His blue eyes were so familiar now, so warm and safeand inviting. The opposite of Gabriele’s, which were dark brown and as hard as flint. I would not think about him – I was here with lovely Jack, and sure, it wasn’t like we ever did anything other than work out or sleep together, but I always enjoyed the time I spent with him. We’d never been on a date and I thought Jack was probably on the same page as me when it came to having no inclination to move things forward. It wasn’t true to say I felt nothing for him. I liked him, he was sweet, he made me feel good – hence the urgent phone call to him this afternoon – and the sex was great, but I didn’t have those sorts of feelings for him.
He didn’t make my insides drop like Gabriele did.
We might only have spent one night together, but it was a night I’d since spent years thinking about, the memory of it as vivid now as it had been then. I shook the thought from my mind – judging by the way he’d acted today, he was not the man I’d imagined him to be. I was here now, and Jack was smiling at me. Jack wouldn’t hurt me. And as he pulled me into his arms and kissed me, I managed to put Gabriele Riccitelli to the back of my mind, which was exactly where he belonged.
I moaned softly with pleasure as Jack’s hand stroked my back, his fingers dipping lower and lower, disappearing inside the waistband of my leggings, slipping them off over my hips.
‘I’m glad you called,’ he said, as I trailed my fingertips underneath his regulation polo shirt with the logo of the gym on the front. As you could imagine for a personaltrainer, there was not an inch of fat on his body and his taut muscles rippled as I ran my hands over them.
‘Just needed to let off some steam,’ I said, gasping as he ran his hand from my knee to the top of my inner thigh and back again. I bucked against him, wanting him inside me as quickly as possible so that my focus would remain entirely on the two of us in this room and not on everything that had happened earlier today.
As if reading my mind, he flipped me around so that I was laying on his desk. I watched with pleasure as he ripped off his top, admiring his toned chest underneath. I pushed my fingers inside the elastic waistband of his shorts and pulled him closer.
‘These are justtooeasy to get off,’ I said, deftly removing them.
Pausing to slip on some protection, he laughed and pressed himself into me. ‘You like that, do you?’
‘Mmmhmm,’ I said, because I couldn’t form proper words now that he was inside me.
I hooked my legs around his waist, closing my eyes. It felt better if he was kissing me at the same time, so I pulled his mouth on top of mine. No time or space to think about anyone else now.
Afterwards, I got dressed as quickly as I’d been undressed and blew Jack a kiss goodbye. I held my head high as I opened the door to his office and walked across the gym floor to the exit wearing my dance clothes. A few sidewaysglances suggested that it looked a bit weird for me to be on a gym floor in heels, and I sincerely hoped nobody had put two and two together and worked out exactly what we’d been doing in that office for the last twenty minutes, but then really, who cared, I supposed. Sometimes I was actually able to put myself first and do things just for fun. And sometimes it felt like everybody else’s needs came before my own – and those times usually involved my family.
My phone rang just as I stepped out onto the street and I dipped into the doorway of the shop next door, putting one finger in my ear so that I could hear over the roar of the rush-hour traffic – not that rush hour in Castlebury was anything like it was in central London. In fact the word ‘rush’ might be a bit of a stretch.
‘Hello, Lira speaking?’ I said, putting my phone voice on.
I didn’t recognize the number, and you could never be too careful, could you? First impressions counted.
‘It is Carlos Torres,’ said the gravelly voice on the other end of the line. His Spanish accent sounded even thicker on the phone.
My breath caught involuntarily in my throat. I mustn’t get excited – he was probably calling to let me down gently, to say that I wasn’t at the level he’d need me to be at for a show likeSlow Burn. But then… that dance with Gabriel had been good, I knew it had been. The second he’d held me in his arms again, the moment he’d given my hand a small, sharp squeeze as the steps began, I’d felt it. But whether Carlos had seen it was another matter. Sometimesthese things just didn’t translate – sometimes you needed to go bigger. It had felt big to me – but had it been big enough?
‘We would like to offer you the job,’ said Carlos.
I couldn’t take it in at first. Did he just say what I thought he’d said?
‘Are you serious?’ was the only thing I could muster.
‘You were the best dancer by far, and your chemistry with Gabriele was phenomenal. We all felt it, and there was no discussion over the matter – it is you we want.’
I leaned against the shop window because I didn’t think my legs would continue to hold me up otherwise.
‘And Gabriele is okay with this?’
Carlos hesitated a moment too long.
‘Gabriele wants what is best for the show.’
‘But he’s not sure about me being cast in the lead, is he?’ I said, saying the words for him.
‘He will come around. We need you to begin rehearsals the day after tomorrow. You can do that, right? I assume there is somebody else who can run your studio while you’re away?’
‘Away?’
‘Did I not give you the details of the tour?’
‘You didn’t.’
