Chasing Shadows (First Wives #3)(9)

“Do I know you?” she asked.

Liam started to shake his head.

“Ignore him. He’s working. Fifty burpees. One-legged. Twenty-five each side.” Brenda took a breath. “Stretch first.”

“Brutal,” Liam said quietly.

Avery rolled her eyes before lifting her hands over her head.

Liam swallowed.

Hard.

Spandex. He loved spandex.

She caught him staring and waited for him to stop.

“Sorry.” So not sorry. He turned around.

“One,” Avery called out. “Two, three.”

Liam made the mistake of looking over his shoulder on ten.

One leg up, her shoulders peeked out from under her skintight shirt, making his mouth go dry.

Since when did a woman’s shoulders make his dick stir?

He closed his eyes, shook his head, and turned around before she could catch him staring a second time. Get it together, man.

On forty-seven, Brenda walked out of her office, past him, and stood over Avery.

“You’re not sweating,” she said once Avery announced she was done.

“I am.”

There was a pause.

“Ten more!”

Avery grumbled. “I hate you.”

“As long as your check clears, I don’t care.”

Liam laughed. He couldn’t help himself.

“Are those shelves done?” Brenda asked.

“Almost.”

Brenda turned and focused on Avery as she did her last ten burpees.

“Damn, that hurt,” she said as she collapsed on the mat after the last one.

“That’s because you missed Friday.”

“I had to leave town.”

“Yes, I know. But take your workout with you and it won’t hurt as much when you return.”

Liam finished screwing in one of the brackets and moved on to the next, all the while eavesdropping on the conversation as much as he could.

“Today we’re starting with punches.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Avery twisting on a pair of boxing gloves while Brenda placed pads on her hands to catch Avery’s swings.

For five minutes Brenda yelled out a series of numbers: One, two. One, two, one. One, two, three, four, one, two. Jabs, cross hits, uppercuts. He had no idea krav had so much boxing involved.

Avery was sweating; her rapid breathing accompanied the grunts that would occasionally follow her efforts.

Brenda broke them off. “Get a drink. The next round is on your back.”

Liam had never worked so slowly in his life. Once Avery caught her breath, she lay down on the mat, and Brenda straddled her. He was pretty sure he’d seen something like this before. Only the women were wearing bikinis and were covered in mud.

“Left, right, until I call it.”

Avery started punching. Each slap of her boxing gloves to the mitts the instructor wore cracked the room with noise.

Brenda called time and instantly told Avery to force her off the domineering, if not slightly erotic, position she held over her.

For a brief second Avery sighed and acted as if she were going to just lie there, then, in a blur, Brenda was knocked off to the side, and Avery was two feet away and on the balls of her feet with her hands in front of her face.

“Holy shit.”

Brenda shook off her mitts and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Don’t be impressed.”

For an instructor, Brenda didn’t seem to have a lot of motivational skills.

“I’m impressed.” Liam met Avery’s eyes.

“She refuses to spar with others.”

“I was with Leslie last week.”

“You have ten pounds on her. And she kicked your ass.”

Avery didn’t argue.

“You need more of a challenge. There is only so much I can teach you one-on-one. One of these days a man his size is going to challenge you, and you won’t have the skills to get away.” She pointed to Liam.

He placed his hands in the air. “Don’t look at me. I don’t attack women unless they ask for it.” He was pretty sure he smirked.

Avery rolled her eyes. “I could get him off of me.”

He laughed and sized her up. “I’m twice your size.”

Brenda glared. “Size means nothing.”

“Do you study krav?” Avery asked him.

“No.”

Avery turned to Brenda. “Then I could get away.”

“You think you can get away, but you’ve never tried. How do I know if anything I’m teaching you is useful if you don’t exercise it?”

“You’d be surprised at what I exercise.”

Brenda narrowed her eyes. “I know about the drunk at the bar.”

“What?”

“Leslie told me. In group. Right after she fought off two—not one, but two—of my best male students. So you can put a drunk into his drink. Good. I’m glad I taught you that much.”

Liam watched the women arguing in silence until that moment. “If you can’t teach her any more, then why do you keep taking her money?”

Both women turned to him as if they’d forgotten he was in the room.

“So I can pay you to stand around.”

“If I can get him off of me, will you let this go until I’m ready?” Avery pointed toward him.