“You can dig in as much as you want to. I’m a tough guy. You can’t hurt me,” Frank teased.
Wanna bet?
“Well, the goal isn’t to hurt you but to release any tension you have.” She used her most neutral voice, even though she could already see where this was going. As long as the dude stuck to a flirty vibe only and kept his hands to himself, she could handle him.
Of course, that was too much to ask.
She started mapping as she usually did, and as she moved around the table, she felt the brush of his hand against her hip. Her jaw tightened as she tamped down on her urge to smack him. Sometimes, people made touches by mistake. This one she let go for the moment, just in case. Men could talk a good game, but they typically failed at the follow-through.
Unfortunately, the would-be Romeo took her silence for acquiescence. This time, he flat-out stroked and then cupped her hip in his bowl-like hand.
Sabrina leaned over and planted an elbow in the spot near his spine, quickly hiding the smile that spread on her face when he yelped. “Too much pressure? Must be a bad trigger point.”
“Nope,” Frank ground out. “It’s fine. I can take it.”
Yeah, I bet you can.
“This is a really crunchy area. Let me know if it’s too much, okay?”
Sabrina felt his body flinch beneath her, but he did remove his hand from her hip.
An hour later, Frank was sweating and breathing hard, but all the knots in his shoulder and back were gone. He had tried twice more to put his hands on her as she worked, and bothtimes, she’d found a trigger point that made him rethink those decisions.
“You’re a lot stronger than you look,” he remarked warily as she was about to leave the room so he could get dressed.
Sabrina put on her sticky-sugar Southern-belle smile and simpered at him. “Aw, it’s so sweet of you to say that!”
She paused to turn her phone back on before cleaning the room and changing the sheets on the table. A dozen notification bells rang one after another. She smirked as she guessed that most, if not all, of those texts came from her brother cursing her to hell and back. She might check them later or simply delete them altogether. He could either speak to her with a civil tongue or not at all.
Cicely came in as she was finishing up. Her mouth was in a deep frown, her sculpted brows narrowed. “That guy who just left—what did you do to him?”
Sabrina blinked. “Just a routine mapping and massage. Why?”
“He said you touched him inappropriately and he’s gonna leave a bad Yelp review.”
Anger flared up in her chest. “I did what? Absolutely not! That nutjob tried to feelmeup!”
Cicely took a deep breath. “Are you sure he didn’t just, um, brush against you or something?”
Sabrina was shocked. Never had a supervisor or someone she worked with questioned her integrity like this. “I don’t know how you do things up here, but in Sarasota, when a man cups a woman’s hip, it’s usually considered deliberate.”
Cicely raised her chin and blew out a breath toward the ceiling, as if asking for guidance. “Okay, I won’t assign him to you again. But if I get another bad customer review naming you, I’ll have to let you go. Understand?”
Sabrina bit her lip and nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I get it.”
She finished cleaning and prepping the room for the next client, but her mind was elsewhere. Was this a sign that she needed to move on?
Rodrigo’s texts came back to her. There was nothing back in Florida for her either. Perhaps it was time she gave up on Scrap and his refusal to take the test, loaded up her van, and left. It wasn’t like she’d put roots down in this city that obviously didn’t want her. The only person so far who seemed to have any welcome for her at all was Cam, and even that was still limited.
No family, no friends, and a workplace that was slowly turning toxic. Perhaps itwastime to throw in the towel and move on. Surely there was a place for her somewhere.
A blast of heavy metal music came from her back pocket, and she pulled out her phone. Cam’s number flashed across the screen. With a sense of dread, she answered. “Hey, stranger. Weird that I was just thinking about you.”
“I hope you’re not with a client. I didn’t want to text this news, so I took a chance and called. Scrap collapsed during a meeting and is on his way to the hospital. Thought you should know.”
Sabrina’s heart stuttered as emotions warred inside her chest. She swung like a pendulum betweenserves the bastard righttoplease don’t die!“Where—” She stopped and swallowed the lump lodged in her throat. “Where is he?”
“West Penn.”
