“There isn’t enough coffee for me to deal with this shit this morning.”

I swear I’m not usually a violent person. I’ve worked a lot of my rage and trauma issues out on my yoga mat.

Except when I forget that I’m practicing nonviolence.

The smell of burning animal flesh at five in the morning is a quick way to make me regress to violence and shabbiness.

Especially since I’m running a yoga studio and it’s rather disconcerting to walk in first thing in the morning to find yourself inhaling charred meat.

I breathe in deeply, needing to remind myself that I can’t evict the new barbecue place next door because I don’t own the damn building. And people don’t take animal cruelty protests seriously any more unless it involves kittens.

Americans just love their steak too much to care about factory farming.

So my yoga studio is now conveniently located half a building away from a barbecue restaurant.

Because the universe is fucking with me.

I have the early morning class arriving in the next fifteen minutes. While I’m confident they are not going to be bothered by the smell of cooking meat, I am not going to be able to focus.

I light some incense and too many candles, then sink onto my mat, jotting down my plan for this morning’s flow sequence. I breathe deeply.

And inhale the smoke from next door.

The panic wraps around my lungs, the coppery stench of burned blood filling my nose and cutting off my oxygen.

I double over, needing cool fresh air by the floor.

“Okay that’s it.”

I slap my notebook down and damn near rip open the door, stalking down the cool pavement to Logan’s All American Barbecue.

The master key to the building works in his back door, too.

I stalk to the back and stop short.

I’m not one to admire anything when surrounded by the smell of cooking meat but standing in the middle of the kitchen is a man sporting the greatest set of shoulders I’ve ever seen on a man.

Broad and cut, watching him do whatever he’s doing causes the smooth muscle to ripple across his back. His arms flex, glistening with sweat. The American flag logo on the back of his T-shirt clings to his frame, highlighting all the glorious details that leave nothing to the imagination.

And after two tours in Iraq, I can assure you I have one hell of an imagination.

He turns abruptly and drops the slab of meat with a shout. “Jesus fucking Christ, are you trying to give someone a heart attack?”

Okay, I might feel a teeny bit bad about scaring the shit out of him. “Are you Logan?”

He frowns, swiping the massive butcher knife on a towel. “Who the fuck is Logan?”

“The owner?” I am now thoroughly confused.

“The owner’s name is Sam.”

“And you’re not Sam, I assume?” This is getting mildly awkward. Nothing like stalking down to someone’s place of business and not finding the right person to yell at.

“Do you always walk into restaurants without shoes on?” he asks, pointing to my bare feet with the knife.

“If you’re not the owner, who are you? And when will the owner be back?”

He stabs the knife into the slab of meat and wipes his hands. “Sam’s out of town for a few weeks.”

“And you are?”

He folds his arms over his chest and leans back against a griddle that I assume isn’t on because if it was, it would have burned him on the ass. “Who wants to know?”

“The owner of the yoga studio that you’re blowing the smell of cooking meat into at five in the morning.”

He tips his chin and offers the kind of smirk that tempts me to reach for the knife. “What, you can’t downward dog with the smell of barbecue distracting you?”

“Yeah, actually, that is the fucking problem. You need to get ahold of the building owners and make them reroute the vents or something. It’s incredibly disrespectful to our practice.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? And no, I’m not calling the building owner to make them rewire shit. You’ve lost your goddamned mind, honey.”

My spine stiffens. “Don’t call me fucking honey.”

“Then don’t come barging into someone’s business being an asshole at five in the morning.” He looks down at my shoeless feet again. “How did you get in here, anyway?”

“Building master key.”

“Why the hell do you have one of those?”

“Don’t change the subject. Are you going to at least stop cooking whatever it is you’re cooking?”

He looks at me like I’ve got a dick growing out of my forehead. “Honey, I don’t know what the hell you’re smoking down at the other end of the building but I’m not calling anyone, I’m not changing up anything that Sam directed and I’m not going to stand here and entertain any more demands from some barefoot hippy psycho.”

“So that’s it then?”

He frowns. “Pretty sure I didn’t fucking stutter.”

I smile coldly. “Then this means war.”

He laughs at me. The cocksucker actually laughs at me. “Don’t you people practice nonviolence?”

I lift one eyebrow. “First you call me honey, then you people? Did they find you in a fucking cave?”

His jaw tightens. “You could say that. Have a nice day.” He waves the knife in my direction, dismissing me.

I briefly fantasize about knocking that knife out of his hand and slapping the shit out of him.

But nonviolent, right?

“You sir, can go fuck yourself.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how the war started.

If she hadn’t been a raging lunatic, she would have been smoking hot. Like the kind of hot that would make a man beg for her to let him do filthy, dirty things to her in the dark.

But I don’t fuck crazy.

I don’t need any help in that department, thank you very much.

When Sam asked me to take over the barbecue place for a few weeks, I said yes, because, well, I didn’t exactly have a lot going on. At least not anything really positive.

It was more…treading water. Kind of holding steady at the not killing myself phase of the operation.

So even though I know jack shit about running a business, I’m in business school and I figure it would give me an interesting case study to work on while I avoid doing all the grip and grin ass kissing that’s known as networking these days.

Turns out people don’t want to give you money when you get raging drunk on a cruise where you’re supposed to laugh at the old man’s money, not puke on his shoes.

There are very few ways for life to go much lower than that.

Trust me, I’ve tried.

So now, I’m running a barbecue joint for the next couple of weeks. I’ve mostly got the hang of the food prep piece. Brisket takes the longest. It has to cook slow and long to get it to fall off the bone level of done. Sam has a few tricks to speed up the process but the best way is to drag my carcass into the restaurant at five am and start the cooking for the next day.

I’m not sure I’d have the stamina to do this long-term.

I glance up as the door slams shut behind the crazy woman.

I wipe my hands and shoot Sam a quick text. You have any suggestions for dealing with the yoga studio owner?

He’s on the west coast, so I’m a little surprised when he responds. What yoga studio owner?

The one who just declared jihad on your barbecue because she says the smell is interrupting her flow or some shit.

The little bubbles tell me he’s typing. I finish loading the last of the brisket into the smoker while I’m waiting for his response.

What the fuck does her period have to do with barbecue?

I choke on my own spit and double over laughing. “Clearly you’ve never been around women and yoga,” I mutter, still laughing.

It’s too bad me and the yoga instructor got off on the wrong foot. In the thirty seconds it took me to restart my heart after she scared the shit out of me, I remember being awestruck by damn near everything about her.

Her hair was long and black, her skin a rich saffron that looked soft and warm.

In that thirty seconds before she started going off, though, I remember it was her eyes that captured me. Dark and rich, for a brief moment, I was lost, the bullshit of my life faded to black.

She was a goddess.

And then she started talking and well, my balls shriveled up and died.

I finish up the brisket and set the timers on everything else. We open every day at ten, which means I’ve got to get my ass to the gym if I’m going to make time for a workout today.

I’m getting better about not skipping workouts. And sleeping. That’s pretty fucking important these days.

But I don’t mind getting up to run the shop.

Funny how that works.

I lock up, glancing down the front of the strip mall to where a few stragglers are dragging their corpses into the yoga studio. The light falls onto the stamped pavement, illuminating the pre-dawn darkness.

Getting up that early takes some devotion, I’ll give them that. I’m used to early mornings. It got ingrained in me during my plebe year at West Point and, well, I haven’t been able to shake the habit.

My nemesis walks to the window. The light casts her skin in a golden glow. Her body is tight and she moves with a smooth energy that’s smoking hot.

Too bad she’s fucking crazy.