It was strength training day, and Sean had him on the bench press. They had upped the weight, so Jason was sweating bullets and grunting like a pig. Sean hoped he’d get through the set without dropping the bar on his neck, but he stood braced and ready behind him at the bench, just in case.
Eight strained and shaky reps later, Sean helped Jason return the bar to its cradle. “Good job. You’ll feel it tomorrow, but it’s progress.”
From the bench, Jason groaned. Sean chuckled. Most people thought six-packs came easy. One of his greatest pleasures was setting up a training program that proved them wrong while delivering results. In Sean’s experience, the best things took the most work to attain, and it was good to be reminded of that from time to time.
“Okay, water break. I’ll meet you in the ring in five.” He lifted his gaze from the sweaty, exhausted male flopped across the bench to lock eyes with the most piercing blue he’d ever seen.
Every time he saw them was like a sucker punch to the gut. That perfect ice blue, so light they were nearly white, set under dark brows, and against soft pale skin, framed with thick, dark lashes. He’d never get used to the effect it had on him. Or the woman strutting up to him with a confidence that belied her guarded nature.
He gave himself a mental shake.Get your head out of the gutter man, she’s not interested.
Understatement of the year. As far as he knew, Ivy wasn’t interested in anyone romantically. Ever. And he’d added it to the list of the many things he worried about when it came to her. Her fear of men, her chronic angst, the way she was constantly on guard, her lack of sleep, her relentless pursuit of physical strength. Her aversion to cheese. His list was a mile long. The only thing that counterbalanced his worry was his attraction to her. And since the incident at Bowie’s five months earlier when she and Hope had been accosted by some slimy blast from the past, coupled with Sean now living right across from her, both his worry and his attraction had amplified. He needed to find a happy medium, and he needed to find it fast.
“Thompson,” she said to him by way of acknowledgment, stopping in front of him.
Ivy had the smoke and mirror effect down better than anyone he knew. On the outside, she came across as fierce, tough, and mildly bad-tempered, but on the inside was an uncertainty and mistrust that left her deeply vulnerable. Too vulnerable, and he hated not knowing what caused it. Because if he didn’t know, he couldn’t fix it.
One thing he did know was, he had to tread carefully. Pushing her for information about her past—or anything—would only make her run. Or fight. If she wasn’t running, she was fighting.
And with that in mind, Sean braced himself and said, “Hey, what’s up?”
Her gaze darted everywhere but him. When she glanced over her shoulder, he scanned the people behind her, as he was prone to do whenever she did these frequent shoulder checks, to see what she might consider a threat to her.
There was no one as far as he could tell. So why did she appear nervous? And not the scared kind of nervous but the hesitant kind, which was weird because while she was many things around him, nervous wasn’t often one of them.
A few more awkward seconds passed before she said, “So, um, I’ve got Smith coming in at nine.”
Dylan Smith was an amateur fighter who’d trained with Sean for the last few years. He’d received a nasty concussion a couple months back during a fight and since then had been rehabbing with Ivy. They frequently discussed Smith’s therapy, so bringing him up wasn’t unusual. But Sean knew that Smith wasn’t what this was about. Call it his Ivy intuition.
“Oh yeah?” Sean said. “He’s still making good progress?”
She twisted her hands. Something was definitely up, and it wasn’t the concussed welterweight.
“Yeah, he should be ready to return to the ring soon.” She shuffled her feet.
Interesting.
“You okay, Ivy?” he finally asked.
Her eyes immediately shot up to his, defensiveness written all over them. Now this was more like the Ivy he knew.
“Of course, I’m okay,” she shot back.
His mouth quirked in a smile, relieved to see her acting herself again.
“You smell like cookies.” She sniffed, tilting her head to the side, nose up.
Ah, so that’s what this was about. He’d wondered if she’d met Tina when she’d visited earlier today. Erica had been too busy mocking him when she’d delivered the plate of chocolate-chip cookies to mention anyone else being present.
Sean sighed inwardly. Here was the complicated thing between him and Ivy. She appeared to avoid having, or wanting, any kind of a romantic relationship. Yet, she seemed to hate the idea of him having women in his life. Her frosty attitude made that clear anytime anyone made the faintest pass at him.
He reacted the same way whenever he witnessed another dude flirt with her. Like Greg-Fucking-Lewis, who was the biggest flirt in his gym. But luckily for him, Ivy was more than capable of putting off unwanted male attention. Unlucky for him, he was uncertain how much of his or any male attention she might actually be interested in.
Which left them suspended in this non-relationship where they were closer than typical friends, but hadn’t yet crossed the boundary into the territory of real intimacy. That was pretty much the point where Ivy’s walls went up—and stayed up.
So, over the last couple of years, they’d fallen into a comfortable, non-sexual, but not quite platonic (at least not in his fantasies), emotionally complicated, pseudo-relationship that he’d come to accept and embrace because one thing he wasn’t willing to do was give her up.
“You met Tina,” he deduced, smirking in satisfaction because, hell, he couldn’t help it. Every once in a while, he liked to see Ivy squirm.
