Free Extreme Bachelor by Julia London

break, several of them camped
out around a child’s swing set—part of their urban obstacle
course—and howled with laughter about something, and when Jack
appeared to tell them break was over, they doubled over with more
boisterous laughter, leaving Jack red-faced without even knowing
why.
    And moreover, Jack was right—the women never
seemed to stop talking. The longer the day went, the louder it
seemed to get. When Michael settled a dispute over a ruined
shoe—“These are Pumas!” one blonde shrieked at a brunette who
rolled her eyes—he’d had enough. Fortunately, the rest of T.A. felt
the same way. Eli, who remained amazingly calm throughout the
day—so calm that Michael was beginning to wonder if he might have
eaten a couple of elephant tranquilizers over the lunch break to
help him along—called the girls together, gave them a little pep
talk, and sent them home until the next morning.
    The women immediately broke into chatter and
showed no signs of going anywhere. It was, apparently, social
hour.
    “I think we need to talk about that second
battle scene,” Cooper was saying, pulling out a sheet of paper from
his back pocket. “After what I saw on the ropes course, there is no
way in hell we are going to get some of these girls to jump off a
rooftop without killing themselves, and we can’t afford to hire
enough stunt women to do it for them.”
    Michael watched Leah emerge from the little
locker room, her backpack over her shoulder. She waved goodbye to
her friends, the same wiggly fingers she used to wave at him at the
subway, and walked toward the parking lot.
    Okay, this was it. He couldn’t help himself,
he couldn’t watch her walk away and not say something. He slipped
away from the very serious discussion of rooftop jumping and
followed her.
    Leah was walking fast. He jogged to catch up
with her. “Leah!” he called out when it looked like she might
actually beat him to her car. “Wait up!”
    She paused; he saw a slight but discernible
dip in her shoulders. But when she turned around, she was smiling.
An odd smile, but a smile nonetheless. “Oh! Hey, Michael . . . ah,
listen, I really have to run,” she said, jerking her thumb toward
an old Ford Escort. “I’d love to chat, but I’ve gotta be someplace,
and you know, the traffic—”
    “I just want a minute, Leah. One
minute.”
    She looked at her car, then at him. Her eyes
were so blue—he’d forgotten how blue. “Well . . .” She glanced at
her watch.
    “Listen . . . that was really weird today,”
he said, wasting no time. “I was blown away by it.”
    “Oh,” she said, nodding, and then her brows
dipped a little. “By what?”
    She had to ask? “By seeing you. I was hoping
we could talk a minute.”
    “Ah. Well. Here’s the
thing,” she said, squeezing the bridge of her nose for a minute.
“I’ve really got to be someplace, and it’s just . . . our . . . you
know . . . stuff . . . I mean, it’s old news, isn’t it?” She dropped her hand
and looked at him, and the expression on her face made his gut
wrench. “No offense, but it was really a long time ago.”
    “Five years,” he said
instantly. “Look, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Leah. I
just want to . . .” Dammit, what did he
really want ? “I just want to talk,” he
said decisively. “Just talk. If not today, maybe
tomorrow?”
    “Tomorrow?” Honestly, she seemed to be
debating if she would even be back at work tomorrow. “Yeah, maybe.
Okay. So I’ll see you tomorrow—”
    “Leah, listen,” he said,
before she could run off. “I’ve thought a lot about you over the
years. A lot .”
    Leah blinked. “Huh. Well . . . I’ve thought
about you, too.”
    He could just imagine she had. “But I
thought nice things,” he said with a lopsided grin. “Great things.
Killer things. Things I can’t forget, and I’d really like to talk
to you. I’d like to tell you that I wish—”
    “Michael?”
    His name startled him, and he jerked