‘You’re torturing the poor girl, Will,’ said Simon, who was walking by, holding a couple of the heaviest kettlebells as if they were bags of sugar.
‘He is,’ agreed Ginger. ‘We’ve been at it an hour and I only came in to say I could do twenty minutes because I was so tired and it was late.’ She looked at the gym clock. ‘It’s five to ten!’ she said. ‘I am shattered, you tyrant.’
Will laughed, reached out and pulled her back into a standing position.
‘You stay out of this, Simon. My girl needs her training and I have vowed to be the man to train her, whether she likes it or not.’
Ginger’s heart skipped a beat.My girl?But she didn’t falter. Will was kind to everyone. So, they’d had coffee a few times and he’d bought her an after-training sandwich in the deli bar across the road, but that was just friendly, wasn’t it?
‘Whether she likes it or not?’ she added, in pretend outrage.
‘Oh, a conjugal. I’m off,’ said Simon. ‘Not getting involved in that row. You can lock up, Tyrant. I need to eat and watch crap on the box. See you, Ginger.’
Will began tidying up. The gym was emptying out. They closed late on Thursdays but it was amazing how many people liked to get in a late workout.
‘Conjugal row, ha. Simon says the oddest things.’
Ginger felt her heart leap a little. Simon could see what Will couldn’t: that she’d fallen for him. Not for how gorgeous he looked, although that didn’t hurt, but for his kindness.
He’d come one day with a giant SUV and helped her haul off some more of Aunt Grace’s endless boxes after she had confided in him about Grace’s problem and her mission to clear the house. When Jack, the photographer, had arrived to take the after-the-workout photos for the paper in the gym, Will had been there with Lulu and her hair and make-up team, encouraging Ginger every step of the way.
He’d admired the photos when they’d gone in, but he’d never said anything specific, nothing like ‘I really like you’.
‘Mr Hunk really likes you,’ Lulu had said on the day of the shoot.
‘Shush!’ Ginger had hissed. ‘He’ll hear.’
‘I hope he does,’ added Lulu irrepressibly. ‘Say something to him – he’s as shy as you are.’
But Ginger’s fear of rejection kept her from saying anything and she treated him the way she treated her brothers, and nothing else.
‘I was thinking,’ Will said, when Ginger had finished her workout that evening and felt as if she’d been in a Turkish bath for a month, ‘er ... would you like a drink after we hit the showers? Or a coffee? You know, something casual. We could grab a bite to eat ...?’
Ginger stared up at Will in utter astonishment and the words that came out of her mouth just flew out: ‘Like a date, you mean.’ She blushed. ‘Sorry! I know you didn’t mean that. Forget I said it. I get dizzy when I’m tired and—’
‘Yeah,’ he interrupted her. ‘Like a date.’
A little buzz of sheer excitement began to thrum through her.
‘Yes,’ she squeaked.
They sat in a small Italian restaurant round the corner and Ginger wished she had stuffed something better in her gym bag than a comfy khaki sweatshirt with a picture of a cat on it, and her equally comfy harem pants which were miles looser on the waist than they used to be. She was never going to be skinny – she didn’t want to be, she’d decided. But she was more toned, felt healthy and working out had given her an appreciation for her body.
Will was in an equally comfortable T-shirt over which he wore one of those red flannel shirts, open so that Ginger could – if she allowed herself to – look at his beautiful chest defined by the T-shirt.
‘Hey Will, nice to see you,’ said a guy coming over to him in chef’s whites.
‘Ginger, meet Mario, owner of this den of iniquity,’ said Will. ‘Mario, this is Ginger.’
‘Gina Lollobrigida,’ said Mario.
‘No, Ginger,’ said Ginger, confused.
‘My Da’s Sicilian and he loves the old movie stars. Saw you in the paper last week – liked the bikini, by the way – and said you were a dead ringer for Gina, fifties movie star. If I phone and tell him you’re in, he’ll be round in a flash. He’ll have you sitting on his knee, telling you the dreams he had about her in his youth.’
‘I love your father, but don’t phone,’ begged Will. ‘We want a quiet night.’
Mario raised an eyebrow. ‘You two ...?’ he asked Will. ‘Because if this is friends, I might ask Ms Gina if she would care to go out with me—’
