Just Breathe (10 page)

Wow. Ethan Roxburgh was nothing if not unexpected. And she’d thought this little day trip had nothing to do with the path to security.

She smiled, ready to be assertive and take him up on his offer, then noticed he was distracted. She turned to see what had caught his attention when a gust of wind pulled at her hair and caught in the sails. Then he was all motion, business forgotten. ‘Get up, Dee. Here comes the wind.’

‘Look what we bought, Dee.’ Lucy and her girlfriends were upending shopping bags onto the dining table. ‘You missed a gorgeous day. We bought so much girlie stuff.’

They arrived home moments after Dee stepped out of the shower, still exhilarated from the fast ride back.

‘And this is for you.’ Lucy held up an enormous candle. ‘Isn’t it fabulous?’ It was the size of a house brick, inlaid with dried flowers, and it felt like a friendship ring.

‘It’s gorgeous. Thank you,’ Dee said.

‘I bought one for myself, too. They look great on a coffee table or sideboard, don’t you
think?’

‘Perfect.’ All she needed was a coffee table or a sideboard.

‘What did you get up to today?’ Lucy was unwrapping creams and bottles and jewellery, making a paper mountain with receipts, while the others oohed and aahed over their purchases.

‘I went sailing with Ethan.’

Lucy lifted her head in surprise. ‘Do you sail?’

‘No, I was ballast – although it felt more like flotsam and jetsam.’

A little grimace flashed across Lucy’s mouth and she drew Dee aside. ‘Sorry about Ethan. Has he been all right?’

Dee didn’t know how to answer that. Nicer than expected, a little unpredictable, more relaxed than usual, drinkable brown eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I told him he could only come this weekend if he didn’t hassle you. Is he being a pain?’

‘Not counting making me squeeze into a wetsuit and roll around in the bottom of a boat, no. Does he usually hassle people?’

‘No, but he gets a little over-protective about clients sometimes and now the ad’s such a big hit, he’s just covering the bases. Making sure you’re the real deal.’

‘Oh.’ She frowned. ‘You mean he’s sussing me out?’

‘Well, yes, but don’t let Toni know that’s why he came. She thinks she’s the attraction.’ She shot a look over her shoulder at the woman with the perfectly round breasts. ‘Don’t worry about him. You’re doing great. Just tell him to bugger off if he starts annoying you.’ She checked her watch. ‘You want a coffee before our class?’

‘That’d be nice, thanks.’

As Lucy disappeared into the kitchen, Dee looked out at the deck where Ethan was talking
to Lucy’s husband, leaning casually on the railing.

Well, that news was just a little embarrassing. For all his talk about nobody worrying how drunk she was at the dinner, he must have thought she was a loose cannon after all. And she’d thought he was taking an interest in her with all that yoga talk on the boat. She’d even thought they’d had a bit of a moment – gazing deeply into each other’s eyes for a good long minute. She felt her face heat up. You dill, Dee. He was probably composing another well-crafted yet cleverly concealed interrogation. Men like Ethan don’t have moments with ‘different’ girls. And the career talk – ‘make it work for you’ – he was just looking out for his client. After all, it wouldn’t look good if the health company’s pin-up girl couldn’t afford the insurance.

Dee lined Lucy’s house guests up in two rows of yoga mats in front of the huge window. It was somewhere between late afternoon and early evening and the dropping sun cast long, cool shadows across the deck and danced over gentle ripples on the water below. ‘Let’s start.’

Nine students this afternoon. Toni was wearing a low-cut singlet that didn’t look strong enough to contain its load for an entire class. Glen, who thankfully was either a great actor or had no memory of last night’s attempted bed swap, also joined them, along with John and Rob. Ethan was the only one who hadn’t made an appearance.

‘Lie quietly on your back, feet slightly apart, arms out straight, palms facing up.’ As they settled on their mats, Dee took a quick assessment of abilities. Toni, Rob and Glen were virgins, Lucy was a three-year, three-day-a-week veteran, the rest were somewhere in between. It would be a complicated class to teach.

‘Begin to slow your breathing. Be aware of your chest expanding as you breathe slowly in.’ Dee used her voice to bring calm to the room, watching each student in turn as they began to focus. As her gaze shifted along the row of mats, a shadow fell from the door. Ethan – sussing her out some more.

So he wants to know if I’m a good yoga teacher. Maybe it’s time he found out. Dee talked as she crossed the room. ‘Feel your navel press towards your spine as you breathe out,’ she told the class, stopping in front of Ethan and lowering her voice. ‘Why don’t you join us?’

‘No thanks. I’m quite happy here having a look.’

‘You’ll never learn anything just by looking. You’ve got to be willing to have a go, don’t you think?’ She raised an ironic eyebrow at the use of his own words.

He smiled uncomfortably.

‘Yeah, Ethan,’ Lucy cut in to their hushed conversation, ‘everyone else is giving it a go.’

‘Yeah, Ethan,’ Glen mimicked her. ‘If we have to be here, so should you. Get your bum on the floor like the rest of us.’

Ethan ran a hand through his hair, searching for a way out. ‘I haven’t got a mat.’

‘There’s a spare under the stairs,’ Lucy called.

Dee went to the cupboard, pulled out the mat, grinned as she held it out to him. He’d feel very manly on the hot pink rubber. Now that the whole class had turned its attention to Ethan, she shuffled a few students along and made room for him in the front row. Gee, teacher’s pet and it was only his first lesson. ‘Right, let’s start again.’

She began the relaxation, calming their bodies, clearing their minds so they could concentrate on the postures. There was a bit of fidgeting, scratching here, repositioning there. ‘Focus on making your whole body motionless, letting your muscles wind down,’ she soothed, moving them into deep yogic breathing. The beginners were having trouble. ‘Imagine your tension releasing and your body softening, becoming silent and still.’

Toni was settled now – wow, those breasts stood up on their own. Glen was almost there but what was the story with Ethan? His toes wiggled, his fingers scrunched, his face twitched. Walking as she talked, she moved to his side and watched. One foot scratched the other, a forefinger curled and uncurled, his nose flared, his eyelids fluttered. The guy couldn’t relax.

She bent down and spoke softly. ‘Lying still means you have to actually
lie still
.’ He opened his eyes. ‘That’s moving.’

He shut them again.

Dee smiled. This bit was hard for some but fascinating to watch.

Twenty minutes later they were still breathing deeply but for a different reason. Balancing poses were more strenuous than they looked. Lucy was enjoying being the artiste of the group and the newbies were doing quite well.

A sheen of sweat had broken out on Ethan’s face, and a vein in his neck throbbed as he tried the Tree Pose, one foot on the opposite knee, palms together in front of his chest. He snuck a look at John, whose arms were stretched above his head in a pose for the more advanced. The espresso in Ethan’s eyes formed hard edges as he raised his arms, wobbled like crazy, gripped the floor with his toes, held his breath until he looked like he’d pass out and kept a very messy Tree for one tiny moment longer than John.

Dee mentally rolled her eyes. ‘Remember, yoga isn’t a competitive sport. Only do what’s comfortable for
you
. It’s better to hold the pose at an easier level than hurt yourself.’ She caught the look of rivalry between Ethan and John and decided it was time to move on to something less combative.

She directed them into a crossed-legged position and waited while half the group struggled to push and pull their limbs into shape. It was amazing how difficult it was for grown-ups to sit like a kid. Toni was bent forward, perfectly rounded breasts ready to roll out of their singlet, while Glen and Rob gave up at overlapping ankles. Ethan took a furtive glance at John and strained, pulling one shin under the other. Standing above him, Dee wondered if the lower body tightness was a family trait, felt like patting him on the head like a try-hard schoolboy. ‘It’s not easy if you haven’t done this before. The next pose might help your bad shoulder.’

His head popped up. ‘I haven’t got a bad shoulder.’

‘Oh?’ Interesting, she thought, taking in the slightly raised left side, the look of denial on his face. She directed the class into the pose then turned her attention back to Ethan, who was
struggling with the stretch. ‘You didn’t injure your shoulder playing sport at some time?’

‘I rowed at school but I never did any serious damage.’

‘A lot of people store stress in their shoulders. Maybe it’s just over-tight.’

‘Not me. I’m not the stressful type. My shoulders are fine.’ He rolled them both to prove it.

Maybe he didn’t realise the left one drew much smaller circles in the air. Dee studied him for a moment. It wasn’t her job to point out the physical shortcomings of first-time students but since he was here to check her out, perhaps it was only right to put him straight.

She touched a fingertip to the spot above his shoulder blade where she guessed the muscle was knotted. ‘So what happens when I do this?’ she asked and pressed lightly.

He jerked like she’d poked him with an electric current. ‘What was that?’

She held up an empty hand. ‘Sorry about that. It looked tight back there but you said it wasn’t sore. I was just wondering.’

He rubbed at the spot. ‘I didn’t realise there was a problem.’

‘Why don’t you try the pose this way?’ Dee showed him a variation, then watched as he tried too hard, stretched too far. His tendons pulled taut, his bicep swelled and her fingers twitched with an urge to pull him back. To cup her hand around the smooth, round, firm muscle bulging nicely in his upper arm.

Well, that was a surprising thought. She had a rule never to touch students except to adjust a pose or, in the case of Ethan’s shoulder, point out a problem. Her warm hand on someone’s bare flesh was a sensation that tended to put a big dent in her wall of professional distance. Back in her early teaching days, before she’d figured that out, she’d had several awkward moments extricating herself from clients’ homes after students assumed the natural progression of her hand on their leg/arm/belly was a quick march to the bedroom for a bit more laying on of hands.
These days, she kept her hands to herself and they kept their minds on the yoga. Before today, she’d never been tempted to touch for the sake of it. There was plenty of reason to – she taught ridiculously handsome models and charismatic actors and a porter with spectacular arms from carrying other people’s luggage. She saw the beauty but there was no attraction in it. For her, desirability was about the whole package. Not that wanting to feel Ethan’s nice, round bicep meant she was
attracted
to Ethan. No, definitely not. She was just concerned he would hurt himself. Then he’d think she was a crap teacher.

‘Be careful. Don’t push it,’ she told him and lifted her voice to the class. ‘Be kind to yourselves. It shouldn’t hurt. If it does, back off a bit. You don’t have to get there on the first try.’

She watched Ethan. ‘That’s good. You could ease off a bit more. Yes.’ Her eyes slid across his shoulder, along his neck to coffee-coloured eyes that were looking right back at her. ‘That’s good. Can you feel the stretch?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t hurt yourself, Ethan.’

‘Dee the Yoga Teacher, I’m in your hands.’

Not today, he wasn’t.

Ethan dropped into the chair opposite Dee at the dining table. Half the guests had departed for the kitchen with stacks of dirty dishes and the promise of wicked dessert. The rest had been ordered to reposition themselves around the remains of the banquet for fresh conversation partners during the next course.

‘How are the shoulders?’ Dee asked.

He tested them with a double-sided shrug. ‘Good. Like they’ve had a workout.’

‘Not sore, I hope.’

‘Not at all.’ He topped up her wine glass. ‘I didn’t realise there was anything wrong. I mean, it felt tight now and then but I didn’t know it was so knotted.’

‘Most people ignore muscle pain until it gets really bad. Do you do much sport?’

‘Not like I used to. I run most days, swim three or four times a week, a game of squash on Thursdays, the occasional bike ride.’

‘That’s a lot. When do you relax?’

‘Exercise relaxes me.’

Dee thought of his twitching – yeah, right. ‘I hope you remember to stretch with all that relaxing exercise.’

‘I suppose you’re going to tell me I should do yoga to fix my shoulder.’

Dee cocked her head to one side. ‘I would never tell anybody they
should
do anything.’

‘I thought you’d be dying to give me the spiel on why yoga would be good for me.’

‘If you wanted to give yoga a try, you’d get an improvement and certainly some relief but you’d have to want to do it.’ Dee shrugged. ‘I’m not going to sell it to you as a miracle cure for a bad shoulder. That’s not what yoga’s about.’

It must have been another ‘different’ thing to say because he shot her one of his brow-creasing, lip-curling expressions. ‘Maybe the yoga business would pick up if you tried to sell it a little more.’

‘I don’t want to talk people into doing yoga and I don’t want a bunch of students looking for some specific results they’ve been promised, like no shoulder pain or a flat stomach or a nice butt. People have been doing yoga for thousands of years – it’s only the Western world that wants it sold to them, that wants a marketing pitch to convince them they need it before they
sample it.’

A moment passed as they eyed each other off. Ethan’s comment had stirred Dee up more than she expected. But it was nice. It wasn’t often she got to defend her goals as a yoga teacher – she was usually defending her right to
be
a yoga teacher.

It was weird how he was watching her, though. No bemusement or drooling alien. Just dark eyes and the hint of appraisal.

From the periphery of Dee’s gaze, Toni’s breasts appeared.

‘Hey, Ethe. How about dessert?’ She oozed herself into the chair next to him and slipped a serve of torte and fresh berries in front of him. ‘Isn’t that just sex on a plate?’

He turned, looked her in the breasts. Not that he was leering; he couldn’t miss them, particularly as they were pressed against him as she lounged over his place at the table.

Dee watched with fascination as Toni commandeered his attention. It’s no wonder men like Ethan didn’t have moments with the ‘different’ girls. What was the fun in that when you could have Toni? Long, straight blonde hair, full, perky lips, a cloud of sweet, seductive perfume, and those unmissable boobs.

Dee looked down at her own breasts – pert, yes, not too small, surprisingly enough, considering her elfin size, but affixed to a sinewy, muscled body with untamed hair and, according to her niece, a spicy scent – as attractive as an adolescent boy with a hormone problem and a taste for curry.

‘What are you grinning about?’ John asked as he passed her a plate of torte.

‘This dessert. Yum. Is there enough for seconds?’

The Sunday morning yoga class was a girls-only affair. A breeze had picked up and the boys decided sailing was more their speed. They skipped back and forth across the water in front of
the house while the girls meditated on the deck. Dee shrugged off the vague sense of disappointment at the men not joining in. Okay, at Ethan not joining in. Seemed yoga wasn’t his thing.