“You think most men would have held out long in fear?”
“I know they would have. And I know there are very few who would be comfortable wearing this.” She tapped the leather. “You know I’m coming to CDS, right?”
“Justice mentioned it.” Something about branding and how their clients viewed them.
“So you won’t mind if I’m in charge?”
He smiled slowly. “Is that what all this is about? No, Taryn, you don’t intimidate me, either. I like that you’re good at your job. I like that you boss your football players around.”
He liked her, but saying that would take them a place neither of them needed to go. They were looking for something fun, not romantic. The challenge, not the fall.
“You’re saying I can boss you around, too?” she asked.
“Never going to happen.”
“You sound sure of yourself.”
“I am.”
She leaned against him for a second, then stepped away. “Good.”
* * *
TARYN HAD REACHED the point in her career where she was rarely nervous before a client meeting. But heading to CDS was different. She knew the cause—a certain man with gray eyes and a way of looking at her that made her feel feminine and flirty. She would say uncertain, only that wasn’t one of the emotions she allowed herself.
Still, she’d dressed carefully, choosing a Hervé Léger bicolor jacket in black and white and a black pencil skirt. Her shoes were Valentino Rockstud open-toe pumps with a two-inch platform and a five-inch heel. She wanted to be close to the tallest person in the room. With size came power. Kenny had taught her that. She wasn’t willing to bulk up, but she could rock a high heel.
She crossed the parking lot to the entrance and stepped into the offices. Justice was waiting by the front desk. He greeted her and shook her hand before leading her back to a conference room.
When they were seated, he offered her coffee, then flipped on a computer that began a PowerPoint presentation.
“As I told you,” he began, “our business is divided into two main parts. We provide professional training to people entering the service protection industry.”
She looked at him. “You don’t really call it that, do you?”
He flashed her a smile. “No.” The slide changed from a man in fatigue cargo pants and a T-shirt to a group of men and women in suits. “We also provide corporate events. A chance for a group to experience something outside their comfort zone. It allows them to bond as a unit. We are the shared adversary.”
He went over the structure of the company. Justice ran the business, Ford brought in clients, while Angel designed the various exercises, obstacle courses and training programs. Consuelo ran most of the classes directly.
He showed her different ads they’d used and handed her copies of other materials.
She pulled a laptop out of her tote and booted it up. Justice gave her their Wi-Fi code and she logged on to the internet.
“Let’s go through your website,” she said, moving her finger across the touch pad, then clicking the page. “Here’s what I see are the big issues that should be addressed.”
Two hours later she and Justice had gone through all their material and every page of the website. She’d made notes about what he said was important and shared her own thoughts on improvements. She’d suggested a secure area for their security-based clients where a log-on would be required. With the right encryption in place, information could be shared without any security risks.
“You’ve made good points,” Justice told her. “Ready for the demonstration?”
“It’s what I’ve been looking forward to most,” she said with a grin.
This would be the first time she would see Angel in his work environment. Usually that wasn’t something that interested her, but Angel wasn’t a guy in an office.
Justice picked up the phone and dialed three numbers. “We’re ready,” he said into the receiver.
She followed him down the hall and into what looked like a large gym. There were windows up toward the high ceiling. Light spilled in, but no one could see what was happening inside. There were weights and ropes and pads on the floor. Everything seemed to have a hard edge. She noticed there wasn’t a single elliptical in sight.
Ford, Consuelo and Angel walked into the room. They were all dressed in green cargo pants and black T-shirts. In Consuelo’s case the T-shirt was a tank style. Taryn worked out four or five days a week. She did her thirty minutes of cardio and then a thirty-minute Pilates routine that kept her toned and flexible. She considered herself to be in decent shape. But next to these hard bodies, she felt flabby and weak.
Her boys were guys with muscles, but Angel and Ford were bigger across the chest and...harder. Consuelo had definition that Taryn hadn’t known was possible in a woman. She suspected it had to do with function. Her boys trained for a game. The CDS folks had trained to stay alive.