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My teeth clenched.I didn’t like the idea of her cleaning the gym just like I didn’t like the idea of her cleaning the pub. Thankfully, the pub was open past the house’s curfew, so that eliminated it as an option.
“You okay?”
I cleared my throat and dipped my chin. “Yeah. Just thinking about what you said. How maybe she’d be a good candidate to work at the house.”
But then I’d have to get used to seeing her all the time—working with her.And when she left, I’d have to get used to not seeing her all the time.And both those things sounded terrible.
“Something else to think about,” he said and clapped me on the shoulder again. “Alright, I’ve got to get home. Have a good night.”
“You too. Tell Cammie I said hi.”
His smile spread wide. “Will do.”
Once he was gone, I headed for the weight rack, but my focus was solely on the two guys left in the gym. I didn’t recognize them, but that wasn’t saying much. I didn’t really get out or meet many people outside of the Blooms circle or the Covington Security crew. I picked up the weights and started going through the motions, using the mirror along the wall to watch them.
I didn’t know why I was fired up. I had no idea what they’d said to her, but they weren’t talking about her now, so the whole damn thing could’ve been innocuous—so innocuous that Benny easily mentioned it. If he were concerned, he would’ve said something, I rationalized, but it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.
I increased the weights in my hands and repeated the same reps and exercises over and over again as I watched them, waiting for them to give me one reason to confront them. To warn them away.
But it never came.
Because I was thinking like a goddamn crazy person.
“Shit.” I dropped the dumbbells back onto the rack as soon as they walked out of the gym, my arms hanging like dead, burning weights at my sides. I hadn’t lifted this hard in months, and it was all because I was too preoccupied with Kenzie to process anything else.
Preoccupied with the knowledge that she had a kid. With the fact that she hadn’t wanted my help. With the worry that some gym rat was going to harass her if she was here at night. Preoccupied with the notion that I had a solution to keep her safe and keep her close.
No.
Absolutely not.
I couldn’t hire her at Blooms. Not because she wouldn’t be phenomenal at the job, because she would; she was phenomenal at everything she did for the house. I couldn’t hire her because I honestly had no idea if I’d be doing it to help her or to help myself.
Shaking my head, I grabbed my things and left, finally heading home for a few hours.
I needed to get over myself. I didn’t need to be everyone’s savior. I knew that.The problem was I wanted to be hers.
CHAPTER5
KENZIE
Don’t. Look.
The warning was as stern as I could muster from inside my own head, but as soon as I straightened from wiping the last corner of the last mirror I had to clean in the gym, my gaze hunted for Zeke’s reflection in the now-pristine surface.
He stood in front of the rack of weights, legs spread, slowly curling one arm and then another with a massive dumbbell in each fist. His tee bunched over his swollen biceps, veins trickling like branches of a living river down his forearms to his fists, but it was his gray sweatpants that really did a number on me. It only took one time of being pressed to the front of him to send my desperately contained fantasies running rampant—fantasies that would’ve been easier to corral if I hadn’t been treated to the sight of him at Iron Works every night since the book incident in his office last week.
I couldn’t hide my surprise when he’d shown up on my second day on the job.Was he following me after our conversation about custody cases? Was he trying to get answers another way?The thought tied a knot in my stomach.
No, he wouldn’t.If he’d wanted answers, he would’ve asked for them—found some way to demand them of me, and I would’ve had no choice to comply; my living circumstances and any hope I had for my future rested on Blooms. And if I believed that, then the only explanation was that Zeke had always used this gym during the late-night hours, and I was now only realizing it because I worked here.
The latter made more sense. I’d had plenty of time over the last six and a half months to appreciate the stoic man’s physique. A broad chest. Thick arms. Legs that filled out and stretched his jeans each time he left his office to repair one thing or another in the house. But here… to see those muscles in action, flexing and bulging in taut coordination… parts of my body came to life that I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Parts that ached and craved. Wanted and hungered. Parts that fear and drugs and anger had buried for a long, long time.
I sucked in a breath when Zeke’s gaze caught mine. The connection was as swift and as electric as a lightning strike before I whipped my arm up and scrubbed an already clean spot right over his face as though I’d seen a speck of dirt there.
Get a hold of yourself, Kenzie.
