NICK WATCHED as Jennifer Rose inhaled, her full chest rising and drawing his attention before he managed to force his gaze upward. He stared at her and waited.
“Um…I don’t know where to begin.”
“How about the beginning?” he urged, noting that two more groups of customers were heading out. Less than twenty people remained, Dixon included.
“Well, Suzanne suggested…She thought we could help each other.”
“I’m with you so far. How?”
“I’ll tutor your son for the summer,” Jennifer said in a rush, as if she had to get the words out or choke on them.
“Great.” The din of the jukebox, the big screens in the billiard area and the rapidly emptying bar and restaurant faded as they leaned toward one another across the broad expanse of polished wood. “But I get the feeling we’re not talking money here, are we?”
“No.” She gulped, glanced at Suzanne and got the other woman’s nod of encouragement in return. “Instead of paying me—” she paused long enough to take another breath and close her eyes briefly “—I’d like membership to the gym and a personal trainer. I—I want—No, I need someone to kick my butt in gear so I can lose the weight I’ve gained since my divorce. But I have to do it quickly. Like, by the end of summer.”
Nick didn’t blink. “That’s it? You want a membership and a trainer in exchange for tutoring?”
“N-no. I mean, yes, I do, but…I have a dress. A really beautiful dress that I want to wear on a trip to Paradise Island. It’s important because the dress is…The dress is me. Who I want to be. And I have to fit into it.”
“I see. Those are your conditions?”
“No,” Suzanne interjected quickly. “We also want more of the same thing you displayed tonight.”
Jenn turned toward her friend, her confusion apparent. “What do you mean?”
“Nick has to be your guy friend.” Suzanne quickly held up her hand. “Not boyfriend, guy friend. You know, so other guys will take notice.”
Jenn gaped at Suzanne.
“You know how people are about checking out the girls who are hanging out with cool guys. Well, Nick’s not dating anyone right now so he, you,” she said, looking him in the eye, “have to pretend to like her. Well, not pretend. The real thing would be nice.”
That wouldn’t be a problem—except for what she’d said earlier. If Jennifer Rose thought she had the right to insult his intelligence the whole time they were together, they wouldn’t be hanging out long. He’d find another tutor.
“Suzanne…”
“I’m not asking for a marriage proposal here. Just point out her good qualities to the guys who ask, and do that whole ‘We’re just friends, but she’s hot’ thing that guys do. At least until Jenn reaches her goal or cuts you loose because someone comes along that she’s interested in.”
“Suzanne. I didn’t—That’s not my idea. We didn’t discuss any of this.”
“I’m improvising.” Suzanne waved a hand to dismiss Jennifer’s protest. “In exchange for tutoring Matt and getting him caught up over the summer, Jenn becomes your personal project. You can’t give up on her when she balks and tries to quit—which she will do. And she,” Suzanne continued, ignoring Jenn’s mutterings, “will get Matt up to speed.”
“That’s not reasonable. Nick has things to do. Responsibilities.”
“It’s fair,” Suzanne insisted. “You’re giving up a big part of your summer for Matt, and you’ll need intense workouts to lose the weight so quickly.”
Jenn studied Nick, as though wanting to gauge his reaction.
“And…”
“There’s more?” Jennifer buried her face in her hands. “Oh, help me.”
Nick fought a grim smile, not thrilled with the idea but able to see its merits.
“Jenn reserves the right to add to her demands later, when she has more time to think with a clear head. Tutoring isn’t cheap, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”
Neither was personalized training, but he didn’t mention that fact. Like it or not, he was too excited at the prospect of saving Matt and himself from a summer of listening to his parents rail about Matt’s grades and the whole summer-school fiasco. If it became public knowledge, all hell would break loose. Again.
Even though Jennifer Rose looked horrified at her friend’s stipulations, Nick nodded without hesitation. She’d learn pretty quick that the last thing she wanted to do was anger her trainer and she’d keep her comments to herself. Short of that, he consoled himself with the knowledge that the summer would only last so long. “Deal.”
“What? You’re not even going to argue? Think about it?” Jennifer rubbed her temples, the tiny lines around her eyes indicating a headache.
Nick shrugged, wondering if by not thinking about it, Jenn would find him even more dense. “What’s to think about? I need a tutor, you need help, and Dixon has it coming.”
“B-but the other…What about that?”
Ah, so that’s what worried her, being seen with him. “Being your guy friend?” When he’d talked to her earlier, he wouldn’t have guessed her to be a judgmental snob. “What about it? People are going to notice us spending time together. What conclusions they draw are all their own. It’s not a big deal to me. Is it to you?”
She sat there, wide-eyed and pale. “Oh. Um, no. Not at…No.”
“So it’s a deal?” Suzanne pressed.
Jennifer’s beautiful dove-colored eyes didn’t waver. “I want you to be sure. You’re sure?”
Glancing around the bar and noting that the two older men who remained were watching the game and paid them no attention, he shrugged. “Business is business. I’m sure.”
“But…”
“No buts.” Suzanne nudged her friend. “You want that trip? This is your chance. Are you brave enough to take it?”
Nick leaned down and opened the mini-fridge, pulling out three water bottles. No more champagne for Ms. Rose. Caps off, he lifted his bottle in a salute. “Here’s to the start of an interesting summer.”
He and Suzanne both stared at Jennifer, waiting for her to commit to the plan.
Finally she lifted her bottle. “To, um, wearing my dress and…and taking my dream vacation to Paradise Island.”
“And last but not least,” Suzanne said with a snicker, “to dancing on tables. She wants to do that, too, you know.”
“Suzanne!”
THE POUNDING in her head went on and on.
Jennifer opened her eyes the following morning only to gasp and groan, squeezing her lids shut in a feeble attempt to counteract the shards of pain shooting through her brain. Three glasses of champagne did this? Or was it four? Everything had gotten sort of fuzzy after two.
“Drinking sucks.” She flung her arms over her face and moaned. What had she done? Had she really told Nick Tulane she lacked the ability to control her eating habits? Maybe she hadn’t said that in so many words, but close enough. She hadn’t gotten this way by eating healthy, that was for sure. “What must he think?”
Thud, thud, thud. She paused, listened and wasn’t sure if the sound was the jackhammer pummeling her brain or something else. Then the doorbell rang. Jenn pushed herself up onto an elbow and glared at the clock beside her bed. Nine o’clock. On the first day of summer vacation? “Go away.”
The words emerged as a whimper. She gingerly lowered herself and rolled over onto her side, pulling the pillow over her head.
“Jennifer? Open up.” Thud, thud, thud. “Rise and shine. Time to get moving.”
Her second-storey bedroom window was located over the front door and the muffled sound of Nick Tulane’s voice reached her like a shot. She jerked upright, held her head together with her hands and scooted to the edge of the bed, pausing long enough for the room to stop pulsating before she stumbled toward the window. The morning sun was blinding and she groaned long and loud when she finally pried her eyelids open and absorbed the fact that this wasn’t her imagination. Nick Tulane really was standing on her porch looking like a fantasy come true in workout gear, sex appeal oozing from every corded muscle revealed by his sleeveless shirt and loose knee-length running pants.
“Shoot me now. I’m having a nightmare.” Her head thumped against the glass and Nick looked up at the sound. She pulled herself away but it was too late. Their eyes made contact the split second before the sheer curtain fell into place.
“Ahhh, feeling the pain this morning, eh?” He released a devilish chuckle.
Jenn’s shoulders slumped. What had she done? What had she agreed to? Enlisting Nick’s help had sounded like a wonderful plan last night, but in the light of day she saw a whole host of problems. She didn’t want a guy like Nick watching her and looking at her while she worked out. Didn’t want him seeing her sweaty and smelly and out of breath or…or jiggling in places that shouldn’t jiggle.
“Deal’s a deal,” he drawled. “Do I need to come up there and get you out of bed myself? Come down, or I’m coming up.”
“Oh, no. Please, no.” He couldn’t hear her through the glass, but Nick probably got the point when she stumbled away from the window. She grabbed a robe along the way and took the stairs very gingerly, so that her head wouldn’t implode. She made it all the way downstairs before she thought to look into a mirror.
“Oh, crud.” Frantic, she rubbed at the eyeliner smudged beneath her eyes, attempted to tame the rat’s nest that was her hair and breathed into her cupped hand. “Ugh. Oh, my. Oh. Oh, that’s bad.” Hangover breath was not a good thing.
Giving up on the impossible, she flipped the dead bolt to the side and cracked open the door. “N-Nick, thank you for coming by, but…I’ve changed my mind.”
He tilted his head, his expression assessing. “How bad is it?”
The irritating man looked determined—and amused. She disliked him even more. “You’re a morning person, aren’t you?”
A thick black eyebrow arched at the accusation. “You’re not? Isn’t it a job requirement, doing what you do?”
She leaned her head against the cool wood and sighed. “Look, I appreciate you coming over here, but I’ve changed my mind. Last night…I had a little too much to drink, as you could probably tell, and I shouldn’t have been making any decisions at all. I was in a mood and…You can go home now and enjoy your weekend.”
She tried to close the door but Nick pressed a hand beside her head and gently but firmly pushed the door inward. Jenn back-stepped and grabbed the belt of her robe. “What are you doing?”
Those eyes of his—what man had eyes like that?—looked her up and down. “I’m getting tough. Exactly like I’m supposed to. And let’s get something straight. We have a binding contract, sweetheart. You’re not reneging.”
“It’s okay. Really. I’ll still tutor your son.” It’s not as if I’ve got anything better to do this summer.
Nick crossed his arms over his broad, extremely well-defined chest and stared her down. Every gorgeous inch of him was tanned and toned and rippled with muscle. His arms bulged below the dark blue-and-white shirt, and who knew the thick muscles along the side of a man’s neck could be so sexy? Nick put The Rock to shame, for pity’s sake. And there she stood, looking like something the cat coughed up. Twice.
“As of right now, you are in boot camp.”
He made the statement with a perfectly straight face although his eyes held a fiendish glint, as if he actually meant it. Awkwardness combined with her post-champagne queasiness, and her stomach rolled and threatened to mutiny.
“And I’m your drill sergeant. Got that?”
She swallowed firmly. Puking in front of this man was not an option. “This is ridi—”
“This is me getting tough, so that you’ll fit into that dress of yours. Now, get your butt upstairs, shower and put on workout clothes. You’ve got fifteen minutes. I’ll fix you something to knock out the headache I see in your eyes, and after that we’ll talk about your fitness and diet regimen before we go for a walk.”
Diet regimen? A walk? Workout clothes? She scrambled for an escape, clarity, something besides the big, fat nothing she had in her head. “But I didn’t mean for you to train me. I meant I’d tutor your son in exchange for a gym membership and a personal trainer. I thought we’d do the see-and-be-seen thing at the gym. You know, when we’re there at the same time. Don’t you have other people who’d help me?”
He stiffened as though she’d insulted him. “Why not me?”
How exactly did she put this? Especially when he already looked as though she’d hurt him? “Because you’re…the owner.” And gorgeous. Drop-dead, movie-star gorgeous. A man who belonged on a billboard advertising sleek sports cars—or underwear. Guys had to look really, really good to model underwear. But Nick? He could do it.
Whereas my Victoria’s Secret days are so over.
Jenn tugged on the belt of her robe again. Did it make her hips look even bigger? Maybe she should leave it loose, so she didn’t emphasize the obvious?
“I am the owner,” he agreed. “Which means my people run the gym. I realize you might not remember all of our discussion last night…”
“I remember it.” She wished she didn’t, but she did.
“Good. But let’s clarify some things. Your deal is with me in regard to my son, which means, if anyone trains you, it’ll be me.”
She got the impression that he wasn’t happy about the decision, but he was sticking to it. Why, she didn’t understand. If he was the owner, couldn’t he make one of his trainers take on the job?
Nick looked around the entry, over her head, then headed down the hall to where her kitchen counter could be seen. She followed blindly, stumbling and wincing because every step made her head hurt more. “But—”
“You’re wasting time. Get your act together, Ms. Rose. Fourteen minutes.”
She lost patience. “No! Oh, geez.” She grabbed her head and held fast. “I can’t. Not today. Not after last night. I just told you, this was a mistake.”
He swung around. “We have a deal. Unless you can come up with a life-threatening illness to explain why I can’t train you, you’re out of luck.”
She faltered, unable to find the words she needed. Who could argue, hungover and looking so horrible? “I’ve changed my mind. That’s good enough reason to me. I don’t want to do this. I don’t know what I was thinking. Obviously, I wasn’t thinking clearly, or I would’ve known better than to think it was possible to lose thirty pounds in two months.”
“It’s possible.”
That caught her attention and her rambling excuses came to a halt in her brain as she focused on his comment. “It is? Really?”
“Really. I don’t recommend it, because slower is better, but it can be done. Especially if a person is morbidly obese, which you’re not. Your loss will probably happen more slowly. But it won’t happen at all if you don’t want to work with me. And why is that?”
Did he really have to ask? “You want the truth?”
“I’m not leaving without it.”
She inhaled shakily and tried to pretend she was talking to an errant second grader instead of a forceful, dynamic man bent on making her keep her word. “Fine, I’ll—I’ll tell you. I don’t want you training me because, well, it’s obvious you don’t have a clue what I’m going through.” She couldn’t maintain eye contact. “I mean, look at you. We’re two totally different people and it’ll never work because you can’t possibly understand where I’m coming from. And when I don’t lose fast enough, I’ll be disappointed and when I’m disappointed or upset, I eat. So then I’ll binge and all I’ve managed to accomplish will be for nothing and then—”
“Stop to take a breath, why don’t you?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Let me get this straight. You’re afraid of—”
“Please, just go.”
He didn’t budge. “So that’s it? You’re giving up before we even get started?”
“Listen, I know what it’s like to fail, and I don’t want to fail at this, too. I can’t…I just can’t take another failure right now, okay?”
Nick stared at her, his expression softening a tad. No, that had to be her imagination. Nothing about Nick Tulane was soft.
“Huh.”
She waited for the punch line, but when it didn’t come, she gritted her teeth. “Huh, what?”
“I thought you had more spunk, that’s what. Especially after last night. It’s sad to think that the only way you have a backbone is if you have some alcohol in you.”
Her mouth dropped. “I have a backbone.” It was just semi-crushed and alcohol-saturated at the moment.
“Then prove it. I saw it last night when you talked to your ex, but I’m sure not seeing it now.”
Doubts overwhelmed her, and with good reason. “I wasn’t myself last night.”
“I guess not.” Nick stepped close and surprised her by sliding a hand under her chin, lifting her face toward his before he dropped his hands to his hips and glared at her, his expression every bit as intimidating as the drill sergeant he claimed to be. “What about that dress? The vacation you mentioned? Where was it to—Paradise Island?”
She glanced down. “What about them?”
“You going to hand them over to Dixon and the woman he tossed you aside for?”
Anger filled her. “No.”
“What was that?”
“No,” she stated more firmly, ignoring the corresponding thud in her head. “I’m not handing Todd anything, but—”
“You give up now, before we even take a walk, and that’s exactly what you’re doing, Jennifer Rose.”