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be more to you than that.”
    â€œNope. Deep down, I’m really a shallow guy.”
    She glared at him for a long moment. Either that or calling bullshit.
    â€œOkay,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
    â€œFamily. Brothers and sisters. That sort of thing.”
    He drummed his fingers on the table. “Just my mom and me. My father took off before I was born.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œNot your fault.”
    â€œI didn’t mean it that way.”
    â€œYeah, I know.” He got up and paced across to the artificial waterfall. “She worked three jobs to take care of me, and I spent most of my time raising hell.”
    â€œIs that why you told me I’d find a better man than you?” He’d said lots of better men.
    His head snapped around. “I said that?”
    â€œIn the shower.”
    â€œPost-fuck vulnerability. It’ll get you every time.” He went back to staring at the water as it cascaded over the rocks at the bottom of the falls. “I’m making it up to her, though.”
    â€œYour mom?”
    â€œWith the money I make here, I’m putting her through college. She always wanted that.”
    â€œThat’s great,” Cassandra said. “What’s she studying?”
    â€œPaleontology. What the hell’s she going to do with that?” he said. “Makes her happy, though.”
    With college costs what they were today, he probably didn’t have much left to live on himself. She couldn’t help but remember all the money that had shown up regularly in her checking account as long as she’d kept her grades up.
    â€œMaybe when she’s finished, I’ll go, too,” he said.
    â€œI can see that.”
    He turned to her and smiled, the self-assured Bobby back in place. “Well, visualize that all you want, but let’s get out of this place. If I stay here any longer, someone will have me eating twigs.”
    She laughed. “I doubt that.”
    â€œYou never know with woo-woo types. They read auras and delve into past lives and other crap like that.”
    â€œWhere do you want to go?”
    â€œHow about the gym?” Again he took her hand and tugged her off to somewhere new. And again she allowed him to do it.
    B OBBY EMPTIED THE gym of the rest of the men using it before he brought her inside. She peeked around a corner as they passed. All of them were amazing specimens in exercise shorts, some wearing tank tops and others bare-chested. Different races, heights, and hair colors, but each with a perfectly sculpted body. To think, a woman could have any one of them at the right price.
    She wouldn’t have any of them, though. She already had her perfect partner. After a few minutes, Bobby appeared in the hallway. “All clear. Come on inside.”
    The place fairly oozed male hormones. There was nothing woo-woo or frou-frou about the equipment. Though state of the art, the machines came in a utilitarian design. They had their own beauty, perhaps, but only insofar as the symmetry served a purpose: namely to beef people up and slim them down. Body sculpture.
    Bobby selected a pair of barbells and sat on a bench to do biceps curls. “So, tell me about the stepsons.”
    He probably assumed she didn’t know her way around a gym. Wrong. She worked out at least three days a week. Usually five or six. “I don’t suppose there’s anything here a woman can wear to exercise.”
    â€œSuppose. Try looking over there.” He nodded toward a nearby counter with drawers beneath. “You can change in the women’s locker room just in case one of the guys comes in by mistake.”
    â€œDo the clients use this gym?”
    â€œThe ones who aren’t afraid of their own shadows do,” he said.
    She’d object, but she couldn’t deny the fact that Bobby had had to chase the men out of their gym so one skittish woman could use