He glanced back to Preslee and recalled how she nearly ran him down moments before. Then after walking past him, she had tripped over…well, nothing. Thankfully, she’d caught herself before hitting the ground. Although when she’d glanced back at him, Adam had pretended not to notice. But he’d noticed, all right. With her around, they might need a more comprehensive first aid kit. Or an EMT on hand.

He glanced back at her injured knee, and concern trickled through him. “What happened to her? Did she get hurt on a machine?”

“No, she walked in like that. Not sure what happened, but it was just a small scrape. Trust me, the Band-Aid makes it look a lot worse than it is. If she wasn’t bleeding, I doubt she would’ve asked me for anything.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. She seems a bit skittish about being here. In the gym, I mean.”

Confusion spiked through Adam. “Why?”

Kurt shrugged. “Not sure.” He motioned to the back of the room where two regular members were lifting weights. “Though, earlier, those two creeps were watching her and making comments. Nothing too obnoxious, but their remarks probably didn’t help any. I’m keeping an eye on them just in case I need to intervene. I don’t want them running her off.”

Adam glared at the two men pumping iron. He had never trained with them before, but he was familiar with them. They were notorious for not putting the weights back on the racks and never wiping their sweat off the equipment after using it, even if it was a machine next to one of the sanitizing stations. The inconsiderate jerks.

While Adam eyed them, the bigger of the two men began chuckling and nudged an elbow into the other guy’s ribs as he pointed in the direction of the woman across the room. Then they both burst out laughing.

Adam’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t sure what was so funny, but they were acting like complete nimrods, and he didn’t like it one bit. But when he twisted his head to glance at the newcomer across the room to see if she had noticed their offensive behavior, Adam sucked in an audible breath.

The last thing he expected was to see this Preslee woman sprinting as fast as she could—on a stair-climber no less—with a look of sheer panic lighting her eyes. Man. He’d never seen anyone move on a stair-climber at that pace before. Her shoes barely had time to slap against one stair tread before the next one immediately took its place, requiring her to double-time it to keep from tripping over her feet. But no matter how fast she climbed, she couldn’t seem to reach the top of the stairs to turn the machine off. Probably why she was holding on to the side bars with a white-knuckled death grip.