High Heels & Pink Glitter (the heavily edited version)

Nutsoid

Avril looked pale—or rather, paler than usual—when she opened the door to Nate on Monday.

"Rough weekend?" he asked, taking in the dark smudges under her eyes and the greasy hair, though as ever her work-out gear was out-of-the-packet fresh, Lululemon patterned leggings and a dark pink top cropped under her bust that drew attention to her flat stomach.

"Been overdoin' the Buckfast?"

Buckfast Tonic Wine, commonly known as Buckie and a drink long associated with Glasgow neds and jakeys, credited in numerous assault trials with alleged powers to turn an unassuming punter into a rabid hooligan. "Ah'd been on the Buckie, m'lud."

She smiled briefly. "I wish. I haven't had a drink in six weeks. Teetotalism is part of the prep work for filming. No...I, oh just some personal stuff."

"Was it the photo o' that lassie wi' your husband? She didnae look much older than eighteen."

Avril's mouth gaped open. "What photo?"

Shit. She couldn't have seen it. One of the red-topped tabloids had led with the photograph of Matt Rogham, the Hollywood action film star and Avril's about-to-be ex-husband, his arm draped over a bikini-dressed blonde, with a big, shit-eating grin on his face. Nate had spotted it while buying milk yesterday and assumed Avril must have seen it too.

"Give me your phone!" she snapped, and he handed it over, muttering the pass code. She hit the Safari button and typed in Matt's name. Where the tabloid led, others had since followed, and the picture was everywhere, along with lurid headlines on the theme of Does Avril know...?

"Fantastic." She returned his phone. "That his current co-star. And while she may look eighteen, she is, in fact, twenty."

That didn't make it particularly better, seeing as Matt was thirty-eight, the same age as Avril.

Observing the dejected slope of her shoulders as he followed her through to the dining area she'd turned into the house's gym, he concluded that a work-out on top of such tiredness would be irresponsible of him.

"Avril, I dinnae think you should work out today. You're knackered. I wouldnae be doing my job properly if I made you train."

Stood in the central space of the room, he could see her mind working through the alternatives, tempted by the prospect of doing nothing. Perhaps she might go to bed for the rest of the day or don a bikini and park herself on a recliner next to Bet Armstrong's swimming pool.

He added to the possibilities. "You could camp out on the sofa with a good book. And mebbe a box of chocolates."

She shot him that same look once more—a longing not to be Avril Taylor for the day.

"You don't need to pay me," he added.

In the personal training world, it was standard practice for clients to be charged if they cancelled the appointment in less than forty-eight hours, as otherwise the 'I can't be arsed' attitude took over. Nate was rather more generous, making it only twenty-four hours' notice, but given how much money Avril was handing over for his services, skipping one session wouldn't hut him too much.

Those oh-so-generous lips parted, flashing white teeth. "That's very sweet of you. But I better go ahead. All those roll-outs and squats will take my mind off it anyway."

He made it a gentle session anyway, focusing more on long stretches, this time using his bodyweight against hers so she could stretch out in full. He wasn't used to Hollywood bodies, that was for sure. Hers felt thin and insubstantial, reminding him of the bones you felt when holding a small animal, a bit like his daughter's short-lived hamster, lost to an unfortunate accident with the vacuum cleaner.