Chapter 1

I was having a quiet working from home. Having made sure that there would be no calls from my office unless urgent, I was making good progress and already thinking about my first beer of the evening when the phone rang. Quietly cursing my secretary for not even making it to lunchtime without calling, I picked the phone up, it wasn't my office but was an ex girlfriend of mine called Linda. We had split up more than two years ago but had become friends again and met up regularly for lunch or a drink after work. Linda asked if we could meet up that evening after work.I said yes, come over about seven.

I went down to the kitchen to get some lunch and grab a beer from the fridge. The flat was a real mess and I was going to have to clean up. I live on my own in a Duplex apartment in London with a kitchen and a dining room and cloak room downstairs and three bedrooms and a sitting room upstairs and there was mess pretty much everywhere.

When we were together Linda had lived with me here for a couple of years and I was pretty tidy, but I had settled back into bachelor life with a vengeance. I have a cleaner who comes once a week but aside from that it was all down to me. I employed my usual cleaning tactic and moved all the papers and other crap lying around upstairs into the smallest of the three bedrooms and all the stuff downstairs into the dining room. I congratulated myself on a job well done and decided to go down to the gym.

Staying in shape had never been a problem for me until my thirties I had always played a lot of sport and had developed a pretty good physique, now that I was nearly thirty-five I needed to spend a fair bit of quality time working out to keep it that way. Luckily it is something I've always enjoyed.

When I got to the gym there was a crowd of people, in the middle I spotted Tony who was the manager he was pretty hard to miss Tony is a big black guy in his early thirties at least six foot four and about two hundred and fifty pounds. We work out together sometimes and I'm no weakling, but he is a pretty strong guy.

"Hey Tony," I called out to him "how's it going?"

"Greg man," he replied " you've come at a bad time. There's only been a bloody fire in the warehouse behind us. The fire brigade got it under control real quick but things are a bit of a mess we're going to be closed for awhile."

"How long?"

"Two days, two weeks - who knows? Head office are talking about refurbishment, so we'll see.

" Anyway," Tony said to me "got to look on the bright side, we've got the rest of the day off. Do you fancy coming down to the pub, most of us are going to grab a quick beer."

"Not today"

"Suit yourself man, we'll be in the Queen's if you change your mind."

I went home to wait for Linda.

She turned up at seven prompt. I went downstairs to let her in. It was pretty dark in the hall way so I didn't get a good look at her but as she came into the flat I got a better look. Her face looked really tense and a little pale, which was a shame really because the rest of her looked really good. Linda is five foot six with brown shoulder length hair. She had lost a little weight since I had last seen her and looked in great shape.

"David and I split." She just came right out and said it. I was speechless. I just didn't know what to say. I couldn't say I was sorry, because I thought that the guy was a dickhead. Linda saw me looking at her and said,

"Don't worry, I'm not going to cry. I'm all finished with that."

"When did it happen?"

"Three days ago. The bastard cheated on me while I was away on business. He wasn't even subtle - my friend Ally saw him out with some girl in a club. They were groping each other on the dance floor. I confronted him about it when I got back. He didn't even apologise! He started tearing into me instead, saying how I work too hard, don't pay him enough attention..." She carried on for a while giving me a blow by blow account. A lot of it sounded pretty familiar to me, they were the same kind of reasons that Linda and I had split up over two years before.

"I'm staying over at Susan's for a while, but I need to go and pick up the rest of my stuff." She paused for a moment and then added, "you wouldn't be able to come and help me would you. I don't want to have a big confrontation with David - and you are kind of useful for carrying stuff."

"Sure no problem."

I got up to pour Linda another glass of wine. As she leant forward I could see down the front of her top. She was wearing a white bra that allowed me to see plenty of cleavage. She has very fine breasts, a 36C, quite firm with large sensitive nipples as I recalled from our time together.

"You look in pretty good shape from here, you must have been spending a fair bit of time in the gym in between work and everything else." She gave me a slightly funny look, probably because she caught me checking out her tits.

"Yeah. I quite enjoy it, it helps with stress going to the classes and I enjoy getting the odd massage as well."

"I can't really go to the gym. David and I are both members of the same place and I really don't want to bump into him if I do. I was kind of hoping that I could use your gym as a guest."

"I'll find out from Tony when my gym will be ready to re-open and I'll let you know so we can go down together if you like."

"Thanks Greg. You've been really kind. It's really good of you to offer to help me move as well, when could we do it? I'm pretty sure David will be out on Saturday morning."

"OK, Saturday morning it is then. I'll get a van from work and we can meet here." Linda then got up and said,

"Thanks for all the help and the wine. I'd better get back to Susan's." She got up to leave and I had another chance to check out her body. She was wearing quite a tight pair of black jeans, which showed off her ass and legs very nicely as she walked in front of me.

I followed her down the stairs and out of the flat.

I headed for the pub to catch up with Tony

When I got to the pub Tony was still there with Ben, who is his number two and two of the fitness instructors, Helen and Christina. They had had quite a few beers and were very happy with it. I got myself a drink and joined them. We talked about what happened at the gym and what Tony's bosses had in mind for the place. It turned out that Tony was going to be at work on Saturday supervising the clean up. It looked like Linda and I would have to do all the work ourselves.

"I can give you a hand on Saturday if you like." It was Helen. Helen is quite a strong girl I have seen her working out and she has even spotted for me once on the bench when there weren't many people in the gym. She is in her mid-twenties and about the same height as me 5'10" and quite muscular without being too unfeminine. I didn't know her all that well but I was sure that she was up to moving furniture.

"Helen that is really kind, but it is a Saturday morning are you sure?"

"Don't worry about it." I scribbled down my address and we arranged to meet at my place on Saturday morning.

Saturday came round soon enough.

Linda arrived first. She was wearing tight grey jogging pants with a blue shirt over a white T-shirt. As she got out of her car her shirt fell open and I saw that the cool morning air had made her nipples stand out proud. She buttoned up her shirt, but I couldn't suppress a smile.

Linda came into the flat and I made some coffee.

"You're looking in a better mood." I said.

" Yes. Well we're getting things done now. The last week has been difficult, now I'm working things out. The only thing that I'm worried about is where I'm going to put all the stuff. Susan's flat is pretty small, she has a garage, but that could only be a temporary solution."

" I already thought of that," I said, "I have a store on the other side of the river, its pretty much empty right now and I won't be needing it 'til the autumn."

"I've got a lot of stuff."

"Yeah I remember, that's why I've enlisted some help for this morning. Helena from the gym is coming down."

"Is this one of your girlfriends?" Linda asked suspiciously.

"No. She works there. I asked Tony, but he couldn't make it. Helen is pretty strong and should have no problem with heavy stuff."

"What is she? Some kind of typical gym butch type?" Linda had often told me about the lesbians down at her gym parading naked in the changing rooms and crowding into the Jacuzzis.Being a typical male I always liked to think that she was a little curious about the whole thing - well you can always fantasize.

"No she's not," I replied, "she's just a healthy young woman who likes her sport and keeps in good shape. You'll see soon enough anyway."

A couple of minutes later the door buzzer sounded. It was Helen. I went down to let her in the front door. She was dressed for work with an old pair of jeans and sweatshirt on. I got some coffee for her and we went up stairs to meet Linda.

"Hi, I'm Helen." Linda looked relieved. She was probably thinking that Helen didn't look at all butch. I let them talk for a while and went down to the car park to pick up the van. I had a check list including about twenty small packing boxes (about the same as a twelve bottle wine case) plus a load of bubble wrap and some old blankets.

I drove round to the front of the apartment block and went to pick up the girls. We drove across to Linda's place but had to park across the street - more work for everyone. We carried the boxes plus some bubble wrap and packing tape up into the flat, Linda had also taken a couple of bags for her remaining clothes. The boxes had come packed flat, so Helen and I began making them up using plenty of packing tape to make them strong enough. Meanwhile Linda set about sorting out her stuff from David's. We started packing up boxes and putting tem near the door.

"I hope you don't think I'm carrying all this stuff out to the van on my own!" I said.

"why else did we bring you along, if not to do all the heavy work?" Linda replied.

"No way. I brought Helen along as the muscle. Besides if we all work together it will be done quicker and we can go to the pub for a drink."