Chapter Three
“Ready?”Spencer askedafter he finished punching in the settings for Misty’s cardio workout on the elliptical.
“Ready.”She stood ready for action, dressed in black leggings with a white stripe up each leg and a t-shirt with a store’s logo on it.He vaguely recognized it but couldn’t have said from where.
“Then let’s go.”He’d decided to start her on a slightly more advanced level after she’d been able to tear into their first elliptical session so easily.
For the first few minutes after the warm-up, she seemed off to a good start.But at the first hill, she gasped.“You okay?”he asked.
“Pen!”The word came out between breaths.Her eyes were wide, and she looked like she’d woken up from a particularly involved dream or nightmare.
“What?”
“I need a pen!And something to write on.I’ve been working on this project for weeks, and this idea to finish it just popped in there.I need to get it down before I forget.I’ve gotta go—my bag’s in the locker room.”
She swiped at the machine to pause the workout, but Spencer raised a hand to stop her.“You don’t have to do that; I’ll get you what you need.Keep going and wait here.”
Spencer jogged across the gym and grabbed a handful of napkins from the café on the way to the office area.Finding a pen proved tricky, and yet it shouldn’t have been completely unexpected, considering they did almost everything on their phones and tablets these days.Eventually, he found a gym-branded pen on one of the desks and hurried back to the cardio floor.
Misty had followed his instructions, but still looked desperate as she went through her elliptical workout.He held out the pen and napkins.“Hope this helps.”
“Thanks.”It came out in a gasp as she released a handle to reach for the materials.She started to write or draw with her legs moving, but eventually paused and bent over the napkin, still standing.Spencer ought to have stopped her, as shit like this wasn’t likely to fly at the combine.But something about the intensity in her eyes suggested she’d rip his head off if he tried, and he stood back to let her finish.
When she looked up again, her face was calmer and yet somehow brighter for it.“Sorry about that.I’m ready to keep going.”
“Glad to hear it.”Sure enough, she went about the rest of the session without another pause or a single word of complaint.
“All right,” he said, handing her a small towel and her ridiculous water bottle after the cooldown was over.“Good job on the workout, but don’t let distractions like this happen again.”
She glowered at him.“If I’d felt explosive diarrhea coming on, would you have made me stay?”
“Of course not,” he croaked.
“Well, that’s how suddenly ideas like this can pop into my head.Sometimes I’m lucky enough to have them come when I’m sitting down to formal work hours, but other times it happens when I’m in the middle of something completely different.Don’t tell me you’ve never had a shower thought in your life.”
He could no sooner tell her that than he could stop the image of her in the shower from popping into his head, almost as suddenly as whatever brainstorm she’d experienced.“Your way of putting things,” he mumbled.
“What?”
He suppressed a sigh.“Nothing.Justtryto make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“That’s all I can do.See you tomorrow.”She left him alone with the sense that he could have handled that better, but he couldn’t imagine how.He also couldn’t imagine that he was totally blameless — she’d started it.
****
Back home, Misty dugthe napkin out of her gym bag before getting out her tablet and stylus.Her elliptical doodle was a mess, but getting it on paper had sealed enough of the idea into her head for her to remember it and now refine it.That last slogan from the book had been funny on paper, but translating it to an eye-catching mug design that wasn’t too similar to the others had proved a larger challenge.
A few flourishes later, she was finished with the drawing.She saved her work and pulled up her other designs to see how they compared.Seeing it alongside the others helped her deem it a distinctive piece and yet a cohesive part of the set.She sent the drawings to the author along with an invoice.All the while, the satisfaction of finding the missing piece and finishing this stage of the project sang in her blood.
