Page 65 of The Prime-Time Experiment

Riley nodded, apparently satisfied. Declan wasn’t, because the truth was he had absolutely no idea what was wrong with him anymore.

A few months ago he would’ve answered the door before the first knock had finished echoing through the house. Instead he’d stood there staring at Riley while the person paying him waited outside.

Which probably wasn’t the behaviour of a man who had everything under control.

Unfortunately, that particular conclusion was becoming harder and harder to avoid.

❈

By five o’clock, Declan was beginning to suspect he had a problem.

Riley had spent the entire day in the corner of the gym collecting data.

That had been the arrangement for months now. Riley sat in the corner of the gym with her laptop, observing sessions, collecting data, and somehow managing to make herself almost invisible while she did it.

The invisible part was where the arrangement started to fall apart, because it turned out it was remarkably difficult to ignore someone who spent six hours a day sitting in one of your oversized shirts, quietly taking notes on your entire profession. Especially when that someone was Riley.

All day his attention had been splitting itself in directions it wasn’t supposed to.

He’d be halfway through explaining an exercise to a client and catch sight of her typing something into her laptop.

He’d glance over between sets and find her watching a movement pattern with the same intense concentration most people reserved for bomb disposal.

At one point he’d completely forgotten a client’s rep count because Riley had pushed her glasses up onto her head and immediately forgotten she’d done it. The client had noticed.

“You right, mate?”

Declan had lied and said yes. The worst part was Riley seemed entirely unaware of the effect she had on him.

As far as she was concerned, she’d spent the day conducting research. As far as Declan was concerned, he’d spent the day discovering increasingly ridiculous things he found endearing.

By the time the final client left and Riley closed her laptop, he felt like he’d run a marathon.

“Same as last session?” he asked as Riley set her laptop aside and stood.

“Yes,” she said. “The structure was effective.”

Of course it was. The corner of his mouth pulled into a smile as he finished checking the cameras she’d set up around the room for data collection, now ensuring they were still filming. “Alright then. Warm up first.”

She nodded and stepped onto the mat, immediately settling into movement.

Declan envied that about her, the ability to move from analysis to action without getting trapped somewhere in between.

The truth was, he’d spent most of the day trying to work out whether dinner had actually changed anything between them. Every now and then, he’d catch himself looking across the gym and wondering if she seemed a little more comfortable here than she had before, whether she’d spoken a little more easily. Whether the way she’d looked at him over dinner had meant what he’d spent the last two days hoping it meant.

The problem was that Riley wasn’t the kind of person who offered obvious clues. Most people communicated through implication, expression, body language. Riley communicated through Riley, which meant every conclusion required approximately three weeks of observation and a supporting data set.

For all he knew, nothing had changed at all. And yet he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something had.

Whatever the reason, he was suddenly aware of how much trust was involved in something as simple as standing this close to another person. Especially for Riley.

She moved through the warm-up sequence with noticeably more confidence than she had a few weeks earlier, transitioning between movements without the pauses she’d once needed. Her body seemed to trust itself more now. The hesitation was disappearing.

Declan watched for another minute before finally stepping forward. “Pause, Riles.”

She stopped immediately and looked up. That still made him smile. There was never any confusion with Riley, never any need to repeat himself or wait for her attention to catch up. The moment he spoke, he had it.

As he crossed the room, he became aware that he was hesitating.