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She laughed. “Only because I want to take out one more life insurance policy on you before I hold a pillow over your face.”
Dennis grinned. “She’s so romantic.”
They all laughed, then Aithan clapped his hands. “Okay, let’s do this.”
After the session with Dennis and Judy, he put the advanced boxing class through seventy-five minutes of calisthenics and sparring in the main gym before checking in with Juan, Blue Water’s office manager.
“Got November’s schedule ironed out?”
“Yeah,” the man replied. “Holidays are a bitch ’cause everyone wants days off before or after, but Tristan’s looking for extra hours, so I gave him Chel’s and Paco’s shifts. He’ll have some OT, but I didn’t think that’d be an issue. If it is, lemme know.”
Aithan pulled his office laptop from the safe and turned it on. While it booted up, he sat back. “How’s he doing?”
“Tristan?” Juan perched on the edge of the small office’s only desk and swigged water from a metal BWF bottle. “Okay, I think. Bit quieter than usual, but he’s not letting his personal problems impact his classes.”
Aithan nodded. “Had a talk with him this morning. He’s pretty pissed at his ex, and I don’t think he’s as golden as he’d like us to believe right now.” He watched the man in question correcting a gym rat’s form during pushups. “His ego got kicked pretty hard and something tells me he brought this all down on himself.”
“Huh. We gonna have trouble?”
Aithan screwed up his mouth, thinking. He shook his head. “I hope not, but it’s probably too soon to tell. Keeping him busy through the holidays is a good idea. The OT isn’t a problem.”
“Okay, boss. I’ll keep an eye on the dude.”
“Thanks, man.”
Juan waved that away and closed the door as he left the office.
Aithan scrolled through the schedule, but he didn’t see any of it. His mind wandered through the conversation with Tristan and landed on his memory of the morning with Zelda Gordon.
She was beautiful. Statuesque and shapely, confident enough to boot Tristan from her life with a swift kick.
People assumed Aithan was attracted to the hard-bodied women he saw in the gym all day, but they didn’t really do much for him. He liked curves and softness on a woman. Healthy was sexier than hard, in his opinion. When he pulled a woman into his arms, he wanted something to sink into. Maybe he was a bit old-fashioned, but Aithan Mazur liked women who hid their steel spines beneath voluptuous curves.
And instinct told him Zelda Gordon was just such a woman.
A new message buzzed his phone. Tobias, his best friend, wanted to know if he was available for a deposition on November Third. Aithan checked his calendar then texted back.
Yeah, man, I’ll free up the day.
Tobias replied:
Thx. I’ll let u know the time. Fuck, I hope this stops Maeve’s BS. U know how much I appreciate u backing me up, right?
Yeah, I do. And u know I’ll do whatever it takes to help u get full custody.
I do. Thx. See u tmrrw.
Yup. Gonna make u dragon walk across the gym.
U suck.
Aithan laughed and returned to the files on his open laptop.
Hours passed as he analyzed the gym’s finances and next year’s marketing plan. Classes came and went. Afternoon crept toward evening. Finally, he sat back, stretched, and rubbed his eyes.
Aithan picked up his cellphone to check his personal email, then scrolled through his text messages, pausing on his offer of coffee to Zelda. He absolutely should not make her another offer. But he wondered why the woman Tristan described was so utterly at odds with the woman he’d met that morning.
His gaze wandered and he spied Tristan coaching a beginning resistance class on the main mat. The man was a damn good trainer, patient and observant. So why hadn’t that translated over into his personal life?
