"I'm ready."

Chris licked his lips a little, "You look so hot right now."

"Chris, focus," Stephanie laughed as she circled in front of him. "We're not here for you to tell me how hot I am."

"But it goes without saying, you know," Chris told her. "Why did you have to wear something like that? I thought that you were just going to be in some athletic pants and a t-shirt, I didn't know you were going to dress like that."

"Like what?" Stephanie asked, looking down at her outfit. She'd had some wrestling outfits made for her. Right now she was wearing a kind of romper with shorts and a v-neck collar and no sleeves. Chris had been staring at her intently since she'd walked into the gym. They were currently at the wrestling facility in Titan Towers, down below the ground floor where the gym was. Chris didn't want to teach Stephanie somewhere unsafe so they were staying in Connecticut for the week.

She felt a little uncomfortable being so close to her family and not seeing them. But with all the bad blood boiling right now, she didn't think meeting up with them would be the greatest idea. She just couldn't picture going to a family dinner and not having it erupt into yelling and craziness and in-fighting. Someday, maybe it would change, but for now, this was how it had to be and she wasn't exactly sorry about it. So long she'd lived under her family's thumb and she was loving the freedom she had now.

"Like that," Chris said, gesturing towards her outfit. "That barely covers anything."

"Are you kidding me?" she asked. "Chris, everything is covered, it's not like I have nothing on or I'm topless or something."

She laughed when he shook his head. "You just look really beautiful is all."

She blushed a little, "Thanks, but that's not the look I was going for. I was just meeting with Ally about wrestling gear and we kind of came up with this one and I liked it and she whipped it right up for me. I thought I'd get used to wrestling in it."

"Yeah, but did you take into consideration that your husband would find you hot in it?" he asked. Then he added, "Great, now everyone who watches is going to think that you're hot too and I'm going to have competition coming at me from all sides."

"Yeah right," she scoffed. "You've seen the girls we work with, I'm the last on the list…well, okay, not true, Chyna is the last on the list, but I'm second to last. Why want me when there are other, prettier girls to be had?"

"Because you're the prettiest," Chris said, winking at her. He was always telling her she was pretty and it always made a blush rise to her cheeks. It's not that she thought herself an ugly cow or anything, she just didn't think she was the gorgeous person Chris seemed to see her as. But when he looked at her, when he told her those things, she believed him because his words seemed so sincere.

"Stop," she responded with a slight giggle. "You're making me blush."

"Even cuter that you don't realize how pretty you are," Chris said.

"Chris, okay, we've had our fun, now I want to start training. When we challenge Trish and Kurt, I want to be prepared to go out there. I want Trish to think that she can just hop in the ring and push me or something and I'll fall down. But I won't fall down and then I'll kick her and pull her hair and throw her out of the ring and then I'll ram her into the ring steps and then you can throw her back in the ring for me and I'll do a Lionsault."

"Okay, babe, you had me until Lionsault. We've got a week to get you trained enough to where you can beat Trish. While that's more than enough time because she doesn't know how to wrestle, I don't think it's enough time to teach you had to do complicated moves like that."

"I took gymnastics as a kid, you know," she said haughtily, hands on hips.

"Yeah, I know, isn't that how you hurt your knee?" he said, glancing down at her knee, which had a brace on it so she wouldn't get injured. Stephanie cursed the shots she was wearing for exposing her weakness.

"Yeah, but that was a long time ago, I'm completely healed from it," Stephanie told him. "I bet that if you taught me I could do it just fine."

"No," he said, "but come on, lock up with me."

Stephanie smiled, "Can do, Teach."

Chris laughed as Stephanie came forward and they locked arms. She tried to smile flirtily at him, but he seemed to change once their arms locked. This wasn't time for flirting and sweetness, Chris looked incredibly determined. This must be what he was like in the ring and if it was really what he was like, no wonder he was the champion and held onto the belt, he looked so fierce. This momentary lapse in her thinking allowed Chris to get her in a headlock and she tried to break free, but Chris had a firm grip on her.

"Chris!" she screamed, trying to get him to let go as she struggled against him.

"This isn't going to make me let you go," Chris said.

"Yeah, but I doubt Trish is going to be able to choke me half to death," she wheezed out.

Chris realized he was holding her like he would hold one of his own opponents and quickly let go of her. She gulped in some air and straightened up. "I'm so sorry, Steph. I didn't mean to hold you so hard, I guess I forgot my own strength there for a moment."

"You must have," she said, rubbing the back of her neck. "I'm okay."

"You sure?" he asked, worried that he might have actually hurt her with a stupid move like a headlock.

"Yeah, so if she had me in the headlock, how would I get out?" Stephanie said.

"Well, you're stronger than she is, so you could push her away and into the ropes. She'll probably bounce back and then you can clothesline her. Clothesline me," Chris said, taking a few steps back from Stephanie. "You could do a standing one, or a running one if you want to get a little momentum. If she's running at you, you can just stick your arm out and she'll run right into it."

"If only I had stronger arms so that it would break her nose," Stephanie said vindictively.

Chris was so incredibly turned on at the moment, but he tried to hide it accordingly, but if she didn't stop acting like this, he was going to have to take her up to her office, close the door and well…"Well, I'm glad you want to break her nose," he said instead. "Okay, so run the ropes and hit me."

"I'm actually, I'm not really sure how to run the ropes," Stephanie said, looking at said ropes with a tentative face. "I mean, I've kind of done it before, but I just…I have this irrational fear that I'm going to fall through the ropes and land on my head and so I don't really like to try."

"It's really easy," he said, grabbing her hand and taking her to the ropes. "Come here, we'll start off easy. Just lean against the ropes and kind of bounce off them."

Stephanie might be falling even more in love with Chris as the session went on. He was the most patient man she'd ever met. Her father and Shane were not patient at all, they were always hustling and bustling and working and doing things non-stop and sometimes, when she wanted to catch up, they would leave her in the dust. Andrew had been pushing marriage so he wasn't even that patient. Chris took her through the steps as fast or as slow as she wanted to and he tried to make it fun for her when she got frustrated.

They worked at it for a few hours until Stephanie's body was aching. Chris was a little winded too, but nowhere near Stephanie. They'd been doing mock matches for the last half hour and her muscles were screaming at her to take a break. Chris saw the strain on her face and said that they should call it a day and she'd done a great job. She beamed at him. She silently wondered if he was just being nice, but he really did seem to think she'd done a good job.

"You are going to be so ready for this match," he said, kissing her temple. "I can't wait."

"Me neither," Stephanie said, already picturing herself putting Trish into a Tree of Woe and kicking at her midsection. Her eyes were lighting up just thinking about it.

"What are you thinking, McMahon?" he asked her.

"Just about what I'm going to do to Trish," Stephanie said.

"Well before all of that, let's hit the showers, then I'll take my favorite girl out to lunch," he said, grinning at her.

"Yes, sir," she said cheekily as they headed to the separate showers. Her muscles relaxed a lot as the warm water hit her back and she hummed to herself as she washed her hair. She was feeling so prepared for her match. She knew she'd only get better and better the more she met with Chris. Maybe she could even be a fighting Women's Champion, defending the title and everything. She got out of the shower, dried herself off and changed into a fresh pair of clothes.

Chris was already waiting for her when she was done. "What took you so long?"

"I take longer than you, sorry," she teased.

"Our hair is the same length, what were you doing?"

"Shut up," she said. "Let me just go up to my office and check my messages and then we can head to lunch, okay?"

"Okay," he said as he seized her hand and gave it a squeeze as they began walking towards the elevators. They were riding up to the top floor when the doors opened and Stephanie saw her mother on the other side, waiting for the elevator. Stephanie took a deep breath and instinctively drew closer to Chris.

Linda stepped on and looked at her daughter with a nod, "Stephanie."

"Hello, Mom," Stephanie said and she could feel the disappointment coming off her mother in waves.

"Chris."

"Hi, Linda," Chris said, not entirely sure how to address her. He knew that her family wasn't crazy about what had happened with him and Stephanie, but he didn't know if it was because of the way things went down or because of him personally. He was inclined to believe it was because of the way things had gone down between him, Stephanie, and her aborted wedding and not because they disliked him personally. He wasn't a bad guy. It was then he realized he hadn't even introduced Stephanie to his parents. They knew he was married, the joint phone call of unhappiness and yelling had alerted him to that fact, but they hadn't yet had a chance to meet her. They would love her.

"Your father is in the building, you know," Linda said.

"He does work here," Stephanie said.

"Why are you wet?" Linda asked. She was trying very hard to remain distant, but she missed her daughter and she was finding this invisible gap between them hard to bear.

"Oh," Stephanie said, running her hand over her hair self-consciously. "Chris was training me a little. He wants to make sure that I can take care of myself if the need arose."

Linda just stared at Stephanie and Chris for a moment. She wouldn't admit it, stubbornness was not just a McMahon trait, but she was almost glad to see her daughter's husband taking such an interest in her well-being. From what she'd seen, Chris and Stephanie did seem happy together and he didn't necessarily seem like a horrible man, she just didn't know him and she didn't like that her daughter had gone over them all and seized control of the company. Linda had had no idea of Stephanie's unhappiness with her current position.

"That's a good thing to do," Linda said. "How…" She wasn't sure she should ask lest she appear interested, though she was. "How are you?"

"I'm very well actually," Stephanie said, just a hint of sarcasm in her voice, just enough to get across that she wasn't going to let her mother get to her.

"Good, good," Linda said and she so wanted to just talk to her daughter like they used to, but there was so much betrayal there she felt like she couldn't speak a word. It was the oddest feeling, this distance she felt from her own child. She knew nothing about her life now. She was married, she was learning to wrestle, she was running the company. What next? Was she going to turn up with a child one day? She hated this.

"You?"

"I've been okay," Linda said. The elevator stopped. "Well, this is my floor, goodbye, Stephanie, Chris."

"Bye," they said in unison. Stephanie watched the doors close. "That was rough."

"You know, it might not…might not be a bad idea if you were to…maybe talk to her or go out with her. I mean, just to ease the rift, maybe…" Stephanie sighed. She did miss talking to her mom.

"Maybe…"