Page 9 of Slow Burn

Jack and I had had an arrangement, if that’s what you could call it, for the last year or so, since I’d paid for a course of actual personal training sessions with him at the swanky and extortionately priced local gym I’d signed up to because I could feel my body changing as I got further into my thirties, and not for the better.

Of course, I didn’t have the pressure of being a dancer anymore – I wasn’t competing or on tour, because if I was, that would have come with a much more urgent need to be at my fittest and to look at my absolute best. But how my body worked, how strong it felt – it was still important to me.

And Jack had pushed me to my absolute limits during our training sessions, which I’d whined and moaned about at the time, of course, but once I started seeing results, it had all seemed worth the effort.

Then one day, after a particularly intense session, we’d ended up having sex up against the lockers in the men’s changing rooms. It had all been so out of the blue that I hadn’t even had time to worry about what would have happened if somebody walked in and saw us.

Since then, our PT sessions had morphed into sessions of another kind, which I had to say were ten times more enjoyable than pounding it out on the treadmill for forty-five minutes straight.

I knocked on his office door – he was the gym floor manager now, so he spent less time training clients and more time doing admin, which made it believable, I supposed, that I’d need to see him in his office for an extended period of time.

According to Jack, nobody had ever questioned why, occasionally, we’d spend half an hour in there with his door locked, although, to be honest, I preferred it when we met at his flat.

He’d even been to mine once, when my parents had been away and I knew there was no way either of my sisters would pop in unannounced.

‘Come in!’ called Jack.

I pushed open the door, closing it behind me.

He was perched on the edge of his desk, wearing racing green gym shorts – and they were short – and a white polo shirt that made him look like he’d just come off the rugby pitch.

His blonde hair was short at the sides and longer on top, and when he reached out his hand I already knew to lock the door behind me – no point in taking chances.

‘Come here,’ he said softly.

His blue eyes were so familiar now, so warm and safe and 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 personal trainer, 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 just too easy 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 sideways glances 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 like Slow 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.

Sometimes these 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.’

The other dancers would have agents – they’d be doing this part for them, the logistics, the negotiation over pay. For now, I had no choice but to do it all myself, and it already felt difficult. How was I supposed to organize things so last minute?!

‘I will tell you everything on Wednesday. Come to Pineapple at two o’clock like before and we will begin. The show opens in three weeks’ time.’

‘Three weeks?!’

‘I told you we were behind schedule. There will be a one-week run in London, followed by five weeks on tour. We will perform in Spain, Portugal and then Gabriele’s home country of Italy.’

‘But—’

‘It is okay, yes?’

This was Carlos Torres. This was a West End run and a European tour. I was the lead female. Of course it was going to have to be okay.

‘See you on Wednesday,’ I told him. ‘And thank you for giving me this opportunity, Carlos. You won’t regret it, I promise.’

‘I know I won’t,’ said Carlos, ending the call.

Forgetting I was standing in the street in broad daylight, I punched the air with delight. And then reality sunk in: now what?