Quit Bein' Ugly (The Southern Gentleman 3)

I snickered as I went to my tiptoes and gave Croft one more kiss.

It was as I was pulling back that I saw how sweaty he was.

“You’re really sweaty,” I found myself saying.

When did that happen?

Now that I thought about it, I did feel sort of sticky from where he’d touched me.

“I was working on lower body,” he promised when he saw the narrowing of my eyes.

I gave him a ‘you better watch it’ look and went to the mat.

For the next forty minutes, I watched as two of my favorite people in the world got a workout in.

Well, mostly my eyes stayed on Croft, but occasionally they’d stray over to Flint to make sure he wasn’t doing anything stupid, either.

When he was hurt a couple of months ago, my heart had all but shattered. I was glad to see that he was almost one hundred percent back to normal.

It was at one of those moments, when my eyes weren’t on Croft, when the glass behind my head shattered.

Shards rained down over my head, and I ducked my face to the mat almost on instinct as I blinked and tried to make sense of what was going on.

A grunt and a curse had me blinking my eyes open to see a brick landing on the mat beside my head.

I stared at it, then looked over my shoulder just in time to see Karen hurrying through the window as if she broke them every day to get into where she was going.

She all but stepped on me in her haste to get through, and I slipped sideways on the mat, falling between the wall and the thick mat that everyone liked to use as a bed.

As I did, I ended up concealing myself mostly, if inadvertently.

Everything in the room went silent as all movement stopped.

“I cannot believe you, Croft,” Karen hissed, standing on the mat as if she did it every day. “How could you do this to me?”

I saw Croft scan the room for me but not find me, and I popped up a bit more to show him where I was.

He saw me, tagged me, then swiftly looked away.

“I don’t think I know what you’re going on about, Karen,” Croft said. “Would you care to share?”

Karen snorted. “You don’t know… you lost me my job! Both of them!”

Croft looked over at Flint, then back to Karen. “Karen…”

“I asked for my job back because I didn’t get what I needed from you, and then you wouldn’t give it to me. Is it because of her?” Karen demanded to know.

“Who is her?” Croft asked.

“Her being that bitch that you couldn’t take your eyes off of. She asked you to fire me, didn’t she?” Karen snarled. “That stupid fat gym owner that could never compete against me. But no, Croft has to find the ugly duckling appealing. Her! Not me. How does that make any sense?”

What a bitch!

I was not an ugly duckling!

So rude.

“Umm,” Croft said. “I happen to think that she’s beautiful. She’s intelligent, calls people when they’re needed, and ultimately makes my heart smile. You do none of those things, Karen.”

Calls people when they’re needed.

Doh!

I quickly dialed 911 and hoped that she wouldn’t hear the call that was placed.

If I didn’t talk, would they send someone to my location?

“I’m everything that she’s not. I have a degree. I’m successful. I won beauty pageants!” she cried. “I bet you can’t say the same thing about your ugly duckling.”

I rolled my eyes hard and set my phone up slightly so that the person on the other end of the line could hear what was being said.

“Flint Stone is an officer, Karen,” Croft said, trying to relay information to the cops. “You should leave. Go to a police station and turn yourself in for stealing my computer.”

“Why did you steal the computer?” Flint asked. “What was in it for you?”

Karen shifted on the mat, causing it to squeak.

“There’s nothing really in it for me right now. But in a few years, when the partners that I was working with decided to add me in, I would jump to the front of the line,” Karen explained.

“Partners?” Flint asked.

“Partners Law Firm,” Croft guessed. “You’re working for the enemy?”

If I remembered correctly, Partners didn’t have ‘innocent’ clientele. They were criminal defense attorneys. And, from what I’d heard, always out for the buck. They’d represent anyone. Even a child killer.

“Sure.” Karen shrugged. “If you want to call it that. But then I was ‘caught’ with your computer, and they said that I was too much of a liability and they let me go. After all that I’d done for them!”

“Is that who Alfie worked for, too?” Croft asked. “He shot me, you know.”

“He wasn’t supposed to do that.” Karen shook her head. “He was supposed to just get the computer. He was fired, too. Because he shot you. Though they are representing him. Which I’ve been told is not a conflict of interest.”