Cam runs a tidy circle around me as I stagger, just to be a prick. “How did this happen? You’ve got the cardiovascular system of a ninety-year-old!”

I holler, “I told you I was allergic to exercise!”

He trots the other way around me, backward. “I thought you were joking.”

I wave an arm at him wildly, hoping to smack him a good one, but miss because the man is the devil and he can’t be caught.

“Are you always this ornery in the mornin’?”

“Don’t you dare taunt me, devil man.” I gasp for air as my gelatinous legs continue their horrific quest to keep me upright and headed forward. I think I might be going blind. “What was in that green goop you forced me to drink before we left? Poison?”

Cam does ten jumping jacks before he answers. “Yep. It’s an old Scottish tradition. A draught of poison just after wakin’. If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll put hair on your chest.”

“Oh goody.” Gasp. Wheeze. “Just what I need.” Wheeze. Cough. “Hair on my chest.”

Shadowboxing around me, dancing on his toes so flurries of snow sparkle around his flashing feet, Cam threatens, “If you’re about to follow that little speech with somethin’ derogatory about your looks, I’ll kick your arse six ways to Sunday, lassie.”

I make a sound that reminds me of the death rattle bad actors make right before they expire dramatically in the movies. Only mine is authentic. “That dang dog again! I’m really starting to hate that dog!”

Cam chuckles. He looks annoyingly good in his stupid sweats outfit, the picture of health and well-being, while I look like an old armchair someone threw out a window into an alley hoping it would be picked up with the trash but instead was colonized by rodents. Thank God the sun isn’t up yet, because the possibility an alarmed citizen would call animal control to come and collect me as soon as they caught sight of my hideous visage is high.

“I can’t believe you voluntarily do this every day. For free. Not at gunpoint.”

Cam lifts the waistband of his hoodie, exposing acres of rippling abdominal muscles. “All for a good cause.”

I wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. “Do you hold yourself tightly in bed at night while whispering sweet nothings into your own ear?”

“Think of pretty boy. Visualize his face when you walk into the holiday party in a sexy dress, lookin’ all toned and bedazzlin’.”

I huff and puff, pondering the image he’s put into my head. “Toned is good. Skinny is better.”

“Wrong! Strong is the goal, lass, not skinny. A man doesn’t wanna grab onto a sack of rattlin’ bones when he’s in the mood. He wants a nice, thick, juicy woman with buttery curves, sizzlin’ hot and tasty.”

“You literally just described my perfect steak.”

“My mum always said you can’t trust a skinny woman. Skinny body, skinny heart, skinny love.”

“I think I love your mother.”

“Aye,” says Cam softly. “She was easy to love.”

Was. That drains the last bit of energy from my legs. I stagger to a stop, holding my side and panting, and look at Cam. He’s refusing to look at me for some reason, keeping his face averted as he jogs in place a few feet away.

“She passed away?”

A curt nod is his only answer.

“I’m sorry.”

He swallows, squinting up at a streetlamp. In the cold yellow glow, his face is all stark angles and planes. The sharp cut of his jaw. The razor-straight nose. The dark hollows beneath his full cheekbones.

The pain on his face is another sharp feature, etched there like carvings in glass.

“Hundred years ago. Ancient history. But thanks.”

His voice is low and raw, and I’ve never seen him so naked. Without the usual bravado he wears like a suit of armor, he seems like a stranger all over again, one darker and more complicated, and far more compelling.

But the moment is gone as quickly as it came when Cam turns to me with a brilliant smile. “Quit your lollygaggin’, lass, and pick up your feet! We’re only just gettin’ started!”

He turns and jogs away down the sidewalk into the predawn gloom, his back straight and his head high, his step lively.

But it’s too late. I’ve peeked behind the golden curtain. I’ve glimpsed the real man behind the Great and Powerful Oz.

“I see you, Cameron McGregor,” I whisper to the empty street as a garbage truck rumbles by. I draw a stinging lungful of diesel fumes and force my legs to move once again. Then I’m jogging behind Cam, my will renewed, the pain in my body pushed to the periphery of my awareness by the single thought crowding out everything else in my head.

I see you.

ELEVEN

By two o’clock that afternoon, I’ve forgotten all about Cam and the interesting moment in the morning cold because I’m in so much agony I’m convinced a trip to urgent care is in my immediate future.

“What’s all the groaning over there?” asks Shasta from behind the cubicle wall, in a voice that indicates she’s not particularly supportive of my medical condition.

“I started working out. Kill me.”

She pops over the wall, resting her chin on the edge and dangling her arms over so she looks like a decapitated marionette. “Pilates? Peloton? Krav Maga? Kundalini? Booty Twerk?”

“What language are you speaking?”

“I’m into capoeira myself.”

When I stare at her in pained silence, she explains. “It’s a Brazilian martial art combining dance, music, and acrobatic movements.”

No wonder she’s so lithe and coordinated. Her resemblance to a gazelle is uncanny. “All things I suck at. Remind me never to go.”

“So what’re you doing?”

I gingerly massage one aching thigh. “Jogging.” When Shasta looks unimpressed, I add, “And really aggressive stretching.” Her eyebrows lift. “Like, torture stretching.”

At the mention of torture she looks interested. “Cool. Hard-core stretching is good for sex. My boyfriend is super limber. He likes to hold a backbend while I ride him like a bull.”

I nearly swallow my tongue at that piece of TMI but force a smile because I don’t want her to think I’m a prude. I will, however, be spending the rest of the afternoon trying to scrub my brain of the image of Shasta in chaps and a cowgirl hat, astride her naked U-shaped boyfriend.

“You’re a lucky girl.”

She doesn’t notice the undertone of sarcasm in my voice and grins. “Totally. D’you want to see a picture of him?”

Before I can be forced to lie about how cute Shasta’s bendy boyfriend is, I’m saved by the appearance of Portia, who’s wearing a face like someone just executed her cat.

“Joellen,” she says, drawing out the syllables in an exaggerated fashion. She’s probably mocking me, but I count it as a win because it’s the first time she’s gotten my name right in the entirety of my employment at Maddox Publishing.

“Portia,” I reply, just so she knows she’s not the only one who can pronounce a name.

Her lips pinch. “Will you please follow me?”

My heart lurches, and Shasta and I share a worried glance. The only reasons I can fathom that Portia would ask me to follow her anywhere are if I’m about to get fired or she’s taking me to the roof so she can push me off.