Three
Crawling out of bed before dew covered the lawn was as bad as forgetting to buy coffee, which Erica had, and that only encouraged her bout of irritability. On top of everything else, she’d barely finished dressing, brushing her teeth, washing her face and fashioning her hair into a misshapen ponytail before the doorbell rang.
Erica muttered a few choice oaths on her way to answer the summons, most aimed at Kieran’s early arrival. Yet before she opened the door, she plastered on a fake smile that slowly withered with one look at him.
With his dark, longish, slightly damp hair and buff body, he could easily be mistaken for a gladiator, regardless of the clipboard clutched in his hand and absent loin cloth. She briefly wondered what he might look like in a loin cloth while resisting the urge to take a downward visual excursion. Instead, she kept her attention fixed midchest on his hooded navy sweatshirt. Even in standard workout apparel, he could put most men to shame, while she resembled something Diner might drag in from the Dumpster.
When he said, “Mornin’,” Erica found him to be much too chipper for the crack of dawn—correction—sliver of dawn since the skies showed only limited light.
“You’re ten minutes early.” Her tone sounded unmistakably prickly, from lack of both sleep and caffeine.
He checked his watch and had the gall to grin. “Guess I am. Want me to wait in my car until six?”
Not such a bad idea at that, but one she couldn’t in good conscience consider. After all, he was accommodating her schedule, not his, even if he had shown up at an obscene hour. “Not necessary. Come on in.”
She held the door open wide while he passed by her, bringing with him a burst of cool air and a noticeably clean scent. Not that she intended to notice anything about him, but her intentions ran amok when she followed behind him and realized he was wearing shorts—to-the-knee shorts—that offered her a fine glimpse of his equally fine calves.
“Are you nuts?” she asked once they entered the den.
His frown indicated he thought she might be. “Excuse me?”
She waved a hand toward his legs. Bare, muscular, enticing, hairy legs. “You’re not wearing pants.”
Kieran looked down as if he didn’t have a clue what he was wearing. “I prefer to run in shorts. Is there a problem with that?”
Erica could think of one big problem—her wandering eyeballs. “Seems to me it’s a bit cold to go outside half-dressed.”
“It’s almost fifty degrees right now, and the highs are going to reach seventy today.”
So much for the first seasonal cold front. “That’s what I love about Texas, frigid one day, sweltering the next. Makes me miss the Oklahoma ice storms.”
“You really aren’t a morning person, are you?”
She felt a tad bit ashamed of her attitude. “Unfortunately, no. But by noon, I’m a really nice person.”
“Since I won’t be here at noon, I’ll take your word for it.” He offered her the clipboard. “I received the form from your doctor, but I still need you to fill out this medical history. It’s only a few general questions.”
A few hundred health questions, Erica realized when she took it from him and perused the text. “Looks like our first jog will have to wait if you expect me to answer all of these.”
“It won’t take that long if you hurry.”
“I’ll try, but remember, I’m barely coherent.”
Erica took a seat on the sofa while Kieran claimed the wellworn brown suede lounge chair across from her. Jeff’s favorite chair—just one more thing she hadn’t had the heart to discard.
Getting back to the business at hand, she answered no to almost all of the queries about her physical condition, then stopped short when she came to the part about her weight. “I’m not sure how much I weigh.”
“Leave it blank. Like I said, I’m going to weigh you this evening and we’ll fill it in then. Since you’ve got to be at work, I’ve decided to wait and do the rest of the assessment at the club.”
Meaning he’d handed her a short reprieve from having her measurements taken and her body fat calculated. Even so, she’d still rather eat dirt. “Fine.”
Going back to the forms, she answered the intimate questions with serious trepidation, read the complex waiver and signed on the dotted line before handing it back to him. “Now that you know my extremely personal history, what’s next?”
He set the forms on the table, slapped his hands on his thighs and stood. “We’re going to start off easy. Just a short jog to the park up the street and back.”
Erica could already feel her muscles begin to protest. “The park up the street is at least five blocks away. How am I supposed to manage that?”
He grinned again. “Put one foot in front of the other and propel yourself forward.”
Oh, what she wouldn’t give for a snappy comeback, or the courage to kiss that smirk off his pretty face. “Very funny. I believe you said we’re starting out slowly. Running five blocks and back doesn’t qualify as ‘slow’ in my opinion.”
He inclined his head and gave her a challenging look. “If you can’t handle it, I guess we could walk.”
She shot to her feet, answering his dare. “I can handle it. I used to run at least two miles a day when I was in gymnastics training.” Training she’d undergone practically back when dinosaurs were in diapers.
He gestured toward the foyer. “Then let’s get going so you can wash your hair.”
The man had a mind like a steel trap and a body that served as bait for any woman halfway interested. She wasn’t interested, at least not that much. “First, I have to check on Stormy.”
Leaving Kieran behind, she walked to her daughter’s room and quietly opened the door. With her blond hair fanned out over the lavender satin pillow case, Stormy slept soundly on her back, arms sprawled wide, one leg jutting from beneath the covers as if prepared for a hasty escape. Funny, Erica had once slept in that same position, until Jeff’s death. These days she spent most nights curled on her side, hugging her pillow, an inadequate replacement for someone warm to hold.
Erica started to wake Stormy and let her know she was leaving, but reconsidered. Once her daughter learned that Kieran had arrived, the child would no doubt be out of bed in a flash, delaying their departure. The quicker she got this first phase of the taskmaster’s program over, the better.
After closing the bedroom door, Erica made her way back to the den to find Kieran still waiting, still looking much too sexy for such an early hour. Obviously he was an early riser, and that unearthed an image she had no business imagining.
After a brief mental scolding, she immediately strode to the desk, disengaged her cell phone from the charger and grabbed her keys.
“Are you expecting a call?” Kieran asked when she turned to face him.
“I
