Page 3 of Tripped By Love

He was growing like a leaf, but his uneven gait was still all toddler. It tugged at my heart that felt strangely bruised tonight. I watched as he half-sat and half-collapsed next to the basket near the back door and focused on taking off his shoes with a little furrow to his brow and tongue sticking out.

“Just making sure we’re still on for tonight,” Marco asked, and the question itself made me pause.

I couldn’t remember the last time Marco and I hadn’t worked out together after Chevelle had gone to sleep. Our daily routine was why I was stronger than I’d ever been before. He only ever missed them when he was traveling with Brady.

“Why? You got big plans or something?” I asked, trying to ignore the stab of jealousy that soared through me at the idea of Marco having plans that didn’t relate to his position as Brady’s bodyguard. Plans that might have involved a woman. Not that I’d ever seen him with a woman. Not in the entire seven years I’d known him.

“Plans?” he asked as if the idea itself was a surprise. “No. I’ll be there.”

Relief I didn’t have a right to had me loosening my death grip on the phone. I’d only been eighteen when Marco had first shown up at Brady’s side in Grand Orchard, and we’d barely conversed during the first few years. But ever since he’d started working out with me, we’d become friends. Or…maybe not friends…but something more than mere acquaintances. Or perhaps it was all in my head, and I was simply a project to him?a coach and his trainee. His boss’s sister who needed some beefing up.

My phone buzzed with another incoming call. “’Kay. I gotta go. That’s Mom.”

“See you at seven-thirty.”

He hung up, and I switched over, trying to get my pulse to calm down so Mom wouldn’t think there was something wrong. So she wouldn’t rush over to find out what I was hiding. So I could get through the night before starting my day all over again at four thirty in the morning.