When I pulled into the studio lot, my mouth parted and my eyes widened. There had to be fifteen cars parked there. Was something wrong? Had there been an emergency? We hadn’t had that many people show up for a class since opening day. I jumped out of the truck and jogged inside. The bell over the door jingled, announcing my arrival. Every head turned, and I almost ducked back out. There had to be twenty people crammed in there. But there was no emergency. They were…working out.
I saw a bunch of new ladies I hadn’t seen before, but also five guys.Guys.At my women’s gym.
Everybody went back to what they were doing almost instantly. Burpees. Lots of burpees. But burpees weren’t a barre thing.
Huh.
Silas jogged over to me, his expression apprehensive. “Hey.” He scratched his forehead.
“What is this?” I asked incredulously, pressing my hands to my cheeks.
“Oh, man.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve asked first. It’s just that a couple of ladies’ husbands came out when they found out a guy was teaching the class. But then they wanted something with more cardio. So I started doing a Bootcamp style class.” He offered me a weak smile. “I thought with you trying to build up the business?—”
I grabbed his arm and shook it. “Silas.” I grinned up at him. “This. Is. Amazing.”
I swear he sunk down three inches with relief. He laughed and put an arm around my shoulders. “Oh, good.” He exhaled long, like he’d been holding his breath since I walked in. “I thought…I thought maybe I’d overstepped. I was going to tell you on the way to the appointment.”
I stood there, in awe, watching as my packed little studio, muggy and hot from all the body heat, pulsed with the happy endorphins you get from a good workout with friends. Silas’s arm was still around me and I slid mine around his waist. I didn’t even care that he was sweaty. Peyton saw me from across the room and waved. Her eyebrows wiggled at the sight of me against Silas’s side.
I rolled my eyes but laughed. “Looks like you won her over again.”
“Who?” Silas’s forehead crunched in confusion. Then he realized. “Oh. Yeah. Peyton and I came up with an unspoken truce. As long as she doesn’t undress me with her eyes, she can come to my class.”
I snorted.
`He squeezed me closer and whispered into my ear. “You have ten new memberships this month.”
My head snapped back. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “I think you just needed some testosterone in here. The guys in Seddledowne need a place to workout too. Knox over there…” He pointed to Knox Freeman, a guy we’d gone to high school with. He was cheering on one of the ladies now that he’d completed his round. “He says he’s sick of driving to Honeyville. Gas is too much, and he’d rather support a local business. He never came because he didn’t think men were allowed.”
My forehead crinkled. “How are they here at nine a.m. on a weekday?”
“Well, Knox is a firefighter in the city. He works a twenty-four-hour shift and then has two days off. So he can’t come to every class, but he comes as often as he can. The others mostly work from home or they’re ranchers.” Silas shrugged. “They fit it into their schedules. But I’ve had some of them ask if we could have a boot camp class in the evening.” My stomach fluttered at the word "we." But I forced it to settle. Silas was just excited. He wouldn’t even be here four weeks from now. That thought made my stomach do the exact opposite—a rock replacing the butterflies.
Silas dropped his arm. “We’re almost done. I need to cool them down and then we can take off.”
He walked back to the front of the class. I may or may not have appreciated the way his short-sleeve compression top showcased the muscles in his shoulders. And there were plenty of them to appreciate.
The idea of letting men into the gym was crazy. The entire reason I’d started the studio was because women kept reaching out to tell me how they wanted a place to get fit without the scrutiny of judging or creepy men. So I’d given them what they wanted.
Or what they thought they wanted. But these ladies didn’t seem to mind this group of guys. As a matter of fact, all my regulars were pushing themselves harder than normal.
My mind was blown and spinning a hundred miles an hour with the possibilities.
Peyton literally bounced over to me as everyone was putting their weights away and rolling up their mats. “I saw your arms around each other,” she sang.
“Okay, Peyt.” I patted her arm. “We’re just friends.”
“Mmmhmm.” She pursed her lips. “Well, you shouldn’t be. If I had a guy like that look at me the way he looks at you…” She barely pointed her finger at Silas who was looking at me right then. His eyes skittered away, and he turned, giving all his attention to Knox and two other guys chatting with him. “We would not be ‘just’ anything. We would be definitively, unquestionably, ex-clu-sive.”
Just then, the three guys who had been talking with Silas walked over and swarmed me and Peyton.
Knox—tattoo sleeves on both arms and a thick, perfectly manicured beard to match his glistening black hair—offered me a fist bump like we saw each other all the time. I legit had not set eyes on this man in at least five years. “Great place you’ve got here, Lemon. Thanks for letting us come.”
I nodded, my mind still in a flurry. “Absolutely. So glad you like it.”
A guy who was about five inches shorter than me, but solid muscle and probably three percent body fat, stuck out his hand. “I’m Wayne Robbie. Live over on Junction Road.” He squeezed my hand so hard one of my knuckles popped. “We were wondering, hoping actually, if you’d let us start an obstacle race group. We could meet in the evenings after most guys get off work.” His hands moved faster than his words. “Everyone would get a membership, of course. We already have about twenty of us that work out, but it’s in my garageand it gets frigid in the winter. And your speaker system is far superior to mine.” He glanced around. “This would be ideal.”
