LITMIR.BIZ

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hand brushed against her arm and Sephy let out a squeal. Turning, she saw her ex and Daisy’s father, Ryan Love, standing beside her. Reaching up she pulled out her ear-buds and turned down the music.

      ‘Want to tell me what this machine has ever done to you?’ Ryan asked her with a grin.

      ‘Sorry,’ her breath came out in a rush and she realised she’d been pressing every button on the darned thing in her quest to exhaust her overactive imagination and beat it back into submission.

      Ryan reached out and re-set the pace on the machine, and Sephy started to feel like she wasn’t going to have a heart attack after all.

      ‘You okay?’ he asked, running his gaze over her. ‘Only Ethan will kill me if I let one of our clients get injured.’

      Ethan Love was the founder and CEO of the chain of deluxe gyms that made up Love Leisure. When Ryan had gone to him for help with his gambling addiction, Ethan had wanted to ensure his brother had a place to live and a place to work when he got out of rehab, so he had bought and refurbished this building, turned it into a branch of Love Leisure, and had then trained Ryan to manage it for him.

      ‘Actually, it’s good you came along,’ Sephy admitted. ‘I guess I got a little carried away trying to work through my –’ she stopped. She definitely didn’t need to be telling Ryan what was going on with her.

      ‘Frustrations?’ Ryan quipped.

      Sephy felt herself blush as she heard the sexual connotation in the word. ‘Er, yes.’ Good grief, what was the matter with her? This was testament to how shaken up she was after Luke’s proposal. Non-proposal proposal, she reminded herself. She really was going to have to do better at remembering the fake part.

      The fake part, after all, was probably what was going to allow her to agree to it.

      Sephy’s stomach lurched – was she going to agree to it, then?

      ‘So you want to tell me what has you so frustrated, over a coffee?’ Ryan invited, thankfully interrupting her tracking mentally back to the one person she’d come in here to get a break from. ‘I seem to remember that was your drink of choice.’

      Sephy stepped off the machine. ‘Can’t think of a better legally addictive stimulant, can you? Oh, crap,’ she put a hand up to her mouth, feeling all kinds of stupid. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to –’

      ‘Use the “A” word?’ Ryan shrugged. ‘An addict is what I am – what I’ll always be.’

      ‘Put a “recovering” in front of it and we’re all good here,’ Sephy said, and then was immediately worried. Aside from having Daisy’s best interests at heart, she wasn’t sure she should be telling Ryan how to talk about, or deal with, his problems. ‘Okay,’ she muttered, ‘Not my place, so sorry again.’

      ‘Relax. No offense taken. Come on. I know a great place around the corner that’s opened up. Or did you come in here for a quick workout before needing to be somewhere else?’

      As Sephy eased into a couple of light stretches to cool down she determined to ignore the fact that she could feel Ryan’s eyes making a slow sweep of her again. Straightening up she confessed, ‘Actually I came in here hoping you would be around so that I could talk to you.’

      The smile that lit up his face held such a potent reminder of the charming bad-boy she used to know that Sephy caught her lip between her teeth. She was under enough stress to be feeling like one sharp shock away from a meltdown as it was, so she pushed down the fear he was flirting with her.

      As his eyes came up to meet hers she returned his stare steadily. Ryan’s old modus operandi had been to hide pain under slow, sure, wicked smiles and easy flirtation, so maybe that was what he was doing now.

      ‘I wanted to see how you were,’ she said, hoping her serious tone would cut through the mask.

      ‘Me? I’m fine.’

      ‘You are?’ Sephy searched his face for signs, but found it hard to get past that swagger of his. ‘Look, Heathstead is a small town. I heard about the breakup with Michelle and so I wanted to check. But if you say you’re fine…’

      Ryan simply shrugged and went with, ‘Her loss, isn’t it?’

      ‘I guess.’ She supposed these days she didn’t deserve more than the ‘nothing touches me’ casual approach from him, but it irked that she recognised the attitude as one she had once mimicked to the max. ‘It must be hard, though,’ she pushed.

      Ryan looked around the gym and then brought his gaze back to hers and lowered his voice. ‘You think I’m about to head for the nearest betting shop to numb the pain?’

      ‘Am I being silly? Do you really have this locked down?’ she pressed.

      That slow grin teased as he leaned in and whispered, ‘How about if I admit that I’m going to extra meetings at the moment?’

      ‘Good.’ She took a subtle step back because it had been a long time since Ryan had whispered into her ear and it felt weird. ‘Is it helping?’

      ‘Well it’s certainly helping me not to gamble, at any rate.’

      ‘Great.’ Sephy pointed to the changing rooms. She could see she wasn’t going to get anywhere checking up on him in his place of work. ‘I’ll go grab my bag and we can head out for that coffee.’

      Twenty minutes later Sephy peered over the top of her latte at Ryan and realised that agreeing to have coffee with him had upped the level of complication between them. Until now she had only met with him while Michelle, who had seemed nice enough, was there, or, with Daisy.

      She decided he was going to have to put up with her butting in and came right out with, ‘Have you told Ethan about what’s happened?’

      There was a flash of surprise in his eyes, but she couldn’t afford to let this go. Not if there was a chance he was struggling and had no one else to lean on. If Sephy had to step up and be there for him, well, hadn’t she had already implied she would, by agreeing to Ethan’s plan to help his brother all those months ago?

      ‘Ethan trusts me,’ Ryan said. He took a sip of his cappuccino, set it down on the hammered aluminium surface of the café table and added sombrely, ‘I understand why you might not.’

      ‘I’ll admit that this isn’t entirely comfortable territory for me.’

      ‘Trust me, it’s no picnic for me either. You think I want my ex stopping by to check I’m getting over a breakup simply because she doesn’t know me well enough to know whether or not I’ll relapse?’

      ‘Do you know yourself well enough to know whether or not you’ll relapse?’ she shot back.

      Ryan laughed and the laughter seemed to relax something in him. ‘You know, I really never imagined you acting as my conscience. Although I admit you’re much prettier than the one I have.’

      Again with the flirting and again she hoped it was simply a defence mechanism.

      ‘How about instead of seeing me as your conscience,’ she asked carefully, ‘you see me as a friend who has a vested interest in making sure you’re okay?’

      ‘How about you let me take you to dinner tonight and we discuss further how okay I am?’ Ryan replied, without missing a beat.

      Sephy’s latte went down the wrong way. She hadn’t got this wrong. He was totally flirting with her. As she grabbed the napkin he held out to her, she blinked back her watering eyes, took in his giant grin and dragged in a steadying breath.

      ‘Ryan, I didn’t come here for a date. I came to check you were okay. For Daisy.’

      At the mention of their daughter his face turned serious. ‘I’m not going to mess that up.’

      ‘Okay. Well, that’s good, then.’

      ‘So it’s

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