The Wedding Invite (Lakeview) (Lakeview Contemporary Romance Book 6) (10 page)

H
er appointment had been delayed
and Nicola remembered clearly her impatience at having to stay late as a result. She had planned to go out on her mountain bike after work, maybe take a spin up as far as Johnny Fox’s pub – anything that might clear her hangover.

She was working in Metamorph at the time, and if she remembered correctly, it wasn’t long after that ‘incident’ in town with Laura.

Apparently, some overly enthusiastic new member – enthusiastic for the first week, if the rest of these business types were anything to go by – had phoned reception first thing that morning and demanded an instant fitness assessment for the same afternoon.

Nicola couldn’t understand the urgency. After all, if he was unfit today, he’d still be unfit tomorrow, wouldn’t he?

Having visited most of Dublin’s city centre hotspots with Helen the previous evening, Nicola certainly wasn’t in the mood for another stuffy forty-something hoping to do something about his love handles, while still insisting that he had the fitness level of a twenty-year-old.

Just before six, the regular after-office crowd began to appear, and there was such a flurry of activity that Nicola failed to notice a tall man standing patiently alongside the counter, waiting for her to finish the signing-in.

“Hello again,” Dan Hunt said in a friendly tone. “Sorry I’m late. I had an appointment for a fitness assessment at five thirty but I rang earlier to say I’d be delayed.”

To say that Nicola was taken aback at the sight of him would be a gross understatement.

“You!” she accused. “But the appointment book says …” She studied the name again, wondering why it hadn’t hit her earlier.

“It should say me,” Dan grinned.

So it does, Nicola thought, mind racing. The name had stirred a slight recognition earlier, and now she knew why. The cute guy from the traffic jam. But what was he doing here?

“How did you know I worked here?” she asked, thinking that he must have sought her out to make a further complaint.

“I didn’t know, actually,” he answered innocently. “I’m just here for a fitness assessment.”

Nicola was thrown off balance. This was way too much of a coincidence for her liking.

“So will you be my fitness assessor then?” he asked, a smile playing about his lips.

“I suppose.” She gathered her things and motioned him towards the gym.

“Just in here, please,” she said, trying to sound professional, but as he passed her the faint scent of his aftershave set off an army of butterflies in her stomach. This wasn’t like her. She was normally the epitome of cool, calm, and collected where men were concerned. What was this guy doing to her?

She shook her head and tried to think of him as a client, nothing more.

However, it was soon obvious to both of them that Dan Hunt wasn’t here just as a client.

“Right, where do we start?” he said eagerly, that megawatt smile lighting up her insides.

Nicola put a hand on her hip. Try and gain some control here, she told herself, try not to let him affect you. “Well, first of all I’ll need to measure your height and your weight.”

She glanced at his lean, well-defined torso as he removed his fleece top. He was well-built, but in a natural, effortless-looking way. Of course, Nicola was well used to seeing well-defined torsos and the like, but this was different.

This was very different.

She saw a faint smile cross Dan’s features, and realised that she was staring. She managed to alter her features into what she hoped was a concerned-looking frown. “Have you used weights before?” she asked.

Dan nodded. “Not at a gym, mostly at home – whenever I get a chance. Why, does it look as though they are having some kind of effect?” he added innocently.

“Not really,” Nicola said, intently studying the chart she held, his double entendre plainly evident. “You need to work a lot harder than you do at the moment to have any
real
effect.”

“Oh.” Dan feigned a disappointed tone. “I had hoped I might be getting somewhere.”

“Sorry, still a lot of work to do.” Nicola bit back a smile. “Now, first I’ll measure your height and then if you could just hop up on the scales there, so I can take a weight measurement.”

Dan obliged, and neither spoke for a while as Nicola entered his details onto the chart.

“Age?”

“Thirty, heterosexual, single.”

Nicola raised an eyebrow and tried to keep a straight face. “The latter information has absolutely no bearing on your fitness, Mr Hunt.”

He shrugged nonchalantly, those cool blue eyes fixed on her face. “Just thought it might be helpful.”

“Right, flexibility test next,” she said. “Sit down on that mat, and try to touch your toes.”

“I can assure you that I’m very flexible.” He winked as he sat down, then leaned forward and touched his toes with little effort.

She smiled. “I’m impressed.”

“Good.”

“Now let’s try your peak flow.” She opened a nearby cabinet, and produced a strange- looking piece of plastic apparatus.

“My what?” All of a sudden he looked nervous.

“Your peak flow.” Nicola was enjoying his petrified look. “Just blow into this so that I can measure your lung capacity.”

“Oh.”

“Not bad.” Nicola entered another set of figures onto her chart. “Now grip.”

“Grip?”

“Grip strength. I need you to grip this piece of equipment as tightly as you can and then I’ll measure how long you can sustain it.” She couldn’t resist adding, “I trust that you have some staying-power?”

Dan met her gaze full on. “That depends on what I’m doing.”

“Right.” This time there was no mistaking the flirtation, and despite herself Nicola felt her stomach do a little flip.
Stop it
, she warned herself.
Stay in control
.

“OK, now do twenty minutes on the exercise bike over there,” she said sternly.

“Twenty? Bit of a slave-driver, aren’t you?”

“I thought you were here for a fitness assessment, Mr Hunt?”

“I am.”

“Well, your body’s reaction to intense aerobic exercise is essential to an evaluation of your overall fitness.”

Dan grinned. “You make it sound very serious indeed, Ms Peters.”

“I’m very serious about my work.”

“As serious as you are about your driving?”

Nicola smiled. “I wondered when you’d bring that up.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t look the slightest bit sorry.

“What happened that day wasn’t my fault,” she said.

“No?”

“No.”

“And did the Gardai see it that way?” he grinned.

“Not quite.”

She had been about to drive away when a member of the Garda Siochana had pulled up beside her on his motorbike, and promptly issued three consecutive tickets: illegal parking, obstructing traffic, and threatening conduct towards fellow motorists. Nicola had objected profusely to the latter, and it was only when the guard suggested that he might just charge her with aggressive behaviour towards a member of the Gardai that she shut up and drove off fuming.

“It was all right for him whizzing around on his motorbike,” she said, her irritation returning at the thought of it all. “He didn’t have to sit in traffic for the best part of two hours.”

Dan didn’t answer, because he was trying his very best to maintain a consistent rate of pedalling. Minutes later, Nicola noticed that he was really struggling. She smiled.

“You’re doing well there, Mr Hunt – hardly breaking a sweat.” She checked her watch. “But, in order to accurately measure your aerobic fitness level, I think I’ll have to order another twenty minutes on this.”

Dan gasped and slowed his pedalling considerably. “What? Are you some kind of sadist or something? I’ll die.”

The expression on his face made Nicola want to laugh out loud. “Not at all. You’re here for a fitness assessment, aren’t you?” She tried to be flippant. “And obviously I can’t assess your fitness until I have all the necessary information. Now another twenty minutes on this, and then we’ll put you on some weights to get an idea of your upper-body strength.”

He finally stopped pedalling. “OK, OK, I give up,” he gasped. “I don’t care about the bloody fitness assessment. That was a cover. I only came here because I wanted to see you again.”

Nicola’s expression betrayed nothing. “Oh? How did you know where to find me?”

“I was stuck behind your car for almost an hour that day, remember? I couldn’t fail to notice the Metamorph sticker on the rear window, so I reckoned you were either a member, or you were staff. There was nothing else to look at, not until you did your disappearing act at any rate. So,” he added, his voice still breathless after his exertions, “are you going to let me take you out to dinner, or what?”

A
frown sullied
Chloe’s usually attractive features as she studied Dan in the

mirror. He was acting very strangely these days. There he was, sitting on the bed, his mind obviously a thousand miles away.

And he hadn’t yet said a thing about her outfit.

“Well? What do you think?” she asked finally.

“What?” Dan was distracted. “What do I think of what?”

“My dress. You haven’t even mentioned it.” She turned sulkily back to the mirror and continued to apply her make-up.

“Nice.” Dan was noncommittal.

She spun around. “Dan, what is
wrong
with you lately? For the past few weeks you’ve been going around in some kind of daze. This dress is John Rocha and it cost me an absolute fortune. What do you mean by just ‘nice’?”

Dan stood up and ran a hand through his hair. “Look Chloe, just because I don’t fall to worship at your feet every time you ask me how you look, doesn’t mean you look bad. You look fine, what more do you want?”

“’Fine’,” Chloe repeated, putting a hand on her hip. “I look ‘fine’, do I?”

“Yes,” Dan said through gritted teeth.

“Well,
I
don’t think I look ‘fine’, Dan. As it happens,
I
think I look a lot better than just ‘fine’. But you wouldn’t give a damn if I went out tonight wearing a pair of your pyjamas, would you? You wouldn’t even notice.” Stung by his attitude, she turned her back to him. Dan
always
commented on her appearance whenever they were getting ready to go out somewhere. He loved it when she dressed up and she loved the way his compliments made her feel so sexy and, nine times out of ten, they both ended up horny and indulged in some pretty good sex before going out at all. But lately, Dan seemed to have lost interest – in sex and more worryingly, in
her
.

“Chloe, please don’t start.” Dan slumped back down on the bed and began to knead his forehead.

“Don’t start what?” Chloe approached the bed. “Seriously, Dan, what the hell is wrong with you? You’re away with the fairies these days, I can hardly get a word out of you.” When he didn’t answer she continued. “Can’t you tell me what’s bothering you? Is it work?” It had better be something like that, she thought. It had better not be something else.

Like an affair.

But where would Dan get the time to have an affair? And why? Chloe turned back to study her expression in the mirror. She was still looking good as ever, wasn’t she? She hadn’t put on any weight, and her breasts were small, but full and definitely still in their rightful place – unlike some others she could mention.

At the last dress fitting, she had been shocked, but more than a teeny bit gratified to discover that Lynne’s boobs had very definitely headed south with little hope of returning.
Her
skin was fresh and clear, and she had even upped her sun-bed sessions lately in order to ensure she had a radiant glow for the photographs. She was always up for sex, admittedly a lot more than Dan was these days, so it couldn’t be that. Dan’s sex drive had dwindled a bit, but maybe that was because he was that much older than her.

Chloe grimaced. Nah, he wouldn’t cheat on her, would he?

“So?” she turned her attention back to her fiancé. “Is it work?”

Dan gave a low groan. “Chloe, please, I’m just in bad form. You know well that I don’t particularly want to go to this bloody party, and yet you expect me to be jumping up and down like a child on a promise of a trip to McDonald’s.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know why you’re so against it. I thought you got on well with Mick. I know Louise can be a bit of a pain but –”

“It’s not that – I’m just really not in the mood. Work is manic and …”

Good, it was definitely work then. Relieved that it was something simple, Chloe turned her attention back to the mirror, and began to tease her straight blonde hair into face-framing flicks. She had seen that very look on Cameron Diaz in a magazine the other day, and was certain that it would look great on her. Cameron always looked so stylish. In fact, Chloe thought, standing back to take another look at her profile, she didn’t look too unlike the actress herself in this get-up. She wondered if anyone else would notice the resemblance.

Oh, stuff Dan, she thought, dismissing her worries. Just because
he
was in one of his moods didn’t mean that
she
couldn’t enjoy herself tonight. So work was mental but wasn’t it mental for everyone these days? Not to worry, he’d soon get over it.

Studying her reflection once more and exhilarated by what she saw, Chloe relaxed and began looking forward to the dinner party.

D
an looked
in the direction of Chloe’s preening, but stared right through her. He’d have to ring Laura.

It was his own fault, anyway. He should have at least tried to contact Nicola by now. But what would he say? Maybe Nicola wouldn’t give a stuff about his new fiancée and his new life. And who could blame her? Hadn’t she told him in no uncertain terms a long time ago that she wanted him out of her life – completely? So why would it matter now whether or not he told her himself?

Then a thought occurred to him. Maybe Laura didn’t even read the invites? Maybe she just glanced at them, realised that they weren’t hers and brought them straight back to the shop. That Debbie one told him that they had been returned that same day. So, maybe he was worrying for nothing. And if Laura had read the invites, maybe she didn’t recognise his name? Maybe the name meant nothing to her. But Dan knew that if Laura read the name, Daniel
Ignatius
Hunt, that of course she would recognise it. Hadn’t Nicola made great fun of it during their wedding vows that time, making sure that the minister pronounced if fully and clearly, knowing that it would mortify Dan? Everyone at that wedding had known how much he hated that name, especially when he refused to repeat it back to the minister, saying simply ‘I, Daniel Hunt, take thee Nicola Peters.’ They had all laughed at that.

Dan exhaled deeply. That had been a good day. Definitely one of the very best of his life. So relaxed, so easygoing, exactly the way it should be. There was no great pomp, no great ceremony, just Nicola and him, pledging their vows in front of a few close friends.

Not like this up and coming charade, whereby at Chloe’s insistence he would have to wear that ridiculous top and tails get-up, all trussed up like a circus performer. Why did some women go all mental over those kinds of things? It was all a load of bollocks as far as Dan was concerned. All about performance, and exhibition, and ‘look at me’. He loved Chloe, but there were times when her obsession with impressing people got to him big-time.

These days he couldn’t really give a damn about what anyone thought of him, because worrying about such things had before been his undoing.