Deadly Testimony (Safeguard #2)(28)

Lizzy sat up straighter and stretched. “Hmm.”

Her vision in darkness was good. So was the view. The man had a solid physique with incredible muscle definition. He kept in very good, very attractive shape.

Have mercy.

He went through another set of fifteen push-ups, pausing again in the plank position. “Am I disturbing you?”

A plank was core work all on its own so using it as the resting position between sets of push-ups had to be a challenge. She considered giving it a try herself. “Nah. As morning habits go, there are worse things than physical activity. Go for it. You can even turn on more lights if you like.”

She wasn’t too worried about shadows. The drapes in front of the windows were heavy and completely opaque. No chance someone was going to see anything through them.

“Well, there are workouts and then there are other, more interesting, forms of physical activity in the morning.” He left his bait out there as he rose smoothly to a standing position and started doing squats.

“Uh-huh.” She stood then, unable to just sit there and keep watching. Instead, she checked her laptop to see if any of the searches she’d set up had resulted in any hits. Some data there but not a lot yet. Her queries might require more time before they turned up something useful. “Question is, do you still go through your exercises whether you indulge in other forms of physical activity or not?”

He laughed. “Would you?”

“Maybe after I’ve got some time to myself, yeah. A partner doesn’t generally react well when cuddle time is cut short so I can get my workout routine in for the morning.” Although she had used it as an excuse to leave when she hadn’t wanted to linger. She wasn’t going to bring it up if he wasn’t though. When it came to casual encounters, there was a certain understanding among participants that outstaying a welcome was awkward. She tried to avoid the feeling as much as possible.

“I...used to travel a fair amount for business.” He paused for a moment. She didn’t blame him since he was going to be testifying against his former employer. He currently didn’t have a job. And one never knew what the next position in a given career was going to bring. It probably took some getting used to. Maybe it was only just starting to really sink in. “In any case, the gyms in hotels are usually mediocre at best and I don’t enjoy adjusting my routine based on equipment available so I tend to design my workout for limited hotel room space.”

She nodded. “I can see that. I do the same for basic stretching and some strength training, but access to a gym and free weights can provide a lot of variety.”

“True.” He moved from squats to burpees, stretching his arms far up to the ceiling then bending to touch his toes. He placed his hands on the ground and jumped his feet out behind him to plank position. He executed a push-up and jumped his feet back to his hands before returning to a standing position. “And I make sure to do strength training at least three times a week at an actual gym.”

He did another burpee.

Burpees were an exercise she loved to hate.

Everyone added their own little zing to it. Some lifted their hands and jumped at the end of each burpee. Others did various kinds of push-ups as part of the exercise. Still others did things with their footing as they went through it.

Kyle kept to the simple form with just the added vertical jump at the end. What she had to appreciate was how smoothly he was going through the exercise. And silently. Sometimes people would do these at the gym and just two or three people could sound like a stampeding herd of grunting, groaning wildlife.

It took a lot of strength, balance and agility to make this exercise look that easy.

And he had the reserves to continue conversation. “I’ve memberships to one or two chains so there’s always a decent gym reasonably close to my hotel when I’m traveling in the US.”

Lizzy rolled her shoulders. Watching him make burpees look easy made her want to join him in working out. “Any particular reason a businessman like you maintains this level of fitness?”

He was as fit or better than most servicemen, even on active duty. His level of cardio looked to be very good based on the way he was able to maintain a conversation with her through each exercise. And any of those exercises might be simple but they weren’t as easy as he was making them look. She appreciated the dedication it took to keep up a routine alone, with no one around to keep him accountable. Hard to persist in pushing oneself without a workout partner or personal trainer. It took a driven sort of mind-set.

Damn it, he was doing more burpees than she usually did and she wasn’t sure if she was more irritated by the realization or that she was keeping count.

“There are a lot of reasons.” He snorted. “None of them are particularly witty or clever when I think about them. There’s a decent amount of conceit behind it, perhaps. Some past friends have called it narcissism. I prefer to look in the mirror and appreciate what I see. I want to be proud of myself, both in appearance and in performance.”

On the surface, his statement was flippant and she thought it was deliberately intended to allow a person to think of him as shallow. But there were a lot of kinds of performance, and she didn’t think he was only referring to the obvious innuendo.

“You’re very good at the things you set out to do, huh?” She tossed it out there experimentally.

“Of course.” The man was finally starting to sound short of breath.