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That seemed a little excessive, but Piper wasn’t one to turn down anyone’s prayers.
***
“When I said I’d be at the gym, it wasn’t an invitation for you to show up.” Coop had to shout over the scream of Norwegian black metal blaring through the speakers. A bead of sweat flew from his jaw as he delivered a violent left-right combination to the punching bag. Piper barely stopped herself from pointing out that it was not only bad form, but also counterproductive, to go after the bag with all that force.
Pro Title Gym was the smelly, windowless, hole-in-the-wall mecca of Chicago’s most elite athletes—a stripped-down space with cinder block walls, dented black rubber mats, and rusty squat racks lining a wall that held an American flag and a yellowed sign with a quote from Fight Club that read listen up, maggots. you are not special. The place reeked of sweat and rubber. No juice bars or trendy workout clothes. Pro Title was hard-core, expensive, and exclusive.
“How did you get in here?” Coop snarled like a Rottweiler.
“I slept with the dude at the front desk,” she retorted over the shrieking, distorted guitars.
“Bull.” An uppercut to the bag.
In fact, all she’d had to do was explain that she worked for Coop. Wearing her chauffeur’s uniform instead of being dressed like a football groupie gave her credibility, and the guy had let her in. “It’s my story, and I’ll tell it how I want.”
He delivered another punishing jab. “Go away.”
That was fine with her. She hadn’t expected to conduct their meeting here, merely to show him that she took her job seriously. But she didn’t immediately move. She couldn’t. Not when the muscles under Coop’s sweat-stained T-shirt rippled like wind over water every time he punched. She had to stop this. Right now. Because if she didn’t, she might start thinking about growing her fricking hair! She spun toward the door.
“Hold it!” Another Rottweiler bark. “Why are you dressed like that? You look like a mortician.”
She calmed herself down enough to tell him who she was driving for. “Only during the daytime,” she shouted over the music. “This is my chauffeur’s uniform.”
“It’s ugly.” Another annihilating punch at the bag.
“So’s your disposition.”
That bounced right off him. “Do you care at all how you look?”
“Not much.”
He stopped punishing the bag and regarded her critically. “You’ve worn the same dress every time you’ve been in the club.”
“Said the man in cowboy boots.”
“It’s my trademark,” he retorted. “Go buy some new clothes. You’re making the place look bad.”
She watched a rivulet of sweat roll down his neck. He smelled like good sweat, the healthy smell of a guy who always wore clean clothes to the gym. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized there was such a thing as a good sweat smell. Now she knew, and she wished she didn’t because thinking about anything that had to do with his body was a distraction she couldn’t afford. “New clothes aren’t in my budget.”
He returned to the bag. “Send me the bill. You need to look like you fit in.”
He had a point, but still . . . “I’m not buying anything uncomfortable.”
“By that, I assume you mean anything that looks decent? Yeah, that’d be a real deal breaker.”
“Try being female for a while. Then you can talk.”
***
Coop couldn’t get used to it. No conversation was ever straightforward with her. Abandoning the bag, he grabbed a scuffed black iron kettlebell and crouched down, extending the weight in front of him and trying to ignore her. He felt the strain in his delts, the hard pull in his thighs. He’d always liked brutal workouts, but he’d never needed them like he did now, when he was trapped at Spiral night after night.
Not trapped. He loved the energy of the club, the challenge of once again proving himself. He just wasn’t used to spending so many hours inside.
He fought the urge to switch hands by glaring at Sherlock Holmes. She wasn’t so impervious to fashion that she’d done up the top button of her blouse. Too bad she hadn’t opened the next one.
His arm began to spasm. A bead of sweat dripped into his eye. He changed hands. “I’m going shopping with you.” He yelled it out, but the music blaring from the speaker over his head abruptly ended so that his voice echoed off the cinder block walls. A White Sox pitcher on the next mat looked over at him. So did Piper, staring at him with those big blue eyes that didn’t miss a thing. Had he really just volunteered to go clothes shopping with a woman?
“Goody,” she said, with a snide expression he’d make damn sure he never saw on her face once he got her naked. “Let’s get manis and pedis, while we’re at it. And invite our girlfriends.”
