What the hell was he doing here?
The man on the other end groaned and moaned without actually using words, eating up the time it took me to make it to the bar, still holding my phone to my face, while I stopped directly to the side of the man I knew. A little too well. It was Jonah.
He was pulling bills out of his wallet with a funny look on his face.
“Look, do it or don’t do it, but I told you what’s going on,” I said into the phone, the familiar head instantly turning in my direction.
Jonah gave me one of his endless little smiles. I held up a finger.
“I need to go. Call me back if you can do better. Bye,” I said, not bothering to wait for him to say “bye.” It was one of the most important intimidation tactics that Grandpa Gus had taught me over the years. If you wanted something, you could get it using sugar, but if you used a little vinegar too, sometimes it worked better.
But I wasn’t worried about him or the deal. I was just doing a favor for a member who had asked Peter for some advice. Then Peter had come to me to help him out.
What I was busy focusing on was the man holding five twenty-dollar bills in his hand the night after he’d left my house.
I flicked my gaze toward the employee behind the counter, who doubled making juices if they were busy enough. She smiled innocently. I really liked Bianca. I smiled back at her but saved the words for the man. I had already told her good morning earlier.
“What are you doing?”
“Good morning, Lenny,” he said in that voice I was planning on surviving through for the next eighteen years of my life. “How ya goin’?”
“Fine,” I confirmed, glancing at his wallet and his money again. “You?”
He flashed me that little smile again. “I came over to see about a membership, if that’s all right. You’ve got a flash facility here. I like it.”
Flash…. Flash…. Fancy?
I’d looked up “ta” the night before, and apparently it was slang for thanks.
“He’s doing a month-by-month membership,” Bianca chirped up politely. “That’s what you asked for, isn’t it, Mr. Collins?”
Jonah’s smile fell off as he looked at the receptionist and nodded tightly, back to looking weird.
What the fuck was that about? I wondered before a more important idea filled my head. I still had no clue how long he was going to be here for. Or where he was going. I figured that was something I should know, wasn’t it?
I’d ask him later. Or sometime in the near future at least. One thing at a time.
“Activate a card for him, but default it as a manager special, please, Bianca. He’s family.”
Her blink said more than I wanted it to. He was family. I had just fucking confirmed something. The next few words out of her mouth did the same. “What’s a manager’s special?”
“It’s on the house.”
She blinked again. “Um, I haven’t done that in the system before.” She lowered her voice. “How do you want me to do it?”
“That’s not necessary,” Jonah butted in, speaking to me as he sidestepped so that his outer left biceps brushed my shoulder.
I slid him a look before rattling off instructions to my employee, at the last minute throwing in access to the other building too.
“You don’t need to do that.” He decided not to drop it, his arm touching mine again. “The gym at my hotel isn’t much, and I liked the look of this place. I wasn’t expecting a thing by coming here.”
If he was trying to suck up to me by complimenting Maio House, it was working. But I didn’t want it to.
Grandpa Gus and I had spent a lot of time going over the floor plan when he’d decided to rebuild. I had loved Maio House back when it had been a hole-in-the-wall boxing gym. Now it was all sleek and clean and brightly lit—both buildings were—and I loved them. I took a lot of pride in this place. How could I not when it had my last name tied to it?
“I’m sure you didn’t,” I assured him. “But you are family, and you don’t have to pay to work out here. So quit arguing with me. You’re making it weird.”
I could feel Bianca’s gaze on me, and I wondered if the nosey asses in the other building had started whispering over in this building too about who they thought Jonah might be. To give her credit though, her fingers flew across her keyboard, and she scanned one of the laminated keychains with a barcode on it.
Glancing up at Jonah again, I found him with his attention already down on me. I gave him a small smile, and he raised his eyebrows like it was me he was exasperated with.
“What?”
“You don’t need to do this,” he said, angling his body some more so that his arm was fully pressed against mine, his thigh right there too.
Well, unfortunately for his ass, I didn’t have any personal space issues. He could press that arm and that leg against me as much as he wanted, and it was never going to bother me. I’d had strangers’ feet literally on my face countless times. Mo had thrown up in my open mouth before. I’d licked her poop by accident.
There weren’t even a handful of things that grossed me out, and that arm and leg right there and those honey-colored eyes nearly glaring into mine weren’t going to get him more than a blink and a raise of my eyebrows right back.
“No offense, but I don’t really care what you think I need to do or not,” I whispered back to him, using those same words he’d thrown at me the night before when I had tried to tell him not to give me his excuses.
And what I got as a reply were his dark eyebrows knitting together.
And then that slow fucking smile crawled across his mouth—and even his fucking eyes somehow—and he nodded, still smiling, as he said, “It’s going to be like that, is it?”
I fucking hated him. I really did. And that was why I kept myself from smiling at him, at least totally smiling, and shrugged my good shoulder. “Yeah, it is.”
This microscopic douchebag laughed.
“Just as saucy as I remember,” he muttered, with that laugh that was just as bright and cheerful as his smile was. It was so annoying.
The memory of him sitting next to me on the bus the day we’d met and laughing then too, You’re a bit saucy, eh, hit me straight in the chest like a dull ache. I’d teased him over… I couldn’t remember what anymore. But I’d been teasing him, I knew that much.
We had hit it off.
And now we were here.
“Would you like me to get Deandre to give him a tour?” Bianca asked, cutting into my thoughts, as she handed him his new laminated keycard.
I only had to linger over his words from the night before for a second before I reminded myself of my decision. Eighteen years. I might as well make the best out of it. I wasn’t about to start being my own worst enemy now. We did get along. A little too well.
At least he wasn’t Noah.
“I can do it,” I told the receptionist. I didn’t double-check with Jonah if that was fine, because what if it wasn’t? I wouldn’t get over him preferring a stranger to me even though I knew I should. “I’ll show you around real quick.”
He nodded back before bending over to grab a duffel bag I hadn’t noticed until right then that he had sitting between his feet. It was navy blue with lighter electric blue accents on it. And it was then, as I looked down at his bag, that my eyes finally noticed something else.