Getting His Way: Sapphire Falls Book Seven (21 page)

Bryan’s eyebrows slammed together. “You’ve talked to Jake?”

She nodded. “He emailed me and I talked to him last night.”

“And he’s taking you on?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. He’s interested. I need to perform well in Steamboat and have a solid plan together. But I think I can convince him.”

Bryan rolled his eyes. “You’re not going to have to convince him.”

Her heart sped up at that. “Really? You think he’ll take me?” she asked.

Bryan scowled again. “Of course he’ll take you. Unless you stop halfway through the run or take three hours to finish, he’ll take you.”

“Really?” She stepped toward him. “You think my time will be good enough? He made it sound like he wanted it faster.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Bryan said. “That’s
his
job.”

“But—”

“Tess, he’ll take you. And he’ll train you and you’ll run the marathon and you’ll probably qualify for Boston if that’s what you want.”

Tess felt her eyes widen. She wasn’t sure she
wanted
Boston. That wasn’t on her list exactly. She’d much rather run in Paris or Alaska. But
qualifying
for Boston would be amazing. “You think so?”

Bryan’s frown deepened. “Yeah, I think so. That’s what he does.”

“So…great,” she said. She was sure her smile showed how much this meant to her. “Then…that’s great.”

“Yeah, great,” Bryan muttered. He ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t believe you’ve been running all this time and I didn’t know.”

Tess felt her smile die. She shrugged. “Why would you know?”

She
paid attention
him
. Not the other way around.

Bryan didn’t say anything for a long moment.

“What?” she asked him.

“I’d love to know what made you start running. I don’t remember you liking it in high school.”

“I never did it in high school,” she said. She still wanted to avoid telling him exactly what had inspired her. Because she really had left that girl and her obsession behind. Mostly.

“So what made you try it?”

“A couple of things,” she hedged.

“I’d love to know,” he said sincerely. “For one thing, this is clearly big in your life. I really thought I knew you. This is great, but I’ll admit it’s a surprise. A great surprise. You know how I feel about running. I had no idea we shared this passion.”

Passion.

He was referring to running, but there was really something about hearing that word from him that made parts of Tess clench. Not that the whole couch scenario was ever very far from her mind, but
passion
…yeah, she wasn’t sure she’d ever really felt that before. The only thing that came close was the running. Which was also because of Bryan.

“I read a blog,” she confessed. “It was very…inspiring. I was…going through some stuff and I knew I needed a change. That seemed like the answer.”

He was frowning again, but it wasn’t the angry scowl from before. Now he looked concerned. “What were you going through?”

Loving you from a distance for far too long. Realizing that the thing I loved most about you was the way you threw yourself into everything with your whole heart. Realizing I wanted that. For me.

That had been the enlightening she’d needed. To realize that she wanted things for herself, not things that would make Bryan take notice.

She’d wanted to experience the
joy
and abandonment that was so evident in Bryan whenever he did a blog post or a video. She’d wanted to live life the way he did. Because he was really
living
life, while she sat in Sapphire Falls and did the same things over and over, in the same places, with the same people.

Tess chewed the inside of her cheek. She didn’t want to lie to him. Not really. They shared a passion now. That’s what she’d always wanted.

“I was feeling restless. Like I needed a change,” she said. “Like life was passing me by and I wasn’t fully experiencing it. The running started out just making me appreciate nature around me and getting to know my body and my…spirit.” She had to remember this was
Bryan
. He was the one who had written about all of this first. “I wanted to know how hard I could push myself. How hard I would work for something I wanted. I wanted to feel…triumphant.”

Bryan was nodding. He got it.

Of course he did. Those were practically his words.

“And you got what you wanted from it?” he asked.

“I figured out that I can do more than I thought, if I want it bad enough,” she said. “I learned that I can get better. I learned to be patient with myself and kind to myself. And I let myself start thinking bigger—bigger than what I’ve always known, bigger than this town and…this life.”

She felt ungrateful when she said that. She didn’t mean that she didn’t love her life, her family, friends, home. But there was a big, big world out there that she’d really first seen through Bryan’s eyes. Now she wanted to see it up close. She wanted to be
in
it.

“And so now you’re getting ready to go and conquer it all,” Bryan said.

Tess nodded. “Yeah.”

Bryan pulled a long breath in through his nose. “Okay. So I’m actually thrilled to learn it.”

“You are?”

He shrugged. “Of course. Someone I’ve known so well for so long, someone I care about, has discovered the joy and pain of something I’ve loved. Something that made
me
a better person. Yeah, I’m very happy for you.”

Happy for her.
O-o-o-kay
. So maybe the whole let’s-settle-down-and-live-happily-ever-after-together wasn’t set in stone for him.

Tess couldn’t believe how devastated she suddenly felt.

Had she wanted Bryan pursuing her and derailing all of her plans? Making her entertain the idea of throwing it all to the side just to have him? Tempting her with the one thing that could change her mind about everything?

No.

But did she want him pursuing her and telling her that he wanted her and needed her, kissing her and touching her and fulfilling so many of her fantasies?

Well, she wasn’t dead or an idiot.

“Okay, so then I guess that’s that,” she said, starting up the steps. Damn, she should have told him about the running before.

Before
he’d given her an orgasm, seemingly effortlessly. Before she’d learned, for sure, that he had no physical issues with his erections. Before she’d known what she’d been missing.

Dammit.

Bryan caught her arm as she passed him. “So let’s talk more. The half is in two weeks.”

She looked at him, his face only inches from hers. “I know.”

“I can get you ready.”

He would coach her. At least short term. He was offering. God, talk about getting everything she’d always wanted. An orgasm
and
training from Bryan? How could she say no?

“Really?”

“Of course. I’d love to.”

“Well—” If she agreed then she’d
really
be committed to Steamboat. And Jake. And everything.

Like leaving Bryan.

And the fact that she was even hesitating made her finally nod. “Okay.”

“Go shower,” he told her. “I’ll make you some breakfast. And we’ll talk.”

Shower. Eggs.

Well, eggs hadn’t been on her list of things she wanted from Bryan, but knowing him, he was great at those too.

Chapter Nine

She was a runner. Damn. He had not seen that coming.

And he had not expected it to hit him with the strength that it had.

He’d known a lot of female runners over the years. Strong, tough, beautiful women. He’d even dated a couple, slept with more than a couple. But their shared love of the sport had never been as important, and as much of a turn-on, as it was with Tess.

Bryan moved around her kitchen, pulling together the perfect after-workout breakfast. Ten miles was nothing small. She needed a refueling with the right balance of protein and carbs that would nourish her body quickly and well.

If she was doing it right, she would have fueled and hydrated before her run and partway through. And he had the definite impression that she was doing it right. Tess was the girl who kept the mayor’s office running, who was organizing most of the festival, who dotted I’s and crossed T’s for everyone else. So he was sure that Tessa was taking care of herself with her running. She’d looked really good walking up her front sidewalk that morning. Bryan wasn’t sure even Ty looked that healthy after a ten-mile workout.

That still meant she needed a good breakfast, and there was something about doing this for her that felt really good. Intimate even.

Coaching her would have felt the same way. He cracked six eggs, whisking them harder than he needed to. Fuck, he hated the idea of Jake Elliot coaching her.

Jake was a good coach. One of the best. He’d do a great job with Tess. If she was really ready to work hard, Jake could get her there.

But Bryan was completely, irrationally jealous of the idea. Coaching was a relationship unlike any other. You had to be a friend, a psychologist, a teacher. You had to know your athlete well enough to know when he or she needed an empathetic ear, or a kick in the ass.

Bryan knew that Jake was meeting with Tess not to judge her talent or dedication, but to see if there was chemistry between them. Not sexual chemistry—necessarily—but chemistry that would allow Tess to trust him, allow him to be fully, brutally honest, and allow them to maintain a mutual respect even when she hated him and when he said hard-to-hear things.

Then again, Bryan knew Jake wouldn’t rule
out
sexual chemistry.

He poured the eggs into the pan to scramble them and started the whole-wheat toast.

He really wanted to train Tess.

It was the damnedest thing.

He’d given up coaching. Moving to Sapphire Falls meant changing what he did for a living. Ty was still competing, and Bryan was able to coach him to an extent—the extent that he could tell Ty that he needed to step it up or help him through the inevitable mental blocks that happened to any athlete at times. Bryan knew Ty, knew how he trained, knew his competition history and cared about his success, so he could help Ty out. But they weren’t establishing a relationship from square one, and Ty didn’t need Bryan out with him on the trails or beside him in the gym anymore.

New clients would.

Ty had offered Bryan a place with him in his new training program that he was establishing in Sapphire Falls, and Bryan had agreed to help out. But not full time.

Athletes who were just getting to the point of high-level competition were Bryan’s specialty. Not beginners, but not the elite who already had Olympic medals or world champion status or even multiple marathons behind them. He was the transition guy—taking those who had started, who knew what they wanted, and needed help getting to the next level. Like Tess. Evidently.

He’d stumbled upon his gift to push and motivate by being Ty Bennett’s best friend all his life. He’d figured Ty out by knowing him since they were five. He’d watched Ty grow, listened to him talk about his sport, gotten into his head because he was in every part of Ty’s life. He’d known about Ty losing his virginity, the first fight he’d had with his father, the biggest disappointments of his life and the greatest victories. Watching an Olympic athlete develop—not just through his sport, but through his
life
—had given Bryan unique insight. Then he’d gotten to know other athletes through Ty and had figured out they all had things in common.

Bryan’s career had started beside swimming pools, on tracks and trails, and in bars postrace, talking to—and listening to—athletes of all backgrounds, at all levels. And he’d figured out that his love for sports, his outgoing, charismatic personality and his undying optimism was a perfect combination for coaching.

But he’d known a move to Sapphire Falls would make continuing that path difficult. So Bryan had accepted that it was time for something new. He’d work with those athletes as needed, but he couldn’t be in the trenches with them. He couldn’t be hands-on with them, the way he was used to being. He had run, biked and swum with his clients. He’d literally worked out their muscle knots, made them their smoothies, started and stopped the stopwatches. He’d been beside them, with them, through the transition to serious, every day, eat-sleep-breathe athlete.

But he had been looking forward to the change. To hanging out with people who were less intense—and less crazy—than high-level athletes. He was happy to be spending time with people who were happy with the simple things in life, farming and family, rather than those who worked their bodies to the peak, and sometimes beyond, for a little bit of gold and glory.

Athletes were nuts.

A case could be made for people in Sapphire Falls being a little nuts too, of course. But they were good nuts. Happy nuts.
Satisfied
nuts.

Athletes were never satisfied. At least not the successfully competitive ones. They always wanted more. That was what kept them training.

Satisfaction
was what he wanted—in a nutshell. The ability to look around and say, “I’m where I’m supposed to be”, instead of always looking ahead and pushing for more. Whereas it looked like Tess was doing the opposite. She’d just discovered that she wanted more.