I step closer, and immediately his minty scent mixed with his natural tanginess makes me want to suck in a deep breath. He’s asked for “hands-on” adjustments in our latest sessionswhenever he can’t quite nail a skill. Before, I used to just tell him to look in the mirror, and I’d call out adjustments.
And Icouldstill do that.
He squats with the bar on his shoulders, and I place a hand on his lower back and another against his core. The warmth of his skin easily penetrates his shirt, sending a zing of awareness right to all my lady parts.
“You’re too forward,” I say.
With a nod, he sits back more, and when I glance up, he’s focused on us in the mirror. Close together. Energy buzzes like a live wire, and I wish I wanted to call an electrician, that I had a desire to put a stop to this incessant hum.
“What?” I whisper.
“I just like looking at you,” he says. “More specifically, I like looking at you next to me.”
“Logan…”
“You said flirting was allowed.”
We’re close enough that when he comes out of his squat to stand upright, he towers over me. A shiver races down my spine. Our gazes are locked.
“Just flirting,” I say, but my voice lacks the conviction I know it needs.
“If you were mine,” he says, his voice gruff, “I’d tell you all the time how beautiful you are, how smart you are, how I can’t stop thinking about—”
“Your next exercise,” I say, stepping back. “Hockey is the focus, right? We don’t want anything to interfere with that.”
My reminder seems to work, and for the rest of our session, he’s exactly like he was before he came to my house. Focused. Determined. Each exercise precise, pushing himself to the max.
We’ve got ten minutes left when my front doorbell sounds. Bituin, who manages my office, pokes her head in the workout room.
“Matilda is here. She wasn’t able to leave Benji in childcare, so she’s got him too.” Bituin’s long brown hair slides off her shoulder to form a curtain.
I bite my lip and glance at the closet where I keep some toys for these situations.
“What’s the problem?” Logan asks.
“Childcare can be tricky,” I say. “And we were a bit slow to get going today.” More accurately, his issues—real or not—with some of the exercises at the start slowed us down.
“What do you normally do?”
“Clean up all the weights or anything dangerous. Then we put any children a client brings in here with some toys while I do physio in the room next to this one.”
Logan takes in the clock above the door, and a crease appears in his brow. “We’re late today. That’s my fault. Sorry.” He lets out a deep sigh. “I can watch the kid while I finish. Then I’ll tidy up the weights and head out. Just leave me a list of the last few things.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. “He’s three and a bit of a dynamo.”
“I can handle one kid.” His smile is wry.
I step out into the hallway and have a quick chat with Matilda. After she agrees, I leave Logan with the final workout items scrawled on the whiteboard, and a three-year-old who has no clue one of the top hockey players in the world is his stand-in babysitter.
Just as I enter the next room with Matilda, Logan’s low rumble is audible.
“All right, buddy. You get the toys, and I get the weights.”
In the treatment room, I become so absorbed in trying to get Matilda’s frozen shoulder going that I don’t register the noise from next door until there’s a loud shriek.
“I’ll go check,” I say, when Matilda tenses.
I open the treatment door, and Benji’s shrieks turn into giggles of delight. I peek around the doorframe, and Logan has tied bands around Benji, and he’s using him as a weight, pulling him up into a clean and then flipping him over his head and onto his shoulders for a squat. Each time Logan rotates him to the front or back, Benji squeals and then lets out peals of giggles.
