“Longer,” he continued, “because I rolled with Tom for about ten minutes after.”
BJJ was all about defending yourself and submitting your opponent on the mats. It wasn't karate. There were no kicks, only standing up long enough to take someone to the ground. So when two people practiced their ground fighting, they called it rolling.
I glanced back at Harper, impressed. Intrigued. Something.
Since she didn't seem to be afraid of Jack and was completely ignoring Jimmy, I had to wonder why she was so scared of me.
I was a punk, that was why. I also had a dark past. She should be scared of me. We might live in the same building, but we came from different sides of the tracks. Hell, completely different worlds. If she was a professor, that meant she was smart as shit. I barely got my GED, and that had been in juvie. Yeah, different worlds.
Then there was Larry. Larry the Loser who sauntered over to stand beside her treadmill. He was a lawyer and thought he was tough shit. Too bad for him he wasn’t and was trying to bag Harper. We couldn’t hear what they said, but I had to hope her reply to his blatant proposition was “back off, asshole.” Why he thought the middle of her run was when to ask her out only proved he was a total douche bag.
“If Larry fucks with her, I want to know about it,” I told Jack, my tone serious.
He nodded. “Yeah, no problem.”
Gray came out of his office to stand beside us, arms crossed over his chest. The doc’s kid stormed past and out the door.
“If you're good here for a minute,” Jack said. “I'll go get the towels out of the dryer.”
Gray offered him a nod, and Jack went into the back.
“Are you okay?” he asked, eyeing me. His dark eyes were shrewd. He wore fighter shorts and a gym t-shirt, flip flops. Since no shoes were allowed on the mats or in the ring, he only wore sneakers for working out. But no one would take him for anything less than a total badass. Yeah, he had tattoos. Yeah, he had the close-cropped hair, the broken nose, the mangled fighter hands. Yet he was known for being a cowboy. Dressing like one with snap shirts and a fucking Stetson. He’d grown up on a ranch in Wyoming. The place was his hell on Earth, and as far as I knew, he’d never gone back after he left for the army. He had his own spread now, closer. His retreat when he needed to check out for a while. Now, he and Emory spent weekends up there, riding horses and most likely fucking. So yeah, Gray was a killer in a cowboy hat. He wasn’t called The Outlaw for nothing.
I felt like a Girl Scout when I stood next to him. Harper must have met him to check out the apartment, sign the lease, and I hadn’t heard she’d freaked out over him. Somehow, it seemed Harper wasn’t afraid of him, only me.
I put my hand up to my jaw, rubbed it. “I've been hit worse. I assume you're not taking him on.” I was the sole full-time fighter he trained right now, but he did private sessions with many. I got paid to do a few as well. The kid would have had to take me out with more than a punch for Gray to replace me.
He only rolled his eyes in response. “Thought you'd have hit the showers by now.”
I lifted my arm and sniffed. “That's what Jack said. Do I smell that bad?”
When he didn't say anything, just took stock of what was going on in the gym, I added, angling my chin toward the treadmills, “I met our new neighbor.”
“Harper? Is that why you’re standing here? Stalking her?”
I laughed, ran my hand over the back of my neck, felt the dried sweat. “I just ran into her a few minutes ago.” I left out the details. The fact that she freaked wasn't something I was going to tell. I could ask him if he knew her issues, but again, I didn’t feel like being a fucking gossip. I never pulled that shit, and I wasn’t starting now. No, she had a problem with me, and I needed to find out what it was. Yeah, I was pretty fucking scary. An asshole, too. But never to her. She just had to stand still long enough for me to prove it to her.
“Emory texted. Dinner at eight at our place. Harper's invited, too.” He leaned in, sniffed. Grinned. “If you don't want to scare her off, I'd shower first.”
Fucker.
Pushing off the counter, I walked out of the gym, knowing I didn't even need to smell bad to do that.
3
HARPER
“Oh, hi,” I stuttered when my neighbor opened the stairwell door. Since he was tugging on a black puffy coat, I’d surprised him. Again.
I frowned, confused. Where were Emory and Gray? This was the door to their apartment.
He quickly stepped back, and I realized he was doing that to give me room, lots of room, so I wouldn’t freak again. He even put his hands out at his sides, palms toward me, to show me he wasn’t going to grab me. Shame filled me, and I felt my cheeks flush hotly.
I’d run longer than anticipated. Thoughts of Cam, what he wanted, the mortifying way I’d panicked about my neighbor hadn’t faded after the usual five miles. I’d wanted to run away from it all, perhaps metaphorically, so I’d kept going, pushing myself until my muscles quivered, sweat poured down my face, my brain finally numb. When I'd finished, Jack, at the gym’s front desk, handed me a note from Gray. An invitation to dinner. Quickly showering, I threw on a pair of jeans, ankle boots and a dark green sweater. My hair was barely dry before I went upstairs.
While the elevator opened to a central hallway on the floor I shared with Reed, it opened directly into the couple’s apartment on the third floor, so only they could make the third-floor button work with their key passes. That meant taking the emergency stairs and knocking, which was perfectly fine with me although my legs screamed at the effort, even only going up one flight.
Reed offered me a small, tentative smile, and damn, he had a dimple. He'd cleaned up since the elevator fiasco. While he still had stubble on his jaw, he'd changed into a long sleeved t-shirt that matched his blue eyes—how had I missed the striking contrast to his dark hair?—and a pair of well-worn jeans. Wearing boots instead of flip flops, he was a half head taller than me. This time, without the all-consuming panic, I could see that while his tattoos were covered, he still gave off the street fighter vibe, yet his gaze was calm. His stance easy going. There was none of that evil lurking there I'd seen in the men who'd attacked me.