Banks is wearing a black helmet and riding a mint-green beach cruiser, and in seconds he’s pedaling by my side. “I figured it’d just be easier if I got one too,” he says, calm and too amused for my taste. “Don’t you think?”
“Where did you get a bike?” I ask, annoyed and impressed at the same time. But then it hits me. When I had dinner last night and he went to run errands, he must have gone into town, or to a nearby town, to pick one up. “Forget it. I don’t even want to know.”
“Too bad mint was the only color,” he says, glancing briefly down at the pretty frame. “I’d have preferred we have matching bikes. But the shop didn’t have a purple one.”
“Such a shame,” I mutter as I slow at the upcoming stop sign.
“But hold on. One more thing,” he says.
At the sign, I set my feet down on the road. He reaches into the basket on his handlebars and retrieves another helmet. “You really should wear one of these things.”
He leans across the space between us and sets the most adorable pink helmet on my head. “I usually wear one,” I grumble.
“I’m sure you do, sweetheart. But, like I said, it’s my job to keep you safe.”
His midnight eyes stay on me as he adjusts the pink helmet, then tucks some loose strands of hair behind my ear, his finger whisking over the shell.
His touch lasts a little longer than I’d expect.
His fingers slide along my jawline, then he snaps the buckle under my chin. He takes a beat, then fiddles with it some more, moving it just so.
Then just so again. His breath hitches. Quietly, but I hear it. A quick, sharp intake.
When he lifts his face, he meets my eyes, and I see that same dark desire from the night we met. Raw. Primal. A flash of heat too.
“There. How’s that?” His voice is lower than before, raspier.
Holy shit.
He meant everything he said then. He was into me. And now, all this proximity is as hard for him as it is for me.
Guess I amhistype.
“It’s good,” I say, answering him at last, even though it’s not good. It’s bad, how dangerously attracted I am to my bodyguard. Especially since he keeps up with me the whole way to the Downward Dog All Day yoga studio.
After we lock up the bikes on a rack and go inside, a pink-haired woman behind the check-in counter says to me, “Ripley, you’re finally taking a class.”
I wince and paste on a smile.
Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the brightest idea to play chicken here. Since I’ve never done yoga before.
15
UPSIDE DOWN
BANKS
Bet she thinks I don’t know myutkatasanafrom myuttanasana.
But when the instructor—a guest teacher from San Francisco—calls out the first instruction I bend my knees, lower my hips, and move into the chair pose easily.
I peer to the right as Ripley stands awkwardly and jerks her gaze to the right too, avoiding me to check out the woman next to her, then does something vaguely resembling a squat.
Since this is a vinyasa flow class, the teacher’s already moving intouttanasana,a forward fold. She’s using the English words for the poses too, but she calls those out a few seconds after the Sanskrit now, so Ripley’s moving on a five-second delay. “And now, if you want, take a flow into yourchaturangaor go straight intourdhva mukha svanasana.”
Once again Ripley cheats to the right, watching the womannext to her fluidly shift from plank to an upward cobra as the instructor adds, “And we all meet in downward dog.”
But Ripley—oh, sassy Ripley who tried to ditch me with yoga—doesn’t know her cat from her cow, and I am here for it.
