He Loves Lucy

November 30

Lucy Cunningham’s control tops were so tight that her inner thighs hissed like a swarm of cicadas with each step. The rhythm of nylon-on-nylon provided the soundtrack to what was becoming a long and humiliating stroll through the Palm Club’s cardio studio, where she was scheduled to meet the man that fate-and her psycho boss-had selected to change her life.

Yes, people were staring. But that was because Lucy was wearing a business suit in a sea of spandex. That, and she was the only chubby chick in a room full of skinny people, which was always funtastic.

Lucy adjusted her laptop strap and pasted on a smile. So where was this guy? It was horrifying enough that she’d agreed to a public makeover as part of one of her own marketing campaigns, but now she had to go peeking behind treadmills in a game of find the uber-trainer? According to the receptionist, he was a hard-to-miss man with short light brown hair, blue eyes, and a little gold hoop in his left ear. Yet so far, she’d managed to miss him and his hoop just fine.

Lucy felt ridiculous. Then she felt around inside her jacket pocket for the comfort of her edible worry beads and popped two Milk Duds into her mouth. It hadn’t escaped her that the beloved Duds would have to go if she was going to lose a hundred pounds in a year. But for that blissful instant, perhaps the last she’d ever know, Lucy closed her eyes and felt the chocolate melt on her tongue until it was yielding and warm, just the right consistency to swirl around under her soft palate to position for the gratifying payoff-the lethal slam of her bite.

Ah, Milk Duds. The official candy of pissed-off fat women everywhere.

Lucy chewed, now much happier, and allowed her eyes to scan the rows of gleaming steel fitness machines displayed on acres of plush charcoal carpeting. She glanced down at the Post-it note in her damp palm. It said: Theo Redmond. Her boss had referred to him as “personal trainer to the beautiful people of Miami Beach,” which made Lucy smile, seeing that he was about to become personal trainer to Lucy Cunningham, originally of Pittsburgh.

As she rounded the corner and entered a wide sunlit area full of high-tech machines, it occurred to Lucy that she might not have thought this through sufficiently. After all, who in her right mind decides to turn over a new leaf during the holidays? Talk about masochistic.

And she hadn’t even considered how she’d introduce herself to this trainer, once she located him. She always preferred the blunt approach but wondered how he’d handle a quip like, Howdy! I’m the out-of-shape babe you ordered!

“Lucy Cunningham?”

Her head swiveled toward the deep voice. She stopped in her tracks as the bronzed God of Fitness arose from his knees. He’d been helping a vaguely familiar-looking woman with a machine that flapped her arms up and down like chicken wings, and the woman now seemed forlorn that he was leaving her side. The man began to walk toward Lucy, smiling.

Her stomach clenched with that near-sick anxiety she felt in the company of jocks, even though it had now been a whole decade since the Taco Bowl incident and there wasn’t an ESPN reporter in sight.

She reminded herself to breathe. She reviewed to herself the truths one by one-the guy moving her way had nice eyes; he had a genuine smile; the guy looked like a life-size Ken doll, only hotter.

His big hand swallowed hers. His skin felt warm and a bit calloused. He squeezed her chubby little fingers. And Lucy knew she was staring, but the sheer physical beauty of this man had apparently left her mute and brain-dead.

He smiled at her and inclined his head to look her in the eye. “I’m Theo. I’m running a little late, so would you mind having a seat in the conference room?” He gestured toward an area walled off in smoky glass. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”

Lucy nodded. She looked from the trainer’s big white smile to the exotic woman on the exercise machine and it hit her. She’d just seen that perfect female face and that perfect female form on the front of that month’s Cosmo! The woman on that bench was supermodel Gia Altamonte!

Lucy sucked in a breath of surprise, and the partially desiccated Milk Duds went along for the ride.

Theo Redmond peered at her, his brow now furrowed in concern. Then he patted Lucy’s back in an area that would have been between her shoulder blades if she’d had shoulder blades, but there’d been nothing remotely bladelike on Lucy’s body for years, as she well knew, and she was about to make some amusing comment along those lines when she realized she wasn’t getting any air into her lungs.

“You OK, Miss Cunningham?”

Lucy smiled nonchalantly, confident she could will herself to breathe. Any second now it was bound to happen.

The trainer and the cover girl continued to stare at Lucy as the seconds ticked by.

The hell with this, she thought, clutching her throat in what she prayed was the universal sign for: There seems to be a Milk Dud lodged in my airway.

Trainer Ken leaped into action. He ripped Lucy’s laptop strap from her shoulder, twirled her around so that her back was toward him, and brought his arms up under hers. In a hot flare of humiliation, Lucy realized several things at once: Gia Altamonte was on her cell phone, summoning the paramedics in a particularly annoying high-pitched Latin accent; the trainer had his hands dangerously close to Lucy’s underwire-buoyed twins; and, in her last oxygen-fed thought, she realized she was too large for Theo Redmond to encircle in his arms in order to save her life.

Lucy was swimming, up, up into the bright world, surfacing from a heavy and sensual dream, where she was being kissed like nobody’s business, kissed so hard her lungs burned. She tried to embrace her dream lover, but her arms felt too cumbersome to move, so she just angled her mouth to better accommodate his kiss.

“The ambulance is here, so you can stop making out with her, Theo.”

That voice sounded like fingernails on glass.

“Lucy? Miss Cunningham? Can you hear me?”

That voice was sooo much nicer.

Then it came back to her, and Lucy opened one eye to see the face of Theo Redmond hovering above. He had exquisite soft blue eyes framed in dark brown lashes and brows. He had smooth but strong lips. He was stroking her cheek.

“Welcome back.”

Lucy closed her eyes tight and tried to melt into the plush carpeting of the cardio room floor. The paramedics rushed in. Their voices were hurried as they took her blood pressure, asked her what medicines she was taking, and-could this possibly get any worse?- heaved her onto a stretcher, wheeled her out through the busy Palm Club, to the elevator, the model and the trainer hurrying along at her side.

“We’re taking you to the hospital, where-”

“No.” Lucy’s eyes snapped open. She glared at the paramedic.

“Just to be on the safe side,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

As Gia Altamonte signed autographs for the ambulance crew crammed in the elevator, Theo leaned down close to Lucy’s face.

“Do it for me, OK, Lucy?” One side of his mouth hitched up, and he winked at her. “When a woman loses consciousness on our first date, I have to wonder-is it my antiperspirant? My mouthwash?”

“It was my Milk Duds.”

“Those things will kill you, you know.” He let his little grin explode into a blazing smile.

Lucy couldn’t help it-she smiled back, still feeling the astounding pleasure of that dream kiss. And in the heat of Theo Redmond’s smile, something inside her ignited. It occurred to Lucy that dropping a hundred pounds had just become her second-biggest challenge.