Luke had a large room. It was actually two rooms together, much like hers. The first room was a sitting room of sorts, not that they’d given him any luxuries. The TV that should have been in the corner, noticeably wasn’t. Neither was there any sign of books or magazines to help pass the time. She winced, realizing he wasn’t exactly getting much in the way of hospitality. The couch by the window was empty. She supposed he was in the adjoining bedroom. Past that would be an en suite bathroom.
From where she stood, Dani heard heavy breathing, huffing and puffing and groans. Wondering what she’d walked into, she slipped the shoes off and carried them into the bedroom. There on the floor, Luke was doing pushups. His shirt was off, and he was covered in a sheen of sweat that accented the cut of his muscles and the ripple of the skin as he flexed. “Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, hundred, hundred-one...”
Dani stood there, transfixed, watching him work out. His arms were thicker than she remembered, his back broader. She’d seen him naked twice, but it was still an eye-catching sight. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“Tell me when you get to six hundred,” she said, leaning against the doorjamb.
He pushed off, caught his feet under him, and leapt to a standing position while spinning around to look at her. It was a move worthy of an acrobat, or a gymnast... or a fighter. For the first time, she realized what she should have a long time ago: Luke was a trained federal agent. It meant he knew how to handle himself in a fight. He was trained—like she was.
And from the look of it, in better shape than she was.
I should have been working out, not stomping in my room like a child.
Being cooped up had made her soft. And she’d had the audacity to think she would be able to help him somehow. He looked like he could take on every guy in the place. At the same time. Blindfolded.
He stared at her. She stood without moving, leaning with her hip cocked, stiletto heels dangling from a finger, her short dress riding up a little on her hip. She knew very well what she looked like; she’d organized her body and dress before speaking.
“What are you doing here?” he growled at her.
She smiled and looked down at his heaving chest, to the tight belly and the hair that seemed to rise from the sweatpants that rode low on his hips.
“You can pretend all you want, but you’re wearing sweatpants. I can tell you’re happy I’m here.”
CHAPTER SIX
Luke was horrible at doing nothing.
If there was one thing about prison, even a prison as nice as a mansion with private rooms, it was that enforced idleness left one with nothing to do but exercise. There were no weights, no treadmills, no fancy machines, but there were pushups, sit-ups, jumping jacks—even if the ceilings were a bit low for that—and the room with the ceiling fan was a different matter entirely. In a pinch, he could do a chin up on the lintel between rooms, but only by holding on with his fingertips. Lately he’d found himself embracing that challenge more and more, liking the sheer physicality of it.
Still, it was better than nothing. When they took him, someone had to go his place and grab his things. It was a small amount to be sure, the place was a cover address and he hadn’t taken all that much clothing with him, but the sweats were essential. He suspected they hadn’t done it to make things easier for him. They were simply trying to make it look like he’d moved on, should anyone miss him. He figured he should be thankful they hadn’t tossed his clothes outright, not that he’d owned much worth saving.
He couldn’t jog, though he’d tried to get them to let him go running, promising to return right away, but that hadn’t gone over very well. He was stuck with what he could accomplish in the room. He’d tried to work out in the front part of the room, the ‘sitting area’, but between the ceiling fan and the position of the furniture it was easier to work out in the broad space between the bed and the window.
He pushed through another set of pushups. Damn Randy. He was more interested in getting Benny Bianchi behind bars than pulling his so-called friend out of the fire.
He took his anger and frustration out on the carpet. He’d started with crunches and moved on to pushups. He’d slacked off the calisthenics for too long, but the days of confinement had allowed him the chance to build up, albeit slowly. Today, in his anger and frustration, he pushed past the 90 mark and finally stopped, gasping and groaning at one hundred. His stomach hurt. It hurt a lot. He wondered if he’d pulled something, and determined that he didn’t really care.
Then there was dinner. Rather, there was the absence of dinner. Not being allowed to leave the room his food was brought to him on a tray, with little domes over the plates. Dinner today was a dirty plate, an empty coffee cup, and a glass filled with a foul-smelling liquid he didn’t want to investigate further. Samuel had brought him the tray with a menacing grin. So he wasn’t allowed food. Or Samuel had eaten it instead. It could have been worse. He might have tried serving up poison. Or something tainted with the intent of making him foully sick.
This at least was straightforward, even if cruel.
He’d flushed the liquid and placed the tray at the door. In the meantime, he drank his fill from the bathroom sink and worked on another round of pushups instead. If his outrage at Randy prompted him to exceed his former limit of crunches, then thoughts of Dani fueled his pushups to new levels. The way she’d behaved when he tried to pull her to one side, the way she’d clawed and fought him. She was a pain in the ass.
But worse—that damn red dress. She had to have known the effect that dress would have, not only on him but on the entire cadre of bully-boys who lined up to gawk and stare and drool. She had great legs, a good figure, and that... thing left nothing to the imagination. Whether she realized it or not, it had had an effect on him too, a nasty one, making it impossible for him to concentrate on getting them the hell out of here.
He slammed out the first ten pushups before he realized he’d done them. He’d tried to tell her that they were being monitored, that he needed the damned stick, that they might be able to break free. But he needed that stick and she didn’t seem to get the importance of that. And in the meantime, he couldn’t even leave the room like an adult, and she’d put her knee in his balls for his trouble.