Taking Him Down (Harlequin Blaze) by Maguire Meg

Author:Maguire, Meg [Maguire, Meg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

8

RICH ROSE EARLY, not rested enough but eager to start his day—to get his mind focused and his body lost in the endless to-dos of training.

He started the coffee and woke his sister, then kissed her goodbye at the curb outside Wilinski’s at five-thirty.

Time for work. Time to get his thoughts off Lindsey—her body and her smell, her soft skin under his palms, her voice in the dark of the gym.

He’d needed last night. Needed the release and simplicity of sex, and a chance to feel like a man again, after the way his injury had castrated him. A hit of the crowd’s admiration shining up from those blue eyes.

Sex was great. Lindsey was great. She was special, even—too special to treat like some fuck-buddy from the office upstairs, even if that was all he was to her. But special or not, she didn’t fit into his plans. She couldn’t stay lodged in his brain like a splinter, niggling at him night and day. Maybe in some alternative universe where Rich had only himself to worry about, or an imaginary future when his sister and mother were secure and he was free to start some new family... But that wasn’t the reality he lived in.

In reality, he was sidelined for months and earning a fraction of what he had been. His focus had to be singular, homed in on his recovery and nothing else.

With twenty minutes before the gym was due to open, he poked through the computer system. Scaring up members and hunting down dues had been Mercer’s arena since Monty’s passing, but after fifteen-plus years in this basement, Rich knew his way around the books. He pulled up the file where Mercer tracked their active membership, pleased to find it had gone up a healthy fraction since he’d last looked. He jotted new names, then slid open the filing cabinet by his foot and flipped through the applications.

Every form had a slot for referrals and goals, where new members were asked what brought them to Wilinski’s and what they hoped to get out of training, be it a pro career or simply a good workout. Rich pulled the newest members’ files, and laughed aloud when the very first one confirmed his egotistical suspicions.

Written in the referrals space was “Want to train where Estrada does.”

Others mentioned him, too. The happy, queasy feeling in his middle didn’t have much to do with arrogance, he realized. It was pride, to be staring at proof that he was giving back, even as an absentee. Always in the background these past ten months had been the guilt—he’d kept his mother and sister foremost on his mind, but this place was family, too. It lifted a weight to believe he’d done good, after all. He might be the most half-assed trainer the gym had ever boasted, but he was attracting new members, even if he wasn’t mentoring any.

At six he propped the doors open, and the mood carried him through the morning sessions.

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