Page 7 of Work It Out
Okay, she was a total neat freak.
She hadn’t decided if she wanted to kiss Pierce or kick him in the nuts. Explosion was nowhere near ready for the kind of service some diva actor would expect, even if calling him B-list was generous. At the very least, some warning would’ve been nice. If she’d been expecting him, she could’ve moved her stuff out before he arrived.
Grandpa Wyatt’s cabin might not be Hollywood glamorous, but she’d redone it in smooth ashen stone floors that reminded her of a dried creek bed and cool sage-colored walls that always made her feel like she’d brought the best parts of the forest inside. It was spacious yet cozy, and the beige furnishings were exactly the right blend of comfort and beauty. She’d always intended to use it as a guest rental, but it was so homey she’d been reluctant to find a place of her own. That and the whole being totally broke thing.
Details.
Somebody as hot as Jake Newman was bound to have ridiculous standards, and she really didn’t need the bad publicity he could rain down on her if he wasn’t impressed with his stay. Moreover, she didn’t need the lawsuit when he hurt himself.
Which reminded her. She stalked back to the bathroom. “Hey, one more thing—”
“I wasn’t slut shaming, I swear!”
“Not that.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What did I tell you guys about your bingo harem?”
Samuel closed his eyes. “Please, please don’t call them that.”
“No alcohol, Samuel. I mean it. I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want to draw any more attention to it, but you know better. One of them is bound to fall off a treadmill and break a hip. We can’t have another claim on our insurance. I can’t afford the premiums as it is. If Chad had been there—” The only insurance agent for thirty miles worked out with Grace a couple times a week. His schedule was never the same, though, so there was no preparing for his visits, and that guy loved words like “negligence” and “OSHA violation.” Dude seriously thought he was saving the world one insurance policy at a time.
“I know.” Samuel wiped the sweat from his brow with a forearm. “None of them listen to me when I point out the rules. I tried to get Nate to take the vodka away from them, but you know him. He thinks they’re hilarious. Blaine said there wasn’t any harm, because any one of them could drink a sailor under the table and still drive home. I told him that would be extremely dangerous, but—”
Rayah cut him off. She didn’t have time for excuses. “If they booze it up in my gym again, you three are on probation. And you can tell the terrible trio that, if I let them come back, they’re getting full-body searches before they step one orthopedic shoe on the gym floor. By Grace. Before she has her coffee. And I’ll make Blaine wear a sweatshirt.”
Samuel squirted toilet bowl cleaner around the rim of the bowl. “That should do it.”
“Glad you approve.” Rayah flicked on the exhaust fan on her way back to the bedroom. Samuel high on bathroom cleaner was the absolute last thing she needed today.
She scooped the last armful of clothes from the final dresser drawer and dumped it in the bin. Five minutes. That was all it had taken to erase her from the place that had been her home for the last year, and she’d spent half that time scolding Samuel. Most of what she owned was in storage and she’d changed the bedding that morning, but five minutes was pathetic no matter how she sliced it. Most people took longer than that to pack up their hotel room.
“So where are you planning to stay?” Samuel shouted over the whir of the fan.
She gave him credit. He’d waited longer and asked that with more nonchalance than she’d thought him capable of.
“You know you could stay with one of us, right?”Squirt, squirt, squirt. “Probably shouldn’t be Grace, though. You’d kill each other.” He wasn’t wrong. Rayah loved that girl, but she wouldn’t be able to stand all that surly in close quarters for extended periods of time without pulling out her hair. Or Grace’s.
“Nate wouldn’t be so bad,” Samuel went on. “He probably has better beauty care products than you do.” Undoubtedly. She’d been bugging him to tell her his skin care regimen since she’d met him. He was pushing thirty and had lived in Arizona his whole life, yet that freak of nature had not one laugh line or crow’s foot.
“His apartment’s a one-bedroom.” She smoothed a stubborn wrinkle from the bedspread. “Having a woman crashing on his couch will either put a crimp in his love life, which will make him cranky, or he’ll parade women through and skeeze me out beyond repair.”
“True. Blaine would try to sleep with you, then you’d break his heart.”
Yeah, right. Blaine had been her best friend for seven years. He flirted endlessly, but he was like that with all women. He also woke up at the unholy hour of three a.m. to go for a run. By choice. God help him if he woke her. The day she escaped the world of elite gymnastics she’d sworn to never support such sacrilege again.
Pierce would tell his BFF, which would make her look like a joke to her biggest client.
“I’d let you stay with me, but…” She heard the shrug in Samuel’s voice. “Half the time,Idon’t want to live with me.”
If it had been anyone else, that comment would’ve made her uncomfortable, made her try to smooth over the awkward moment with some crap about him being wrong. But that was just Samuel’s way. He had zero filter and a boatload of idiosyncrasies. To him, it was simply fact, so she blew past it. “Jared’s too much of a slob.”
“Understatement.”
This was one of those times when having a decent father would come in handy, but she’d sooner sleep on a bed of rusty nails and used needles than call her sorry excuse of a sperm donor. It’d certainly be cheaper.
That morning, she’d received Daddy Dearest’s millionth email demanding money to keep his mouth shut about where her startup capital came from. He’d upped his game, including in the missive a picture of her in her spangly unitard, hair pulled into a ruthless bun and a strained smile on her sixteen-year-old face. Next to her stood a middle-aged man, his arm draped across her shoulders.
She swallowed against the bile rising in her throat and rolled the bin toward the back door. “I’ll figure something out.”
“Which means you’ll be stubborn and sleep in your office.”
