“Come again?” Suzanne asked, gripping the sides of her treadmill as she stared at Imogen. “What do you mean Ty decided you shouldn’t have sex? What the hell happened? I didn’t even know you were with him last night.”
“Well, he needed a ride after he and Nikki broke up. We were talking and he kissed me and we decided to have sex.” When she said it out loud, it all sounded rather dubious. “Then he drove my car to his place and said we shouldn’t have sex. Then he borrowed the book and I left.” Imogen looked around the gym to make sure no one had heard what she had just said. The gym they were at was a haven for race car drivers, and one of them could be wandering by at any given moment. It was originally why she had chosen it, at Suzanne’s recommendation, but now she was thinking it wasn’t all that wise.
“Wow. That’s weird. Just weird. How was the kiss? Did he suck or something? Maybe he was embarrassed.”
“He didn’t suck.” Not in the slightest. She had been completely prepared to have her mind blown in bed, given what a sampling of his kisses had done to her. “And I don’t really think that he has confidence issues. I just think he realized that I’m not his usual type and that he’s not really attracted to me.”
Which she found more than mildly distressing.
“Oh, that’s horse pucky,” Suzanne said. “If the man wasn’t attracted to you, he wouldn’t have been cramming his tongue down your throat in the first place.”
“I believe it’s universally accepted that men frequently engage in sexual acts with women they do not find attractive. Hence the origin of the alcohol-related one-night stand and the term beer goggles.”
“Well, he wasn’t drunk and he’s not a teenager. Not to mention he may have a thing for young and dumb, but Ty is a good man. He would only have sex with a woman if he was attracted to her. I’m sure of it. And if he was certain she was attracted to him.”
Suzanne’s hand shot out and grabbed Imogen’s wrist. “Oh, my Lawd, what if he thought you weren’t attracted to him? That would explain why he pulled the plug.”
Imogen was struggling on her machine to find a rhythm, so Suzanne’s unexpected contact caused her to lose her balance. Grabbing the handles of her treadmill, Imogen slowed down her pace and tried to recover. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible, but it seems a little unlikely. I think I am just a bit too much of a freak for him.”
Suzanne’s eyebrow lifted. “You’re a freak? Like freaky deaky in bed? Did you tell him that?”
Imogen’s already pink cheeks burned from more than exertion. “No, I’m not a freak in bed! I meant, I’m odd in that I’m nothing like the women he usually dates. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I need to let it go.”
Maybe if she kept telling herself that, it would actually be possible. “I need to focus on my thesis. I’m supposed to be in prime physical condition so I can go hiking and dirt biking and jet skiing, since drivers are inclined to participate in aggressive and physical hobbies. I need to watch my diet, drink lots of water, and educate myself on the history of the sport.”
Just thinking about it made her wonder why this had seemed like a good idea. She was a bookworm, not a dirt biker. She had an innate fear of anything that might result in every bone in her body being broken. And judging by the way she was feeling light-headed and on the verge of severe muscle spasms in her thighs, she was not in prime physical condition by any stretch of the imagination.
“That sounds like a lot of work. It seems to me that a man and a woman should just meet, decide they like each other, and call it good.”
“The point is to increase your odds that he will meet you and actually like you.”
Suzanne made a disparaging noise. “And I can’t believe we’re working out at seven in the morning. This is an ungodly hour of the day to be sweating. If I’m working this hard in the morning, I’d prefer it be because my man has woken me up with an eight-inch nudge.”
That was a reminder she didn’t need. That could have been Imogen that morning if she hadn’t somehow scared Ty off the night before.
“I don’t mind the early hour.” Imogen grabbed her water bottle and sucked some down. She was starting to think she wasn’t going to survive to the thirty-minute mark.
“Alright, so we have to sweat our asses off and eat salads and shit and then what?”
“You don’t have to do this with me, you know.”
“It will be fun, and it will piss Ryder off to see me flirting with other drivers.” Suzanne shot her a grin. “And getting on my ex-husband’s nerves is worth the torture of this treadmill. Besides, I have the insider track on who you should target to flirt with and who you shouldn’t.”
“Sounds good, but only if you’re sure. This has the potential to be fairly awful.”
“Since when is flirting with hot men awful?”
“I was born without the flirt gene. It’s truly awful for me.” That was no exaggeration. “I mean, look at how I screwed up last night with Ty. He was flirting and tossing off sexual innuendos, and I just looked at him and said I would not have anal sex with him.”
“You what?” Suzanne shrieked so loud that Imogen saw half a dozen other fitness patrons swivel their heads to look at them. “Did he ask you to? At the party?”
“No, of course not.” Which was what made it all the more ridiculous. “We were in the car and he was hinting about positions, what was to come, etc., and I just blurted out that I wasn’t doing that with him.”
“Girl . . .” was Suzanne’s thought on the matter, her expression one of total horror. “Do not bring up the back door unless he’s knocking on it.”
Imogen was about to agree that was the wise thing to do when she glanced toward the front door and completely lost her rhythm on the treadmill. Ty was standing in the doorway with a gym bag in one hand, a cell phone in the other. “Oh, damn,” she managed to say before her feet lost the fight to stay ahead of the machine and she went flying backward on the belt.
In a split second she was on the floor on her backside, stunned from the impact, and totally mortified. Before she could even think to force her uncoordinated limbs to jump to her feet, hands were under her armpits hauling her to her feet. A glance over her shoulder showed a guy Imogen found vaguely familiar pulling her up.