in Chestnut Grove. At least from her viewpoint.
He was nothing like most men of her acquaintance, but that was a good thing. Deep inside, Sam remained a small-town girl who admired a man with the common sense to change his own tires and wield a hammer. A man’s man. Masculine, strong, steady.
Gina’s voice interrupted her ruminations. “He’s cute for an older guy.”
Great, she’d been caught staring. “When are all of you going to give this up? Neither Eric nor I are interested.”
“Really?” Nikki asked, popping a square of juicy watermelon past her black-lined lips. She clearly didn’t believe Sam’s protest.
“Really. Now can we talk about something else?”
“Well, we do have another idea,” Gina said.
“Oh, good.” Sam rolled her eyes heavenward. “Now I’m really worried.”
“We want to know how you keep in shape.”
That question she could handle. She sprinkled glitter around a block letter and said, “I have a daily exercise regime, which I never skip.” Style would fire her in a New York minute unless she looked perfect in their clothes. “Why?”
She worked like crazy to stay in shape and worried constantly. Between the need to properly handle her eating disorder and the need to stay in perfect condition, she often felt as though she would never be enough. Not good enough. Not pretty enough. Not thin enough.
That feeling was part of the vicious cycle that had caused the disorder in the first place.
“We want you to start a workout program here at the center for us.” Gina pushed her paper plate of melon to one side. After cutting a single slice of cantaloupe into a dozen tiny bites, she’d left it mostly uneaten. A warning bell, one that had rung every time she’d been with Gina, went off in Sam’s head.
“You don’t need an exercise program,” Sam said earnestly.
“Gina doesn’t. She has great willpower, but the rest of us can’t stay away from the French fries. Won’t exercise offset the calories?” Tiffany asked hopefully.
“That all depends, but exercise helps. You need exercise anyway,” Sam said. “The most important thing is maintaining good health.”
“You sound like my mom,” Tiffany said.
“Sorry. But your mom is right. Your health is everything.” Sam had learned that the hard way. Some things lost could never be regained.
“So will you do it?” Nikki pressed. “Will you start a class?”
She worked out anyway. Why not encourage the girls to stay fit in the process? Exercising with them would be a lot more fun than doing it alone. “I could ask Scott if the church would mind. It’s easy to set up a combination Jazzercise/aerobics regime. It might even be fun.”
And in the process she could discuss healthy eating with the girls and get better acquainted with Gina. The girl worried her.
“We could meet here.” Tiffany’s round face was excited. A green marker in hand, she pointed around the Youth Center. “There’s plenty of room. And I would so love to go back to school this fall with a new, slimmer body.”
“Well, I’m a slave driver, let me warn you.”
Nikki grinned, the black lipstick a startling contrast to her white teeth. “We’re tough. We can take it.”
“Okay, then,” Sam replied, shaking loose glitter onto a clean piece of paper. “I’ll check with Caleb to be sure it’s okay. Maybe I could help you get started before I return to work.”
“Planning on leaving soon?” a masculine voice asked. Eric popped open a cold Coke and took a long drink, his eyes watching her over the rim.
“Sam’s going to start an aerobics class for us,” Nikki said. She slid another bite of melon into her mouth and smiled around it.
“Maybe.” Sam softened the reminder with a smile. “I said I’d check into it.”
“Nice of you, but if you’re headed back to Chicago, how can you do that?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t have any set agenda at the moment except for a few things I can fly to and be back in a couple of days.”
Never mind that the agency was hounding her to do more public appearances for Style. But even the gig to hand out an award at some Hollywood awards program couldn’t tempt her to leave Chestnut Grove right now. Maybe she was burned out.
Eric scraped a chair away from the table and straddled it, leaning both arms on the back. The Coke can dangled from his strong, masculine fingertips. “Eventually, though, you’ll go back to Chicago.”
He seemed almost insistent.
“I haven’t decided yet exactly what I’m going to do.”
“What do you want to do?”
The question, much like something he would have said in Africa, surprised her.
“I’m reevaluating.” She wasn’t sure how much to tell him. Sometimes when they talked, he seemed genuinely interested. At others, he appeared to be judging every word and finding her unworthy.
“What’s to reevaluate? You have a great career that pays well. You get to travel all over the world. People know your face.”
“Sometimes that’s not a good thing.”
“Poor little rich girl?” he asked.
She studied his expression to see if he was making fun of her. He wasn’t.
“It’s not that. It’s having people make assumptions about me because of what I do for a living.”
The answer caught him off guard. He waited two beats before smile lines crinkled around his eyes. “I think you just took me down a notch.”
“Not intentionally. I’m an average person, Eric. Not a face. Not a celebrity. Just a person.” She capped the red glitter with a snap and reached for the blue. “How’s the booth coming?”
“Almost finished.” He motioned toward the structure with his Coke can. “Do you think we should paint it or leave it raw?”
Sam looked toward the girls for their opinion. “What do you think, ladies? Paint or not?”
The girls exchanged looks and Sam tried not to sigh in exasperation. Every time she and Eric spoke, the teens started up again. Before anyone could answer, a scrawny, hawk-nosed man entered the room.
Sam tensed. Her interior decorator. Why was he here? She thought they had everything settled with remodeling her suite.
“Miss Harcourt.” In his usual fit of hyperactivity, the man rushed to her. “I need your opinion.”
“At this time of night? Really, Dennis, you
