No Rep (Madd CrossFit #1) - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,43

throat,” Mavis snarled. “And wasn’t that you who said this was a van, and not a car?”

Murphy grumbled something under his breath as he dropped his tools down onto the concrete that Mavis’s car was parked on. From there, he reached for her son.

“Let me have him,” he ordered. “You’re doing this. There’s absolutely no reason in hell that you shouldn’t know how to change your own fucking tire.”

“Don’t curse in front of my kid,” Mavis said as she glared at the man who’d just taken Vlad from her.

I chose that moment to pull Fran into my arms and walk her backward.

Neither adult noticed us leave. Vlad did, though, grinning happily at me as he bounced in Murphy’s arms.

I waited until we were inside the house to say, “What the hell was that?”

Fran laughed and threw her arms around my neck.

I groaned at the feel of her warm body pressing up against my cold one.

“Apparently, when Murphy and Mavis first met, it was at CrossFit. Murphy told Mavis not to do something because she might hurt herself, and Mavis blew him off. She hurt herself, and he’s apparently been pretty smug about it ever since. And Mavis, not liking the smugness, pretty much goes out of her way to give him shit.” Fran shook her head. “Funnily enough, Mavis asked Murphy his thoughts on her buying that particular van. He told her not to get it. And let’s just say they’re like water and oil.”

My lips twitched at that news.

“I can tell,” I mused.

Even from the front bedroom, I could see that they were still bickering.

Mavis was changing her tire, though.

“How did last night go?” Fran asked quietly.

I’d officially handed the case over to the FBI agent.

And though I would help if needed, there was really no reason to. The FBI agent was seasoned, had a good track record, and had resources that I didn’t have, or no longer wanted to have.

“I handed the case off.” I turned from the window. “Now that the FBI is in town and on the cases, I won’t be called in anymore. I can go back to my own work.”

Fran frowned. “But you never stopped working at the gym.”

Mavis snickered as she pushed into the room, startling the both of us and hitting me in the back with the door. “You didn’t know that you were having sex with the world’s most popular horror/suspense author that there is?”

She snatched her spare key off the door hanger that was directly next to my face, then left, leaving me alone with a very stunned Fran looking at me in horror.

There was a long moment of silence and then, “Oh. My. God.”

I blinked, surprised by her words. “What?”

She turned around and snatched her phone off the couch, pulling it up only to go directly to her Kindle app. “You’re my favorite author ever.”

That’s when I saw what she was reading.

My latest book.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re so adorable.”

“But, you know what would make your book even better?” she whispered, her eyes spreading into a mischievous smile.

I couldn’t help it. I had to know.

“What?” I asked.

“Sex,” she breathed. “Lots and lots of sex.”

I threw my head back and laughed. God, I loved this girl.

CHAPTER 16

Am I the only one that calculates how much sleep I’ll get before bed?

-text from Taos to Fran

TAOS

Two weeks later

My days of teaching classes almost full time were almost over.

I’d done my job.

I’d done my duty.

I could now go back to the back of the gym and ignore everyone and everything.

Couldn’t I?

“Hey,” came a voice that I now craved to hear.

I turned slowly from my contemplation of the sunset and smiled. “Hey.”

She tilted her head. “Everything okay?”

I thought about that for a second.

Was everything okay?

Not really.

The murders that the chief had pulled me in on had gone unsolved. Maria’s murder was still unsolved.

The teaching classes that kept me seeing a certain someone on a daily basis were now over.

And I already missed her.

I didn’t even know if she was going to keep coming to CrossFit or not.

I mean, sure we’d done ‘things’ that some would automatically assume meant a relationship, but life had gotten in the way over the last two weeks since Maria’s murder.

I’d volunteered myself full time to helping solve the murders with the FBI agent, Easton. Yet another murder had occurred, and we realized that the more manpower on the investigation, the better. Or, I did. I hadn’t quite been able to leave it behind once they’d told me that I