My Guardian Angel (2 page)

Gelateria

True to his word, my brother showed up at ten. It was a nice, hot day in the summer, so I decided to wait for him outside on my steps. The sun was now shining brightly, taking away whatever signs of rain we had from the night before. He rolled down his window and shouted, “Let’s go, baby girl.”

I jumped up from my top step and jogged down the rest until I reached his door.
I hopped inside his large Escalade. God, the man was too much.

“So this is your new chick mobile?” I looked at it disgusted.

He pulled down his glasses and smiled wickedly. “You know it.” He turned up his heavy metal music and began driving us down to his gym.

As much as my brother was a man whore, he was good with his money
. The thought was frightening enough. He took whatever money he made with his job and kept investing it, opening up a few health clubs, which were becoming popular with the New York crowd. From there, he would reinvest into buying properties. He wanted money and loved using it to his advantage. Our parents were now retired and traveled a lot. We essentially only had each other.

He pulled into the building his gym was in and drove down to the parking lot
. We walked to the elevator and he pressed the number four. The doors opened to reveal the main entrance to his gym.

There was a young girl at
the reception area. Her hair was bleached blonde and her body was tanned to the point that it looked slightly orange. Without a doubt, she had implants and her nails were gelled making her look entirely fake.

She smiled the moment she saw him.
Her eyes then drifted to me. Her mouth gaped opened and I could swear I heard her snarl at me. I turned to see my brother smiling.

“Asshole
,” I said under my breath.

She ran to him and hugged him, her arms wrapping around his neck
. He gave her a one-arm hug back.

“Hey
, Jessica. How are things?” he asked, letting her go.

“Good, you?”
she said, looking at me.

“Pretty good
,” he answered. She then turned and smiled at him.

“Here to work
out?” she asked.

Obviously a stupid question.

“Yeah.”

“Yah!”
she squealed. I rolled my eyes and put my bag down. This was taking too long.

“And who is this?”
she asked rather cattily.

“This? This is my little sister.
Remember her, because she’ll be coming to this gym.” He pointed at me.

Her mouth formed a little
“o” and her eyes became wide. I knew my brother’s tone. She had crossed the line. He hated territorial women, especially if there wasn’t anything for them to feel territorial about. He pushed by her and waited for me on the other side. I smiled and passed right by her.

“Where do you find them?” I asked.

“They’re workout bunnies. They follow gyms everywhere.” He shrugged. He meant to say they follow him anywhere.

He pointed to where the
women’s locker room was and told me to change. Once I finished changing, I waited for him to come out of his office. My brother was big on sports athletics. He graduated from NYU with a master’s degree in exercise science. I use to make fun of him telling him he was a glorified gym teacher, but he was much more than that. He dealt with rehabilitation of his athletes and took the time to care for their bodies. He was awesome at his job and I was happy he had found something he loved doing, other than women.

“Are you coming?”
he yelled after me.

I marched into the main gym area and all the women stopped and gawked.
This was one of the main reasons why I hated going out with him. He was the looker of the family and I was the brains. He kept going until we reached a room filled with mats and various boxing gear. I took out my wraps and began covering my hands up. After what had happened to me, Darios made sure I took up a self-defense course in order to feel empowered again. I had grown to like it and I pretty much kept it up.

“So
, we’ll do basic drills and some running,” he said, waiting for me to finish wrapping up my hands.

“And weights?” I added.

“And weights,” he smiled and repeated.

The workout was much like the ones I had done before
. He kept pushing me harder, wanting more from me, which I gladly gave. All the pent up frustration had nearly done me in. It felt nice punching the focus mitts he had worn.

“Come on! Harder Kass! Faster!”
he yelled. I did what I was told, focused my mind and pushed harder.

“
Okay, time.” He held out his hands and I finally dropped mine. My body was full of sweat and I was out of breath. Jessica knocked on the window and pointed to the phone. I knew she was probably lying, but I let it go.

“I’ll be back
,” he said as he left the room.

I was so taken in with my training I hadn’t noticed quite a few people had joined us in the boxing room.
I walked up to the far wall and slid down. I crossed my legs and began to stretch my shoulders. I watched the few who were here boxing; some of them were new, while one in particular was not.

I could tell he was a veteran.
He must have trained from a young age. He wore nothing except long boxing shorts, which left his upper body free for me to ogle. He was built. Every muscle clearly defined. A large chest and thick arms, but not the ‘it’s to gross to look at’ type. He was just perfect. His one arm was covered up with a full sleeve tattoo, which made him look even meaner. He growled as he punched. The low sound made a quick connection to my lower lady friend. Damn! It’s been too long.

“Kass?”
my brother called out to me. I reluctantly looked away from the man who made my kegel muscles work overtime.

“Yeah?” I replied as I rose up and walked over to him.

“I’ll need to leave. Something went wrong with one of the guys in the training camp. I’ll drop you off and then head down.”

“You go. I'm a big girl now. I can go home on my own.
Besides, it’s a nice day, I wouldn’t mind walking.” I waved at him.

He nodded. “
Okay, I’ll call you later.”

“Whatever.” I smiled

I walked over to the wall where I had left my things and picked them up. I figured I would finish my workout and head out a little later. It wasn’t as if I had anyone waiting for me or anything to do today. I turned and faced the other wall, where tall, wet and dreamy was working out. He had stopped and was staring at me. His light grey eyes narrowed as I stared back. I hiccupped from surprise. Great! Now I look even more desperate. I lowered my head and headed for the free weights.

A few minutes
later, he followed. I’d like to think he followed me, but I knew that wasn’t the case. He picked up some weights. I guess he was working his chest. I had looked, only because I couldn’t help it. So sue me. The man was gorgeous with a capital PLEASE HAVE SEX WITH ME! That’s when it happened, the male version of a gym bunny came up to me.

“Hey there beautiful, I was over there.” He pointed to some other part of the gym, “and I couldn’t help but see you were doing an exercise wrong. So I figured I come over to show you how it’s done.”

I put my weights down and rolled my eyes. “Oh, Jesus,” I said under my breath.

“Sorry, what was that?”
he asked.

I faked
a smile. “How joyous!” I mocked. He laughed and began to pick up the dumbbells.

“Ah listen buddy, thanks for the offer, but I'm not interested in being helped.”

He gave me a dirty look and said, “I wasn’t trying to pick you up.”

“I didn’t say you were, but funny how your mind went there though. I'm just not interested in being taught how to do a shoulder press.” I laughed a little. He dropped the dumbbells and walked away.

I picked up my weights and stared at myself in the mirror, my long, brown hair was slicked back to a high, tight ponytail. My shoulders were well defined and so was my body. I wasn’t too muscular, but I was fit thanks to my big brother. I positioned my weights over my shoulders and pressed up towards the sky.

Once I finished my
set, my eyes wandered again and there he was, still staring at me through the mirror in front of us. Had this been at a bar and I was a little drunk, I would have had the courage to walk up to him and say hi. However, this was my brother’s gym and I was full of sweat marks and no makeup. There were too many negatives to make this a positive for me.

Once I finished up with my
shower, I dressed and headed out. Jessica saw me and painted on a smile.

“
Oh, hey Kass, your brother wanted me to give you this.” She handed me a gym card, which had my name on it and the worst picture he ever took of me. Bastard! He probably was giggling when he did this.

“My name is Kassia
,” I corrected her, as I glared at my card. I was so going to kill him.

“But your brother calls you Kass
,” she noted with annoyance.

“Yes, but he’s my brother, unless my parents had another child and never told us.”
I hated how much these girls tried to make friends with me, all under the guise of getting closer to my brother.

“Sorry
,” she bit out.

“
It’s okay.” I smiled back.

The elevator dinged and I ran to catch it.
I was still looking at this stupid photo of me sticking out my tongue at him. I was drunk when he took it. My eyes were crossed and my hair was a mess. He was going to change this or I wasn’t coming here. As I ran to the elevator, I didn’t notice that I rammed into my sexy boxer from before.

We both collided into each other as the door closed behind us. He had grabbed my arms, preventing me from falling.

“Are you okay?” he asked. His was voice low and rough. My mind stopped.

He was the perfect package. The body, the tats, the eyes and now the voice.
Damn it! It was way too long for me. I needed a man. ASAP!

“I'm sorry, I didn’t see you there
,” I finally said, realizing my card was no longer in my hand. I frantically looked around for it and saw it beside him. He followed my line of sight and smiled. He reached down to grab it, but I yelled out “NO!”

He stopped and gave me a ‘what’s wrong with you
, lady’ look. I dropped my face, giving up. I’d humiliated myself enough. He proceeded to pick it up. That’s when he knew what was wrong with me.

“Nice pic
,” he noted.

“Yeah
, thanks,” I said dryly, taking it out of his hand.

“Kassia
,” he murmured my name. I looked up at him. “It’s a pretty name.” He smiled softly.

Did I just see dimples? Damn it all to hell!
He continued to look at me, his light grey eyes drawing me in. The elevator dinged, letting me know it was time to be released from his gaze.

“Thank you
,” I said again as I headed out. He followed from behind, but not close enough that I felt freaked out.

“My name is Jason, by the way.”

“That’s nice.” I waved over my head and scurried away.

Just great! My first outing in I don’t know how long
, and I finally meet someone I might be possibly interested in and I go and humiliate myself. Way to go, Kass.

It was one o’clock and the sun was scorching the sidewalk, making it hotter than it was.
I loved it. Well, I loved it enough to know that I was going to a highly air-conditioned home. I enjoyed the heat and the way my body almost dripped with sweat. I just loved the smell of the sun on my skin and the stifling air around me. Summer in New York couldn’t get any better than this.

I saw a small gelateria and I began to crave some gelato.
I pushed the door and a small bell chimed. There was a bit of a lineup, but I didn’t mind. I was going home and the only time I was going back out was tomorrow night. The girls cussed me out that I hadn’t had time to see them, and they wanted to dance.

Tara and Genna were a duo who brought trouble into my life since the tender age of sixteen. Well
, since I moved to our last home. They made my last years in high school as fun as possible. After what had happened, they reached out and wanted to bring me out of my problems. The thing was they brought more problems to me. They used to call us the three musketeers for a reason.

We’d lie to our parents about being at each other’s home
s for the weekend, so we could drive up to Montreal to party or head into the city and party all night. We did everything together. Each of us had our own story to tell and our own problems to deal with. Within our friendship, however, we found a sense of sisterhood, which was hard to explain to outsiders.

They were both right. I hadn’t had time to see them with the stupid screenplays and the new novel.
When did I have the time? But both had men troubles and needed the night to let off some steam.