Discovering Dalton (Manchester Menage Collection #2) Read Free Page A

to the first time they’d looked around the empty shell of a loft and planned out their new home. On paper, the ensuite looked bigger, and the second bedroom didn’t have space for an ensuite, so Liam thought himself clever when he’d snapped up the first room, leaving Troy to use the smaller second and the full size bathroom opposite it. Big mistake, and one Troy made sure Liam paid for over the six years they’d lived together.
    The cold water felt good running over him. The water pressure was shit, but that didn’t change from this bathroom to the bigger one. They needed to revamp the plumbing, but they never seemed to have time, and any money they got recently was put back into their own businesses. Troy with his newly opened tattoo studio, Living Ink, and Liam with Aspire—the gym he’d taken over when their foster dad Terry passed away two years ago. Despite leaving a good amount of cash, it had taken more than the thirty grand passed down to them in their inheritance to get it updated and ready for new members.
    Terry and the older members who went loved the slightly run down, less flashy style, but new paying members demanded more and so that’s what Liam and Troy decided to do. Now it looked just as good as any other gym with its new equipment and remodelled space.
    As he soaped up his arms and chest, Liam smiled, thinking how far they’d both come since they first met, since they first walked into Terry’s gym as snot nosed, skinny kids. Looking over his body now, it was a far cry from the fifteen year old chubby one he started off with. He’d always been tall, but a bad diet of fried food and no exercise left him overweight and he had an attitude which would make a saint lose their patience. Terry had a way of dealing with him, with both of them, and it was through him and his wife Alice they found a home for the first time ever.
    He owed his foster parents a lot. More so because they hadn’t just let Liam and Troy fly the nest when they reached eighteen. They kept them close, encouraging them like real parents would do. Helping them find jobs and pushing them to keep going and do better.
    It was because of them Liam ended up going to college and becoming a personal trainer and fitness teacher. With it, he could have done a few things, a sports teacher in a school was one option he thought about, but he knew in his heart he would choose to stay with Terry and work with him in the gym.
    Terry was getting on in years by then and he needed someone he could trust to take over, so for the last ten years, Liam worked there, taking on more and more responsibility as Terry stayed home more or took well-earned vacations abroad.
    Now it was Liam’s and he felt proud of what he’d achieved, but he still felt a wave of loss creep over him thinking how it had changed. He hoped Terry would look down on him and feel happy with what he’d done, but he also worried he’d changed it too much and cast aside the working class values Terry worked so long to achieve.
    He didn’t want Aspire to be some prissy gym for suits to come to after work. Yeah, they had some, but they catered to the local people, the more down to earth men and women. Women. Now that would irk Terry.
    All the time Terry had run the gym it had been men only, and Liam had kept to that rule for a bit, but they lost money to other gyms further away because of their men only rule, so slowly, Liam changed it. At first just having classes for women only, then mixing them when he got one male member who showed interest. Now the entire gym was mixed, leaving only the weight room as more male only. It wasn’t a rule women couldn’t go in, but they chose not to because it still felt a little intimidating, but Liam knew in time a few women could be persuaded to go in and give it a go. Maybe he could even set up a female only room to ease them into it.
    Stepping out of the shower, Liam dried his short cropped, brown hair roughly before towel drying his chest