Playing for Keeps (Heartbreaker Bay #7)(54)

“It’s closed,” she said, surprised.

“Yes, it closes early one night a week for private use.” Caleb pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the front door.

“You’re the private user?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ve got connections.”

“You could say that.”

Since she’d been here before, she knew the front door opened into a wide room lined with windows to the street and marina on one wall, the other with mirrors and a sea of gym equipment. Near the front door was an entrance area, a front desk, the wall behind it lined with pictures of people who’d been here.

The alarm was beeping at their entrance. Caleb took out his phone and thumbed his way through an app and the beeping stopped.

“That’s a pretty serious connection,” she noted.

“I created the alarm app this building uses and installed it,” he said.

A phone on the front desk buzzed and then a woman’s voice beamed into the room. “Caleb?”

“Yep,” he said.

“Just checking. Want to go a few rounds? Niles is with me and he says he wouldn’t mind kicking your white-boy ass. We could be there in twenty.”

“Not tonight,” Caleb said. “He’ll have to save that pleasure for another time. ’Night, Sienne.” He disconnected whatever connection they’d had and then did something else with the app. “Dismantling the security cameras,” he said.

“Okay.” Sadie cocked her head. “So clearly you’ve got more than just a connection here.”

“That was my sister Sienne. Her husband and I spar sometimes. A pass here is available to all of my employees in their benefits package.”

“You own the whole building,” she guessed.

“I do.” He paused as if waiting for something more from her and when he didn’t get it, he said, “Gotta admit, I figured I’d get some sort of smartass comment about that.”

“I was controlling myself.” She lifted a shoulder and smiled. “Besides, you seemed to have carved out a really great life for yourself, one that caters to your strengths. I actually think it’s great.”

“Yeah?” he asked. “And what are my strengths?”

She rolled her eyes. “Like you need any compliments or help with your ego.”

“Humor me.”

“Alright,” she said. “Well, you’re extremely smart.”

He gave a small smile. “Is that it? I’m smart?”

She shrugged. “Started with the obvious. You’re also a sucker when it comes to animals and women who can’t always make ends meet—”

He opened his mouth, but she set a finger on his lips, not wanting to go there right now. “And then there’s the thing I didn’t expect.”

At her touch, his eyes had liquefied to the color of whiskey, neat. “It’s that I’m a great kisser, right?” he asked.

She liked the feel of his lips moving beneath the pad of her finger and it made her smile. As did the fact that he was right. He was a really great kisser. He liked to do it, a lot, and it showed. When he was on his game—and she suspected he was always on his game—he could make her forget things, like where and who she was. His tongue was magical and she might have whimpered a little at the memory, but she shook her head because it was more than that. “It’s that you see me,” she said softly.

Reaching up, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and brought her hand to his chest. With his other hand, he stroked back a strand of her hair and smiled. “I do see you. And I like what I see. But I’d like to see more, Sadie. A lot more.”

“Ditto,” she whispered, the admission not coming easy. She wasn’t even sure when it’d happened, and uncomfortable with the direction of those thoughts, she turned away to look more closely at the wall of pictures.

There were many from years ago when this place had indeed clearly been a dojo, and much smaller. It hadn’t been the whole bottom floor of the building back then, but just one tiny corner of it. The recurring theme seemed to be an Asian man in various stages of the dojo. She realized there was also a small boy, dark hair, big eyes, skinny and awkward. As the Asian man aged in the pics, so did the boy, from young kid to teen to . . .

“You,” she murmured in shock, lifting her head and meeting Caleb’s eyes.

He’d been watching her take in the pictures, and gave a small smile when she figured it out. “Me. I was a scrawny, asthmatic, bullied ten-year-old, maybe forty pounds soaking wet.”

Hardly more than Lollipop weighed. Sadie soaked up that tidbit and tried to picture him as anything but this confident, successful, charismatic, leanly muscled man standing in front of her.

“This place saved my life,” he said. And on that shocking statement, he once again took her hand and walked her through the place.

When they got to the sparring ring, she slowed. Thanks to all her time spent in a gym not all that unlike this place on the other side of town, she felt quite comfortable here. Powerful. Extremely feminine, and . . . well, sexy. “Want to go a few rounds?” she asked playfully.

His eyes heated. “Yeah, I want to go a few rounds.”

He’d used his husky sex voice and she let out a low laugh. “I meant in the ring. As long as you’re not afraid?”