News of Steph’s date spread instantly. Rich ribbed her non-stop through their Friday shift, proving himself a bottomless well of medical innuendo.
Patrick, the least qualified electrician ever licensed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was busy testing the new security system all day. Steph found the frequency with which he peered at exposed wires and muttered, “That’s weird,” highly disconcerting. More disconcerting still was that he’d apparently arrived at seven, yet was still working by the time the evening sparring session was winding down. If he wasn’t sandbagging to scam his boss for extra pay, he had to be plain old incompetent.
Steph and Rich were sitting on the mats, facing one another, cooling down after the evening’s sparring. Their soles were pressed together, and they held hands, taking turns leaning backward to stretch the other’s hamstrings and arms and back. The thirty or so members who’d braved the snow and ice for a chance to scrap were doing the same, more than a few looking skeptical about the exercise, or perhaps the hand-holding. Wilinski’s boxer types might have power on their side, but they could stand to adopt Steph’s regimen of flexibility drills. She was only too happy to torture them into better shape.
“Be careful with this fancy doctor guy,” Rich warned. “One flash of that stethoscope and he’ll have you disrobing before your starters even show up.”
She rolled her eyes at him.
“He’ll probably want to dress you in one of those paper robes and get freaky with the tongue depressors.”
Steph leaned way back, reveling as Rich winced. His turn came to pull, and she let him tug her all the way forward until her arms and chest met the floor.
Rich laughed and eased her up. “That ain’t natural.”
They got to their feet and Steph could feel the past couple hours’ exertion in her muscles. She should be exhausted to boot, but with every minute that ticked by, bringing her date closer and closer, her heart beat quicker. She’d hoped the workout would burn off the nervous energy, but nope.
Still, she was prepared. She’d taken Jenna’s advice, finding herself an overpriced pair of stylish jeans and a pretty cashmere sweater. The promised snow had arrived, so heels were a non-option, but Steph had brought a pair of dressy black boots that looked good under the jeans.
“Okay!” Rich shouted to the group. “Everybody hit the showers, stat. Steph’s got a hot date and needs to make herself pretty.”
A bunch of the guys taunted her with seedy whistles.
“Make it quick,” Rich added. “He’s a doctor.”
They chided her with extra oooohs before dutifully heading for the exit and locker room.
Steph looked to where The Worst Electrician Ever was messing around with the security panel. “Why is he still here?” she murmured to Rich.
“The locks aren’t engaging or something. He said it’d be fixed in ten minutes.”
They walked to the edge of the mats, and Steph turned on her heel and gave the workout area a quick bow, the respectful reflex ingrained by years of jujitsu. “When exactly did he say that?”
Rich made a face. “’Bout four hours ago?”
Misgiving squirmed in her middle.
Fifteen minutes later, the members had all cleared out and she and Rich exchanged an uneasy look.
“My sister’s car’s in the shop,” Rich said. “I’m supposed to pick her up from her shift at ten-thirty.”
She eyed the clock. She absolutely had to be out of here by eleven sharp, but that gave Patrick forty minutes to fix whatever he’d messed up. “You go ahead.”
“You sure?”
She nodded.
“Right then. Good luck tonight.” He gave her a clap on the shoulder and headed for the exit.
She crossed the gym to where Patrick was tinkering. “How’s it coming?”
“It’s coming,” he said brightly, turning to beam that stupid-making handsome smile at her.
“I have to be out of here at eleven, at the very latest.”
“No worries. I’m so close, I can taste it.”
“Have you been tasting it since this afternoon?”
“Trust me.”
She didn’t trust him, though. Didn’t trust his skills any more than she might’ve trusted her body in the same room as his, back in her mid-twenties.
“I have to get cleaned up,” she said. “So if you have any business in the men’s locker room, please refrain for the next twenty minutes.”
“Nope. I’m good.”
I just bet you are, she thought, eyeing his arm as he turned back to his puzzle. Good man to have on your July Fourth softball team, good to his mother and his friends, always good for a lusty tumble on a Sunday morning.
Far too good at that last one, surely.
But the instincts that had her imagining such a thing were bad, bad, bad.
Mind over body, she reminded herself. It was what let her fight through the pain and work past her limits, and if she could harness it in a ring, she could do the same in her romantic life.
“All clear?” she shouted into the men’s locker room, finding it empty. She grabbed her gym bag and headed inside. She’d enter as sweaty Steph, and emerge a new woman. She’d stripped and faced dozens of opponents hell-bent on knocking her down. There was no reason she couldn’t dress up and face this latest challenge...even if it had her more nervous than she’d felt in years.
Still, she liked the nerves. Loved the nerves.
She twisted the shower tap, and waited for the hot water that would rinse away the old Steph for the rest of the night.
* * *
PATRICK STARED AT the diagram in his hand, then the panel on the wall.
Diagram, panel. Panel, diagram.
Man, he should sue whatever jerk had marketed this product. Easy five-step installation his ass.
He’d guessed this job would take him two hours—cut the holes, fit the boxes, marry the wiring, home in time for the Bruins’ opening faceoff. Now it was past ten. And he couldn’t just call it a day and deal with it in the morning—that’d mean leaving the gym unlocked all night.
Maybe it wasn’t the security system. Maybe it was the building’s wiring. But he’d checked those connections a thousand times...maybe a thousand and one was the magic number? He opened the metal door in the corner.
Ridiculous. This former factory probably predated electricity, and the basement’s wiring looked like spaghetti, each generation of improvements layered on top of the previous. Patrick was a pretty awful electrician, to be sure—he was a carpenter by trade, bumbling through this contract out of economic necessity—but this was just unfair. Getting this system to work was like grafting bat wings onto an elephant then commanding it to fly.
“C’mon,” he goaded, tinkering with one of the connections.
The lights flickered and he quickly turned the screw the other way, making a mental note to not touch that one again.
A moment later Steph came marching out of the locker room. There was a towel fisted between her breasts, though she still had her bra on and her hair was dry.
“What was that?”
Pretty ballsy of her, considering she was alone in this basement with a strange man. Or maybe not. Patrick pictured the flurry of bad-ass kung fu moves she might lay on him if he pretended to rush her. Better not try it.
“Just a