Preslee blinked at him. Adam was normally so easygoing and friendly. He’d never been this uptight about anything before. At least not in her presence.

But Michael nodded. “All right. I will…for now. But we’re going to have to talk about it at some point.”

Adam made a rude noise in the back of his throat at the underlying threat in his brother’s words.

Preslee didn’t know what to say. Apparently there were a lot of things she didn’t know about Adam and his family. And now wasn’t the time to ask about them. But she did want to know more and hoped he would open up to her later. “If you two are done poking at each other, we should probably get to the workout.”

She went for the treadmill in the center, hoping to keep the brothers from being near each other, but Adam steered her toward one on the end and kept the middle treadmill for himself. As if he was purposely keeping her away from his brother. Weird. Was Michael that big of a jerk? Maybe that was why Adam hadn’t wanted her to go on the mud run. Because it was clear that he hadn’t. She just wasn’t sure why. It was exercise, for goodness’ sake. Wasn’t that what he wanted her to do?

Oh. Wait. Was he afraid she wouldn’t be able to keep up and would embarrass him during the event? If so, he’d probably be correct. Undoubtedly, she would lag behind them the entire time. Maybe she should back out and not go.

But then she remembered how Adam had treated her like a child and spoken for her as if she didn’t have a mind of her own. So rude. And she decided right then that she wasn’t backing out of anything. The mud run’s obstacle course would probably kill her, but she’d at least die a slow death as an independent woman who had made her damn point.

The three of them walked at a brisk pace for a few minutes until Adam said, “Time to up our speed to a jog.”

She groaned under her breath even though she did as he said. Each of them increased their speed until they were jogging next to one another. While she was already perspiring like crazy, Adam and Michael weren’t even sweating. They weren’t even breathing hard. Sure, they were both in good shape, but couldn’t they even act like this was as hard for them as it was for her? Jeez.