She didn’t want to see Jake Marriott at all.
It wasn’t safe.
‘Come on!’ Mia urged Ashleigh on the cross-training machine at the local gym early the next morning. ‘Use those legs now, up and down, up and down.’
Ashleigh grimaced against the iron weight of her thighs and continued, sweat pouring off her reddened face and pooling between her breasts. ‘I thought this was supposed to fun,’ she gasped in between steps.
‘It is once you get fit,’ Mia said, springing on to the treadmill alongside.
Ashleigh watched in silent envy as her trim and toned sister deftly punched in the directions on the treadmill and began running at a speed she’d thought only greyhounds could manage.
‘You make me sick,’ she said with mock sourness as she clung to the moving handles of the machine, her palms slippery and her legs feeling like dead pieces of wood.
Mia gave her a sweet smile as she continued running. ‘It’s your fault for fibbing to Jake about going to the gym regularly.’
‘Yeah, don’t remind me.’
‘Anyway, I think it’s a great idea for you to get some exercise,’ Mia said without even puffing. ‘You’re so busy juggling work and Lachlan that you don’t get any time on your own. You know how much Mum and Dad love to mind him for you so there’s no excuse. The gym is a great place to switch off.’
Ashleigh looked at the sea of sweaty bodies around her and seriously wondered if her sister was completely nuts. Loud music was thumping, a row of televisions were transmitting several versions of early morning news shows, and a muscle-bound personal trainer who looked as if he’d been fed steroids from birth was adding to the cacophony of noise by shouting out instructions to a middle-aged man with a paunch, in tones just like a drill sergeant at Boot Camp.
‘I can’t believe people get addicted to this,’ she said with a pointed look at her sister.
Mia grinned. ‘It’s also a great place to meet people.’ She glanced at a tall, exceptionally handsome man who was doing bench presses on the other side of the room. ‘Not a bad sight for this time of the morning, is it?’
Ashleigh couldn’t help thinking that Jake’s muscles as he’d dug the garden the previous day were much more defined than the man in question; however, she had to accede that her sister was right. There were certainly worse things to be looking at first thing in the morning.
‘How long do I have to do this for?’ she asked after a few more excruciating minutes of physical torture.
‘Five more minutes and then we’ll do some stomach crunches,’ Mia informed her cheerily.
Ashleigh slid a narrow-eyed glance her sister’s way. ‘How many?’
‘Three hundred a day should do it,’ Mia said determinedly. ‘You’re not overweight, just under-toned.’
‘Three hundred?’ Ashleigh groaned.
‘Come on,’ Mia said and, jumping off the treadmill, pulled over a floor mat near the mirrored wall. ‘Down on the floor and let’s get started.’
‘One…two…three…four…five…’
When Ashleigh arrived at Jake’s house later that morning the temperature had risen to the late thirties and the air was thick and cloying with humidity. A clutch of angry, bruised-looking clouds was already gathering on the western horizon as if in protest at the unseasonable heat.
She couldn’t see Jake’s car or any sign of him about the house or garden so she let herself in and closed the door with a sigh of relief as the coolness of the dark interior passed over her like a chilled breath of air.
She lost track of time as she went to work in the second of the two formal sitting rooms, this one smaller but no less jam-packed. She ran her hand over a Regency rosewood and brass-inlaid dwarf side cabinet in silent awe. The cabinet had a frieze drawer and a pleated cupboard door decorated with a brass grille and was on sabre supports. She knew it would fetch a fabulous price at auction and the very fact that Howard had it in his possession would lift his profile considerably.
Her gaze shifted to a George III mahogany cabinet, and then to a Victorian walnut credenza which was inlaid and gilt metal-mounted, the lugged serpentine top above a panelled cupboard door and flanked by glazed serpentine doors.
The scent of old wood stirred her nostrils as she took photo after photo, edging her body around the cluttered furniture to show each piece off to best advantage.
During her time working with Howard she had seen many wonderful pieces, had visited many stately homes and purchased deceased estates, but nothing in her experience came anywhere near what was in Jake’s father’s house. She’d completed enough courses by correspondence to recognise a genuine antique when she saw it and this house was practically filled floor to ceiling with them, most of them bordering on priceless.