massage therapist's around the corner.
Blair wasn't in the mood for company. 'Ernie's is the one place where I can go that no one knows me and no one cares where I come from or where I'll be going back to. The only thing they care about is what I do in the ring. I'd like to keep it that way.'
Cam continued to keep step with her through the narrow streets of the Village as they headed north towards Chelsea. 'Are you trying to say that no one has been inside with you?'
She couldn't believe that Mac had allowed Blair to work out alone without at least one agent in the gym with her. Essentially that left Blair unguarded, which was something that was never supposed to happen, even in the most secure circumstances. Exceptions occasionally occurred, but they were rare. Briefly, she thought of those nights she and Blair had spent at Diane Bleeker's apartment while Diane was in Europe. None of the agents had actually been in the apartment with Blair, but there had been a car outside in the street. If the agents in the car knew that Blair was not alone, no one had ever given any indication of that. Cam didn't like to place fellow agents in situations they might later have to lie about, but at the time, she hadn't been assigned to Blair's security detail. Their few hours together each evening were personal, personal and intimate and no one else's business. She wasn't hypocritical enough to deny, even to herself, that she and Blair had tried to keep their meetings a secret, but they had not purposely eluded the Secret Service agents assigned to protect Blair either.
The gym was an entirely different situation. Blair would be in unsecured surroundings with two dozen men who, even if they didn't recognize her, might present threats. If she were recognized, absolutely anything could happen, from simple harassment to abduction. Cam shook her head, knowing how Blair would react. 'I don't know how you've managed to keep them away from here, and I'm not certain I want to know, but I can't let you go alone.'
'I know that,' Blair said, turning down the alley that led to the unmarked, unpainted door that was the street entrance to the gym on the upper floor. 'Usually a car waits just at the end of the alley. I've been coming here for years. No one will bother me.'
'I'm coming up with you,' Cam said grimly. It was too late to change plans now, and since she was the only one immediately available, the responsibility fell to her.
Blair stopped with her hand on the door and looked at Cam, her face completely unreadable and her eyes flat and expressionless. 'You can come up if you want, Commander. But I would prefer that you stay away from me.'
With that, she opened the door and took the stairs two at a time, leaving Cam to follow.
Cam stood against one wall, her hands in the pockets of her blended silk trousers, watching two fighters prepare to spar in the ring opposite her. The top floor of the warehouse was dimly lit by rows of dirty windows well above head level and fluorescent lights dangling from heavy chains in the cavernous ceiling. The combination cast the entire space in a harsh flickering haze. There were sparring rings at each of three corners of the room. In the fourth corner, an area partitioned off by plywood and exposed two-by-fours served as the business office and makeshift locker rooms. When she had first entered, Cam had given the entire room a thorough examination, noting how many people were present, and where they were. Blair had gone immediately to the tiny women's dressing area, which was nothing more than a closet with a curtain strung across the door.
Cam did not follow her for several reasons. She wanted to give Blair as much privacy as possible, and following her into the dressing room would only call more attention to them both. Furthermore, she had been in that dressing room with Blair once, and she knew just how small it was, and she knew exactly how Blair looked when she stripped off her clothes to put on her work out gear. Cam did not want to be standing two feet away from her when Blair did that, because regardless of her intentions, Cam knew she would be tempted. It had been six weeks, and not a day, hell, barely an hour, had passed that she didn't think about Blair. What she couldn't tell Blair, and what she didn't want to think about herself, was how many times in those six weeks she had imagined how Blair's skin would feel under her fingertips.
So she stood in the shadows against the wall where she could see the entire room and still be as close to Blair as she could be without actually climbing into the ring with her.
Twenty feet away, Blair jogged lightly in place on the soiled canvas cover of the ten foot square ring while she waited for her opponent to adjust his gloves and get his mouthpiece between his teeth. She had been free- sparring for almost three months with some of the men in her weight class. There were no other women who frequented the gym with enough experience at kickboxing to spar with her. She'd been coming long enough that the men accepted her as a regular, and no one thought anything of working out with her. After the first few times that she had put one of them soundly on the mat with a round house kick or a strong right cross, they forget that she was a woman and fought her with no holds barred.
She watched the young guy opposite her approach, happy at the moment to see a little belligerence in his attitude. She needed an outlet for her physical frustration and her mental turmoil. Cam's abrupt return and the sudden change in their relationship had left her reeling. Nothing would test her or distract her as much as being in the ring with someone who could potentially hurt her. She would need to focus and she would need to burn. She knew that somewhere nearby Cam was watching. She didn't look for her; she didn't want to see her. But she felt her, and part of her wanted her there.
She hated the fact that she was comforted by knowing that Cam was near. Cam was so very good at making her feel cared for, even when it was part of her job. From the very beginning, Cam made her feel that she was what mattered and not the status reports or job performance evaluations that seemed to motivate so many of the dozens of agents who had guarded her throughout her childhood and into adulthood. God, she hated that she loved every single thing about Cameron Roberts. She lifted her gloved hands and tapped them against those of her opponent, eager for the first contact, wanting desperately to drive Cam's face from her mind.
*
She's even better than she used to be, Cam thought, as she watched Blair dance lightly across the canvas. Unlike most male kickboxers who relied primarily on their punches for knockouts, Blair had to depend more on her legs, which were, for most women, more powerful weapons than their hands. It also gave her the advantage of staying beyond the range of most other fighters' punches. It was very possible that with a well-placed kick Blair could render a man unconscious. On the other hand, she wouldn't be able to weather too many direct blows to the face from a man her size or one even smaller. As Cam watched, Blair effectively countered a volley of punches and pushed her opponent back with a nicely executed kick to his thigh.
As one part of her mind kept a constant vigil of the people nearby in her peripheral vision, Cam allowed
