He dropped the chip back into the bag and held it out to her. Taylor snatched it from his hands.
“You see,thisis why I wanted to hire you,” Jamar said. “Another trainer wouldn’t have had the balls to tell me off the way you just did.” He dusted his fingers, as if wiping away crumbs. “I’m done with potatoes. Bring on the lentil chips.”
“You have toearnlentil chips.”
His brow arched, amusement shimmering in his dark brown eyes. “Is that how it is?”
“You wanted a drill sergeant,” she said.
Taylor wiped the grin off her face before he misconstrued it as flirting. Except this totally felt like flirting. Shit.
“Wait, you do meal prep, don’t you? How much to add that to what you’re already providing?”
“You want me to cook for you too?”
He shrugged. “If you think it will help get me into shape.”
She thought for a moment, then said, “I can prep your meals, as long as you pay for the cost of groceries.” She crumpled the bag in her hand, crushing the remaining chips into inedible crumbs. She handed it back to him. “We’ll start working on your diet tomorrow. Go change into your workout clothes. It’s time for you to show me what you’ve got.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jamar tugged a pair of running shorts on over his tighter compression shorts and grabbed a tank made of wicking material from the neat stack the cleaning service had placed in his dresser. Pulling the tank over his head, he made his way to the walk-in closet that housed more than four hundred pairs of tennis shoes, each in custom-built units that lined the walls.
He was willing to be sensible with every other aspect of his life, but when it came to his Jordans, Vans, and old-school Chucks, sensibility went out the window.
He slid a pair of white-and-gray New Balance from their cubby and brought them to the bench in the center of the walk-in closet. He loosened the laces on one shoe, then dropped it to the floor.
Jamar hung his head, braced his hands on his thighs, and sucked in a deep breath.
What was he doing, thinking he could pull off something like this? Did he really think a new diet and changing up his workout routine would make a difference? Some of the best doctors in the world had evaluated his knee, and all but one had determined that he would never run onto a football field as a professional ever again. What made him think he could defy the odds?
“Because you always defy the fucking odds,” Jamar said, sitting up straight.
He’d been defying the odds since birth, when he’d spent six weeks in an incubator before his parents could even take him home from the hospital. He’d defied the odds when he’d made the varsity team at Katy High. When he’d earned his football scholarship to UT.
He wasn’t the kind of natural athlete his best friend Silas had been. None of this shit had ever come easy for him. If his teammates ran five miles, he ran seven. If they spent two hours in the weight room, he stayed for an extra thirty minutes.
He put in the work and made shit happen. And he would do it again.
He stuffed his feet into his tennis shoes and jumped up from the bench.
“No more excuses,” he said, reinstituting the old saying Coach Cunningham used to drill into his high school team.
Jamar went downstairs and walked into his home gym. He stopped short.
Damn.
Taylor had changed into the outfit she wore in her YouTube videos: baggy army-green pants and a camouflage print fitness bra with the wordsTAYLOR’D CONDITIONINGin orange lettering across her not too big but not too small breasts. Her abs sported a six-pack, but it wasn’t cut like his. It was soft, delicate. Delicate lookedsofucking good on her.
She looked up from her phone and spotted him. “Oh, you’re back. Good. Ready to get started?”
“Just a sec,” Jamar said. He walked over to the cubby where he kept athletic tape and a compression sleeve for his knee. His knee felt fine, but he needed a moment to recalibrate his brain after the initial shock of seeing Taylor in her workout clothes. Not preparing himself for that was a rookie move.
He slipped on the compression sleeve and returned to the custom-made, high-impact foam mat he’d had installed in the middle of the six-hundred-square-foot gym. Taylor stood in the center, her hands on her hips and her legs braced apart.
She was going to kick his ass.
He was ready for it.
