Exactly the kind of body that Eli would think was perfect.

The tempo of the music picked up and Kay stumbled as the whole class executed a turn. She picked up her feet and tried to emulate the way the person in front of her was moving. Was it left, right, left? Or right, left, right?

Just when she thought she had it, the whole class turned in the opposite direction and Kay stumbled into the person next to her.

“Sorry!”

The girl didn’t even seem to hear her because she was turning in the other direction. Her breath was coming faster now and not just due to embarrassment. Her lungs burned and her thighs ached. How was everyone else moving their feet so fast?

Kay moved to the side to get a better view of the instructors. To her shock and surprise, the teacher on the right was moving and shaking better than the skinny instructors. Kay watched, mesmerized, as she executed each step with perfect grace. Her hips seemed to have a seductive sway to them. Kay looked down at her own body and swung her hips. Some of the steps were easier when she put her hips into it.

Maybe she could enjoy this after all.

ELI WAS IN the middle of a dead lift when the first call came in. After several rings, it went silent. He blew out a breath and squatted again. The phone beeped, indicating he had a new voice mail. He ignored the sound and tightened his abdominals as he stood back up.

Eli gritted his teeth, relishing the burn and stretch of his muscles as he worked his back. He considered his body to be a machine, a tool in his arsenal just like his Beretta or his SUV. Honing it was part of his job and necessary so it would perform as needed. There were other “performance” benefits of a healthy body, as well. Not that they’d come in handy any time soon. Kay couldn’t handle seeing his kind of endurance.

All the more reason he needed to work out his tension in the weight room.

When the phone started ringing again, he set the bar back on the rack and rummaged in his gym bag. He pushed aside a towel, an extra weight-lifting belt, and a change of clothes before he found it. He’d missed the call again. When he saw the caller ID, he hit the button immediately to call Tank back. He’d asked the man to contact him with any news about Hope’s father. If he was calling now, it meant he must have found something.

“What have you got for me?”

“Hey, boss. I’ve been keeping tabs on Banner and something finally popped. It appears our guy thinks he has what it takes to be a senator.”

Eli planted himself on an empty weight bench. “That’s quite a jump for a guy who owns a bunch of strip malls.”

“Exactly. The guy has no background in politics and few connections. What’s a second-rate businessman doing running for congress?”

“I don’t know, but I’m less worried about his chances in the polls and more concerned about what he’s willing to do to make himself look good. Maybe he’s worried about Kay running to the press with stories about him once he’s in the public eye?”

“That seems likely. He hasn’t announced his bid officially. This is all based on communications between him and his assistant.”

“As soon as it’s official let me know. He might step up his efforts to scare Kay into silence once he’s officially running. Maybe we’ll get really lucky and he’ll give us the evidence we need to hang him.”

“Will do.”

They hung up and Eli dropped his head into his hands. A quick glance at the time told him he only had about twenty minutes before the end of Kay’s class. Not enough time for him to do much other than some curls. He usually only worked one body part at a time, but since his workout schedule had been so disrupted lately, maybe he could fit in some leg work as well. He was hampered by his need to stay within sight of the dance studio. From this part of the gym, he could see everyone going in and out. There was no way he’d have allowed Kay to go otherwise.

Now that he knew her ex had some pretty good reasons to want her out of the picture, he definitely wasn’t leaving her alone. It would be pretty risky for him to try to hurt Kay when he was about to be in the public eye, but he’d seen people do crazier things. Especially when they saw someone as an obstacle to getting what they wanted.

Eli shook his head in disgust at the thought of a man trying to terrorize the mother of his child because she was inconvenient. His job had stripped away many of his illusions over the past decade, namely that anyone in politics had good intentions. He’d seen far too much of the ugly side of the political game.

There was no way he’d allow even a fraction of that to touch Kay or her daughter.

“Excuse me. Are you done with this?”

Eli turned, startled, at the voice next to him. An older man pointed at the machine he’d just finished using. He’d been sitting on the weight bench next to it, staring into space.

“Yes, sorry. Let me get these.”

Eli lifted the heavy plates off the bar so the other man could get started, then moved to the next machine. He only had a short time until Kay’s class was over, so he’d better make the most of it.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, all Kay could think was that Zumba was a tool of the devil. Huffing and puffing, she edged her way to the corner of the room and slid down the wall into a heap. The rest of the class continued turning and stepping while she sucked on her energy drink and tried to pull more oxygen into her lungs.

It was tempting to just sneak out, but she didn’t want Eli to see her and feel compelled to cut his own workout short. He’d been looking forward to this. His routine had been destroyed by protecting her. The least she could do was stick it out for the entire class.