Just Breathe Read Online Free PDF Page A

sit in it without falling out. The shoot’s already booked and it’ll cost a fortune to cancel. You’re my last chance. So you’ll do it?’
    No pressure or anything. ‘Actually, I was wondering how much I’d get paid.’ What was the point swallowing that particular pill if it wasn’t going to cure her.
    When Lucy recited the daily rate, Dee looked at the phone in awe. Wow – Leon’s money, the electricity bill, rego, grease and oil change, half a sofa.
    ‘Are you in?’ Lucy asked.
    Deep breath. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Have you got any publicity shots?’
    Another thing she didn’t own. ‘No.’
    ‘No problem. You’ve got a class with me a couple of days after New Year. I’ll book you into our photography studio and get the shots to the client in the afternoon.’
    Dee envisioned a bunch of executives analysing her earthy chic, whatever that was. It was all suddenly, ominously real. ‘What will I have to do?’
    ‘Just a bit of yoga. Don’t worry. Let’s just concentrate on getting the Health Life board to approve you.’
    That would be the same Health Life board Ethan Roxburgh was on. Dee thought of the bemused look on his face at Lucy’s party when he discovered she was the yoga teacher. And after she’d smashed Leon’s car. Maybe she needed a Plan B for getting her shit together.

    The alarm buzzed. Dee’s eyelids shot up. She gasped, in the grip of panic.
    She’d woken the same way every morning for ten years – the hangover from the car accident. Whatever was on her mind would grow large and frightening overnight and terrify her in the morning. Today the photo shoot had scared the hell out of her.
    She settled back on her pillow, took a deep breath and blew it out again. In the early years, that waking sensation had stayed with her all day – made her tense and nervous, made her back ache. The anxiety was like a wild animal – she could catch and cage it now but it was always waiting for a chance to escape and freak her out.
    Closing her eyes on the pre-dawn darkness outside the window, she rolled onto her back and focused. Big circles with the right leg, big circles with the left, breathe in, breathe out, shutting down the fear, loosening her back. Then she dropped onto the yoga mat beside the bed and began her daily practice.
    An hour and a half later, she pulled up outside Patrick’s house. The wild animal was in its cage but it was rattling the bars. Damn photo shoot.
    Patrick opened his front door before Dee had a chance to knock. He was incredibly stiff in the shoulders, hamstrings, lower back and, well, all over really. He couldn’t reach past his knees in a forward bend but he was at his door at six-thirty every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Bless him.
    She listened patiently to his litany of sore parts – neck, knee, shoulder, wrist, tooth (yoga couldn’t help with his root canal problem but he liked to tell her about it anyway) – and focused on making sure he didn’t injure anything else in the next hour.
    The post New Year traffic was light as she drove through the city for the eight-thirty intermediate class at the yoga school. It was mostly mums, and most of them were on holidaywith their kids. Anxiety aside, it was just plain depressing teaching ninety minutes of yoga to three people. It didn’t even pay for the petrol.

    An hour before the shoot, Dee and Lucy were side by side on the floor of Lucy’s office executing two neat Downward Dog poses – hands and feet on the floor, legs straight, butts skywards forming large inverted Vs – when the door behind them opened.
    ‘What are you doing here?’ said Lucy, her head still tilted towards the floor.
    Dee tucked her chin a little closer to her chest to see who was there. Ethan Roxburgh, one hand on the doorknob, the other on his hip, was glancing back and forth between their twin peaks. From this angle she could see what all the fuss was about him. Relatively gorgeous with his tanned face and dark, mysterious eyes, although the