The Heart of the Matter Read Online Free PDF Page A

pink with the glow of exertion, and she mopped her face occasionally with a hand towel on her mat, but her moves were tireless.
    While she executed perfect push-ups, he followed, determined to do as many as she could of this one exercise with which he was familiar and at which a man, with superior upper body strength, should excel.
    But she, her body perfectly aligned, pushed up anddown as though she were motorized, while he did one to her two, his muscles burning and screaming with pain.
    He finally slumped to the mat while she continued to count. Then he watched in a haze of exhaustion as she pushed herself up, then eased herself down, and suddenly his mind skewed what he saw and he imagined her in the act of loving a man—him—with that same inexhaustible enthusiasm.
    He groaned and let his forehead fall to the mat.
    “You okay, Jason?” Philly asked anxiously in mid push-up. She was doing half push-ups from her knees, but she was doing them beautifully.
    He rolled onto his back and drew a deep breath. “I’m great, thanks. Nothing that oxygen and a pacemaker wouldn’t cure.”
    She laughed as the music stopped. “Glad to hear it. Worst is over. Now we’re cooling down.”
    Jason survived the next two cooling-down numbers, and put on a brave face when the class was over and many of the women, disheveled but somehow vibrant, came to introduce themselves and welcome him to the class.
    “Next time will be hell,” Martie warned with a sturdy thump to his back, “but after that you’ll get into it and it’ll feel so good you’ll never want to quit.” Then she shouldered her towel and her own personalized mat and left the hall.
    Dixie rolled her eyes at the retreating figure that looked more thirty than seventy.
    “We’re all chipping in to have her kidnapped and force-fed DoveBars.” She smiled at him philosophically. “You don’t have to do as well as she does, you just have to relax and feel good. See you Wednesday?”
    No. They were never going to see him again. But he smiled and let her think it was an affirmative, and thankedher for all her help. Then he fell onto one of the many folding chairs lined up on both sides of the room and pulled his bag toward him with his foot because he doubted seriously that he could bend. He was sure he’d pulled every muscle and stripped every gear in his body.
    He’d eased his crippled muscles out of his sweatsoaked shirt and was pulling on a fresh one from his bag when he surfaced from the neck to find Laura standing in front of him, a big brown envelope bag over her shoulder. She’d combed out the ponytail and red hair fell in tight ringlets past her shoulders. Damp little curls sprang along her hairline. He thought they seemed like visible signs of her energy.
    “You survived,” she observed with a cautious smile. “How do you feel?”
    He rotated a shoulder and stopped because it hurt. “Like I’ve been worked over by Torquemada,” he replied. “I can’t believe you aren’t even out of breath.”
    She tapped lightly over her heart. “Of course I get breathless, but I recover quickly because I have clear arteries. And I doubt seriously that the Spanish Inquisition was this much fun.”
    “Fun.” He considered the word. “You probably mountain-climb on weekends, don’t you?”
    She laughed. “No. But I do hike. You coming back Wednesday?”
    He tried the same smile on her that he’d used on Dixie. “I appreciate your interest in me, Ms. Price.”
    “You can call me Laura,” she said, and he could tell she’d read his mind, “if you come back on Wednesday. But if we’re just going to meet in my office, I’ll have to remain Ms. Price.”
    She was teasing him about that, but he guessed on some level the distinction was true. The woman who was up-tightand formal and serious about rubber food became someone else entirely when she put on tights and cranked up the music. She could let herself go here. He found himself wondering why she couldn’t