The next day Lani was at the martial arts studio trying to decide whether or not to practice with a weapon- hardwood bo staff, tapered square tonfas or nunchucks-or to simply take her frustrations out on a punching bag.

Thanks to Detective Eli Grant she could barely sleep a wink last night. She endured an endless cycle of falling asleep and waking up over and over. And everytime she woke up, she expected Eli to be by her side.

Then this morning she was distracted during a planning session with Kristen. They'd already gone over the Paris job ad nauseum so she wasn't so much worried about forgetting any details. Her job was fine. The issue was that she resented Eli for getting into her head at all. She had come to the studio to try her best to forget him and his empty threats. There was no way he had anything incriminating on the drive.

All she had to do was avoid him for a day, then she was off to Pari for two weeks. Maybe she would even stay in Paris. The DiMeras had offices all over the world.

Still thinking about weapons, Lani began stretching then moved right into her favorite warm up drills. When her drills were completed, she decided on her weapon of choice-the bo staff. She selected one from the wall and began to turn it in a helicopter spin above her head and figure eight in front of her. The staff spun so fast it was like a blur. She switched hands back and forth. Next were basic strikes. She planned to do a thousand of them, a hundred thousand of them, something mindless until her head was clear and she wasn't thinking of anything at all. Especially not Eli Grant.

Combining spins, strikes, kicks and full body turns Lani moved gracefully around the room with her staff for the better part of an hour. Then suddenly she felt someone was watching her. After completing one final dizzying turn, Lani landed on one knee dramatically stabbing the staff into the matts underfoot as if it were an unfortunate opponent. Panting for breath from all of her exertion, she looked up to find Eli standing near the weapons rack, dressed in black karate gi. He bowed low to her and Lani felt her staff slip from her hand and drop onto the matt covered floor.

"Ouch," Eli said as he stood up straight again. "If that was intended for me-I felt it."

Of course, just her luck. The main person she was trying to forget shows up the minute she managed to push him out of her mind. "Why do you think," Lani said still breathing rapidly, "That everything is about you." She picked up the staff and walked past Eli to put it back on the wall. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing. You don't usually come here on Wednesdays." Eli moved to the matt and began a series of Taekwondo movements.

"How do you know that? Have you been following me?" Lani stood near the wall watching Eli remembering when they used to come to the studio together. While she brought dance and beauty to martial arts, Eli had power and raw strength. Both of them could seriously harm an opponent with their bare hands. Lani knew she was lethal with the staff.

"Nope, I used cutting edge detective work to figure it out. I look at the sign in sheet when I come in on Thursdays."

"Ahhh...so you've been coming in on Thursdays trying to avoid me?"

"Considering our history, I tried to make sure our paths didn't cross here."

"You should have kept that up and made sure we didn't run into each other today."

"Today is intentional" Eli said. "I wanted to remind you the clock is ticking. You have until tomorrow to move out of the mansion or what we talked about might happen, will happen. I'm not playing around Lani."

"How about this," Lani responded stepping onto the matt. "I'll fight you for the drive."

Eli stopped moving, gave her an incredulous look and snorted "You think just because you've gone over to the dark side, you can beat me."

"I know I can." If she couldn't forget him, the next best thing was to kick his ass or at least attempt to.

Eli placed one foot in front of the other and angled his body so that he was not longer directly facing her. He lifted his hands into loose fists in front of his face assuming a classic martial arts fighting stance "It's been awhile, Lani Price," he said. "Let's see what you've got."