built, with enough muscle on his frame to make me feel tiny by comparison. His dark lashes rimmed a pair of bright blue eyes, and his hair was as dark as his lashes, an inky black, shorter on the sides but long and unruly on top. He’d gone back in to put a shirt on, but he hadn’t touched his hair. For some reason that bothered me.
“What did your email say?” he asked, walking past me and picking up my suitcases off the gravel drive.
I sighed. “That there weren’t many flights available and that I would arrive early. I sent you—well, I sent Eric with a C—two emails about it.”
He shook his head and wandered off with my suitcases in tow. I had no choice but to follow him as he rounded the back of the house.
“Oooookay,” I murmured under my breath.
He glanced over his shoulder at me with a hard stare and I stilled. Behind a computer screen, his blue eyes had been piercing, but here, in real life, they nearly eviscerated me.
I’d had quite a few gymnastics coaches over the years. Vlad, Boris, Patrick, Igor—they’d all been on the right side of fifty with thick accents and thicker mustaches. They were as gruff as they came, but I already had a suspicion Erik would be the worst of them all.
“I tried to warn you that my flight was early,” I said, trying again.
He ignored me and pointed to the left. I let my gaze follow his finger until I spotted a small guesthouse tucked into the tree line behind his house. It was old, with a bright yellow door and a charming rocking chair out front that looked like it needed a good dusting.
Erik crossed the backyard and dumped my suitcases at the foot of the porch. By the time I’d caught up to him, he was already turning back for his house without a second glance in my direction.
“Aren’t you going to show me around the property?” I asked.
He waved over his shoulder as he continued to walk away. “Molly knows her way around.”
For some reason, his flippant response was too much to handle. I was the one who was about to compete in the Olympics. I was the one who had to train with a new coach. I was the one who’d spent half the money in my bank account to fly across the country to train with a man who seemed as pleasant as a porcupine. Instead of turning around and chalking up his bad attitude to a rough morning, I crossed my arms and shouted out after him.
“THANKS FOR THE WARM GREETING! IT WAS NICE TO MEET YOU TOO!”
I thought I heard him mumble something under his breath, but he disappeared around the front porch without a reply just as the door of the small cottage whipped open behind me.
“BRIE! Finally.”
Molly’s small arms wrapped around me from behind and I smiled. Even if Erik’s greeting had been cold, I still had Molly. She was another member of the gymnastics team, a veteran I knew I could depend on to cheer me up. I turned around and hugged her before stepping away to get a good look at her. She had bright red hair, freckles dotting her cheeks, and an infectious smile. She was still wearing her pajamas: a bright pink tank top and matching shorts.
“Were you just shouting at Coach Winter?” she asked, reaching around me for one of my suitcases.
“Long story,” I said, glancing over her shoulder. “Are you the only one here?”
She nodded. “Yeah, you guys weren’t supposed to get here until later.”
“Yeah, yeah. Believe me, I know that now. Why didn’t he yell at you for being here early?”
She laughed. “My host family went on vacation, so I had to come here a few days ago. It wasn’t a big deal since I train at Seattle Flyers anyway.”
Unlike the rest of the team, Molly wasn’t flying in to train with Erik for the month. Though she was originally from Oklahoma, she’d left home at the ripe age of 13 and moved in with a host family from Seattle Flyers, all so she could train with Erik. It wasn’t an uncommon practice for young girls to leave behind their family and friends to go and train at elite gyms. Fortunately for me, Austin had more than its fair share of good coaches.
“Erik didn’t chew your head off for needing to arrive early?”
She frowned, confused. “No? Why would he?”
I rolled my eyes. “No