Nanny

18

Kate

The gym was as well-stocked as any professional gym. The floor was covered with rubberized tiles, and the walls were mirrors. A bunch of free weights—dumbbells, barbells, and kettlebells—were arranged against one wall. The other wall had four cardio machines in a row: treadmill, bike, elliptical, and a rowing machine. On the other side of the room, behind a glass wall, was the lap pool Barry had hidden behind in our game of hide and seek. It was covered right now, which did make it look like a hot tub.

He has a workout room upstairs next to his office, I thought, and another one here in the penthouse. It must be nice.

Mathias was punching buttons on the treadmill. "Good! I thought I would have to retrieve you from the bedroom! Are you ready?"

I nodded. "Braxton has a workout room upstairs next to his office, and a second one down here? Seems kind of crazy."

Mathias scoffed. "It takes time to travel up and down the elevator. Up, down, up, down. This is a waste of time! Time that could be spent getting sweaty! Now, enough about Brax. This session is about you! We will begin with a simple jog on the treadmill."

I hesitated. "Can we do one of the other machines? I'm not exactly equipped for the treadmill..."

"Absolut nicht!" he boomed. Absolutely not. "Do not fear, because the workout I will choose will be quite easy indeed."

I sighed and said, "What I mean is... I don't have a sports bra. So anything with bouncing is going to be painful."

He turned to me with regret. "Scheisse. My deepest apologies! I did not understand. We can begin on a different machine. But first, we must stretch!"

We did some dynamic stretches first, which Mathias explained were better than static stretches. He had me swing one leg back and forth like a pendulum, then the other leg. Then we walked across the room while kicking our knees up to try to touch our chins. For someone so large and muscular, Mathias was surprisingly flexible.

"We will begin with the elliptical machine. Very little bouncing. Ah, and it works your arms, too!" He demonstrated the motion in front of me, though without the machine it looked like he was trying to ski and punch someone at the same time.

"Elliptical sounds great."

I climbed onto the machine and Mathias selected a workout. A timer appeared on the machine, starting at five minutes and counting downward.

"Just five minutes?" I asked while I began moving. "I can do more than that."

Mathias stepped onto the treadmill next to me and began walking. "Five minutes is the warm-up! Then the real work begins!"

I held onto the elliptical arms and began moving faster. I had to hand it to Mathias: his enthusiasm was infectious. I was kind of excited about the workout now that I was on the machine.

Sweat began running down my back as the timer reached zero. Then a new clock appeared: thirty minutes. The resistance in the elliptical increased slightly, too. I had to work a little bit harder to get the machine to move.

"We begin!" Mathias punched a button on his treadmill and the machine hummed louder. His feet stomped on the treadmill with every step as he began jogging.

"Pump the arms!" Mathias said with a huge grin. "Pump them! Puuuuump!"

I giggled and moved my arms harder.

Both of us settled into a quiet groove. I tried to ignore the number counting down in front of me, but my eyes kept flicking down to it. I glanced over at Mathias's treadmill. He was running at a seven-minute pace. That seemed awfully fast for a guy his size, but he didn't seem to be breathing hard at all.