Why doesn’t she just step off the damn thing?

Kurt raised a brow. “You going over there to help, or do you want me to?”

Adam was already moving in her direction. “I’ve got it. I’ll go turn it off before she hurts herself.”

Hustling across the room, Adam made it to the aisle behind the machine and came around the opposite side of the stair-climber. The machine was tall, but he jumped onto the front easily enough, grasping the bars to pull himself the rest of the way up. Then he quickly reached over the railing and punched the red emergency-shutoff button. As the stairs immediately slowed to a complete stop, he leaped off the machine and hurried around to the other side to see if she was okay.

Panting heavily, the exhausted woman leaned against the rails and rested her head on her forearms. Her long auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but a few loose wisps had fallen around her face and were now soaked with sweat. As was most of her shirt. How long was she running like that anyway?

Her head slowly lifted. Although he thought her face couldn’t possibly get any redder than it already was, the moment her gorgeous blue eyes landed on him, the color in her cheeks deepened immensely. “Uh, thanks,” she muttered awkwardly, her eyes darting away.

“No problem,” Adam replied. “You okay?”

“Yes.” She nodded as she took another deep breath and exhaled slower, her breath trying hard to return to a normal state. “Thank God you have fast reflexes.” She blew out another breath. “That’s twice you kept me from hurting myself.” Then she murmured something low to herself that he almost didn’t catch.

Confusion spiraled through him, and he cocked his head. “What does gym three mean?”

She visibly cringed. “Uh, sorry. It’s nothing. Just me talking to myself. I…uh, do that sometimes.”

He didn’t like that he’d made her cringe but shrugged nonchalantly. “Don’t we all?”

“Well, yeah. I guess most people do.” The sincere smile she gave him was so genuine, pure, and unexpected that it warmed him from the inside out.

An underlying current began to hum slowly through his veins, and he swallowed hard. “What were you, uh, trying to do?”

She laughed nervously. “I wasn’t really trying to do anything. Well, at least not to the machine. I was doing a video update on my antiquing vlog. But when I ended the live feed, I accidentally touched one of the buttons on the stair-climber. The machine went crazy, and it was going way too fast for me to stop it. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Can I give you some assistance with it?”