Own the Eights Gets Married - Krista Sandor Page 0,4

at Jordan, sure he’d have something to say about her glacial running pace and found him nodding toward Hector and Bobby.

Once this segment was over, she was bound and determined to figure out what the hell was going on.

“What does the next chapter hold for Georgie Jensen and Jordan Marks?” the female host asked.

Georgie looked from her tongue-tied boyfriend to her friends before realizing it was up to her to keep this crazy train from going off the rails.

She resurrected her beauty queen expression. “We’re exploring all avenues and ways to expand the More Than Just a Number blog and brand. We wanted to start locally because the community is very important to us…” she answered but trailed off as Jordan released her hand and got down on one knee in front of her, and the penny dropped.

One knee.

A freaking falling in love montage.

She scanned the studio, filled with smiling faces and a cameraman now standing only a few feet behind her.

She lowered her voice. “Jordan, what are you doing?”

He looked up and met her gaze. “Hopefully, starting our next chapter.”

2

Jordan

He was doing it. He was really doing it.

Right here. Right now.

Down on one knee, he stared into Georgie’s eyes. Not quite blue and not quite green, they weren’t only beautiful. They were the color of his future. The last thing he wanted to see before he went to sleep, and the first thing he wanted to lay his eyes on each morning.

Georgiana Jensen, former Miss Cherry Pie, and the eternal love of his life.

This remarkable woman had made him question everything. She’d peeled past the layers he’d erected around his heart. With her messy bun and her librarian cardigans, she’d blasted through his guise of physical perfection.

It wasn’t like there was anything wrong with working hard or, for that matter, caring for your appearance. But it wasn’t everything. Not even close.

Before Georgie, he’d put so much energy into proving to himself that he was no longer the string bean high school weakling everyone had teased. They’d called him Straws back then, thanks to his long skinny legs. The jocks and the school jerks would stuff his locker full of the cafeteria staple just to laugh and gawk when he opened his locker, and they all tumbled out in a humiliating wave of white paper wrappers.

He’d tried to bury his past and forget that sad, skinny kid. And for nearly a decade, he’d almost done it, thanks to a chance encounter delivering food to a CrossFit gym when he was eighteen. His life changed after the gym owner, Deacon Perry, had taken a shine to him. Through dedication and damn hard work, the string bean boy morphed into a powerful man.

Fifty pounds of pure muscle can do that. And as his body changed, so did his mind. Many of the changes were positive, others were not.

With each pull-up and every deadlift, he endeavored to erase all the signs of his former self and took on a hypermasculine edge to mask the bullied boy within. Instead of honoring the creative and introspective kid he used to be, he began equating bravery with brawn and toughness with physical tenacity. When he’d come up with the idea for the Marks Perfect Ten Mindset blog, he did want to help people reach their personal best. But he also used it to create another layer between himself and that skinny kid from the Colorado plains.

Thanks to Georgie, he could be both the ripped fitness trainer as well as the comic-loving, literature-reading man who wasn’t defined by a number.

He glanced over his shoulder and nodded to Becca. She gave him a thumbs-up then unhooked Mr. Tuesday’s collar.

This was really happening.

Black and white with one ear cocked up while the other drooped down, the dog he’d come to love bounded toward them with a ribbon tied around his neck.

“Jordan is this what I think it is?” Georgie asked as she scratched between the dog’s ears.

“Well, it’s not a segment on selecting the perfect pet for your lifestyle,” he answered, untying the ribbon and sliding an engagement ring off the strip of satin.

“How did you arrange all this?” she asked wide-eyed.

“We can answer that!” Hector exclaimed, taking Bobby’s hand and joining them on set.

Something he was absolutely not expecting as the couple took a seat, one on each side of Georgie.

“Jordan came to us and asked about how we got engaged, and then it snowballed from there,” Hector, the more outspoken of the power couple, explained.

“We shared with