Noah

Chapter 3

Veronica

As soon as Noah was out of sight, Veronica jumped on the scale. How dare he! She'd never even been close to one-eighty her entire life. She gasped when she had to keep moving the weight past one-eighty. It finally stopped just over one eighty-seven. Bringing her hand to her mouth, she felt the knot forming in her throat, and then she pushed the weights back down to zero before Nellie could see what she weighed.

"Was he right?" Nellie must've seen her near-tears expression because she added, "Well, that's why we're here, right?"

Veronica felt like throwing up now. She could hardly believe she'd let herself put on that much weight in just two years! "Can we leave, Nellie? Please?"

"No." Nellie stood in front of her and took Veronica's hands in hers. "I'm not letting you add any more reason for being depressed and locking yourself away from the world. If being overweight is what has you so depressed, then this is exactly where we belong."

Where we belong. Veronica had to smile. What would she do without Nellie? "You don't even need to lose weight." She sniffed, bending over to get a bottle of water out of the small gym bag Nellie had brought. The only things in it were two medium bottles of water, Nellie's wallet, and her inhaler.

"Yes I do! Even though I've lost a few pounds, I'm still over my ideal weight! Did you see how he looked at me when I said I'd lost some pounds? Like he was thinking, 'lose a few more!'"

Veronica held back a harrumph. "I'm sure you'll lose whatever else you need to lose today. It's probably all water weight." She took a sip of her water then turned to look up at Nellie. "Your asthma acting up again?"

Nellie shrugged. "Not really, but I figured since I haven't worked out in so long, better safe than sorry."

Veronica frowned, remembering how in the past there'd been times when Nellie had to be hospitalized because of her asthma. From the corner of her eye, she saw Noah was on his way back already, and they were supposed to have been stretching. The closest they'd come was Veronica bending down to get the water.

"Here he comes." Nellie said, spreading her feet apart and reaching for the floor with her hands. "So what do you think of our trainer?"

Veronica looked up at her from where she was bending. "Huh?"

"Talk about sexy!" Nellie whispered as he neared.

"Nellie, he's a kid."

Halfway to them, Noah dropped the mats and went back. Nellie and Veronica watched him from behind. His muscle shirt left nothing to the imagination. There wasn't a perfectly defined muscle on him you couldn't see. And he had a lot of them. Typical trainer-looking guy. Not an ounce of fat on him and whole lot of huge everything.

"Oh, c'mon, where's your sense of escapism? I'm a married woman, and I'm enjoying the view. Who cares if he's young? Nothing wrong with fantasizing—besides how many kids have you seen with a body like that? He's gotta be at least twenty-three, twenty-four."

"Twenty-four? No way." Veronica said, bending over again. "You're just saying that because he's so big. He has a baby face."

"One of the strongest jaws I've ever seen on a baby." Nellie giggled. "And did you get a load of those lips? Umm, umm. Talk about suckable lips."

Veronica had to giggle now too. "Will you stop? The guy can't be more than twenty-one, and I'm being generous." She'd been around students enough when she worked at the college to be able to guess their age fairly accurately.

"Let's ask him."

"No!" Veronica stood up. "Don't you dare."

Nellie laughed. "Why not?"

"Because it's none of our business. You better not."

Nellie shook her head, her face still full of humor. "All right, all right. You're no fun anymore. The old Roni would've already been flirting with him."

Veronica rolled her eyes, going down for one more stretch. "Yeah, well the old me didn't weigh a hundred and eighty-seven freakin' pounds!" She groaned, disgusted with herself. How could she let herself go like this? She'd gained more than the forty pounds she thought she had.

Nellie was right about one thing: she'd almost forgotten what a flirt she could be. But she was wrong about the other: there was no way she'd ever think about going out with someone so much younger than her. It was hard enough to find a mature guy her age. She most certainly was not taking her chances on the younger ones.

Noah dropped a mat in front of each of them and then one in front of himself. "All right, ladies. Have a seat."

After stretching for only about ten minutes, Veronica was already sweating. Sweating! And they hadn't even started the work out. This was humiliating. Once they stretched out to Noah's satisfaction, he had them hop on the treadmill. What he called a warm up had Veronica drenched within minutes.

As they did their warm up, before the real workout started—good Lord, this was going to kill her—he talked to them about his plan for them. Since Veronica needed to lose so much more than Nellie, their workouts would be a little different, which, to Veronica, translated into he'd be working her out until she was in tears. Oh yeah, she'd be coming back for more of this crap. If she made it out of here alive tonight, Nellie would be lucky to get her to take that walk in the park she talked about earlier, much less get her to come back here.

Once the real workout started, Veronica did feel like throwing up. She regretted wearing a sweatshirt now. She was roasting, but taking it off and revealing the t-shirt that probably now clung to her sweat-drenched body was out of the question. Just like she could make out every chiseled muscle on Noah's body, he'd be sure to make out every roll on hers. No thanks. She'd faint from heat exhaustion before that happened.

Thankfully, Noah was paged because he had a call in the office. He apologized but told them to keep going. "You guys have ten more minutes on that anyway. I'll be back before then. Keep up the pace." He lifted an eyebrow at Veronica, and she almost growled in response.

No sooner was he out of sight than both she and Nellie slowed down to a crawl. The water bottles Nellie had packed were long gone and their dry mouths were aching for some now. Soon, Nellie got off her treadmill and reached for the gym bag, pulling out her inhaler. After two hits, she was back on the machine.

"I can't," Veronica started saying but found she could barely talk, "believe ... I let you ... talk me ... into this."

Nellie was breathing just as hard. "But aren't you excited?" She stopped to catch her breath. "You're gonna lose so much weight."

Two loud bangs brought their attention up toward the office door, where Noah stood with the phone to his ear. His hand was on the wall he'd apparently slammed it against, and his expression seemed menacing but at the same time sexy as hell. It surprised her that at a moment like this, she would even be thinking like that.

He pointed his finger up forcefully, as in, "pick up the pace." Both Nellie and Veronica groaned and changed the speed on their treadmills back up, but Veronica didn't go back to the speed he'd left them on—she couldn't. She already felt ready to drop.