Wrestling Harmony (The Kingsley Series) Read online

  Wrestling Harmony

  Book Three of the Kingsley Series

  BY : BRANDI KENNEDY

  Text copyright ©2013

  Brandi Kennedy

  All Rights Reserved

  Dedication

  It never ceases to amaze me, the support that I have found and the new friends that I have made, the entirely new aspect of life that has opened up to me, just because I took the risk of following my dreams...

  For my children who are my world, my reason for waking up each day, and the most treasured blessings of my life …

  For Dana, my cousin, my friend, my confidante, my editor …

  For Lauren Dawes, whose amazing professionalism inspires me to work harder even as her friendship encourages me to keep going ...

  For my collection of J’s – the people who encourage me when I need it, who lift me up when I’m down, and who help me make sure my name is one that the world has heard of – Thanks to J.M., J.S., J.J., J.O., and J.W ...

  For all the others who have played a part in getting me to where I am …

  And for the fans – those dedicated loyalists who read for me, encourage me, review me, share me, and wait ever so anxiously for the next release …

  *Thank*You*All*

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  A Letter From The Author

  About The Author

  Follow Brandi Kennedy on the Web

  Other Titles by This Author

  Chapter One

  Harmony Kingsley walked through her class, letting her eyes wander from child to child, giving tips and instructions as she walked. "Julia, that's a great job! I am so proud of your new cartwheels! Keep going, Kylie, you’ll get it; your handstands are a lot more stable than when you started here, huh? Just try it again if you fall, that’s how you get them right – with practice. Maddison, be careful on that beam! Watch your balance, hon, and don’t forget to point your toes."

  Rolling her shoulders, she checked the clock again. Harmony loved the kids in her classes, but the constant worry that one of them would be injured exhausted her. Her job wasn't just about teaching the youngsters how to tumble and flex; she was gleaning the best from their ranks, sending the most talented children to train with an Olympic trainer that she had trained with long ago, when she was younger and her hopes for Olympic competition hadn’t been shattered with the passage of time. Teaching the young class of hopefuls was the last of her real involvement with the Olympic training scene – in the past year she'd been backing out, moving away from the world of gymnastic competition.

  Harmony had just turned twenty, and letting go of her Olympic dream had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. The hope of someday being an Olympic gymnast was now behind her, leaving a hole in the fabric of her life that begged to be filled with something more personal, more challenging – something new. Working with the kids kept her busy and earned a paycheck, but she felt lost without a new dream to work toward, unsure of where her life was going now that she'd left competitive gymnastics behind.

  All she knew for sure was that she wanted to keep doing something athletic. She wanted to keep doing something that would allow her to use and maintain the physical fitness she'd worked so hard for, something that would keep her fit, that would give her the same rush of competition, the same thrill of success.

  In the meantime, she loved having the chance to teach gymnastics and dance to the children in her classes. She loved guiding the talented ones, encouraging them to follow their abilities and hone their skills while they were still young. She loved working with the others, too, encouraging them to keep trying while helping them to discover their own strengths. Still, thrilling as it could be, the job was tiring.

  "Only ten minutes ‘til five. Finally," she whispered, her blue eyes following the motion of the clock's second hand. Aloud, she said, "Okay littles, we're almost finished for today, so let's get into our stretch routines." Harmony waited for the kids to come together, sitting in lined ranks on the floor. Guiding them through their stretches and flexibility exercises, she felt some of the achy stiffness beginning to leave her own neck, felt her own shoulders moving lower, away from her ears as her body relaxed and released the day’s tension. It had been a long day with five full classes, and she was ready to be finished. Leaning into the final stretch and counting down before releasing the children, she took a deep breath before sitting up and turning to face her class.

  "Alright guys, that was an awesome job. You can go ahead and change out now. Street shoes on, okay?" Harmony clapped her hands sharply together, watching the children of her tumbling class leave their exercise and crowd together near the cubby wall. As the girls chatted and giggled together, finding and changing into their sneakers, she waved to the mothers lined up outside the window and took the few steps over to her desk.

  A scuffle brought her attention back to the doorway though, where she watched her newest student launch herself into the iron grip of a heavily muscled young man. "Uncle Xander!” she shrieked, throwing her tiny arms around his thick neck, her feet lifting from the floor as he caught her against his chest, the tattoos down his arms rippling over his muscular arms as he moved. "You came early! You came to my class!" the girl shouted.

  The man stood, running the fingers of one hand over the close crop of his dark blond hair as his blue eyes swept the room. His gaze settled on Harmony, who dropped her eyes to the papers in her hand. Xander Harrison, uncle. His name was there, listed as a permitted pickup for the girl. Squatting down, Harmony tucked the papers into her desk, running her palms down her thighs as she stood.

  "Time to make nice," she muttered, waving goodbye to one of the kids. But when she turned to the door to introduce herself to Laney's uncle, she was too late; he hadn’t waited and was now walking down the hall with the girl perched, giggling, on his massive shoulders.

  “Mmm, never seen him around before,” Harmony’s best friend Whitney murmured, appearing through a side door behind the desk. She clicked her tongue, stepping a little closer to peer around Harmony’s shoulder as Xander carried Laney down the hallway and through the gym. “He looks familiar to me, though, somehow.”

  “Laney seemed to know him; she ran right up to him and called him Xander. He’s her uncle, I guess,” Harmony answered, gesturing toward the desk drawer that held all of her students�
� enrollment and pickup information. “His name was on her paperwork, so I let them go ... Seems pretty rude though, right? He didn’t even say hi.”

  “Well, I guess it’s a good thing Laney called him by name, then, isn’t it?” Whitney laughed softly, nudging Harmony’s waist with a pointed elbow.

  “Yeah, or I’d have embarrassed both of us trying to stop him from taking her. He is on her pick-up list though, so no point in chasing him down. I don’t know, maybe he’s just in a rush.”

  “Whatever, he can haul me out of here anytime he wants. Look at those arms!”

  “Whitney, you are insufferable,” Harmony laughed. “He didn’t even introduce himself! I can’t imagine how rude he must be on a daily basis. I mean, who picks a kid up from class for the first time without speaking to the instructor?”

  “Well I have to agree that that’s a little strange, but hey – he’s still pretty to look at, and you don’t need an introduction for just looking. He seriously looks really familiar though. I don’t know him, but I totally know his face from somewhere – is he a member here?”

  “I doubt it,” Harmony answered, twisting the cap from a bottle of water. “I don’t think I’ve seen him before, either. Hey, you want to grab some dinner in a little bit? That was my last class for today.”

  “Man, Harmony, I wish I could,” Whitney said, making a face. “But I’ve got one last step class for the day before I’m finished. I’m free after that though, if you’ll last that long.” Crossing her arms, she stepped back, bracing her narrow shoulders against the wall behind her. “I know how you get when you’re hungry,” she laughed.

  “Whatever, I’m not that bad,” Harmony retorted, grinning. But for real though, how long?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Let me look,” Whitney said, turning to read the class schedule from the wall beside the door. “It’s a short one, just an hour. But I’ll be a while because I’ll need a shower before I go out. You sure you want to wait that long?”

  “Yeah, I’ll wait a while. I need to blow off some steam anyway. Come find me on the cardio floor when you finish?”

  “No problem,” Whitney laughed. They walked together to the other side of the room, lifting stacks of aerobic steps and placing them neatly around the room for Whitney’s class. By the time they’d finished, each step had been topped with a gym towel, an elastic tension band, and a set of miniature hand weights.

  “Alright, then. All set?” Harmony asked, once the room was set up. “One minute to class time. So I’ll leave you to it and see you in a bit?”

  “Yep, I’ll come find you when I’ve got everything put away in here,” Whitney grinned, turning to the stereo and slipping her cell phone into the music dock.

  Leaving the studio and jogging up the stairs to the second floor of the gym, Harmony stepped onto the nearest stair machine and got moving. “Okay, a little sweat on the stairway to nowhere, and no time to think about the old days,” she muttered, setting the machine’s resistance levels. Within minutes, sweat beads rolled down the sides of her face and her leg muscles were burning. Pushing herself, Harmony increased her pace, struggling to block herself from thinking about the past …

  Until only six months ago, Harmony had spent every evening after work in a room across town, flipping and twirling, tumbling and dancing, working her body and training to follow her dreams. She’d still held a fragile hope back then; it wasn’t until she’d been offered a job as a trainer that the reality had hit her. It was only then that she’d realized she would never be an Olympic gymnast. She would never even be close. Her time had passed, and she was well beyond her gymnastic prime. Turning down the training job had broken her heart, and letting go of the Olympic dream had shattered a part of her that she wasn’t sure would ever heal. But she’d had to admit to herself that it was over, and holding on to something that was no longer possible for her would have been too painful. It was easier to let it go, easier to walk away than to always be on the sidelines, training other stars to achieve a dream that had once been hers. And so, she had let it go.

  The worst part was that in losing her hold on that childhood dream, Harmony had lost a part of herself. She’d lost some of her enthusiasm – she’d lost some of her positive cheer, becoming somewhat more aware of a deep sense of loneliness setting in.

  She’d watched her brother Drew marry a beautiful woman, and she’d watched her sister Cameron marry the sweet psychologist who’d brought Drew and Cass together. Cameron’s adoption of Mac’s son, Logan, had just been finalized, and her parents had thrown a huge party to welcome Logan officially into the family.

  Watching wasn’t easy though, and Harmony was struggling with the adjustment. She’d always been the star, the performer, the Kingsley kid with a talent and a claim to fame. But she’d fallen short of her goals, and she still felt the failure like a searing wound, one that left her spirit aching. Now, her youngest brother Evan was the star Kingsley, the hero of his high school football team, a talented player who’d already been promised a scholarship in exchange for playing on a college team.

  Even her oldest brother Michael was looking happier, finally healing from a painful divorce, and while Harmony was thrilled to see Michael recovering from his heartbreak, all of the happiness around her only served to remind her of her own loss.

  Everyone’s happy. Except me, she thought miserably. All of them, doing well, making progress, achieving something. Except me. And I can’t even say anything, because it’s stupid for me to be this down about something so impossible in the first place. The Olympics ... maybe it wasn’t ever really going to happen in the first place, and I’m just being childish, still moping around all the time.

  “And that’s enough of that,” Harmony grumbled to herself, leaving the stair climber and stepping onto a treadmill. Slowly increasing the speed, she moved into a driving run, pushing her body, silencing the grief of her lost dream behind the rasping hiss of her breath as her feet pounded the belt of the treadmill.

  Lost in the motion of her body and the thrill of the run, it took her a while to realize that Whitney had appeared beside her, smiling as she tapped lightly along the side of the treadmill monitor. “Ready to get out of here?” Whitney asked.

  “Yep, shower time,” Harmony answered, slowing her pace and eventually shutting down the machine. Finally, she swept a towel over her face, stepped down from the treadmill and forced a smile. “How was your class?”

  “It was the usual,” Whitney shrugged. “And your run?”

  “Ineffective,” Harmony sighed. “I’m still the biggest representative of failure my family has, and I still can’t seem to let it go.”

  “Harmony, stop it. You know they don’t see it that way; no one thinks you’re a failure. I swear, your family is so stinking proud of you, it makes everyone else look bad,” Whitney laughed. “You just need to stop being so down on yourself.”

  “Easier said than done,” Harmony said, lowering her eyes as she folded and unfolded the sweaty towel in her hands.

  “Look, we’re still young, Harmony. There’s still a lot of time for you to figure out what you want to do next. I promise, your life is not over.”

  “But my career is. You don’t get it Whit; that was my dream. It was the one thing I always worked toward, and I skipped so much other stuff, just being dedicated to making the Olympic team. I know I could’ve done the training thing and still been a part of that world, but ... it just wouldn’t have been the same. It wasn’t what I wanted. But to finally get good enough and be too late? I failed. And there’s no changing it, because there’s no going back.”

  “Even if you could go back, you and I know that you gave your all to your gymnastics, Harmony. You worked harder than anyone I’ve ever seen, and you were so dedicated. But it’s done, and you’re right – you can’t go back. However, you can redirect,” Whitney said softly, hooking her arm through Harmony’s elbow and leading her away from the treadmill. “You’re young, Harmony. You’re beautiful, yo
u’re smart, you’re talented. Dream a new dream.”

  “Yeah, that’s easier said than done, too,” Harmony muttered. “Dreams don’t just trip and fall in front of me. That was my thing, the thing I was good at, best at. I was a gymnast, Whit, and that’s all I have ever been.” Shaking her head as they wandered through the doors into the employee locker room, Harmony opened her locker and said softly, “I don’t know how to be anything else.”

  Whitney’s slender arm settled around Harmony’s shoulder. “Sure you do; you’ve been a teacher for months, working with the kids in your class. If that’s not working for you, try something else. You’ll find something new to love, I know you will, Harm. Just keep your heart open. It’ll come.”

  “Yeah, if you say so,” Harmony mumbled, a tear sliding down the slope of her cheek as she gathered fresh clothes and a towel from her locker and shut the door with a click. “If you say so.”

  Chapter Two

  “Are you sure now’s the best time to move?” Whitney asked, watching with concern as Harmony pulled a fork through her salad, moving the food around but not eating.

  “Yeah, I think I have to,” Harmony answered. “With everything changing for me, it just seems like the right time now. I mean, I stayed with my parents because I traveled so much with the competitions and stuff with gymnastics, but now that I’m home to stay, I think it’s time for me to step out on my own, find my own way. And maybe that’s part of why I’ve been so down lately. I feel like my life is on standstill, like I’m going nowhere. Maybe a change will do me some good, Whit.”