The two times I had seen her before she had been wearing dark framed glasses, but they hadn’t hidden the unique purple of her eyes. She wasn’t wearing glasses today, but contacts from the looks of it, which only enhanced the color. For the first time in my life I was hypnotized by a pair of sweet eyes.
“Hey!” She greeted me with a smile that made her nose scrunch ever so slightly at the end. “I thought you said that gyms weren’t for you.”
I was really glad I had changed my mind! “I got bored,” I told her honestly, still captivated by her eyes. “Do you come here often?”
Her brow furrowed for a second and I bit the inside of my cheek. Really? Had I really just dropped that lame line? I could do better than that in my sleep. Gods! Oh great, now I was falling into Emmie’s habit of putting a plural on God. What the hell was wrong with me?
“I’m usually here when I don’t have a job lined up.” Harper easily fell back into exercising while continuing to talk to me.
“You’re a photographer, right?” I was sure that was what she had told me the first time I had met her. We had a brief conversation while I waited for Lana in the apartment she shared with their other roommates.
She seemed surprised that I remembered. I was kind of surprised myself. I didn’t normally remember little details about women, the only exceptions being the ones in my family, and even then I didn’t always pay close attention.
“Yeah, I’m doing freelance right now.” Her nose wrinkled. “It pays the bills I guess.”
“Don’t your parents help out?”
The light that had filled those strange eyes of hers dimmed, and I wanted to kick myself. I was really putting my foot in it today. “I don’t really talk to my parents unless I have to,” she murmured and turned her attention back to the numbers on her elliptical.
Harper
My thighs started burning long before I decided that I had enough of the elliptical. I reached for my towel and wiped the sweat from my brow and upper lip before taking a sip from my water bottle.
Beside me, Shane Stevenson, aka Hot Rocker Man, bounced off his own torture machine like he had another two hours of workout in him. For some strange reason he made me smile.
“So where to next?” he asked, taking his Boston Red Sox cap off and messing with his hair before putting it back on.
“I’m done.” An hour was my limit, about enough to work off the desserts I seemed to be addicted to. “I’m hitting the showers.”
His face fell and he actually gave me a little pout. “Ah, come on, Harper. Don’t leave now.”
That pout drew me in and I found myself relenting. “What do you want to do?”
Blue-gray eyes darkened and I saw firsthand the look that Lana had warned me about. Shane was supposed to be some bad ass womanizer that could melt the panties of every female with a working libido. I just couldn’t figure out why he was flirting with me …
“A few things come to mind.” His voice was lower, husky.
If I said it didn’t affect me I would be a liar. It seemed that my libido worked just fine because I was sure that my panties did melt a little, but I knew better than to take him seriously. Guys as hot as Shane didn’t go for girls like me.
I grinned and pushed at his shoulder. “I’m starving. Let’s shower and go get some breakfast.”
“Or we could do that.” He winked and walked with me toward the locker rooms. “I didn’t bring anything with me to change into.”
“Okay, I’ll hurry then. Do you want to go back to your place to change?” I glanced at his shirt drenched in sweat that clung to his hard chest. “Or I could get you something from Linc’s locker?”
“Do you think he would mind?” Shane frowned.
I shrugged. “I’m sure he won’t, but if you want we can run upstairs to the private rooms and ask him. He and Lana should be close to done by now.”
Blue-gray eyes narrowed at my words. “Lana is with Linc this morning?”
“Yeah, didn’t she tell you? She and Linc are doing some kind of dance competition. They practice two to three times a week, if not more. Linc pushes her really hard. He has a thing about winning.”
Actually, I was sure that Lana was starting to dislike dancing on some levels because of Linc’s drive. She wasn’t enjoying it like she had a few months ago.
Or maybe it was because Drake Stevenson was in town. Lana had told me about her relationship with the older Stevenson brother, or lack of one if you looked at it that way, so I knew she had to be hurting and conflicted about his sudden relocation to the East Coast.
“Let’s go ask Linc.” Shane gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, and I had a sudden crazy thought that maybe Drake wasn’t the only Stevenson brother with a thing for my friend.
Why that thought bothered me, I couldn’t say. It was almost startling the way my heart felt like it was being stabbed with a stickpin, but I ignored the dull ache and led him over to the stairs. Music was still playing behind the door. Normally, the room was used for the Zumba classes that I sometimes climbed out of bed for.
Shane opened the door and let me go in before him. My roommates were dancing to some Michael Bublé song. It was the first time I actually saw them like this, and I had to say they were pretty amazing. Linc was a big guy, in height and muscle mass, but he looked like he belonged on the dance floor the way he controlled Lana. And Lana looked enthralled as Linc swung her around. The excitement, the happiness I saw on her beautiful face, told me she wasn’t completely fed up with dancing just yet.
The couple didn’t even notice that they had an audience until the music finally came to an end. When it did Linc started critiquing Lana. “Your leg needs to come up a little more on that last spin, Lana.”
“Okay.”
“So this is what you blew me off for, sis?” Shane shook his head. “I feel cheated!”
Lana’s head snapped up and her face lit up when she saw him standing beside me. “You’ll get over it. Wow, three days in a row. I don’t think I saw this much of you back in Cali.”
“I was bored.” He stepped forward and pulled her into a hug.
I watched my friend but there wasn’t anything different about the way she looked at Shane than the way she would look at Linc. I shrugged off the idea that the two might possibly be into each other.
“I see you decided to actually get out of bed before noon,” Linc commented dryly as he uncapped his protein shake and chugged it.