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  “This one is a crowd favorite,” Logan said.

  She was both disappointed and grateful when it ended and he laid her leg back flat on the mat.

  Oh thank God, Holly thought, I don’t know how much more of that I could stand. She congratulated herself on maintaining her composure.

  And then he straddled the leg he was done with, he grabbed her other leg, and the exquisite torture began all over again.

  She managed to withstand his repeating the process by thinking of nothing but breathing and refusing to look directly at him. It bordered on hopeless. His being invaded every one of her senses with every one of his. He softly murmured words of encouragement and support, and his hands overran all her nerve endings. She was certain if she actually looked into his face and he smiled at her again, she would liquefy. She didn’t see how it could get any worse. Until he sat her up, knelt behind her, and began to massage her shoulders. His strong powerful hands were surprisingly gentle. He moved her ponytail to the side to gain better access. She could feel his breath warm on the back of her neck. He was completely unconcerned with her drenched condition. His warm hands sensually kneaded; his thumbs pressed into her shoulder blades and rubbed. She wanted to scream, she wanted to moan. She felt as languid as if she’d just been made love to. He finally rose. He moved in front of her and, bracing his feet, held out his hands. She automatically put her hands in his and planted her own feet on the floor. He exhaled and easily hauled her up until she was standing beside him.

  “Fantastic job.” He looked down on her, beaming.

  You took the words right out of my mouth, she thought.

  Chapter Five

  They saw each other three times a week. Holly was always on time, ready to go, with her sweatpants, her baggy washed-out T-shirts, and her wisecracks. She always entered his gym with a calm yet steadfast determination that rivaled the attitude of any of his more notably competitive clients. She had a self-deprecating sense of humor that Logan came to enjoy, once he realized it wasn’t real malice aimed at herself. It was refreshing not to have to spend half their time together stroking her ego. At times he wondered if she even had one. It wasn’t the way she went to great lengths to avoid catching a glimpse of herself in any of the mirrors that lined a full wall of the gym—that didn’t surprise him. It was more in the way that when it was time to work, she dug in, with total focus and concentration, until the set was over. Then, as she recovered, she delivered the occasional punch line. She had no concern for the rolls of fat around her midsection that became exposed as her shirt hiked up when she lifted weights above her head or bent over. She ignored the wedgies created when she lunged. She wordlessly got into every single uncomfortable and sometimes graceless position he told her to assume. And she would sweat, even more than she did that first day. So much so that she began to bring her own towels, although he specifically told her he had more than enough to meet her every need. He was thoroughly amused when he learned why she was doing it. She would bring beach-sized towels and lay them over the weight benches or any other piece of equipment that had a seat. She had read somewhere it was the polite thing to do so she wouldn’t “skunk it up.”

  “It’s not that kind of gym,” he laughingly told her. He wasn’t offended. He knew his places were lavish, immaculate, and state-of-the-art.

  “I know,” Holly quickly said, looking down and pretending to examine her fingernails before continuing, her face flushed with embarrassment. “But I’m leaving … I’m leaving … snail trails.”

  “Snail trails?” He laughed again, fully appreciating the visual.

  “Oh good grief.” She snapped her head back up at him and pressed on, still embarrassed but now aggravated as well. “Yeah, I’m sweating between my legs. I’m leaving a mess at anything and everything my ass touches!”

  He realized it undoubtedly was something that was truly bothering her and he swallowed one more laugh. “Holly, I clean all the equipment that’s used before the next client arrives. It comes with the territory. You aren’t the only person that happens to, although you’re probably the first to give it such a colorful name. I’m guessing that explains why you’re bathing in CK One before you arrive.”

  “No,” she said, trying to stay irritated but smiling in spite of herself. “I do that because I don’t want to smell like a dirty sneaker. It’s too much?”

  “It smells nice,” he said, returning her smile with a rakish one of his own and giving her a friendly rub on the shoulder. He took her towel and laid it on a nearby incline bench. “And a welcome change from all the swamp ass I’ve gotten used to.”

  “Oh my God, swamp ass.” Holly giggled lying down on the bench and towel while Logan retrieved a barbell. “I bet we could make up an entire dictionary of grody gym terms.”

  He handed over the forty-pound barbell. “I’m all for it, but right now the only term you need to worry about now is ‘whoop your ass.’ Come on, give me fifteen chest presses. Now.”

  He began ordering beach-sized towels to accommodate her. And she continued to sweat for him in buckets.

  Holly spoke little about her past, her present, her future, and Logan never asked, chalking it up to awkwardness at the differences in their lifestyles. It was something he admired about her, but it also left him intrigued. It wasn’t uncommon for his clients to go above and beyond in telling him about their personal lives, at times making him feel more like a therapist than a personal trainer. He was made confidant to secrets about everything from wives and lovers to children and parents, coworkers and teammates. He kept people motivated through divorces and addictions and scandals. He had become a master at taking the energy generated by an emotional rant and transferring it into a successful workout. But with Holly, it was all about business and innocuous witticisms. Be here now; it’s time to work, not play This Is Your Life. She was paying him money that in all likelihood was hard for her to come by; they owed it to each other to get the most out of every session.

  As time passed, however, Logan’s curiosity grew and he had to hold himself back from asking. Her late husband’s name was Bruce. That was it, the only outside information he became privy to. He only discovered it when she mentioned it in passing. She’d been talking about how they used to hike. It came up when Logan commented on Holly’s exceptional cardiovascular endurance—not because she wanted to chat.

  Instead of trying to feed his curiosity, Logan worked Holly hard, sometimes harder than he would any other client. She was a quick learner. If ever she became frustrated, he never heard her complain. In fact, she seemed to thrive on the impossibility of a chore. Sometimes he would hear her sincerely groan just before falling short of finishing a task he’d set before her, and almost always after. She understood his mission was to constantly raise the bar and set her up to fail. She knew if it ever actually became easy, it meant he wasn’t doing his job.

  Each time he weighed her, which was once a week, Holly thought up a new way to maim him—and kept it to herself. Her favorite fantasies usually ended with Logan being shoved down the stairs at the entrance to the building. The very same stairs she climbed to get to him.

  “Let’s talk about your diet,” he said to her one day, out of the blue, about a month into her training. She was warming up on an elliptical machine.

  “Let’s not,” she instantly replied. Geez, it isn’t even a weigh day, she internally lamented. Why did he want to take an unnecessary, internal-organ-rupturing tumble? “I’d rather do lunges.” There was nothing Holly detested more than leg lunges. Dragging around her own carcass was excruciating, especially when she was in a room full of nifty-looking weight machines. He made her do hundreds of them during every session.

  “Not an option, kid, but I’ll be happy to oblige on the lunges,” he retorted smoothly. He knew she didn’t want to have the conversation. But the time for it had come, whether she wanted to have it or not.

  “I like to eat. End of story.” She scowled, getting off the cardio equipment and trying to thi
nk of how to get them both closer to the stairway. Maybe she could crack him upside his head with a dumbbell instead. A ten-pounder would certainly do the trick, if she got in a good wind-up with it.

  He smiled and crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you really think you got to your current weight because you like to eat? Most people like to eat. It’s been reported that it’s even necessary for survival. Have you had your thyroid checked?”

  “Yes,” she puffed out at him. “Right after Bruce died I went to the doctor for a full physical. Unfortunately, I’m fine internally. Oh yeah, he did mention I was too fat.”

  “There is no denying genetics play a role in a person’s body type. People are predisposed to six-pack abs just like they are to having blue eyes. But any time a person is carrying excessive fat, there is usually something deeper going on. There are generally two common types of eating disorders suffered by the obese.” He continued in his maddening clinical way to ignore her reluctance to delve into precisely what she didn’t want to talk about. As he talked, he went about gathering all the weights she would be using during her session. “One is compulsive overeating. In layman’s terms, an addiction to food. Using food and eating to hide from emotion. To fill a void and cope with stress and the problems that occur in everyday life. Compulsive overeaters are most times fully aware that their eating habits aren’t normal but get little support, other than being told to get some willpower and go on a diet. It’s just as damaging to their self-esteem as telling an anorexic to just eat.”

  “Who would have thought?” Holly burst out laughing. “I have something in common with an anorexic.”

  “Sort of,” Logan answered, “with the exception of the stereotyping that overweight people have no control. And that’s a big misnomer. It’s totally about control. Many of them are specifically using their bodies as would-be blockades against the very people they feel are judging them. They want everyone to like them but are using food to cope with feelings of not being good enough, which only perpetuates the problem, and usually makes it worse. It’s a vicious cycle of eating as a way to forget the pain of needing acceptance.”

  “I don’t care if people like me,” she told him.

  “Oh, come on,” Logan replied. He was determined not to let her one-liner herself out of the conversation, no matter how badly she might want to. “I don’t believe you don’t care if people like you. Everyone wants to be liked, at least a little bit. And despite your best efforts at being surly, you are really quite likeable. That’s why it’s also important to remember that most eating disorders have emotional aspects.”

  “Okay then, so what’s the other train of thought on what ails me?” Holly asked him, trying to minimize the sarcasm, feeling flattered that he called her likeable.

  Logan went on, encouraged by her willingness to listen and not just shut him down. “The other culprit is binge eating. Binge eaters usually suffer a combination of symptoms similar to compulsive overeaters, only with bulimia added in.”

  “I’m not bulimic.” She snickered.

  “Obviously,” he retorted.

  “I have thought about taking it up once or twice,” she added, snickering again.

  “Please don’t,” he told her seriously.

  She immediately apologized. “Sorry. I realize you’re only trying to help.”

  “Good girl.” He smiled at her again and continued. “What bingers do that is different from compulsives is consume large quantities of food in a short period of time, usually two hours or less. They eat uncontrollably, even after becoming uncomfortably full. They’ll sometimes eat things they don’t even particularly like just for the sake of eating. But unlike bulimics, they don’t purge after an episode. They also have an extremely difficult time losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight.”

  “Sounds like you’re entering my territory,” she said, and Logan had trouble deciding whether she was joking or not. Given that survival itself was probably a struggle for her since losing her husband, he couldn’t shake the vision of her at home, full of cheap processed foods that were high in fat, sugar, and calories and with no nutritional value.

  “Actually, my dear complicated little grasshopper, I think you are probably a combination of both.”

  “Figures,” she said scathingly.

  “I never said you didn’t have your work cut out for you,” Logan told her truthfully.

  “So what’s the solution, Einstein?” She pressed him, suddenly anxious to end the conversation and get to lifting.

  Logan took note of the switch in her demeanor. He was getting too close and she was getting ready to put her wall back up. He decided it was best to finish the tutorial for now, but not before he covered the most important part of the topic. “Look, it’s too soon to tell what sort of body you are going to end up with when we’re done here. If what you told me when we met is true, odds are you’re not going to end up looking like Jennifer Aniston, no matter how much time you spend in a gym working at it. And that’s just something that you need to come to terms with. It’s about getting you healthy. But this I want you to know, and I want it to sink in: there are five specific factors that determine fitness; you are in firm possession of four of them.”

  “Really?” She stopped fidgeting and gave him back her full attention.

  “Absolutely,” he told her enthusiastically. “The criteria break down into cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition, which is the clinical term for your body-fat-to-mass ratio.”

  She interrupted with a snort. “I can see you saved the best for last. Let me take a crack at the one I’m falling short on.”

  “Hey.” Logan promptly cut her off and pointed a stern finger in her direction. “I’m not going to tolerate the wisecracks on this one. Do you realize just what a special gift you’ve actually been given? From the first day you walked in here, I’ve been impressed with not only your cardio endurance but your muscular strength and flexibility. You don’t get that stuff from just having a good attitude. Athletes bust ass for months to get what you had naturally from the get-go.”

  “I feel a lecture coming on,” she murmured, beginning to chew on a fingernail.

  He relented. “If that’s what you needed, I would surely provide it. But I don’t want to lecture you. I just want you to be aware of how much you have going for you. For when it gets tough. And make no mistake, it’s going to.”

  “Tougher than an eating disorder and subjecting myself to your torture? You don’t think I’m going to be able to make it, do you?” She sounded dejected for the first time since he made her get on the scale.

  “Holly,” he said, softening just a little while remaining firm. “You’ve been giving a hundred percent since day one and your body is responding to it. But eventually, it’s going to adjust to the new routine. The eating is the thing that’s going to challenge you, probably for the rest of your life. I just want to make sure you’ve taken stock of your arsenal for when you’re feeling weak and out of control. So that you can get past it and make the sort of changes that take root and last. It’s no accident that ninety-five percent of people who take off weight put it back on. They get discouraged and their old habits are the comfortable and familiar ones. I don’t want that to happen to you. Getting in control of eating addiction isn’t like kicking smoking or drugs or alcohol. Those are addictions that you give up completely, and once you get through the withdrawal you win the war by abstaining. Your battle is so tricky. You’re always going to need food. You’re going to have to get to a point where you coexist with it and it’s not the crutch you fall back on.”

  “I guess now would be a bad time to tell you I’ve taken up smoking?” Holly tried to bring some flippancy to the situation. The attempt was unsuccessful and she saw his eyes flash with genuine anger.

  “If I thought you were the least bit serious, I would actually think about throttling you.”

  “Geez. Lighten up. I’m having enough trouble wit
h one addiction, thank you very much. I’m just trying to stop the shakedown here.”

  He didn’t want to shake her down, force her into talking about the things that she might not be ready to admit. He watched her silently continue to bite her nails, absorbing the information he had given her. She heard him, and for now that would have to be sufficient. He wanted her back into the proper head space before they fully got into her session.

  “One thing is certain: the most common denominator in both compulsive eating and binging is the cycle of food replacing emotion. Depression is an emotion that ranks high on that list and is something that has been in the forefront of your life the last couple years, no matter how hard you might try to suppress it. Have you thought about seeing your doctor for it? Maybe a therapist?”

  “Oh, sure.” Holly made no attempt to mask her disdain. “Let me go blather my problems and take advice from someone who in all probability is crazier than I am. Yeah, no thanks.”

  “Don’t be so quick to assume there’s anyone out there crazier than you,” he teased. “But for the sake of argument, how about just calling your regular doctor? Surely any doctor worth his salt would recognize the depression that comes with becoming a widow.”

  “Why?” she asked him heatedly. “So they can start mixing drug cocktails to keep me from feeling anything at all? Or better yet, they give me some great new drug they didn’t bother to fully test and I wake up six months later growing a tail?”

  “Okay. I get it.” He was quick to try to defuse her anger, attributing it to the fact that running to see a doctor for something that wasn’t outwardly hurting her was something she probably couldn’t afford. Especially considering that he was taking up a chunk of her cash flow. Plus she did have a point. “And by ‘get it,’ I mean that I totally understand and in many ways agree. I’m always in favor of trying holistic means before running to the pharmacy, definitely in cases like this. And you’re in luck for employing other tactics. Endorphins are natural chemicals in the body that fight depression. They release during physical outputs of energy, and you’re certainly doing plenty of those.”