If there was one place on her body she didn’t want him fondling, it was the underside of her upper arms. Or her stomach. Or her thighs. Or the pads of flesh on her hips. Or her waist, because it was still so soft.

“You rock, Cunningham. Exhale on the extension.”

“Stop doing it for me!” She would have batted his hands away, but she was busy pushing the stupid bar up over her head. Theo kept his fingers on the vulnerable bare flesh of the underside of her arm.

“I’m not doing it for you, Lucy. You’re doing every bit of the work.”

She exhaled on the extension, feeling her shoulders and arms shake with the weight on this last of fifteen repetitions, her abdominals contracting to provide the stability for the movement. “Then why are your hands all over me? Take your hands away and let me do it.”

With great relief she returned the bar to its berth and sat up. Theo guided one of her arms up over her head and bent it at the elbow so that her fingertips touched between her shoulder blades.

“Breathe into the stretch and chill out, Luce. I’m not doing anything for you. I’m just here if you need me. That’s my job.”

She harrumphed.

“That was an excellent workout. You’re a machine, Luce, a lean, mean fitness machine.”

She stood and grabbed her gym towel and water bottle from the floor and glared at Theo while she chugged. Then she wiped the sweat from her face.

“That might be overkill,” she said into the terry cloth.

“The man has a valid point, Lucy.”

It was Tyson. She peeked around the towel to see him standing at Theo’s side, and it was the first time Lucy had noticed that Tyson was at least two inches taller than Theo.

She immediately felt self-conscious. The sweat stains under her pits were so big they had blended with the sweat ring around her neck, which ran all the way around to her back and down into the seat of her yoga pants. She was basically one large, wet rag. Her hair was pulled up in a clip that had long ago lost its fashionable position and was now balanced on her shoulder.

She took another swig of water for fortitude, then fixed her hair clip as best she could. “Hey, Tyson. How’ve you been?”

“Fine, except I don’t get to see you much around here. Our schedules don’t seem to mesh.”

He was one handsome man. Deep-set dark eyes with decadent eyelashes and a nicely trimmed mustache over one beautiful set of lips. Big and hard and bald and black. And he’d just smiled at her, and Lucy wasn’t sure she’d be able to stand up much longer.

“Well, it’s nice to see you, Tyson. And I’ll catch you tomorrow, Theo. Thanks for the workout.”

She turned to head to the locker room and Tyson was at her side. “Mind if I walk with you?”

She shrugged and tried to appear nonchalant. She could feel Theo’s eyes on her. He was staring at her, sending heat her way, from his increasingly distant position behind her. She felt it. She felt him. She was so tempted to look back…

“I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me some evening. I’ve been meaning to ask you for quite a while.”

Lucy stopped and grabbed the towel from around her neck and wiped her face again. She glanced up to Tyson and saw him waiting patiently for her answer, a hint of a smile on his lips.

“Look, I’ve got to ask you this one little thing.” Lucy took a quick sip of water. “Are you sure you want to go out with me?”

Tyson’s laugh was sexy. She liked the sound of it. “I’m very sure. So is that a yes?”

“No. I mean… I have one more question.” She took a steadying breath. “Weren’t you a Division I football player in college?”

“Uh. Yeah. University of Florida. You got something against bigger schools?”

She could tell by the way his eyes sparkled that he found her amusing. Nothing about this subject was amusing to Lucy. And she just knew that if she accepted his offer, Doris was going to have a field day with the deeper meaning of it all. “I have nothing against the schools themselves, just the football programs.”

“Is that right?” Tyson put one of his huge hands on her soaking wet shoulder and encouraged her to continue her walk to the locker room. “Well, how about you shower and change and we’ll go have a cup of coffee across the street and you can tell me all about the activities you do like.”

“Parcheesi. I like Parcheesi. Nobody ever gets hurt playing Parcheesi.”

“You haven’t played Parcheesi with me.”

Lucy giggled. Her worry was ridiculous. Tyson went to school down here, not in Pennsylvania where it was news. He didn’t recognize her. That was paranoia. Plus, maybe going out with Tyson would accomplish two things at once-she could face her fear of jocks and end her dating drought all in one fell swoop.

She looked up at him and realized the most important reason for her to say yes was that Tyson seemed genuine, had a fine sense of humor, and was an incredibly attractive man. It might also help her to get over her completely irrational and dead-end crush on Theo.

“I’d love to have a cup of coffee and talk about Parcheesi. Twenty minutes?”

“Absolutely.” Tyson smiled big at her. “I’ll see you in the lobby.”

Lucy dared to turn around before she entered the locker room, and there Theo stood, right where she’d left him, an expression on his face she swore looked just like jealousy. He gave her a wistful smile, tapped the clipboard against his thigh, and walked away.

You snooze, you lose, Redmond.

Tyson turned out to be the kind of man who liked to laugh and dance and be in the company of women. He seemed to know quite a lot about the female species, and Lucy figured it was knowledge that came from years of intense hands-on study of the subject matter.

In fact, Tyson had his hands on her during much of their first date. A hand on her elbow. A hand wrapped around hers when they walked. A hand on her knee to illustrate a point.

She enjoyed it. She enjoyed his laugh and the easy way he had with everyone they encountered. When they strolled together toward Bicentennial Park for the reggae festival, she relaxed into his strong arm and leaned up against him.

At one point, she turned her head to look up at Tyson, only to find him smiling down at her with that bright, devilish grin of his.

“What’s on your mind, Tyson?” She smiled back at him.

“Just thinking that you’re the sweetest woman I’ve met in a long time, Lucy. Are they all like you in Pittsburgh? ‘Cause if so, I may be relocating.”

She laughed. “There’s only one of me.”

Tyson moved his hand to her waist, pulling her tight against him. “You’re damn cute, Lucy. So tell me, how many other men are you seeing these days? I mean besides Theo of course.”

Lucy stopped and wrenched away from Tyson’s embrace. “I’m not seeing Theo!” She realized she sounded huffy.

“Whoa, girl. Relax.” He pulled her close again and resumed walking. “That was a little joke, you know? Because everybody knows you see Theo every damn day. Unless-”

Lucy shook her head. “Don’t go there.”

“You got a thing for our man Theo?”

Lucy brought her arm up around Tyson’s waist and squeezed. It was a bit of a shock. Tyson’s body was more than buff, it was carved out of granite, and she felt his muscles ripple under her fingers. “Dear God,” she whispered.

“You like that?”

“It’s impressive. What’s your percentage of body fat?”

“You gonna tell me yours if I tell you mine?”

Lucy tilted her head back and laughed. “Like you and the rest of Miami don’t know it already.”

Tyson stopped this time, pulled her close to the revolving door of an office building, and held her steady in front of him. “Listen, Lucy, I like you a lot.” The feel of one of his big fingers stroking the side of her cheek was very nice. Very nice indeed. She felt her eyes close. “But all you have to do is say the word and I’ll back off. Theo’s my friend. I respect him and like him and I’d never want to get in the middle of something you two are working on.”