“The second one,” he said. He brought his elbows up on the table as well and folded his hands. “There’s this weeklong scouting event in college football called the Combine. College players who hope to make it onto an NFL team are given a battery of tests, both mental and physical. It’s their chance to show NFL scouts what they’re made of. My goal is to be within the top five best times in each test that’s used at the Combine.”
“What kind of tests?”
“Things like the forty-yard dash, bench press, vertical jump. There’s a long list of evaluations and each will require me to be in top form. I can run the forty in seven-point-four-nine seconds, but I need to shave at least one-point-five seconds off that number if I want to have a chance.”
“That’s insane,” Taylor said.
He shrugged. “Welcome to the NFL.”
Taylor sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. She studied him, taking in the determined set to his strong jaw. He was serious about this.
“I’ll be honest,” she said. “I don’t get why you would hire someone you saw in a YouTube video. There are trainers out there who would kill for the opportunity to work with you.”
“Are you saying you’re not one of those trainers?”
“I’m not saying that at all. I’m just trying to understand your motives here. Why me?”
“I already told you. I like your training style. That hard-core, in-your-face approach is what I need to kick me into high gear.”
The more he explained, the more she was convinced that he really was legit.
Taylor decided to be up front about her lack of a degree. The one thing she did not need right now was to get excited about this job and then have him back out of the deal because she hadn’t graduated from some fancy university.
“Before we go any further, you need to know that I’m not a certified dietician,” she said. “Actually, I don’t even have a degree.”
He regarded her with a quizzical frown. “So youaretrying to talk me out of hiring you?”
“No! No, I just don’t want there to be any confusion here.” She picked up a potato chip and tossed it back into the basket. “Not too long ago, I was promised a position—one that I am one hundred percent qualified for, I might add. But when the people who wanted to hire me learned that I didn’t go to college, they backed out of it.”
His perfectly shaped lips pressed into a thin line as he studied her.
Taylor braced herself for the blow she knew was coming. She was pissed she hadn’t gotten a second brownie out of him before the inevitable end of their nonexistent partnership.
“Is that you in those videos on YouTube?” Jamar finally asked.
“Yes,” she answered slowly.
“And are you the trainer all those Yelp reviewers were raving about?”
She nodded.
He shrugged. “Then why do I care if you have a college degree? Bill Gates didn’t have a college degree when he started Microsoft.”
She’d been so busy mentally preparing herself for disappointment that it took a moment for his words to register. He still wanted to hire her?
Taylor tried to contain the squeal threatening to explode from her mouth. Jamar Dixon would never understand the gift he’d given her with those words. Growing up surrounded by people who collected degrees the way some people collected baseball cards, her refusal to go to college had only added to her odd-duck status in the Powell household.
Having Jamar as a client could turn her entire business around. His endorsement could lead to legions of his fans clamoring to work with the fitness consultant who put their beloved favorite football player back in the game.
“I realize that what I’m asking you to do is pretty intense,” he continued. “I’ll pay you fifteen thousand dollars if you’ll work exclusively with me for the next two months.”
Thank God she hadn’t chosen that moment to take a sip of her carrot juice, because it would be all over the table right now.
“I looked up the average charge for personal trainers,” Jamar continued, as if he hadn’t just blown her freaking mind. “According to most of the websites I researched, trainers charge between forty and seventy dollars per hour session. I figure you average around five clients a day, so that would be three hundred fifty dollars per day. Am I right?”
“Umm . . .” was all she managed. Her brain was still stuck on fifteen thousand dollars.
“Do you see more than five clients a day?”
