Chapter 7

The following day, Lara was taking a much-needed water break after scrubbing in for Dr. Baumgartner when Travis caught up to her.

He tapped his little paper cup against hers, making her smile despite the trying day she had had working with the crabbiest surgeon on the planet. Travis’s easy smile and go-with-the-flow demeanor never failed to calm her mind.

“Rough day?” he asked.

“Just came out of surgery with Baumgartner.” Lara released a withering sigh.

Travis grimaced. “Yeesh. I hope that’s vodka in your cup.”

That evoked a genuine laugh, and Lara could already feel some tension releasing from her shoulders.

After her procedure with Dr. Lima, Lara found assisting Dr. Baumgartner to be painstaking. Dr. Lima was hardly a warm-and-fuzzy person, but she hadn’t made Lara feel incapable of getting anything right.

“This is your last shift of the week, right?” Travis asked, and Lara nodded. “How about we unwind afterward? I’ll be clocking out about thirty minutes after you, if you’re down.”

Intrigued by his sly smirk and wagging eyebrows, she asked, “What do you have in mind?”

“How do you feel about kickboxing? We can pretend the pads are Dr. B’s face.”

“Oh, I am so in.”

***

Lara went home ahead of Travis to wash off the hospital and change. It was mildly humbling to dig her workout gear out of a box stashed at the back of her closet.

She hoped Travis wouldn’t mind her bright-pink shorts and discolored socks, but she had neither the time nor patience to search for something less embarrassing.

Thankfully, he didn’t seem like the sort to care about such things, and since they were only going to be in his apartment, she didn’t think it would really matter.

With that in mind, she easily convinced herself it also wouldn’t matter that her shorts were itty-bitty and made her look like Barbie doing roller derby.

On cue—and as had been the trend lately in Lara’s life—the universe, upon seeing her in an upswing, decided to knock her back down.

“Ah, hello again.”

Lara froze, her back to the hall as the lock on her door clicked into place. She wondered if she stood still long enough, would he convince himself he was hallucinating?

“Nice shorts,” Zavien said.

Of course, she wasn’t so lucky. With a sigh, Lara turned to face him.

Since he had left that chocolate and cheeky note at her door, she had actually been finding it more difficult to hate him as ardently as she once had.

Despite his ever-present mask, Lara knew he was smirking; that twinkle in his eye told her everything. “Don’t be a perv,” she chided, though it admittedly lacked conviction.

She looked at him for real, taking him in from head to toe. Usually, she got stuck on the fact that seventy percent of his face was hidden and that his behavior was abysmal, but this time she noticed him.

“You look nice,” she said, surprising herself with the compliment—and him, too, because his eyebrows shot up before his eyes crinkled at the corners in a presumed smile.

He did look nice, though. His dark jeans fit so well they looked like they had been sewn right onto him, and his crisp button-down shirt betrayed his slouch by showing off deceptively broad shoulders.

“Don’t sound so shocked. We can’t all pull off mismatched socks and spandex.” He cast a lingering, trailing gaze from her feet up to the aforementioned shorts.

Her face heated. “What did I just say about being a perv?”

Zavien laughed, and Lara was horrified to find it was quite a nice sound—deep, rumbly, inviting. Things she had not expected, nor wanted, from him.

When she started moving toward Travis’s apartment, Zavien kept step beside her. She found that his nearness wasn’t entirely awful either.

“So what’s the occasion? Court hearing for your public menace charges?” She stopped at Travis’s door, but Zavien took a few steps farther, toward the elevators.

He paused, turning his head just enough for her to catch the mischievous gleam in his eye. “If convicted, I’ll have my mail forwarded to you,” he said with a solemn nod, like he was making one last promise.

Before she could lash out at him, he rounded the corner. She had half a mind to chase him, but Travis’s impeccable timing saved her what would undoubtedly have ended with her own humiliation, as every interaction with Zavien seemed to go.

“Were you talking to yourself?” Travis glanced up and down the hall.

Lara ignored him in favor of growling under her breath in frustration. “I hope your pads are thick because, boy, do I have some tension to work out.”

***

“Argh!” Lara snarled as her leg hit Travis’s pad with a loud slap.

Travis grunted, his arm recoiling after her kick.

“You okay?” she asked, already readying herself for another go.

Travis shook it off and nodded, repositioning himself to block her punches. “Go for it.”

She didn’t need to be told twice. She let a flurry of jabs hit the pads strapped to Travis’s palms.

“Left hook,” he instructed, and she followed, her left fist sailing toward his raised left hand. “Good. Uppercut.”

They continued like that—him instructing her, her throwing as hard as she could, and him blocking. It wasn’t exactly the sort of physical activity she would usually have done with a man as cute as Travis, but God, was she having fun.

At least until things got out of hand.

In her typical overachieving fashion, Lara aimed to one-up herself with every blow. So when Travis called for another kick, she put all her weight behind it.

He stumbled before gravity had him teetering backward with nothing to stop him. Try as she might to catch him, she was no match for the physics of the situation. Between the momentum of his fall and his far heavier weight, her attempt had been destined for disaster.

And disastrous it was.

The two of them hit the floor in a series of thumps and groans, with Travis falling ass-first and Lara coming down right on top of him, all flailing hands and pointy elbows.

Travis wheezed as Lara rolled off him and onto the hardwood. He must have had the wind knocked out of him because he gasped a few times before choking out, “You know, you’re a lot stronger than you look.”

Lara would have laughed if she weren’t so exhausted. Instead, she smiled up at the ceiling. “You’re meaner than you look.” She bumped her shoulder against his.

The floor was nice and cool and felt heavenly against her sweaty body. They lay there for Lord knows how long, catching their breaths and winding down from a strenuous workout.

“That was amazing, thank you,” Lara said once her body had returned to a normal temperature.

“Seemed like you needed it,” he said with a laugh. “I didn’t expect you to be into it, honestly.”

“I dated this guy in college who was really into sports. Like, anything you could imagine, he was all for it—kickboxing and wrestling included.”

“And you were right there with him.” Travis’s smile came through in his voice.

She laughed. “Too competitive for my own good.”

Travis hummed in agreement, and she swung her arm to swat at him, pleased when her hand made contact with smooth skin and hard muscle. It was hard to tell where she had hit him, but the low grunt he emitted told her it had been somewhere good.

“I guess that explains this business with Crane.” Travis turned to face her, and after she met his gaze, he continued, “You just have to get the last word.” He rolled his eyes, but his dimply grin told her he wasn’t judging.

“He’s a jerk,” she said. “I won’t just let him get away with it.”

“Maybe he likes you.”

Lara sat up so she could glare down at him as she rebuked him. “Bite your tongue.”

Travis laughed before sitting up beside her, his smile even more charming this close. His sweat weighed down his pretty brown curls, slicking them over his forehead and toward his warm brown eyes.

He really was so very sweet and cute, and Lara was immensely disappointed in herself for finding that it simply wasn’t enough to capture her whole attention.

A little saddened by the revelation, Lara hopped up to her feet, offering a hand to Travis. “C’mon,” she said, tugging him toward the door. “I’ll treat you to a post-workout smoothie to make up for the bruised coccyx.”

Thankfully, a juice bar was a five-minute walk from the building, and during that time, she admitted to her failed attempt at looking inside Zavien’s package and the chaos that had followed.

Once they had their smoothies in hand and were making their slow way back home, the conversation stalled. Lara glanced over at Travis, who was seemingly lost in thought. She kept quiet, and the tension between them grew until, at last, he broke the silence.

“Look, I like you, Lara, but even a blind man could see how Zavien gets under your skin.” He shot her a knowing look accompanied by a smile before adding, “And it’s no hard feelings. You’re cute and smart, but honestly, you’re a little scary for me.”

Lara gawked at him, stammering, until she finally decided what to be most outraged by. “You think I like him?”

“Well, he certainly seems to like you. I can’t imagine him expending so much effort on anyone otherwise. He’s a super low-key guy.”

“I can’t believe you think I like him,” Lara muttered, more to herself.

“Truth be told, I kind of had a thing for him when I first moved in.” This comment made Lara’s jaw drop, and he shrugged in response. “He’s a bit of a weirdo for my tastes, though.”

“So, wait.” Lara grabbed his arm and turned to him. “I’m too scary, and Zavien is too weird?” She raised her brows. “Have you considered that maybe you’re the problem?” she teased.

Travis laughed and bumped his shoulder against hers. “No. Besides, I think Zavien’s into the crazy. You might just be two peas in a pod.”

“Are you ~trying~ to offend me? I’m nothing like that asshole.”

“Uh-huh.” His tone dripped with sarcasm. “I could help you make him jealous.”

Lara considered that as she sipped her smoothie.

Whatever she had with her cryptic neighbor was strange, and although she was curious to know more about him, she had enough on her plate without adding any manufactured drama.

With a firm shake of her head, Lara made her decision. “No. I haven’t found his mail in mine for nearly a week, and I don’t want to waste any more time on Zavien Crane. I’m taking the high road.”

“Oookay,” he sang.

She sent him a glare but then pushed past it. Travis would see; she would show him. She would wash her hands of Zavien Crane and move on from all this nonsense.

Lara and Travis stopped at the mailboxes on their way up. She was still fiddling with her key when Travis’s laughter tore her attention away.

Doubling over, he managed to say, “Jesus, come look at this!” while pointing in front of him.

Following his finger, Lara’s gaze landed on the building’s message board, where someone had pinned a pair of hideous granny panties. When she spotted the very familiar pink Post-it note attached to them, her face burned with fury.

She stepped toward the note, which read: Found in laundry machine #5. Hope they find their way home.

Snatching them both down, she growled Zavien’s name to herself, then fisted the panties and tried her damnedest to shove them into the tiny pocket in the waistband of her shorts.

“Still wanna take the high road?” Travis asked, snorting with laughter.

He should know damn well that she was ~not~ going to let this slide.