Warrior's Touch (Immortal Warriors #2)

Chapter Two: Club Gym

“Tell me again why the hell I’m doing this?” Kat wheezed.

“Because you work in a bakery and you don’t want your ass getting as wide as the counter,” Arisia huffed out.

“Too late,” Kat grumbled, attempting to follow their instructor’s high energy movements but failing spectacularly.

It was obvious the early morning dance class at Club Gym was a new form of modern day torture. Kat Miller was too short and entirely too uncoordinated for any choreography more difficult than a Chicken Dance. The fact that she was expected to jump around to Cascada’s Evacuate the Dance Floor like she knew what she was doing was wrong on so many levels.

She still couldn't believe she’d let her best friend convince her to try out the new gym that had opened on their way to work. With its wide open spaces, glossy floors and full length windows that let everyone on the street see everything that was happening inside, it was not a place Kat would’ve tried out on her own. The first time she’d seen a class doing a routine, they were rolling on the ground to Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda.

It had not been a pretty sight.

“Alright, people! Push it out for the last minute! Come on! I wanna see you move!” Brandy, the perfect dance specimen shouted from her place in the front.

Kat concentrated, knowing the hour was almost over and then she would be free. Two bad stumbles and an elbow to her neighbor’s chest later and they were done.

“Oh, thank God!” Kat threw herself on the floor and tried to remember how to breathe.

Arisia laughed and lowered herself next to her best friend until she was sitting cross-legged beside her. She bent over, walking her hands out until she was stretching the muscles in her lower back and hips.

Kat turned her head and studied her best friend. Arisia was everything she wasn’t – tall, lithe, and blessed with great boobs. She could stop traffic in her little black dress and Italian heels. But if anyone made the mistake of thinking she had nothing going for her except being a candidate on America’s Next Top Model, they were quickly put in check. Arisia was sharp enough to cut – her dual degrees from Columbia University and Yale only the first drop in her hostile takeover of the academic community.  

Kat was definitely much more girl-next-door material.

At 5’2,” it was a little hard not to feel like an umpa loompa around Arisia, but she was hardly the only one. Even Arisia’s sister Raven had felt a little like the Ugly Duckling growing up with such a beauty.

Still, Kat was more than happy with who she was – a short, cute baker, who knew how to accessorize and enjoyed dying her hair different colors depending on the season. She’d gone to school and received her degree in English Lit, always assuming she’d make her way to a bigger city. Charleston, South Carolina was nice but it wasn't New York or Chicago, but when her favorite uncle died, she knew where she was needed most and had accepted her life with the easy grace that had always been her nature.

Her parents were good people but they never really understood their only daughter, who enjoyed spending time in bakeries and book shops more than playgrounds and beaches. When all of Kat’s friends were cheerleading or going out for different teams, she got a job at the local bookstore. It wasn’t long before her old friends became more like acquaintances, and her parents warned her of the effects of being too solitary. They didn't understand that Kat was never alone. She had her books, and the characters in them - some of them the very best friends anyone could ever hope to have. 

Plus, she hadn’t been alone for very long. It was at West Side Stories she’d first met Arisia and Raven – daughters of the popular owner of the long standing bookstore. They both attended a private school in New York, returning mostly on vacations and holidays. It was during her first Christmas at the bookstore, when they’d arrived in a tumble of laughter and colorful scarves that Kat knew she’d found friends for life.