Real

“Brooke. Please.” I glance at my friends as they sit in the car with the hazard lights on and their faces turned in this direction, and I sigh. “So do you always follow his instructions to the letter?”



“To the T.” Pete gets out of the car, walks over to Kyle’s Altima, and opens the back door for me. The inside of the car falls silent until I’m safely tucked inside and we’re finally heading home.



“I think it’s hot that he wants you home safe.”



“Melanie, right now you think McDonald’s is hot, and you barfed when you saw Supersize Me and have banned it ever since. Your breath smells like vodka and Quarter Pounder.”



“Well, Brooke, if you had a drink with me, you wouldn’t be able to smell me. No more excuses. No more, ‘I have competition tomorrow.’ You should get drunk and go give Remington all the babies he wants.”



“He wants twins but I already said I want to wait until the Vegas wedding.” I hand her a little vitamin B and C complex chewing tablet. “Here, suck on this. I know it’s not what you want, but it’ll get that alcohol out of your system sooner.”



“Thanks, doctor. I’m going to miss you. But it’s high time not only little Nora got all the fun. It sucks that your little sister has a better sex life than you when you’re so much prettier, Brookey. Please, pleeeeze promise to text me every day.”



Smiling, I bring her close and wish she wasn’t drunk so I could actually talk to her. I have no idea what I’ve done, but I’m excited. All I know for sure is I’m not backing out of this agreement. My mom and dad will be ecstatic to see I’m giving my life some momentum in a new direction, and I’ll be only too glad that when I talk to them next Sunday morning, the answer to their greeting, which is always “Any job offers?” will finally be yes.



All right, so it’s only for three months, but it will do wonders for my career. Plus, it feels good to be wanted in a professional sense, after all the preparation. “I will, Mel. Every day,” I tell her, as I listen to her busily sucking on the tablet.



“When he kisses you, you need to text me that very second.”



“Mel, he hired me as a specialist. There will be no kissing, it’s all professional here.”



“Fuck professional!” she protests.



“Stay professional, Brooke,” Kyle says warningly. “Otherwise I’m stopping over and having words with him.”



“I’m glad you said ‘words,’ Kyle, because that’s all a man like you can actually get away with when facing Remington Tate,” Pandora tells him before she bursts out laughing.



I smile, because the image of Kyle standing up to Remy really is funny. An image of the latter flashes in my mind, and I see him as I just saw him, looking at me unapologetically, as sexy as sex itself, and I wonder how it’s going to feel when I have to put my hands on him.



My job is extremely tactile. There’s no way of helping my clients without having some sort of contact. I’ve rehabbed my students in middle school, nursing injuries like I nursed my knee, but I’ve never touched a man that I actually want like this one. Whenever he trains, he’ll need stretching after, and that is right up my alley. Now, my sole purpose will be making sure Remington Tate keeps fighting like a champion. Suddenly, I can’t wait to be back on a team, even if I’m on a different side of it.



To Atlanta



The private jet is enormous, and Pete signals for me to board before he does. He picked me up at my place less than an hour ago, and he looks sharp in a Men in Black suit. I head up the stairs and realize you can actually fit standing inside the plane, like in a large airliner. However, no commercial jet I’ve ever been in has had a fraction of the luxury inside this one. Suede, leather, mahogany woods, gold trimmings, and state-of-the-art screens adorn the interior. It’s all a collection of extravagance in this big, amazing, rich man’s toy.



The seats are arranged in sections that resemble small living rooms, and in this first section there are four plush ivory leather seats, bigger than a first-class seat. They contain a smiling Riley, who stands to greet me, as well as the other two members of Remington’s staff—his personal trainer, Lupe, a fortyish, bald man who looks like Daddy Warbucks from the movie Annie, and his chef and nutritionist, Diane, who I recognize as the woman who delivered the tickets to me.



“Nice to meet you, Miss Dumas,” Coach Lupe says, with a kind of scowl on his face I somehow figure is his natural expression.



I shake his hand. “Likewise, sir.”



“Oh, bah. Call me Coach. Everyone else does.”



“Well, hello again,” Diane says, her grip smooth and gentle. “I’m Diane Werner, the chef, slash nutritionist, slash ticket delivery girl.”



I laugh. “It’s so nice to meet you, Diane.”



The air around them is actually very open and real, and a twinge of excitement flits through me at the thought of belonging to a team again. Truly, what would make me enormously happy and satisfied as a professional is that from now on, when Remington Tate fights in a ring, he will flow like a ribbon with the strength of a dozen oxen, and I just love knowing I’m working with other specialized people whose goals are on par.



“Brooke.” Pete signals to the back of the plane, and down the long carpeted aisle, passing another section of four other seats and past a large TV screen and an enormous wood-paneled bar, is a leather bench that looks remarkably like a sofa. And there, in the middle of it, with his dark hair bent as he listens to his headphones, is Remington Tate. Six-foot-plus tower of testosterone.



An unexpected heat shoots directly into my bloodstream at the first sight of him in daylight. He wears a black t-shirt which clings to his muscles, and low-slung worn denim, and his ridiculously ripped body wears it all with centerfold perfection as he lounges on the spacious taupe leather bench at the far end.



My heart gives a wild kick, because he looks just as impossibly sexy as ever, and I really wish I didn’t automatically notice. I guess you just can’t hide something as blatantly sexual as him.



“He wants you back there,” Pete tells me. And I can’t help noticing he almost sounds apologetic.



Swallowing the moisture in my mouth, I make my way uneasily down the plane aisle when he looks up, his eyes catching mine. I think I see them flare, but fail to read anything in his expression as he intently watches me approach.



His stare makes me so nervous I feel the tingle once again, right in my center.



He’s the strongest man I’ve ever seen, in my entire life, and I’m familiar enough with the subject to know that wired into my genes and DNA is a natural desire for healthy offspring, and with it comes a desperate urge to just full out mate with whoever I deem is the prime male of my species. I have never in my life met a man before who sparks up my crazy mating instincts like him. My sexuality burns with his nearness. It’s unreal. This reaction. This attraction. I’d never believe it if Melanie was explaining it to me and I wasn’t feeling it like a bubbling cauldron under my skin.



How am I going to get rid of this?



Lips curling slightly, as though amused at himself over a private joke, he pulls off his headphones as I stop an arm’s length from him. The rock music trails into the silence, and he abruptly clicks off the iPod. He signals to his right, and I take a seat, fiercely trying to block his effect on me.



Bigger than life, like seeing a movie star in person, his charisma is staggering. He has an aura of pure raw strength, every inch of him lean and muscled, which gives off the impression of being a man, but with a charming playfulness in his expression that makes him look young and vibrant.



It strikes me that we’re the youngest people in the plane, and I feel even younger than I am as I sit next to him, like I’ve just become a teenager again. His lips curl, and honestly I have never, ever, met a more self-assured man, lounging back almost sensually in his seat, his eyes missing nothing. “You’ve met the rest of the staff?” he inquires.



“Yes.” I smile.



He stares at me, his dimples showing, his eyes assessing. The sunlight hits his face in just the right angle to illuminate the flecks in his eyes, his lashes so black and thick, framing those blue pools that just suck me right in.



I want to start off professionally, since that is the only way I can see it working, so I loosely fasten the seatbelt around my waist and get to business.



“Did you hire me for a particular sports injury or more as prevention?” I query.



“Prevention.” His voice is rough and invites a surge of goose bumps on my arms, and I notice, by the skewed way his big body is turned toward me, that he doesn’t deem it necessary to wear a seatbelt on his plane.



Nodding, I let my eyes drift to his powerful chest and arms, then I realize I might be staring too blatantly.



“How are your shoulders? Your elbows? Do you want me to work on anything for Atlanta? Pete tells me it’s a several hour flight.”



Without answering me, he merely stretches out his hand to me, and it’s enormous, with recent scars on each of his knuckles. I stare at it until I realize he’s offering it to me, so I take it in both of mine. A frisson of awareness feathers from his hand and deeply into me. His eyes darken when I start rubbing his palm with both my thumbs, searching for knots and tightness. The skin to skin contact is staggeringly powerful, and I rush to fill in the silence that suddenly feels like deadweight around us.



“I’m not used to such big hands. My student’s hands are usually easier to rub down.”



His dimples are nowhere in sight. Somehow I’m not sure he hears me. He seems especially engrossed in watching my fingers on him. “You’re doing fine,” he says, his voice low.



I become entranced in the planes and dips of his palms, every one of his dozens of calluses. “How many hours do you condition a day?” I ask, softly, as the jet takes off so smoothly I barely realize we’re airborne.



He’s still watching my fingers, his eyes at half-mast. “We do eight. Four and four.”



“I’d love to stretch you when you’re done training. Is that what your specialists also do for you?” I ask.



He nods, still not looking at me. Then his eyes flick upward.



“And you? Who pats your injury down?” He signals to my knee brace, visible through my knee length skirt, which rose slightly when I sat.



“No one anymore. I’m done with rehab.” The idea of this man seeing my embarrassing video makes me queasy. “You Googled me too? Or did your guys tell you?”



He pulls his hand free from mine and signals down. “Let’s have a look at it.”



“There’s nothing to see.” But when he continues staring at my leg through those dark lashes, I still bend and lift my leg a couple of inches to show him my knee brace. He seizes it with one hand and opens the Velcro with the other to peer down at my skin, then he strokes his thumbs across the scar in my kneecap.



There’s something wholly different about him touching me.



His bare hand is on my knee, and I can feel his calluses on my skin. I. Can’t. Breathe. He probes a little, and I bite my lower lip and exhale what little air remains in my lungs.