Page 55 of I'm Your Guy
“It is what it is,” Rigo says listlessly. “I knew what I was getting into by marrying a soldier. It’s just that…”
“It’s just what?”
“It isn’t logical.” He swallows hard. “But I worry more at the end of a deployment. Like maybe he’ll let down his guard.”
“Oh, honey. He won’t. But love is kind of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t kind of thing, isn’t it?”
“Definitely,” he growls as we switch places again. “Okay. Now tell me your thing.”
I’m still unsettled and very confused. “You and Buck follow hockey pretty closely, right?”
“Of course.” He lifts the weight.
“Has there ever been a queer player on the Cougars?”
His eyes widen. “Publicly? No way. But statistically, sure. There must have been.”
As I watch him lift, I try to figure out how much I’m willing to say.
“What’s up with that question?” he finally asks. “You’re being weird. You rarely go to the gym, for starters.”
“You either,” I grumble.
“I need to believe that my husband is coming home. He’s going to be ripped from all that time on an army base, so I gotta put in some effort.”
I picture Tommaso’s hot body pressing against mine, and I close my eyes. I did not imagine how hungry his kisses were, or how deeply he was into it.
But the second his phone rang, he freaked out.
“You’re not going to pass out, are you?” Rigo asks.
“No,” I insist.
“Then you’re up. Lunges.” He takes some weight off the bar and points at me.
We lunge and lunge until my legs are about to fall off. Rigo pulls me toward the row of treadmills and tells me to do a cooldown.
He waits until we’ve been trotting side by side for a couple minutes before asking, “So what the hell happened? Did your boss make a move on you?”
I gulp.
He whistles under his breath. “Jesus, really? And you didn’t hit that?”
“Oh, I would have. But it was just a kiss.” Although it wasn’t. We practically devoured each other. “I don’t think he meant to do it, because he kind of lost his mind afterward. And, God, don’t mention this to anybody.”
“I would never. Maybe he surprised himself,” he suggests. “You are pretty cute. Who kissed who?”
I try to think. “It’s blurry. We were tussling over some fabric samples.”
“Sounds hawt.” Rigo fans himself. “Listening to you talk about thread counts could make a man lose his mind.”
“You shut up.”
He snickers. “I’m only sort of joking. It sounds like you’ve made a real effort for this client. Going out of your way to accommodate him. Making it fun.”
“I make a real effort for all my clients,” I insist. “You have to meet them where they are. And Jersey doesn’t like to talk about fabrics, so sometimes I have to make a game out of it.”
“Hmm,” Rigo says. “Do you have cute little nicknames for all your clients, too?”
