Three pairs of eyes swiveled to stare at Ruby.
She gulped. “Gee, I duuno. On the couch, maybe?” It wasn’t exactly a lie. He’d started off there.
“Um, like, where any friend I haven’t seen in years would stay if he needed a bed and there wasn’t a spare because my brother’s using the spare room.” Crap. Too much information. Now she was the one who sounded fake.
Caroline visibly perked up. “He’s a friend?”
“From primary school. Lost touch with him when his family moved overseas. Didn’t recognize him at first because I haven’t seen him for years and he’s changed his name. He calls himself Kyan now.”
“Kyan what?” Liz just had to ask. Bless her.
“Kyan… Davids,” Ruby blurted, unable to think of anything better to use as a surname.
Luckily no one batted an eyelid at her lack of imagination under pressure. David even seemed rather chuffed by the stunning coincidence.
Liz goggled at her. “Bet you had kittens when you finally recognized him.”
“Er, yes. He’s um… grown up a bit since I last saw him.”
“I’ll say!” Liz said. Both she and Caroline giggled in perfect unison.
“You should have seen Kyan strip, David.” Liz gushed like a teenager. “His physique is amaaazing. Biceps, pecs and abs to die for. Don’t you agree, Caroline?”
“I was rather more interested in lower down,” Caroline all but purred.
“Adequate?” David asked, a sly grin curving his lips.
“Oh yes.” Caroline ran the tip of her tongue over her even, white teeth. “Very adequate indeed. Even though he didn’t do the Full Monty, it was patently obvious he’s well hung.”
“And his eyes are this gorgeous shade of blue, and sooo compelling. I swear I just about came on the spot whenever he so much as glanced at me.” Liz sighed dreamily. “He’s probably the most perfect-looking man I’ve ever met.”
“Such a shame you’ve got a boyfriend, Liz,” Caroline reminded her.
Liz came back down to earth with a thump. She heaved a sigh. “Yes. I mean, no! Geoff’s a great guy.” Flushing, she changed the subject. “You’re between men, though, aren’t you, Caroline?”
“Yes. I dumped Josef last week.”
“Ski Instructor Josef?” David asked. “Shame. I rather liked him. That accent… oooh!”
“Josef wasn’t a patch on Kyan, though,” Liz said. “Kyan’s just… just—”
“Beyond words?” David arched his eyebrows, grinning at Liz’s all-too-obvious infatuation.
“Oh yeah.” Liz sighed again. “He could come and sleep on my couch any time—if I didn’t already have a boyfriend, of course.”
David fanned himself with the latest Property Press. “You must bring your stripper in for a visit some time, Ruby. I’d looove to meet him.”
“Mmm.” Ruby shuffled papers on her desk, wishing her colleagues would get down to work. It was becoming rather tiresome watching women—and obviously certain men, too—reduced to giggling, brain-cell-depleted bimbos where Kyan was concerned. Thank God Jules was totally in love with Alex and seemed immune to Kyan’s charms.
“Does he have a girlfriend?” Liz wanted to know.
“Who?”
“Kyan, of course!”
“No.” Ruby snapped, before she’d thought the implications of that answer through.
“There you are, Caroline.” Liz nudged her and winked conspiratorially. “He’s single. Go for it.”
Caroline’s eyelids drifted half shut, and her smooth, immaculately made-up features morphed into a predatory expression. Ruby shuddered, reminded of a hunting hound who’d just scented her prey and was eagerly anticipating a feeding frenzy when she finally caught up with the poor unfortunate creature.
Time to improvise and salvage the situation. After last night, the last thing Ruby needed was Caroline trying to get into Kyan’s pants. “I don’t think he’ll be interested in finding a girlfriend right now,” she said. “Seeing as how he’s still mourning the, er, tragic death of his… fiancée.”
“Oh, how awful!” Liz said. “What on earth happened to her?”
Ruby was saved from having to scour her pathetic imagination for yet another lie when her phone rang. And even more lucky for her, the caller was Mrs. Liang, a demanding Chinese woman who insisted on being shown through new properties as soon as they hit the agency’s books. She refused to wait for the advertisements to run in the local papers and the Property Press, and she made a point of ringing every Monday morning without fail. All the agents hated dealing with her.
“Yes, Mrs. Liang,” Ruby said. “We do have a some new listings that fit your criteria. I’ll email the links through for you to have a look at, shall I? Oh, you’d rather me tell you all about each one, then you want to look through them all in person? Okay, no problem. I’ll just find out which of our agents is free and they’ll arrange viewing appointments.” On cue, Liz, Caroline and David heard their cell phones ringing and scurried off.
Ruby didn’t mind dealing with Mrs. Liang, even though the woman could single-handedly waste an entire morning when she set her mind to it. All the staff knew she was rich as sin, and could buy half a dozen properties if she felt inclined, but not one of the agents had come close to selling her anything. Mr. Liang spent weeks at a time in Taiwan, and everything had to be emailed to him for approval. Inevitably, by the time Mr. Liang got around to approving his wife’s choice of mansion, it’d been snapped up by some other wealthy buyer.
At least, that was the official reason a deal had never been closed with Mrs. Liang. Ruby suspected the woman was lonely as hell, and used house buying as an excuse to enjoy a bit of attention whenever her husband was away on his business trips.
She settled back to haggle with Mrs. Liang. They both enjoyed this part of their “relationship”. It was sort of like being at a market, only instead of haggling over cheap clothes and knickknacks, they were haggling over million-dollar houses. On a good day, Ruby managed to keep the number of houses Mrs. Liang insisted on viewing to under half a dozen. Her record was two. Today, however, her mind wasn’t exactly on the job and Mrs. Liang insisted on viewing four of the properties Ruby listed.
“But Mrs. Liang, the Lake Pupuke property doesn’t have a pool. And you know Mr. Liang won’t even consider buying if it doesn’t have a pool.”
“Mr. Liang is not the boss,” she squawked. “I am the boss! If I like the house with no swimming pool then we will buy the house with no swimming pool. Too bad for Mr Liang!”
Oh dear. Now Ruby had offended her. “Of course, Mrs. Liang. My mother always told me that women rule the roost.”
“Roost? What roost?” She began muttering under her breath in Mandarin.
“I mean, women make all the important decisions,” Ruby said.
“Your mother is a sensible woman, Ruby. And you are a good daughter to listen to her. Now, you tell your boss that this week, I will almost certainly buy a house. You tell him.”
“I’ll do that,” Ruby said. “David will be very pleased to hear that, Mrs. Liang.” Though he won’t actually believe it until he gets a signed Purchase Agreement and a hefty deposit check in his little hot hand.
“Now you will find me nice lady agent to show me these houses, Ruby.”
Ruby grinned. Revenge could be so awfully sweet. “I’m sure Caroline would be—”
“Caroleen?” Mrs. Liang’s outraged screech was so loud, Ruby yanked the phone away from her ear. “I will not have that scrawny lady showing me any more houses! She is not a good person. Her soul is shriveled up just like her body.”
Ouch. That was a bit harsh. Caroline was skinny, not emaciated. And she could be a bit self-involved at times, but Ruby wouldn’t go so far as to say her soul was shriveled.
“No Caroleen,” Mrs. Liang insisted. “I want Liz. She is very nice, very polite. You tell her, Ruby. She will show me these houses today, and I will buy one. She will get a nice big commission, heh?”
“I’ll tell her right away, Mrs. Liang. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.” Ruby hung up and went to give lucky Liz the good news.
After she’d commiserated with Liz, Ruby glanced at her watch. She was taking an early lunch and there was only an hour and a half to go before she headed off for her very first swimming lesson.
Okay, so perhaps it was crazy to sign up to compete in a triathlon when she didn’t even know how to swim. But hey, how hard could it be?
~~~
Ruby sauntered into the women’s changing area and halted mid-stride when the ghastly truth about public swimming pools smacked her upside the head.
Oh God. Communal changing rooms. If she didn’t want to have to squeeze into a toilet cubicle, she’d have to strip off and change into her swimsuit in front of people.
She forced herself into motion and treated herself to a fierce internal pep-talk. Come on, Ruby. You’re a confident woman. You’re completely fine with how your body looks. As long as you’re happy, who cares what others think?
Ah, who was she trying to kid. She wasn’t happy. She faked it—she only pretended not to give a shit about what others thought of her. She wouldn’t be on this get fit treadmill of pain and potential humiliation otherwise.
She slunk to the darkest corner of the room and deposited her bag on the bench seat. Head down, trying not catch the eye of anyone else in the changing room, she shucked her clothes and pulled on her new swimsuit. She sucked in a deep breath and wrapped her towel around her torso before turning around to face the world.
Turned out she wasn’t the shyest, most body-conscious woman in the room. That label belonged to the pretty blonde teenager trying to strip off her wet togs… while completely draped in a voluminous towel… which kept slipping down at the most inopportune moments.
Ruby hid a wry grin. How ironic. This girl was still young enough to be completely devoid of cellulite, and instead of rubbing everyone’s noses in her nubile-ness, she was too shy to show off.
Ruby trailed a trio of elderly women out of the changing rooms and into the pool complex, more than willing to be distracted by the funny, flowery, old-fashioned swimming caps the women were all wearing. They reminded her of an amusing birthday card she’d once bought for Jules. The card had featured a photo of four women poised to dive into a pool, all wearing swimsuits with little skirts designed to preserve their modesty, and flowery bathing caps—just like the ones these ladies were wearing. Inside, the card read: “It’s official… we’ve become our mothers.”
Her grin slid from her face as she was confronted by ghastly realization number two: there were men swimming in the pool, too. Lots of them.
And as she wandered over to the area designated for her swimming lesson, she discovered that her instructor was male. A very young male—hardly out of his teens. Fabulous. Could it get any worse?
She watched him finish up his lesson, and realized it could get worse. A lot worse. Because if he was going to teach her to swim, he’d have to touch her… like he was touching his current pupil, showing her how to position her arms as she floated on her back, tapping her stomach to encourage her to push her chest up so she didn’t sink.
Registering for this triathlon to prove a now non-existent point to her brother was all very well. And for all of a day, Ruby had felt intensely proud for doing a number of things that scared the hell out of her. Like shopping for her first new swimsuit in about a decade. And learning to ride a bike.
She was even kind of looking forward to mastering the technique of jogging without giving herself two black eyes—something she would be coming to grips with tonight after work. But as the woman in the pool smiled at her instructor, thanked him, and clambered out of the pool, Ruby wanted to run back to the changing room and throw up in the toilet.
Shit-a-flaming-brick. She’d signed up for a whole course of lessons. What on earth had she been thinking?
Her instructor beckoned her into the pool. Ruby clutched her towel and stared at him. She could almost hear her knees knocking as he smiled.
“Nothing to be afraid of. It’s just water.”
Easy enough for him to say. What did he know? Mere fear didn’t even begin to cover her emotions at the moment. Try complete and utter horror.
“Come on, er—” Her far-too-youthful-to-be-taken-seriously instructor glanced at his whiteboard. “Ruby. Don’t be scared. Jump in and I’ll have you swimming before you know it.”
She sucked in a deep, bracing breath. It’s now or never, Ruby. If you don’t do this, you’ll never learn to swim and you won’t be able to do the triathlon. Then you’ll hate yourself for being a coward. And your family, and all those people who’ve whispered unkind things about you when they thought you couldn’t hear will be proved right. And….
And Kyan will never really love you. Because how could a guy like him ever truly love someone who was fat?
That last insidious little whisper acted as a catalyst. Before she could chicken out, she shed her towel and dived—or to be more accurate, belly-flopped—into the pool.
The expression she glimpsed on her young instructor’s face before she sank beneath the water was a huge clue he might not have been exactly ready for her to dive right in.
~~~
Chapter Nine
Ruby sighed as the hot water penetrated her aching muscles and sank deeper into the bubbles. She wedged the phone more comfortably under her chin. “I’m telling you, Jules, diving into that pool was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Well, not quite as stupid as going jogging without buying a proper sports bra first, but pretty up there in the stupid stakes.”
She groaned, massaging the aching muscles of her upper chest region. She’d expected to be sore after her swimming lesson but the half-hour-long jog, during which her rather large breasts had been jiggling up and down without adequate support, sure hadn’t helped either. All right, so it’d only been five minutes of actual jogging because she’d been so winded after five whole torturous minutes that she’d power-walked the rest of the way. Briskly, mind you. Still, it wasn’t a particularly auspicious beginning to her dreams of jogging the entire leg of the triathlon course without pausing.
Jules sniggered down the phone line. “God. Wish I’d been there.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Ruby assured her. “It was shades of Shallow Hal. Not pretty.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“You know, that movie where they stuck Gwenneth Paltrow in a fat suit? There was this scene where she jumped into the pool, and half the water spewed out with such force that some poor little kid swimming in the pool ended up squatting in a tree.”
Jules burst out laughing. “Oh come on, Rubes, you’re exaggerating. You’re nothing like that.”
“Maybe not. But it was pretty bad.” She’d be tempted to wince at the embarrassing memory except it would probably hurt too much. “I made such a huge splash I completely soaked a bunch of people walking by. And you should have seen the look on Craig’s face. The poor boy was horrified.”
“I’m sure that look of horror was because he’d just had to haul you up the bottom of the pool.”
“Maybe. But that same look stayed on his face the entire duration of my lesson.”
“What, and you don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that you breathed in a mouthful of water, and he had to clap you on the back to help you get your breath? Stop imagining things, Rubes. I’m sure he’s seen heaps worse bodies than yours squeezed into swimsuits.”
“Maybe. But realizing I couldn’t swim at all after I’d dived into the pool must have been pretty scary for him. Not to mention realizing I expect him to get me to a stage where I can swim in a triathlon in less than four weeks. Poor sod.”
“What’s really up, Rubes? It’s not like you to sound so depressed. What’s wrong?”
Darn. Jules knew her too well. “This is only my first day of training and I’m so exhausted I can barely move. How’n the hell am I going to get through an entire w
eek? Let alone four. I’m beginning to think I might not be up to this. And that I’m an idiot for signing up for this triathlon.”
“You’ll be fine, Rubes. Just take it easy and stop pushing yourself so hard. I’ve looked up the triathlon website and most of the training schedules suggest training in only one discipline per day. None of them say anything about swimming, cycling and running every day. Little wonder you’re feeling knackered.”
“Yeah, but those schedules are for people who’ve got the full twelve weeks to train.”
Jules huffed into the phone, and managed to make it sound mega pissed-off. “No-one’s expecting you to break any records. It’s an achievement for some women just to make it to the start-line, let alone finish the course. And going by the stories from women who’ve done this triathlon before, it doesn’t seem to matter whether you have to dog-paddle, wheel your bike, and walk the entire distance. It’s all about participation.”
“I know all that. But I can’t help thinking I’m just kidding myself. What on earth possessed me to think that I can do this? Maybe I should quit before I make a complete fool of myself.”
“You can do this, Rubes. I know you can,” Jules said, just as a deeper voice echoed her words.
“You can do this, Ruby. I believe in you. You just have to believe in yourself.”
She glanced up. “Kyan?” Yikes. She scooped up a mass of bubbles with one hand and tried to cover herself adequately, while juggling the phone in the other hand. “What the hell are you doing in here? Get out!”
“I brought you something to eat,” he said, brandishing a tray.
“Er, thanks?” Not. “Would you please leave it on the vanity unit and shoo? I need some privacy.”
He deposited the tray and Ruby allowed herself to relax. But instead of leaving her with a tiny shred of dignity intact, he leaned against the doorframe and surveyed her with a predatory gleam in his eyes. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. He looked oh-so-sexy in bare feet, low slung jeans and a black t-shirt.
The Crystal Warriors Series Bundle Page 42