Jonah was wearing shorts. And not just any shorts. His rugby shorts.

They were navy blue and about as loose as thighs the size of Jonah Collins’s could let shorts be, which wasn’t that loose at all, especially not higher up on his legs. Looking at the seams for a split second, I was pretty positive he’d had to tug the material apart hard to give it a little more of a stretch to not be so tight.

And yeah, there was a tiny split at the bottom of each leg like he’d taken scissors to them for just a little more room.

And speaking of his thighs, they were just as big, if not bigger, than I remembered. Considering I had grown up around men who babied and pampered their bodies, I was pretty nonchalant about looks and muscles. But his were something else completely. He had the kind of thighs that no bodybuilder, light heavyweight, or even heavyweight MMA champion was capable of. Sprinting legs. Massive. Bulging muscles that my hands briefly remembered were rock hard.

And those damn shorts started about five or seven inches above his knee, showing way more leg than any of the guys around the gym showed, except for the handful in on the MMA side who favored tiny compression shorts.

But none of them, as fit as they were, were any comparison to Tall, Dark, Less of an Asshole Than Yesterday, and Handsome.

And just like I remembered, he wasn’t the slightest bit self-conscious about it.

Or his long white socks that set off the dark curly hair of his legs.

No big deal. I had seen them, and I could move on with my life now. There were plenty of other rugby players in the world who probably had the same build.

I sniffed and shot him a pleasant expression as I raised my eyes. This funny shape came over his mouth, but he didn’t say anything about whether he knew exactly what I was looking at or thinking about. Good. “Come on, I’ll show you around,” I told him, tipping my head to the side.

He followed me, his own head swinging from one direction to the other, soaking up the rows and rows of machines and equipment.

I started pointing. “This is the cardio section. There’s everything from treadmills to stationary bikes, a couple of Stairmasters and elliptical machines.” I gestured to the other side of the walkway that cut through the center of the gym and swept out into another line crossing it. “The machines are set up by muscle group. The ab and glute machines are all in the front.”

I highly doubted he used those.

“Biceps and triceps in the middle and the last row over there has all the back and chest machines, for doing rows and pull-downs.” He knew what I meant. There was no way he didn’t know his way around a gym.

Jonah nodded as we walked, but I knew that most of that part of the floor would be unused by him. It was the other section that I’d bet he would be working in. “There are dumbbells all along the wall by the mirrors. Squat racks are on the left. Bench presses, from what you can see, are in the middle. There are a few barbells in the corners, but you can steal the ones off the squat racks or bench presses too. The Smith machines are on the right wall.”

“How old is all this?” he asked all of a sudden. “When you told me your grandfather owned a gym, this wasn’t what I pictured.”

I wasn’t totally sure how to answer that. I waved him to follow me toward the door that led to the walkway between the buildings. He was already familiar with this door, obviously, since it was the same one he had somehow managed to sneak in through before. “We had a building that was a lot smaller before. The same one my great-grandfather owned, where he started Maio House as a boxing gym. A few years ago, though, a major hurricane hit, and it was devastating for the area. Neighborhoods and parts of the city that hadn’t been in flood zones in a hundred years, flooded. And that building was in one of those areas, and it destroyed everything. But we were one of the lucky ones, because Grandpa’s paranoid and had gotten flood insurance before I was born, even though everyone else told him it was unnecessary.

“Anyway, it took a while, but the policy came through. The land that the original building had been on was really valuable, and he sold it. It was too small to rebuild on, and it wouldn’t be the same. About ten years ago, he had bought this plot of land because he had thought about expanding and setting up another satellite branch, and it was cheap then, but never got around to it. So, he decided to rebuild here. This place opened a month after Mo was born, so it’s brand new.”

He had stopped to watch me as I told him the story, and a frown had slowly formed over that dark pink mouth. “It was in the news, the storm.”

“Yeah. Grandpa rented out a place temporarily, but it was tiny and only fit a cage and a few mats. That’s why I went to France.”

“It makes sense now. You didn’t have work here.”

I nodded. “And my other job was just part-time. That’s why I left.”

“You had another job?” he asked, surprised.

“Yeah. I only worked here twenty-hours a week. Grandpa never let me work full-time until a few months ago, and it wasn’t like he paid me a lot hourly. I just worked the front desk.” I shrugged. “I worked in the mornings at a retirement home.”

“A retirement home?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. I guess we’d never gotten around to talking about that before. “I was there for seven years as an aide.”

“You never said anything about the flooding,” Jonah commented after a second, thoughtfully.

“It was awful, and a lot of people had it a lot worse than we did.”

He nodded like he understood, and I’d bet he did. “What did you do for work when you… got back?”

When I got back knocked up? I gave him a funny face, pushing down that rising anger at the fact he didn’t know what I’d done after I got back from Paris. Because of our lack of communication. “I went back to the retirement home and worked the front desk. I was there until Mo came.”

And he hadn’t been around.

I changed the subject before he asked anything else about that time and pissed me off in the process. “Anyway, I know you’ve already seen the other building, but let me show you where everything is in case you want to work out there. It’s a little quieter and more private, and there’s more space for certain exercises,” I told him moving to open the door out, but his long arm beat me to it.

That big, muscular bicep was inches from my head as he swung the door wide, and I ignored how close the front of him got to my back as he did it. Just as I was about to rush ahead to open the next door so that he wouldn’t, I changed my mind. Fuck it. What did I have to prove? He could open the door if he wanted to. And if I was going to like it, it was only because all these rude asses I spent time with hardly ever did.

Probably because they knew I could do it my own damn self.

I led him in, feeling the heat from his body directly behind me as I showed him—like he couldn’t see—the section to the right covered in high-quality fake turf. “There are tractor tires down on the far end, if you can see. In the shelves all the way on the wall over there are ropes and different things that you can use.”

The thought barely entered my mind that if he worked out here, I would see him more.

Oh well.

“But you have access to everything. The only time this part is used is usually really early in the morning or after five when everyone is off. But there aren’t that many people who have the middle membership that gives them access to this building, so you’ll be left alone most of the time,” I let him know. I hooked my thumb behind me. “I’ll be in the office usually if you need me. I doubt anyone will give you a hard time, but if they do, let me know.”