The new shorter distance between us didn’t confirm any of my suspicions. She didn’t exactly look like Jonah. She was several inches shorter, over a hundred pounds lighter and didn’t have any facial hair. I eyed the designer purse with its two letters stamped all over it and waited the two seconds it took the woman to slowly move her gaze over to me, looking up at me through her eyelashes with her lips flattening.
This was going to go well, I could just tell.
“Hi,” I told her as professionally as I could, which mostly just meant I kept as much attitude out of my tone as I could. “I was told you were asking for Jonah. Can I help you?”
The same honey-colored eyes that Mo had, and Jonah too, looked up at me through at least two layers of mascara, and I could see and feel the way she flicked her gaze down from my face to the black Polo shirt I had on with Maio House stitched onto the breast, to my black pants and low black boots.
I’d gotten slow looks like the one this woman was giving me countless times in my life. Before and during high school. Sometimes when I met fighters’ girlfriends.
It was measuring and calculating and not thinking much of me.
Luckily, I didn’t give a single shit what people I didn’t know thought.
I didn’t even care enough to look her up and down right back. I just stared at her as I crossed my arms over my chest and waited. I had all day.
There were only a few people in this universe who could out-stubborn me. Jonah’s maybe-mom could try her best. I’d been dealing with Grandpa Gus for thirty years. If anything, I’d be impressed if she ended up getting under my skin even a little.
Luckily, or maybe not so luckily, she only did one more sweep of me, pursed her lips, and went with being direct. “Is he here now?”
Yeah, there was the accent.
And oh, hi to you too. I blinked once. “No. We’re not in the business of keeping track of our members, so I’m wondering if there’s something I can help you with.”
It wasn’t my imagination that one of those familiar honey-colored eyes went a little funny for a second before one hand—perfectly manicured—slipped into the purse at her side. In the blink of an eye, a matching wallet was pulled out, and in another blink of the eye, she was handing over a card. Her license.
“I’m looking for my son. I would like to speak to him,” she said, sounding like just telling me this information was a hassle.
It took me a second to process the information on it. Sure enough, Collins was on the license along with a first name of Sarah. The date of birth on the license too showed a year that would have made sense to go along with the thirty-year-old I had gotten off the phone with. Huh.
Why wasn’t Jonah answering her calls? Every impression he’d given me was that he was close to his family, at least some of them. It didn’t exactly make sense.
He’d obviously told her where he was at some point. Given her enough information to come to the gym to look for him, but not the name of his hotel or anything else like that. This wasn’t totally adding up.
“If it isn’t an issue, I have no problem waiting here until he arrives,” the woman, Sarah, said in a snooty voice that didn’t hit me anywhere near the way her maybe-son’s did. Mostly because he didn’t talk like he thought he was better than me.
I handed her back her license. “I don’t have a problem with you waiting here if you want, but it might be a better idea to find him at his hotel.” Maybe I should have said something different, but I didn’t. Fucking attitude.
And then this woman gave it right back. “I would go to his hotel if I knew where it was.”
Was that my fault?
I smiled at her, and it wasn’t anything like the smiles that my best friend—and Jonah, now that I thought about it—handed out like they were candy on Halloween. “I was under the impression that if someone wanted to see you, they would tell you where they were staying.”
Shots fired.
I felt a little bad right after the words were out, but only a little. All right, not really. If this was Jonah’s mom… well. That meant she was Mo’s grandma. Which meant that even if I didn’t like her, she was still her grandma. Which meant that she was family. I had seen enough friends have shitty family members to know how that game went. It had made me grateful on a lot of occasions for how lucky I was that my family was tiny and I liked and loved everyone in it.
Her eye did that funny thing again as she lightly dropped her wallet back into what might have been a three-thousand-dollar purse. “May I speak to the manager?”
“That’s me,” I explained, letting my asshole smile dissolve. The grandma, grandma, grandma chant in my head went nowhere.
There.
The woman who my baby girl may or may not be related to, opened her mouth like she was going to say something else, but another voice beat her to speaking.
A voice with the same accent that Jonah and his maybe-mom had. “Still no Hema?” A woman’s voice.
I glanced to the side to find a woman walking over.
A really pretty woman with long, dark brown hair, an oval-face, and blue eyes.
Why the fuck did I feel on the edge of blacking out with rage?
“No,” Sarah Collins answered, still using that snooty-ass tone that had put me on edge.
The other woman pouted. Okay, it was more of a frown, but it sent my blood pressure soaring either way. And my eyelid….
I had literally just asked him about a secret marriage or a girlfriend, and he’d said there was none of that. He wouldn’t lie to me. She could be anyone. There was no reason for my eyelid to start jumping all over the place and for me to assume my vision was about to go dark. No way.
I needed to get the fuck out of here.
Sliding my palms over my thighs, I faced the older woman and said, “You’re more than welcome to wait. There are a few water fountains and a juice bar straight ahead if you want something. Let us know if there’s anything else you need.”
And like the chickenshit I apparently was now, I turned around and headed back the way I had come.
Fucking shit. Fuck.
A part of me genuinely hoped that this woman really wasn’t related to Jonah, but my sixth sense said she was. That was just my luck. If I could take the exchange back, I wouldn’t. She’d been a bitch and so had I, but what was I going to do? Bend over and take it?
Yeah fucking right.
And then there was the woman with her. Shorter than me, slim, really fucking pretty. Asking about Hema. Who was she and why did I care so much?
I was losing it. I really was.
I needed to cool it. I needed to breathe, and I could tell meditation wasn’t going to do the trick. Not when I was this riled up.
Luckily, the solution came to me instantly.
Peter was on the floor when I got into the building, working with a small group. I kicked my boots off inside my office, sending both of them flying toward my desk. Today was his day with the lesser-experienced amateur fighters. What that meant was that they weren’t good at fighting both standing up and being on the ground. But they weren’t total noobs. The eight guys and three girls were on the mats. From the look of what Peter was trying to demonstrate, they were going to be working on handstand rolls, which meant that they were lined up in three rows and would go from a standing position to a handstand, then allowing themselves to roll out of it to get back into a standing position.