She's All Tied Up: Club 3, Book 2 Read Online Free Page A

her pec flies. She did not want her girls sagging to her waist by the time she was forty.
    However, the machine was situated at the end of one of the long rows of gleaming exercise machines, back near the big mirrors where the weightlifters did their thing. Weights were racked beneath the mirrors, padded benches arrayed nearby, so the lifters could watch their conformation.
    Jake stood with his back to her, clad in his usual brief tank and shorts, tanned skin gleaming with perspiration, a streak of sweat down the back of his tank.
    Carlie tried not to stare, really she did, but criminy, his muscles were all pumped up and gleaming, his back was amazing, and his huge biceps bulged when he curled dumbbells of a weight that she doubted she could pick up off the floor with both hands.
    Of course, he caught her at it. He squatted to set down a weight, and her eyes drifted down to the taut, hard ass outlined in his clinging shorts. He straightened, and she looked back up, into the mirror. She was jerked out of her reverie by that icy gaze trained on her like homing lasers. He held her gaze with his own for a moment and then deliberately looked her over, head to toe and back. Then he smirked, not overtly, just that tiny lip curl that made her want to do something violent to his person.
    A blush scalded over her face and down across her chest. She turned away, firming her mouth, which wanted to tremble. She wished she’d left her hair down so she could hide behind it.
    She knew what he saw—the opposite of his ideal woman. Her snug pink top displayed her 36D breasts and the pooch of her tummy, which she could not seem to get rid of no matter how many crunches she did. The black shorts fit well, but on her rounded hips and ass, well…she’d joined the gym for a reason. She was going to tone up if it killed her. She was fairly sure it wouldn’t, but it meant a lot of hard work.
    Sara coached her through her exercises every Saturday morning. Carlie then did the exercises on her own three evenings a week after work. She also walked every evening, even when it was hot. She’d tried getting up early to walk before work, but she was not a morning person. She was also not a jogger—no matter what sports bra she bought, her breasts bounced around, so it was uncomfortable at best, and downright painful the week before her period.
    Well, tough. Jake didn’t like the way she looked, but plenty of other guys did. Gerry and Mase and Rafe—although he was so off her list, after the way he’d acted on their first and last date.
    She’d met him at the coffee shop at which she stopped every Friday morning for a sugar-free cinnamon dolce latte, finally got the courage to say hello when he looked up from his phone, on which he was usually scrolling as he waited in line for his own coffee. He’d nodded, looked back at his phone, then done a double-take that was pretty darn flattering, looking her up and down in her green wrap sleeveless dress and bone platform sandals, her hair caught up at the back in a messy knot with a few curls escaping, one down the back of her neck, one dangling by her cheek.
    He’d given her a lazy smile with lots of white teeth. After they’d chatted for a few moments, he’d asked her if she had plans the next evening. They’d arranged to meet at The Palomino, a classy bar and restaurant in the Pearl, the artsy district of downtown Portland.
    Carlie showed up a little early, nervous but excited about a first date with an exciting, handsome man, sat at the bar and ordered a mojito, a Palomino specialty.
    Rafe showed up ten minutes late, smiled but gave no excuse for his lateness, and then proceeded to demonstrate that he now thought she should a) be grateful for his attentions because she was, as he put it, an armful, but he liked that and b) be easy pickin’s because she’d agreed to date a guy she did not know.
    They hadn’t made it to dinner. Tears threatening, Carlie had scooted back on her bar stool away from