was, you don’t have to tell me at all. If you say it’s nothing, it’s nothing. It’s just so out of character for you to look anything aside from happy at work, I was worried.”
“That’s why I’m going to tell you. So you won’t waste any of your beautiful brain cells wondering and worrying.” Releasing her, he stepped back and leaned against a shelfful of wellness products. “Brian decided to lease out an unused room at the back and he chose Frances’s physiotherapy practice to fill the space. Her grandmother is one of my regular clients and I was wary of mixing existing business with a different level of business, but he’s confident it’s a good decision, so here we are.”
“If you’re concerned enough about this business decision that it put the look of doom on your face, maybe you should talk to Brian again, before the ink dries on the lease.”
Another expression breezed over Sam’s face. One she’d only seen a couple times, but recognized instantly. Hard to forget the look of impending bad news. If he didn’t feel inclined to share it, she wouldn’t push to hear it. Being his girlfriend didn’t entitle her to know his every thought and emotion.
“Frances’s grandmother tried to set us up. I don’t know if Frances is aware of it. That’s how Brian got her business card that started this ball rolling. I left it on the desk.”
The sensation of bad milk curdling tugged at Leigh’s gut. “But you didn’t put it on the desk for him to consider adding her to the club. You left it there for yourself.”
“Not the way you’re thinking. I took it out of my wallet the minute I realized I didn’t want to call anybody but you. For the record, that was about sixty seconds after I received the card. That’s why I left it on the desk, to get rid of it.”
“The garbage can is generally more effective for that.”
“True. I guess that in my mind, it was some kind of life-changing gesture. I’m smart about some things, but I’m still learning how to not be an idiot about other stuff. The important stuff, unfortunately.” Even while pointing out his mistakes, he was charming.
She’d always been attracted to directness, but with Sam, even more so. Something about his particular brand of lay-it-all-out-there honesty endeared her in a way she hadn’t experienced before.
Your heart already knows how you feel.
“Do you want to come over Saturday after work and meet Lennox? Officially meet her, I mean.”
Sam’s eyes widened, as did his smile. “Definitely.” Full grin in place, he pushed off from the ledge to meet her at the service counter again. “You keep surprising me.”
Surprising herself too. The excitement of new experiences wouldn’t last forever though. It couldn’t. One day, she’d run out of ways to surprise him. Then she’d just be boring old Leigh. But today was not that day.
