Love You More

She blushed.

He realized he’d basically just flirted and shut up. Maybe he shouldn’t have left D.D. Maybe no man, happily married or not, should be sequestered alone with a woman like Jessica Ryan. Which made him wonder if Tessa Leoni had ever met Jessica Ryan. Which made him wonder how Brian Darby had ever lived past the first week of fitness training.

Bobby cleared his throat, took out his spiral notepad and a mini-recorder. He turned on the recorder and placed it on the counter next to the microwave.

“Have you met Sophie?” he asked his interview subject.

“Once. School was canceled so Brian brought her in with him for his workout. She seemed really sweet; she found a set of one pound hand weights and carried them around, mimicking all of Brian’s exercises.”

“Brian works out solely with you?”

“I’m his primary personal trainer,” Jessica said with a touch of pride. “Sometimes, however, our schedules don’t mix, then another trainer might fill in for me.”

“And how long has Brian been working out with you?”

“Oh, nearly a year. Well, maybe closer to nine months.”

“Nine months?” Bobby made a note.

“He’s done great!” Jessica gushed. “One of my best clients. His goal was to bulk up. So the first three months I put him on this wicked hard diet. Eliminated his fats and salts and carbs-and he’s one of those guys that really loves his refined carbs, too. French toast for breakfast, hoagies for lunch, mashed potatoes for dinner, and a bag of cookies for dessert. Let me tell you, I didn’t think he was going to make it through the first two weeks. But once he got his system cleaned out and reset, then we started the next stage: For the past six months, he’s been following this regimen I developed from my fitness competitions-”

“Fitness competitions?”

“Yes. Miss Fit New England, four years running.” Jessica flashed him a white smile. “It’s my passion.”

Bobby tore his gaze away from her tanned, toned bicep and returned it to his notebook.

“So I gave Brian a week by week diet of six high-protein meals a day,” Jessica continued perkily. “We’re talking thirty grams of protein per meal, consumed every two to three hours. It’s a big commitment of time and resources, but he did awesome! Then I added in a fitness regimen of sixty minutes of cardio followed by sixty minutes of heavy weights.”

“Every day?” Bobby ran. Or had run, before Carina was born. He shifted his notepad two inches lower, in front of his waistline, which come to think about it, had been a bit tight this morning.

“Cardio five to seven times a week, strength training five times a week. And I introduced him to hundreds. He was great at hundreds!”

“Hundreds?”

“Lower weight, but higher rep, to see if you can hit a hundred. If we do it right, you can’t on the first try, but continue training, then four weeks later, try again. In the first two months, Brian nailed all his hundreds, forcing me to bump up his weights. Really, amazing results. I mean, not for nothing, but most of my clients talk a good game. Brian was delivering the goods.”

“He appeared to have put on a fair amount of weight in the past year,” Bobby commented.

“He put on a fair amount of muscle,” Jessica corrected immediately. “Three inches to his arms alone. We took measurements every two weeks if you want them. Of course, his work schedule means we missed months at a time, but he kept on track.”

“You mean when he shipped out as a merchant marine?”

“Yeah. He’d disappear for two months at a time. First trip out, totally wrecked him. Lost most of what we’d done. Second time, I prepared an entire program for him to follow, including diet, cardio, and weights. I got a list of all the equipment available on the ship, and tailored it perfectly, so he’d have no excuses. He did much better.”

“So Brian was working hard with you when he was here and hard on the ship when he went away. Any reason he was working so hard?”

Jessica shrugged. “To look better. To feel better. He was an active guy. When we first started, he wanted to improve his fitness so he could tackle some bigger mountains skiing, biking, that sort of thing. He was active, but thought he should be stronger. We took it from there.”

Bobby set down his notepad, regarded her for a moment. “So Brian wants to improve his skiing and biking. And in order to do that, he’s spending how much money a week…?” He waved his hand around the well-kept room in an obviously well-equipped gym.

“Couple hundred,” Jessica said. “But there’s no price tag for good health!”

“Two hundred a week. And how many hours of training, grocery shopping, food prep…”

“You gotta commit if you want results,” Jessica informed him.

“Brian committed. Brian got results. Brian was still following the program. Why? What’s he looking for? Forty pounds of muscle later, what was he lacking?”

Jessica regarded him curiously. “He wasn’t still trying to bulk up. However, Brian’s not naturally a big guy. When a… smaller man…”

On behalf of men everywhere, Bobby winced.

“When a smaller man wants to maintain bigger results, he has to keep working. That’s the truth. High protein, big weights, day after day. Otherwise, his body is going to return to its preferred size, which in Brian’s case was closer to one eighty, not two twenty.”

Bobby considered that information, which, as a smaller guy, wasn’t great to hear.

“Sounds like a lot of work,” he said at last. “Not easy for anyone to maintain, let alone a working parent. Time to time, I bet Brian’s schedule got a little busy, his hours squeezed. He ever… seek additional assistance?”

Jessica furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

“Products to aid his speed/ability to add muscle?”

Jessica frowned harder; then, she got it. “You mean steroids.”

“I’m curious.”

Immediately, she shook her head. “I’m not down with that. If I thought he was juicing up, I’d quit. Screw the two hundred a week. I dated a guy into ’roids. No way I’d go down that road again.”

“You were dating Brian?”

“No! I didn’t mean that. I mean associating with someone abusing steroids. It makes people crazy. The stuff you see on the news-it’s not a lie.”

Bobby regarded her levelly. “And for your own training?”

She met his gaze just as levelly. “Sweat and tears, baby. Sweat and tears.”

Bobby nodded. “So you’re not a proponent of steroids-”

“No!”

“But what about other trainers in the gym? Or even outside the gym. Brian got some great results very fast. How sure are you that it was all his sweat and tears?”

Jessica didn’t answer right away. She chewed her lower lip again, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I don’t think so,” she said at last. “But I couldn’t swear to it. Something was going on with Brian. He just got back into town three weeks ago, and this time around… He was moody. Dark. Something was on his mind.”

“You ever meet his wife?”

“The state trooper? No.”

“But he talked about her.”

Jessica shrugged. “They all do.”

“They?”

“Clients. I don’t know, being a trainer is like being a hairdresser. The ministers of the grooming services sector. Clients talk. We listen. It’s half our job.”

“So what did Brian say?”

Jessica shrugged, obviously uncomfortable again.

“He’s dead, Jessica. Killed in his own home. Help me understand why Brian Darby embarked on a major self- improvement program and it still wasn’t enough to save him.”

“He loved her,” Jessica whispered.

“Who?”