Yoga? Somehow, he’d missed that. Surely she didn’t expect him to participate.
As if she could read his mind, she plopped a mat in his hands.
“Oh, I’m not…I don’t do yoga.”
“You do today. After that bike ride, it’ll feel good to stretch out.” Amusement played along the curve of her mouth. “After all, we can’t have our captain too sore to sail our ship.”
Surprise and pleasure clattered through him, stumbling over the fact that the statement had come out sounding…Was she flirting with him? Or was she simply anticipating watching him struggle through yoga? Either way, he’d play along. “If I do that pretzel stretch stuff, that’s exactly what’ll happen.”
Danae shrugged. “I’m not here to force you into anything. But there’s a spot for you, and I thought you were all about trying out new things and living in the moment.” A challenge, belied by the casual way she’d tossed it out, and he had to hand it to her, she’d found the right button to push.
She continued down the line, giving out mats and instructions. As she reached Mark, he aimed a lovestruck grin her way. Josh gritted his teeth and glanced down at the rubbery blue mat in his hands.
Looked like today, he was going to do yoga.
Chapter Thirteen
“Oh my gosh,” Danae said as she fed a black-and-white alpaca a carrot. The creature ate in a seesaw sort of motion, not up and down like humans did, and the crunch, crunch, crunch permeated the air. “He’s so cute.”
Josh wasn’t sure cute was the word he’d use. Funky-looking. Graceless. Needed to close its mouth when it chewed.
“Actually, all of these alpacas are female,” the staff worker in charge of their group informed them. “Females only have their lower teeth for chewing grass, so they can’t bite. Males have two upper pairs that are called fighting teeth.”
“And yoga is no place for fighting.” A woman wearing tie-dye pants and a T-shirt with a cartoon alpaca giving the peace sign walked up to their group. The seashell bracelets on her wrist rattled as she waved a hand through the air. “Hi, I’m Jill, and I’ll be your instructor for today. I suggest spending about five minutes getting to know these majestic creatures, and then I’ll sprinkle grain around our mats and get started.”
Seriously, was he still asleep? Had he wandered into an alternate dimension? He loved animals as much as anyone, but he kept waiting for Danae or one of the staff to let him in on the joke.
Vanessa let loose a squeaky noise as a brown baby alpaca with a black snout approached her. “Whoa, check out this one’s eyelashes, Danae. They’re ridiculous. They’re even longer than my thirty-dollar lash extensions that all the beauty influencers rave about.”
“That’s Bitzy,” the staff member informed her.
Danae giggled and told Bitzy “You’re such a pretty girl. I bet you do an amazing downward dog.”
“Or is your specialty tree pose?” Vanessa asked.
Once again, Josh was totally out of the loop on whatever they were talking about, but if he was going to do yoga, he was snagging the spot next to Danae instead of letting it go to Mark.
Jill sprinkled the grain around their mats, as promised. Then she sat in a cross-legged position up front and began reciting instructions in a calm, soothing voice. “Let go of all the tension in your body as you feel the breeze blowing through your hair…”
Josh exhaled, focused on the light breeze, and admittedly, his tension did begin to melt as he followed along.
But then the more complicated stretches started. He bent at the waist and lowered his hands. Which stopped at about knee height. No way was he going to get them to the mat without snapping his back or hamstrings.
A tan alpaca with a shaggy hairdo meandered between him and Danae, who had her palms down on the mat as if it didn’t take any effort. She stretched out her fingers and let the tips run across the alpaca’s side. “Good girl, Marcella. Way to breathe through your moves.”
Marcella’s wheezing sounded like a freaking freight train. One that was struggling to chug its way uphill.
Danae craned her neck and peered up at Josh’s face, her ponytail swinging with the movement. “Come on, Josh. Bitzy’s more flexible than you.” She jerked her chin at the baby with the long eyelashes, who was ducking under one of the grown females.
“Bitzy walks on all fours, so that hardly counts.” A grunt slipped out as he lowered his hands to