Книга - Taking Him Down

Taking Him Down
Meg Maguire











Look what people are saying about Meg Maguire’s latest title, Making Him Sweat!


“Maguire succeeds in socking us with a sterling combo of love, loyalty, family, sweat and tears.

4½ stars!”

—RT Book Reviews

“Making Him Sweat is the first book in a brand new series by Meg Maguire…that centres around MMA. You know what that means, right? Hot, sweaty, half naked men. I’m there. I can expect only good things from Maguire!” —Under the Covers

“If you enjoy reading about super sexy boxers who like to get down and dirty, then definitely give this book a try.”

—Blithely Bookish

“[F]ull of interesting, likable characters and sexy love scenes.”

—Fiction Vixen

“I loved this book! Jenna and Mercer share some delicious sexual tension, but thankfully

Ms Maguire does not torture her readers.

I definitely recommend this book and am looking forward to reading the sequel.”

—Badass Book Reviews

“I love fight books…especially where old school boxing meets the more modern MMA style.

This cute book had so many great characters and a good old-fashioned romance.”

—Nocturne Romance Reads




About the Author


Before becoming a writer, MEG MAGUIRE worked as a record-store snob, a lousy barista, a decent designer and an overenthusiastic penguin handler. Now she loves writing sexy, character-driven stories about strong-willed men and women who keep each other on their toes…and bring one another to their knees. Meg lives north of Boston with her husband. When she’s not trapped in her own head, she can be found in the kitchen, the coffee shop or jogging around the nearest duck-filled pond.




Taking Him Down


Meg Maguire






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For Ruthie and Serena, cherished sparring partners in all things wonked and wordy.

And thanks, as always, to my editor, Brenda.

Don’t mess with her—she’s been trained.




1


“NOT TIGHT ENOUGH. Start over.”

Though the guy suppressed his frustration well, Rich knew he was getting cussed out in the privacy of the teenager’s head.

Tough shit, kid. Get yourself a paid fight and you can be the colossal dick for a night.

The gauze was obediently unwound from Rich’s palm, the elaborate process started all over.

Mercer cut through the locker room chaos carrying a tub of Vaseline. According to the promotional materials, he was Rich’s trainer. In truth, Rich trained himself. He liked it that way, not having to answer to anybody. But after tonight he’d be committing to a manager, landing a deal with a major mixed martial arts organization. He’d get hauled out of Boston and obscurity and shipped out west to train under a team of MMA specialists. Saddled with a half dozen guys riding his back about every mile he ran, every forkful of food or drop of booze that passed his lips, every last detail that led up to him stepping into the ring.

Oh frigging well. Price of success.

“You look good,” Mercer said, crouching and unscrewing the tub’s lid.

“You look real pretty, too, Merce.”

“You look calm. If you’re faking it, keep it up.” He smeared Rich’s temples, cheeks and forehead, to reduce the friction when he took a shot to the face.

When Rich’s hands were finally wrapped and taped to his satisfaction, Mercer passed him his fingerless MMA gloves.

“Where’s your mouth guard?”

“Quit fussing, grandma—I got everything organized. Go celebrate for a few minutes.” Mercer’s actual trainee, Delante, had won his first real pro fight twenty minutes earlier, with a skull-thumper of a closing punch. “Get that kid cleaned up for the press and tell him not to mumble.”

“Fine. I’ll be back.” Mercer slapped Rich’s shoulder and took off.

Rich tugged on his gloves, gave his fists a squeeze. Nice and snug. He liked the feeling with the medical tape in place, that promise of a proper scrap, no sparring tonight.

He was a good fighter—a hell of a good fighter, if you factored in how DIY his regimen was—but he had more than that going. He was six-three and had made weight at 204. He was built and goddamn good-looking, and had what his late mentor called “the magic.” That thing you can’t build in a gym or find in a supplement bottle. That thing that made guys want to hit you and made their girlfriends want to wake up in your bed.

Nobody respected a pretty face inside the ring, and that suited Rich fine. Whatever had people hungry to see him lose, bring it on. Whatever had opponents hating him for winning, whatever had promoters eager to give him another match. Love and hate felt the same when you were high on adrenaline, and your detractors shelled out the same money for tickets as your fans did. That hate-ability plus a solid win tonight and Rich would get signed. Give it nine months and a couple decent matches and he’d be on the magazine covers, courted by equipment and vitamin companies for the right to slap his face on their ads. Whether it’d still be so pretty by then…

Didn’t matter. Rich would win, he’d sign, his future manager would handle the offers. He’d suck it up and take whatever orders his training team barked, and he’d be successful. Of that, he had no doubt.

But he wasn’t hungry for that—fame or attention.

He was hungry for a fight, sure. That was a perk. But the thing that lit a fire in his gut, made him salivate for this moment, was the money.

Fifteen grand when he won tonight. Down the road, once he signed—twenty, thirty, fifty and up, plus the endorsement deals. And he’d lease his face to whoever offered him the fattest checks, and cash them with no qualms.

It might not be honorable, but Rich Estrada fought for money. Because fighting was the thing he was good at, the diploma he’d never earned, the only marketable talent he had.

He fought because if he didn’t, his mom would be dead inside a year.

THE ARENA WAS in turns dim and blinding, the air pungent with a hundred clashing aromas. Lindsey Tuttle was planted in the thick of it, three rows from the action and close enough to hear every kick and punch and grunt.

The cage was eight-sided, walled in by chain-link, and it held two bloodthirsty opponents—just names off a fight card, men Lindsey didn’t know beyond their records and vital stats.

She leaned in toward her boss and friend, Jenna, to shoutwhisper, “Who’s winning?”

“I dunno.” On closer inspection, she saw that Jenna’s eyes were squeezed shut. It seemed she’d reached her capacity for spectating during the previous match, watching with her hands clamped to her mouth as her boyfriend, Mercer’s young protégé, had won his first big fight. It hadn’t been too bloody—a lot of rolling around, then one wince-worthy punch that sprayed red across Delante’s opponent’s cheek. It had dropped the guy’s limbs like deadweight and had the ref announcing a knockout halfway through the third round.

Lindsey watched the two strangers grappling under the lights. There was no commentary to explain what was happening, and she wasn’t sure which of the guys tangled on the ground was pinned, and which was doing the pinning.

But damn, it was exciting.

It was the fourth fight of the night, the big-deal bouts still to come. Lindsey worked for Jenna’s matchmaking company in Chinatown, and their office was located one floor above the mixed martial arts gym Mercer managed. Aside from Delante, the only fighter Lindsey knew from the gym was slated for the third-to-last match. She glanced at his name on the fight card. Rich Estrada.

She shivered.

But only because she didn’t want her acquaintance getting his face broken. Not because Rich’s huge, alarming body gave her…feelings. Most certainly not. He was singularly the most obnoxious man she’d met in ages.

As shouts rose all around her, she realized she’d spaced out. The crowd roared, but with delight or disappointment? Men’s emotions all wound up sounding the same if you doused them with enough testosterone and alcohol.

A winner was proclaimed, his sweaty arm hoisted by the ref.

If Rich won his match, he stood a chance of “escaping the dungeon,” as Mercer had worded it—moving on to bigger and better things than toiling all day in the subterranean sweatbox also known as Wilinski’s Fight Academy. It had been a respected boxing gym in the eighties when Jenna’s dad, Monty, had opened it, but after a criminal scandal and the sport’s decline in popularity, the place had gone to seed. Now Mercer was at the helm, saddled with the unenviable task of bringing it back into legitimacy with the addition of MMA training and some overdue improvements. Delante and Rich winning their matches could do wonders, he’d said. Bragging rights were everything in this business.

“I need a drink,” Jenna said, eyes finally open. Her face was pale. This was clearly not her sport. Too bad she’d fallen in love with Mercer. His years as an amateur boxer had left him with a misshapen nose and cauliflower ears, and Jenna must have been imagining it was his face being pounded every time a strike landed.

She rose and Lindsey rooted in her wallet for a ten. “Get me a beer?”

“Sure.”

Lindsey was enjoying the exotic atmosphere. Cleaners had to disinfect the ring between matches, mopping away the blood and sweat, and the air was charged with adrenaline. She’d grown up in a family of hockey fanatics, but with hockey, the fights were a bonus—icing on a cupcake. MMA was nothing but frosting.

As the prefight prep wound down, her fascination shifted. Rich’s match followed the next one. Her energy dropped low, humming in her belly.

Just nervous for him, she told herself, nearly believing it.

Rich was a handsome, fearless showman, the center of his own universe. And he was annoying enough simply acting as though Lindsey must be in awe of him when he swung by their office to flirt. He’d surely be insufferable if he found out she had an actual crush on him, as superficial and physical as it was.

Superficial and physical and inconvenient. She was supposed to be trying to make her current relationship work.

Work being the operative word. Relationships shouldn’t be work at twenty-seven. They should be fun and natural. But things with Brett were exhausting and serious, and if she wasn’t mistaken, they were moving backward. They’d gotten engaged before relocating from Springfield to Boston. He’d moved to take his first law job and she’d followed after securing her own gig as a wedding planner. He’d broken the engagement after one month of cohabitation. Nothing like faking adoration for other women’s diamond rings right after packing your own away in the back of your sock drawer.

They’d needed to slow things down. Too many changes, too soon, he’d said. New city, new career, new home…oldgirlfriend, she’d inferred. A girlfriend who’d sufficed when Brett had been a broke student, but didn’t seem to be cutting it now. She knew that whatever he felt about the old apartments he’d lived in and his former identity as a kind, lovable dork…he now felt the same about her, too. They’d been friends since eighth grade, confidants through high school and finally a couple when Brett came back to Western Mass for law school. That history had been the backbone of their romance. But Lindsey had borne witness to the old Brett, and it seemed the new, polished, hotshot Brett resented her for it. It made living with him a daily struggle.

Jenna returned, handing Lindsey a plastic pint of beer and a wad of change.

“Thanks.”

Jenna sat and gulped half her red wine in one swallow.

Lindsey laughed. “You’re going to make the worst fight wife ever.”

“Don’t tell me you’re actually enjoying this?”

“Oh, God, yeah. I have no idea how to tell who’s winning, once they get rolling around on the ground, but it’s still fun. Plus…you know. Half-naked sweaty men.”

Jenna shot her a squirrelly look. During a wine-soaked working lunch the previous week, Jenna had weaseled the Brett situation out of Lindsey. She normally liked to keep her personal life personal, but that was hard when your boss—and best friend in a new city—was pathologically romantic.

Last week, Lindsey and Brett had been on-again. As of three nights ago they were off-again, to the tune of a mutually negotiated free-to-see-other-people experiment. They still cared for each other, but as friends now, more than lovers. She’d poured years of love and energy into what they had, but it had begun to feel like an obligation, not a commitment.

“Brett doesn’t care if I look at other guys,” she assured Jenna. Let her think they were still together if it made her happy. “You’re not one of those types who think checking people out is cheating, I hope?”

“I’m not that old-fashioned.”

“It’s a very pervy sport,” Lindsey said with approval. “Our payback for women’s beach volleyball uniforms.”

“You perv all you want, but I’m keeping my eyes shut. They ought to make special blurry glasses, so you can’t see the blood.”

After a noisy introduction, the next match began.

The guys seemed to be getting bigger, the crowd more excited. Lindsey felt the energy herself, an electric stirring in her middle, not quite fear, not quite arousal, but as primal as both.

No shoes, no shirts, fingerless gloves. Muscular men rolling around. She scanned the crowd, surprised by how few women were in the audience. Then the guy on the mat took an elbow to the face and the resulting blood reminded her why that was. Jenna hissed with fear, squinting through her bangs.

But Lindsey leaned forward, mesmerized.

The very concept was thrilling—two humans stripped and tossed in a ring, out to prove which one was the stronger, better competitor with a minimum of rules, etiquette and padding. Lots of blood and sweat, surely lots of bruises when dawn arrived. Lots of…skin. Lots of everything she was missing out on since Brett had ripped his new, urbane identity out of an Esquire spread.

The match ended with an anticlimax, the outcome decided by the judges. Next up, the third-to-last fight, yet as far as Lindsey was concerned, the main event.

She watched the ring prep, heart thumping harder, harder, until she swore she could hear it over the rabble. She twisted her program into a tight tube again and again.

“Rich is next,” Jenna said, the collar of her shirt fisted in both hands. “Why couldn’t Mercer be into fly-fishing? Or ultimate Frisbee?”

“Too bad you didn’t inherit your dad’s love of fighting, huh?”

Instead, Jenna had inherited the gym, along with a portion of the former factory that housed it. She’d been estranged from her dad but had moved to Boston to take advantage of her odd inheritance sight-unseen and open a new franchise of Spark, a regional matchmaking company. Lindsey was awfully happy she had. She liked her new job. In fact, she’d probably love it, once her own romantic hangover subsided. At the moment it wasn’t the easiest thing, mustering enthusiasm for other people’s relationships.

“I just don’t get it,” Jenna said, blue eyes on the activity in the ring.

Lindsey shrugged. “Mercer will never get matchmaking. It’s healthy to have some autonomy.” Did she believe that for real? Or was she just trying to make herself feel better about how much space she craved from Brett?

The announcer scattered her thoughts.

“Next up, the match to decide the New England MMA Light Heavyweight Championship!” Music started up and the gigantic arena screen displayed two open double doors.

“In the blue corner, defending his title, a mixed martial artist from Warwick, Rhode Island. Thirty-one years old, five feet eleven inches, two hundred and five pounds. Greg ‘the Trucker’ Higgins!”

Striding down the aisle toward the cage, Higgins was meaty and pink-faced, with a tacky chinstrap beard and a trucker cap that helped explain his fight name. Several men in matching hats and shirts followed.

Jenna clapped politely. Lindsey hated Higgins out of principle, and booed along with the minority as he strutted to Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere, Man.” He stripped to his shorts and entered the ring, warming up as his music faded.

“A-a-a-nd in the black corner, a boxer and kickboxer hailing from Lynn, Massachusetts. Twenty-eight years of age, six feet three inches, two hundred and four pounds, Rich ‘Prince Richard’ Estrada!”

Her breath hitched when Rich appeared on-screen. She twisted in her seat to watch him descend. His intro music was a remixed hybrid of hoity-toity chamber music and some infectious Latin hip-hop. He wore black warm-up pants and an open, deep purple sweatshirt lined with ermine fleece, hood cocked. Raising his arms, he welcomed the modest applause, and hisses from the Higgins fans. He dropped his hood with a grand, arrogant gesture and bared his chest, fists thrust triumphantly in the air, his entire body emanating 10,000 watts of pure, blinding smugness.

Mercer trailed him, along with a couple other guys Lindsey recognized from Wilinski’s, his corner for the fight. Unlike Higgins, Rich’s team didn’t have special gear splashed with sponsor logos, just black T-shirts with Wilinski’s Fight Academy, Boston, silk-screened on the front.

“This match will be comprised of three five-minute rounds,” the announcer confirmed for the fans.

Rich stripped and Mercer shoved a mouth guard between his lips. When one of the guys from Wilinski’s slicked his arms and chest with Vaseline, Lindsey suppressed a ridiculous stab of jealousy. He entered the ring to warm up and the lights over the audience went dark as the music faded, setting Lindsey’s skin prickling.

The men fought barefoot. Higgins wore loose-fitting kickboxing trunks covered in sponsorship logos. Rich sported far snugger, plainer shorts, ones that hugged his thighs and butt and…other places, and made Lindsey feel funny. Dangerous-funny.

The men hopped and shadowboxed, keeping their muscles primed as The rules were announced. When Rich circled she could see the large tattoo inked between his shoulder blades in black and gray. The dark wingspan of a condor above a shield, framed by draped banners—the Colombian national crest, a snoop through the MMA message boards had told her. He had a mismatched design on the swell of his right shoulder—a circular field showing a river and horizon, an ax, an anchor—the seal of his hometown. There was a third one, a line of black Thai characters that ran down his ribs. Lindsey didn’t know what they said, only that he’d trained in Thailand for a year. All indelible reminders of where he’d come from, or perhaps souvenirs of where he’d been. Apt for a man destined to go places.

What must it feel like, being in the spotlight, everyone’s eyes on you? Lindsey had always been a supporting player, tagging behind her popular older sisters when she was growing up; a barnacle along for the voyage when she’d uprooted her life to follow Brett. For her past clients, the invisible woman running herself ragged so their big days would go off without a hitch, and for her future clients, the temporary go-between broker, there to facilitate their first dates.

As she watched Rich stretching his neck and shoulders, bathed in those pure white beams…she envied him. She’d never felt like someone whose entrance commanded the room’s attention, let alone an entire arena. Lindsey was always in the shadows, never the light, frequently thanked but never applauded.

A blonde ring girl in a spangly bra-top circled the cage, flashing a sign that read Round 1. There was no bell. Instead the official shouted, “Let’s go!” and the men met in the center for a second’s grudging fist tap before jumping back, circling.

Neither was shy. Both kept their guards up, feet busy. Rich baited his opponent with a couple short jabs, rewarded when Higgins took a swing. Rich dodged it and came back with a kick to Higgins’s thigh, then crowded him toward the chain-link.

They traded minor hits, then Higgins escaped and retreated a few paces. Rich stayed on him, still baiting, getting him to toss out defensive jabs, sneaking in a punch here, a kick there when his opponent’s guard was open. For a while, the action seemed to slow. Higgins certainly seemed to slow, shifting from foot to foot, red in the face.

Just when the fight was starting to get a bit boring—bam. Rich caught Higgins with a high kick to his ear. It bent the guy over, and Rich got him in the back of the knee and buckled him. Then, chaos.

Rich was on his opponent, pummeling his head and raised arms with punches and elbow strikes, hard enough that Lindsey saw sweat or spittle flying under the lights. The crowd was roaring. She realized she was screaming herself, a stream of hysteria erupting from some well of untapped ferocity.

Mercer stalked the periphery of the cage, shouting and jabbing the air. Lindsey wondered if Jenna was going to get soundly trounced tonight, and if so, she envied her. She could use a sound trouncing herself. Hell, she’d take a spirited dryhumping.

Higgins managed to get his legs around Rich’s waist and shift them to their sides, but the effort looked desperate. Rich took a sharp hook to the temple, unfazed.

An air horn blasted to end the round, and Rich was on his feet. Higgins wasn’t quite so quick to rise, and Rich wasn’t as courteous as some of the earlier fighters—he didn’t offer his opponent a hand up. Both made it back to their corners. Through the fence, Lindsey watched Mercer swab Rich’s now bleeding temple with some kind of goo, another guy forcing a water bottle to his lips.

Her heart thudded so hard she felt high. She wished she were right there, close enough to smell him and see whatever fearsome energy was shining in his dark eyes.

The ring girl did her prancy thing, then the round began. The men swapped punches and kicks. Lindsey hadn’t even taken two breaths and whack! A stunningly hard hook from Rich and Higgins went to all fours. Rich followed, ready to grapple, but an official stepped in and forced him away. There seemed to be a short window of time during which everyone waited for Higgins to make it to his feet, but it didn’t happen. He dropped his forehead to the mat between his elbows, body shifting uneasily from side to side, and suddenly—

“A stoppage has been called, due to a technical knockout.” The crowd erupted in a mix of cheers and boos. Rich was corralled to the center by the ref, and once his opponent was helped to standing—

“The winner—Rich Es-s-strada!”

His arm was raised, and Lindsey shrieked like a banshee. Jenna caught up, looking confused but thrilled, having missed the single punch that had ended the round inside fifteen seconds. The earlier shot Rich had taken must have been worse than it had looked. A thin ribbon of red trailed from his temple down to his jaw. The announcer held the mike between them and asked, “How does it feel, earning your first championship title?”

Between panting breaths, Rich answered, “Overdue.”

“Good fight?”

“If I ever get another match with Higgins, I want a scrap next time, not a slow dance.”

This was met with major heckling from the Trucker fans.

“Any other words?”

He put his hands on his hips, chest still heaving. “Thank you, Merce, all you guys. Thank you, Mamá. Thank you, Diana. And thank you, Monty, wherever you wound up.” He gave a little heavenward salute and walked away from the mike.

As Rich stepped down from the raised ring, Mercer greeted him with a beaming smile that seemed to ask, “What took you so long?” They shared a manly, brusque hug before a medical guy tidied Rich’s cut. Rich led the way back up the aisle, his corner following. Lindsey’s gaze caught on his back muscles, gleaming under the stark spotlight.

“Wow,” she said, relaxing back in her seat.

“If only all fights were that efficient.” Jenna frowned. “Except that would mean every fight ended with someone getting really badly hurt.”

“Still. What a way to kick off your career.” In a few months, Lindsey could be shelling out a small fortune to watch Rich fight on pay-per-view. The thought was enlivening, except…

Something soured her stomach. Rich wouldn’t be around much longer. Mercer had said he needed new guys to fight, more opponents in his weight class and at his level. He’d be off to a training camp, who knew where.

She’d miss Rich’s ego-stroking flirtation, but it had been nice while it lasted. Exciting, without any messy romantic fallout. A crush. Someone to get secretly nervous about seeing, to put on eyeshadow for, without actually having to do any of the work of an actual relationship. Then again, also without getting to enjoy any of the perks, such as three rounds with Rich’s body in the ring better known as her bed.

As if she’d have had the first clue what to do with him if she got the chance.

With Delante’s and Rich’s victories secured, the final two matches were stress-free. By the time the main event was wrapped, Lindsey had officially caught the MMA bug. Swearwords she’d never uttered aloud had come streaming from her mouth unbidden, and she’d hopped to her feet so many times it was a wonder she hadn’t broken a heel or twisted her ankle.

“Are you coming to the after party?” Jenna asked, organizing her purse. “Nothing glamorous, but free drinks once the press stuff is done. Merce and I could give you a lift later.”

“Count me in. I could stand a little VIP treatment.” It wasn’t every day she’d get a chance to mingle in this strange, feral world.

If she’d known she’d be going to an after party, she’d have dressed up a bit more. It was chilly for early fall and she’d worn jeans. Nice ones, with a cute top, but watching jacked, angry men attack each other had her feeling exceptionally feminine, and she wished she’d dressed to reflect that.

Jenna had a pass to get them behind the scenes, and they followed the noise and activity to the threshold of a boardroom past the lockers. A long table was set up at the far end of the room with microphones, and the fighters sat behind it, all showered and dressed, answering questions for the small cluster of press people. Rich had changed into a suit, and Lindsey could make out the white bandage someone had applied to his temple.

Most of the questions were for the bigger-name guys from the final matches. But when one reporter asked Rich how he felt about his “lucky punch,” he smirked and replied, “If this was archery, you wouldn’t be asking about my lucky bull’s-eye.”

When the meeting disbanded, Lindsey and Jenna followed the crowd. They ended up in a fancy area for the corporate types who had box seats and season tickets, and the open bar was swamped. They spotted Mercer loading stuff onto a dolly, presumably to be taken back to Wilinski’s. Jenna hugged her boyfriend, and Mercer’s return embrace looked eager and possessive, making Lindsey a touch envious. She hadn’t felt the pleasant dig of strong male fingers at her back in ages.

The couple broke apart, and Lindsey clapped Mercer’s arm in congratulations. “Happy, I trust?”

He laughed. “There’s an understatement.”

“What do you think—was it a lucky punch?”

“Rich doesn’t need luck. He hits like a truck.”

“Do you wish he’d gotten a chance to show what else he can do?”

Mercer shook his head. “Nah. Rich has that thing—that thing people love to hate. He’ll be even more of a draw if fans are dying for his win to be proven a fluke.”

“Where is he?”

“Being courted by managers, same as Delante. I need to get over there myself, keep an eye on the kid. You girls should get some drinks—I’m driving.”

Lindsey and Jenna hit the bar, then wound up loitering in the concourse with a small group of guys who trained at Wilinski’s. They spent some time getting to know their mysterious, violent neighbors and trying to follow the postfight gossip.

A bit later Jenna disappeared in search of Mercer, and Lindsey was starting to feel the hour, her adrenaline waning. She took a seat on a radiator, letting her heels drop to the floor, and checked her phone for the first time in hours.

One text, from Brett. What time are you home tonight? It was from a couple of hours ago, and he was probably already in bed. The subtext read, “You’re going to wake me up, aren’t you? I need my beauty sleep. I’m a powerful lawyer.”

Okay, that was a bitchy interpretation, but she had the spirit of it pegged.

She tapped out, Not sure. Late. and shut the thing off. Suddenly wiped, she was tempted to contradict the message and head for the subway. Who knew how long Mercer would need to stay?

Then her mood shifted, weariness gone in a breath as silly, glittery excitement burst inside her like confetti.

She had a second to register Rich’s haughty, blinding smile before he was swarmed by a dozen well-wishers and autograph-seeking kids, Lindsey’s view blocked. Thank goodness, too. The drinks had her feeling loose, and she could use a minute to pull herself together.

Rich was a ridiculously good-looking man. Scary-sexy with his shirt off, and devastating in a suit. His gorgeous, masculine face, dark eyes and shoulder-length black hair had earned him his fight nickname. Broad shoulders and chest, slim waist, then those hips and that butt and those thighs and…ooh, tremble. His shape seemed made-up, like the heroes in those comic books Brett used to care so much about.

Rich could’ve easily skewed toward being too perfect, except for that accent, peppered with swearwords and strong enough to strip the wax out of your ears. It all worked great as a swaggering ring persona, but his over-the-topness wasn’t an act, Lindsey didn’t think, and that was enough to keep smart girls from getting any reckless romantic notions about the man. Though it didn’t keep her body from wanting his.

Lust object? Go for it. But she held herself back from slapping a few other labels on Rich. Rebound material? In your dreams, Tuttle.

Still, as the crowd thinned and her view of him cleared, she felt her pulse race, hormones elbowing her better judgment aside.

Six feet, three inches of good-sense-wrecking kryptonite.

And if Lindsey were her own client, she wouldn’t be letting herself anywhere near Rich Estrada.




2


BUT INADVISABLE NEARNESS was exactly what Lindsey got only a moment later.

Rich escaped the crowd, heading in her direction. He blinked in recognition and surprise, and blinded her with that lethal smile.

“Look who it is.” Stopping in front of her, he slipped the suit jacket from his shoulders. The space was stuffy. He hadn’t worn a tie, but he undid an extra button on his dress shirt. “Almost didn’t recognize you outside that office.”

“Hello, Mr. Champion. Well done.” She hazarded a clap on his arm then regretted it, now knowing exactly how hard that particular body part was. As if she needed another thing to fixate on.

Rich shrugged, uncharacteristically humble. “Just a regional title. I’m still in the minors.”

“For now.”

He tossed his jacket on the radiator. “Thanks for coming. And for sticking around this long.”

“Hey, free drinks.”

Rich laughed.

“It was fun. My pleasure.”

He sighed, a tired, genuine noise, and took a seat beside her—though not quite as close as Lindsey would have preferred. She’d never seen him like this. So…accessible. Probably just exhausted. He flirted with her every chance he got, and not subtly. As though it was a sport, one he played with every woman he came across.

He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, forearms flexing with tendons and making Lindsey’s brain glaze over.

“You actually watch any, or was it too gory?”

“Oh, no, I watched the whole thing.”

“It’s an acquired taste.”

“Then I just may have acquired it tonight.” Oops—was that a flirty smirk she’d felt pass her lips? Quit thinking so hard. He’s just the obnoxious, sexy guy from the gym downstairs. The one she’d developed an extremely troubling fascination with the past couple weeks. Probably some self-defeating relationship-sabotage crush. Naughty matchmaker.

A server came through with a tray of champagne flutes.

Rich snagged two, handing one to Lindsey.

“Thanks. Cheers to your big win.”

They clinked. His dark eyes held hers as he drank. Goddamn, she could fall into that stare and drown, grinning as the world went black.

“How come your face isn’t all screwed up?” she blurted. Rich laughed, a deep and far too exciting noise.

“No, really. Haven’t you ever had your nose broken?”

“Sure. Twice. And what about all this?” He pointed to a couple scratches and the bandage, and the stitched gash nearly healed beside it. She’d dabbed concealer on that once—long story. Been close enough to smell his skin, as she could now. Tonight that scent tried to hide behind a hint of cologne, but she found it easily, breathed it in.

She pulled herself together and waved dismissively. “Surface stuff. I get those shaving my legs. How come you’re not…You know.”

“More like Merce?”

Lindsey wouldn’t say Mercer was unattractive, but he looked, perfectly aptly, like a man who’d spent the past decade getting routinely punched in the face. Whereas Rich…

“You’re too pretty,” Lindsey concluded. “Too symmetrical. And your ears aren’t hideous enough.”

He smiled, looking away as though she’d actually managed to make this shameless man bashful. She took the opportunity to ogle his forearm again, and the way his dress shirt pulled taut against his locked biceps.

Their eyes met once more. “You implying I’m doing my job wrong?” he asked between sips. “Seems like letting my face get scrambled as little as possible would be to my credit.”

“Fair enough. Are you happy with how you did tonight?”

“You actually wanna hear the long, incredibly boring answer to that?”

“Sure.”

“I’m happy I won,” Rich said, swirling his champagne so the foam rose. “And I know the way it happened will be great for lining up another match, to prove I didn’t just stumble into a title with a lucky punch. If Higgins and I ever wind up in the same pro organization, I’ll probably get a nice rematch, maybe even move up the card, if they spin this into some rivalry. But I would’ve liked a bit more of a tangle with that asshole.”

Lindsey nursed her drink as he recounted the details, asking questions when she didn’t understand a term.

He laughed after ten minutes’ conversational dominance. “You fake not being bored really well. Tell me to shut up anytime.”

“I don’t mind. We are at a fight, after all.”

“True.”

“Are you what they call a technical fighter?” She’d heard the term someplace, and it now accounted for a healthy percentage of her meager MMA vocabulary.

Rich shook his head. “Mercer’s a technical fighter. Means he can execute a kick or punch with, like, robotic precision. Me, I’m sloppier, but when I hit, no matter how busted it might be, I like it to land hard. Like, hard. Plus I’m not the strongest grappler. Best if I can mess a guy up while we’re still standing. I do what they call sprawl-and-brawl, avoid going down to the mat whenever possible.”

She crossed her legs, accidentally brushing Rich’s shin with her bare foot. Zing. She cleared her throat. “Sorry. So, how did you get into all this? Tell me you were in med school or something, then you had a nervous breakdown and went all Fight Club.”

He cocked a skeptical brow. “You wish I was a doctor?”

“No, I mean, it’d be cool if you had some upstanding life before you went rogue. It’s such a romantic cliché,” she said with a silly sigh. Oops, that’d be the champagne.

“Sorry, I was never upstanding. Grew up poor, immigrant parents, got in tons of fights in grade school. High school dropout. But I could lie, if it gets you all worked up.”

Lindsey grinned, hoping her blush didn’t show. “Nah.”

“You sure? What do you want me to be, in my previous life? Investment banker? Oil magnate?”

She laughed.

“Lawyer?”

“Definitely not,” she said a bit too passionately.

He bumped her shoulder with his. “Disgraced royalty?”

“That would explain your fight name.”

“Nah, that’s just because of my aforementioned pretty face,” he said, flashing her a smile worthy of an Armani campaign.

“It’s the nose. You have a very princely nose.” She nearly reached up to touch said nose, but perhaps mercifully, Jenna and Mercer wandered over. Lindsey edged herself farther from Rich’s hip. Assuring Jenna she was freshly single in front of him seemed lacking in both class and subtlety.

Jenna beckoned Rich to his feet for a hug. “I wondered where you were hiding. Congratulations. If I’d been able to bring myself to watch, I’d say you looked great.”

“I always look great.” Rich and Mercer gave each other the standard manly half-hug-slash-handshake.

“Great work, man,” Mercer said. “Just don’t forget where you came from, once you sign with an org.”

“I’m sure I won’t, not with the Wilinski’s branding you’ll want plastered all over my shorts.”

“We’re about ready to head out. Did you still want to catch a ride with us?” Jenna asked Lindsey just as someone came around refreshing the champagne.

“Oh…” She watched the foam rise in her glass. She didn’t want to leave yet. She wanted to stay and keep flirting with Rich, keep this lovely buzz stoked and put off getting bitched at by Brett for waking him up. But the subway would stop running shortly and cabs were expensive, especially if she was soon likely to be on her own, paying rent… . “I guess I should.”

“Where do you live?” Rich asked.

“Brigham Circle.”

“You can share my cab later.”

“You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. It’s on the promotion company’s dime.”

“Okay. Great.” Far better than great.

“Right,” Jenna said, giving Lindsey a look, one she translated to mean Don’t forget you have a man at home or some similarly fretful matchmaker admonishment. “I’ll see you Monday. Have a great weekend, both of you.”

Lindsey watched them disappear into the chaos, suddenly shy now that her evening was officially slated to end in the same vehicle as Prince Richard.

“Wait.” She turned to him as he sat. “Don’t you live in Lynn? Isn’t that, like, twenty miles from where I am? In the opposite direction?”

“Like I said—not my fare to pay.”

She smiled, tapping his glass with hers. “Any plans for your prize money?”

“Help my mom out with some bills, get my car fixed. Nothing flashy.”

“Saving those flashy plans for when you’re one of the main event guys?” She shook her head, boggled by the top-level payouts. “Fifty grand for a night’s work.”

“I know. Still, nothing compared to Tyson back in the day, or the big Vegas boxing matches. Seven figures for a single fight.”

She looked him in the eye, feeling a flash of intimacy and praying it didn’t show on her face. “Think you’ll ever be that big? A million dollars big?”

“Nah. Even for the biggest events in UFC, the main event guys don’t take home more than two or three hundred grand. And those are the top Ultimate Fighting Championship guys. Celebrity types. Names you might actually recognize outside the sport. People are only just realizing it’s not a fad or some pro-wrestling-type sideshow.”

Lindsey tried to imagine any woman seeing a commercial featuring a half-naked Rich and not finding herself turned on. To the sport. Turned on to the sport. “I should buy shares.”

“I’ll buy shares in Spark, then. Mercer says your stable of singletons is growing nicely.”

“I’m meeting with my first client on Thursday.” Sort of. She’d be shadowing and assisting Jenna to start, completing a couple courses this fall before being officially cleared to oversee her own clients. “And you’ll be on the road soon—no longer a threat to the female population of Spark.”

“Their loss.” His gaze shifted to some distraction in the middle distance.

“Are you looking forward to whatever’s next? Jetting off to exotic foreign locales?”

His eyes met hers once more. Goodness, they were dark. And deep. Boring through her skull and dismantling her good sense.

“No jets for me,” Rich said. “More like motor lodges off the freeway or somebody’s spare room near whatever facility my future manager sends me to train at.”

“But you are leaving Wilinski’s, right?”

Word came down the corridor that people were relocating to a club. Rich nodded his comprehension but turned back to Lindsey.

“I’ll get sent away to some camp for a while, so I’ll have a chance to try on the competition.” he looked thoughtful a moment.

“What?”

Rich’s voice went quiet, nearly soft, and he dropped his gaze to the glass in Lindsey’s hand. “It feels shitty, saying that. Like I’ve outgrown the gym.”

“Maybe you have.”

“I’ve been making do with what I got for as long as I’ve been alive. Wilinski’s is my style—scrappy and broke.” He frowned. “We could make it a lot more than what it is, if we had the money.”

“How do you get money? More members?”

“Yeah.”

“And how do you get more members? By producing bigname fighters, right?”

“That’s a good way.”

“Then all you have to do is go out there and set the world on fire, Rich.”

He smiled, though the gesture drooped with melancholy. “There’s a part of me that’s afraid I’ll go off, train for a few months in some state-of-the-art facility and forget where I came from.”

She was peeking through the slimmest crack in his shell, offered a glimpse of a man who wasn’t as cocksure as he liked everyone to believe.

“That’s your choice to make, I suppose.” Emotion and alcohol had her reaching out and rubbing his arm, patting his shoulder. The contact was intense, a mix of intimacy and awe at the sheer hardness of him. She took her hand back, feeling drunk.

For a moment their eyes met, then Rich dropped his gaze. “Sorry to unload. It’s been a hell of a day.”

“I’ll bet. You going to the club?”

“Nah, I’ve had enough excitement for one night. Plus I gotta be in the gym at ten.”

“Jeez, no rest for the wicked.”

“You wanna get out of here? Must be pushing two.”

Get out of there and go home alone? Or together? The exhaustion was gone from his eyes, replaced with his usual mischief, if she wasn’t mistaken. “Sure.”

He stood, stooping for her shoes and sliding them onto her feet. Lindsey blushed to the roots of her hair and stammered a thank-you.

Rich stopped by the locker room for his gym bag, and Lindsey carried his jacket. The weight of it felt peculiar, draped over her arm. Personal. She wanted to put her nose to the collar and find his smell there. She wanted to pretend she’d forgotten she was holding it when they got to her place so she could keep it. But that was lame and a little creepy, and an invitation for uncomfortable questions from Brett.

Stupid crush, making her all crazy.

The night air was enlivening, and Lindsey suddenly felt wide-awake. She wished for a dozen things in a breath—for Rich’s arm around her shoulders or his hand claiming hers, for a hot, loaded look or a brazen invitation. The only gesture she got was the simple opening of her door when he selected a cab from the curbside lineup. Her heart beat in her throat for the few seconds it took him to stow his bag and circle to the other side.

He seemed impossibly big as he settled beside her.

She gave the driver her address. It was only a fifteen-minute ride, this time of night. The backseat felt strange after the arena, so quiet and close. She glanced Rich’s way. “Did you meet any managers you liked?”

“Two or three I thought I could stand working with. Got their cards, so I’ll have to do some research this week and make my pick.”

“If you get your rematch, I’ll be sure to come.”

“Excellent. My first official groupie.”

“You wish. What if I show up in my Greg the Trucker shirt?”

Rich winced. “If that dirtbag’s your type, I am not sharing a cab with you.”

“Just kidding. And fine, I’ll be your groupie. Just don’t think you get to sign my cleavage.”

He laughed, eyes squinching in a way that seemed to double his sex appeal.

Not wanting their rapport to end, Lindsey asked a couple more questions about the sport. Rich answered, then added, “You really got some bloodlust in you.”

“No, it’s not that.” An image flashed—his hips, his thighs, his sweat-gleaming stomach and incredible arms. “Some different kind of primal something-or-other. Did you have any family watching tonight?”

“Nah. My mom thinks it’s barbaric—she grew up in Colombia, in a real rough area. She’s seen more than enough fighting for anybody’s lifetime. And my sister gets too stressed out.”

“You really love it, huh?” What was it like, to be so passionate about something? Lindsey thought she was reasonably driven, but she wouldn’t say wedding planning and matchmaking were her callings. Careers, perhaps, and satisfying ones, but not passions. Maybe she just wasn’t passionate. Not the way Rich was.

“I do love it,” he said. “It’s all I know, really. Gotta milk it for all it’s worth while I’m still in good shape. Maybe in ten years I’ll have to think about earning something flashier than a GED and find a respectable gig.”

“You could coach.”

He shook his head. “I’d rather see guys as opponents than students. I’ll leave all that nurturing bull to Mercer.”

“Well, your immediate future looks awfully bright. Let’s hope they’ll be able to understand your accent, wherever you wind up.”

“Tease all you want—you’ll miss me when I’m gone.” He said it through a self-satisfied sigh.

“I’m sure I’ll get more work done without you sticking your princely nose around the office door every ten minutes.”

“How come you never say yes when I ask if you wanna grab lunch?”

Lindsey’s face heated in the darkness. “I’m always busy when you ask.” In truth she’d said no because often she and Brett were on-again, or because Rich flat-out intimidated her. It wasn’t as though she floated through her workday on a champagne cloud of boldness. On a good day Lindsey suspected she was cute, but Rich was stunning. Men like that didn’t simply stroll around with passably cute girls. She’d spent enough time feeling invisible. The next time she got into a romance with somebody, she wanted a man she could shine beside, and Rich was too bright to do anything but cast others in his shadow.

“Maybe now that I’m leaving,” he said, “you’ll deign to say yes, just once. Take pity on a man.”

“We’ll see.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. What about after work? Jenna must let you go home at some point. Long enough to get a drink down the street?”

Her blush burned hotter than ever. “Are you asking me on a date?”

“Say yes and find out.”

She glanced out the window, champagne courage abandoning her. Dammit, why did she have to clam up at moments like this? But for once, her mouth sided with her body. “Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Okay.”

Rich shook his fist in triumph. “Nice. Frigging finally.”

She laughed. “I hesitate to fuel your already turbocharged ego. But yes, fine. I’ll go out for a drink with you some evening after work.”

For a long moment they didn’t speak. Rich’s darting eyes seemed to watch her with some sly persuasion of fondness, as though she amused and baffled him equally. Must be a rarity for him—a woman who didn’t visibly melt into a puddle in his presence. Thank goodness he didn’t know how wobbly he made her knees, simply passing by her office.

Her gaze snagged on his mouth, on the sexiest set of lips she’d ever seen. Always ready with a smirk or a curse-riddled diatribe. She wondered what else they might offer.

She was staring. They were both staring, though the pointedness of it didn’t seem to unnerve Rich a jot. Then again, he routinely peered into the eyes of men hell-bent on knocking him unconscious.

“What?” she asked, unable to bear the suspense.

“I dunno. were we about to kiss?”

Her heart pounded. “Oh. I didn’t think we were. I was just staring because you were staring.”

“I was waiting for some little female signal. But your poker face is stone-cold.”

Kiss me, she wanted to say. Tackle me. Rich was too much for her to get hung up on, but for a fling? For some fun in the back of a cab? Not her type, but so exciting. So unlike any man she’d ever experienced. Not that there’d been many.

Without her willing them to, Lindsey’s lips parted. And it was all the invitation he needed.

His hand was at her neck, strong and warm, and as he ran his thumb along her jaw, she felt sparks prickling. He lowered his face to hers, noses touching first, then mouths.

It was as though she’d never done this before. He felt so new, so different after all those years with the same man. Heat pooled in her cheeks, her chest, between her legs.

They twisted in their spots, hands seeking faces, seat belts binding laps. Rich tilted his head, parted lips asking to take this kiss deeper.

His mouth grew hungrier, tongue seeking hers. She found his collar clutched in her hand, no clue how it had happened. His kisses made Lindsey’s head swim, made her most scandalous exploits seem a chaste hand-holding. What on earth would sex with this man be like?

Ooh, terrible thought. Terrible, brilliant thought.

He broke them apart to murmur, “I’ve been wondering for weeks what you taste like.” He freed the buckle of his seat belt and slid beside her.

Lust folded in on itself, desire making her entire body tight and hot and angry. His hand was warm and broad, thumb on her cheek, fingers fanned possessively over her jaw.

She stroked his chest through his shirt, touched his face, fascinated by his soft skin, rough stubble, the texture of his bandage and the edge of the cut it hid. Maleness personified, an entirely new species.

His mouth was perfect—pushy, masterful, sinful. His hands felt so good on her neck and shoulder…how amazing would they feel elsewhere?

Just as her mind began to wander, she felt a funny sensation at her hip, a tingling that wasn’t in any way erotic. She wrested her lips from his.

“Is that your phone?”

“Just a text. Like I care.”

His mouth was on hers again, hungry and impolite. How long since she’d been kissed this way? Ages and ages and ages. Maybe never. She grasped his shirt, crisp cotton in her fist, hard muscle under her knuckles. He had to hunch to keep their mouths on par, seeming so big and looming and wrong and awesome she wanted to claw him.

Another intrusion from his phone—a nagging ping.

“Maybe it’s a manager,” she teased, lips still pressed to his. “They want you so badly, they’re texting at 3:00 a.m.”

“Probably some drunk friend. They’ll call if it’s important.” He took her mouth.

No one’s kissing had ever done this to her before, made her so hot she could feel herself getting wet. Just from kissing.

But again, a ping had her pulling away.

Rich sighed. “Hang on. This is going to drive me up a frigging wall.” He checked the screen, face lit white. “It’s Mercer.” He hit a button, eyes darting, brows pulling together in a frown. After a few seconds he turned his phone off.

“Everything okay?”

Rich blinked, gaze focused past her, out the window. “Yeah, yeah. Everything’s fine.”

Whatever the urgent bro-message had been, it killed their make-out session dead. Rich shifted back to his side and buckled his seat belt with a cold snap.

Her heart sank.

At least this fixed her worries about seeming rude by not inviting him up. Though it would’ve been nice for the kiss to end under duress, at her curb, all fraught with both of them wishing it could continue in somebody’s bed. She’d have ended it, been the one to seemingly muster self-control, since there was no way she’d have told him it was because her ex was upstairs. She could have—should have—left this unflappable man all flustered and won this round of their little sexual-tension battle.

“This is me,” she said as they reached her building. She forced a smile, hoping she looked unaffected to have lost his attention to a text, and so suddenly. The greatest make-out session of her life, clearly just a whim in Rich’s estimations.

“Thanks again for coming out.” He laid a perfectly, horribly chaste kiss on her cheek.

“Oh, sure.” She folded his jacket on the seat between them.

“Take care.”

“You, too.”

And with a thank-you to the driver, she was on the sidewalk. Rich waved her toward the building and she heard the cab pull away once she made it safely into the foyer.

Her legs were lead as she headed up the steps, and she was halfway to her apartment when she realized it.

The most obvious answer was usually the correct one, and the most obvious answer was that it hadn’t been Mercer who’d texted, but some girlfriend Rich had neglected to mention. Or, equally gutting, a better offer for a night’s recreation.

And just like that, her sails went limp. Just like that, she realized she’d been a fool to think she might be anything more to him than a convenient female body.

She entered her apartment, and as she closed the door, she wasn’t just shutting it on the hallway or the October chill. She shut it on her gullible heart and her weak body, for having made her lose track of her head, if only for a night.




3


Ten months later

RICH FOLLOWED THE GREETER to a booth with an underwhelming view of the diner’s parking lot. He had to remind himself where he even was, the travel had taken such a toll.

Albuquerque. Last week of July. Day before the event he’d been living and breathing for the past eight weeks. Fight night.

Just another match. No big deal. He had to keep thinking that, but in truth it was the chance of a lifetime, like tripping over a pot of gold.

Something about Rich—his personality, no doubt—had rubbed Nick Moreau, the current light heavyweight champ, the wrong way. Rich had responded in kind when asked what he thought of Moreau, and a flame war had caught fire, a back-and-forth Rich had hoped might one day land him a well-publicized grudge match. But when Moreau’s opponent for the big event had fractured a rib in May, the champ had a ready suggestion. “Gimme Estrada. I’ll shut that pretty—bleep—’s mouth for him once and for all.”

A stab at the frigging light heavyweight belt, not even a year after signing. That was nuts.

And to think he’d earned the chance just by being unbearably obnoxious!

The waitress came by, but Rich didn’t need the menu.

“Four egg whites, scrambled, no salt, and four pieces of dry wheat toast.”

She scribbled on her pad.

“And a glass of skim milk and a piece of whatever fruit you got.”

“Banana okay? Anything else you can only get in pie form.”

If only. “Banana’s perfect.”

She departed along with the laminated sheet showcasing whatever deliciousness Rich was missing out on. At least tonight he’d get a steak. A lean, unsalted steak and a side of equally undoctored steamed vegetables.

Still, the weigh-in would be done the next morning, the fight that evening. Then it’d take a team of horses to keep him off the nearest plate of ribs.

When his breakfast arrived, Rich tried to overlay the image of his mother’s bandeja paisa, an obscene Colombian orgy of a meal. Beans, dirty rice, pork, more pork, plantain, avocado, yet more pork…He’d think of these rubbery, tasteless egg whites when he landed his first kick, this sickly, bluish so-called milk when he caught the guy with an elbow. He’d dedicate the fight to the god of fatty, rare steaks and strong beer, and he’d earn himself a knockout, no question.

It was nice to have an hour away from Chris. His manager was a schmoozy weenie, but apparently schmoozing worked—look where it had landed Rich. But he wasn’t an ace at being told what to do. Chris was busy with prefight stuff that morning, leaving Rich free to enjoy his solitude. Trouble was, whenever he had a little solitude, his brain filled the space with distraction. A sort of five-foot-six-ish distraction, with dark blond hair and insanely blue eyes, freckles and a wry half smile.

That always happened when Rich had his sights set on a girl but hadn’t gotten with her yet. He fixated. Like the ribs, he hungered for what he couldn’t have. Or rather, what he’d chosen not to have, because she’d made him pretty certain in the back of that cab, he could’ve had her.

Then he’d gotten the text from Mercer’s number.

Before you get any ideas, champ, you should probably know Lindsey’s got a live-in boyfriend. —Jenna

Yeah, he should have known that. Too bad Lindsey hadn’t been the one to inform him of it.

Jesus, nearly ten months ago that had happened, and he was still hung up. It made no sense, but he could remember her face better than that of the last woman he’d woken next to, only a few days ago. The road must be making him crazy. Or Lindsey made him crazy. She certainly had that night after the fight—not just the messing around, but the way he opened his mouth when her eyes were on him and…stuff just came out. Stuff he never shared with people, except maybe his mom and sister. Emotions and crap.

The waitress came by. “Anything else?”

“Just the check.”

She tore the item in question from a pad and set it on the table.

“Thank the cook for accommodating my ridiculous eggs,” he said with a smile.

“We’ve been getting lots of weird requests. You must be with the…sorry, I’ve forgotten what it’s called. The kickboxing thing.”

“I’m sure we’ll drive you all crazy tonight, ordering chicken breasts with no skin or oil or salt. Worse than a bunch of supermodels before a runway show.”

She smiled at that, and Rich tried to imagine her naked, just to see if the image banished Lindsey’s smirking face from his head. No such luck. The waitress wandered off, but the only backside preoccupying him was two thousand miles away, for better or worse.

Definitely worse.

Rich wasn’t a saint by anyone’s standards, but it had stung, discovering he’d made out with another man’s woman. His younger self wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but he was older and wiser and generally less of a self-centered dick. Even if he didn’t feel an obligation to the poor jerk—probably out of town on a business trip or something—he had the pride to think he deserved the attentions of a woman decent enough not to cheat on someone.

Weird, though. Lindsey had seemed so like the opposite of that kind of woman. No time for B.S. Hell, the girl was a matchmaker.

Still, none of it kept him from imagining everything he’d opted out of.

He wouldn’t be back in Boston until Christmas, once the last of his three contracted fights wrapped in Cleveland. Three matches in the big leagues in less than a year. Hell of a run. But it was also a hell of an opportunity, and he was in freaky-good shape. If lightning struck, he’d win tomorrow, earn himself a title no one expected him to, and hopefully get to drop that December bout in favor of something a bit further out, maybe even a main event. Even if he lost, he could sleep easy knowing where the cash was coming from to pay his mom’s hospital bills. Knowing there were no financial clouds looming while she recovered from her heart valve replacement…Though it stung that he hadn’t been there to hold her hand. He’d been training, as always, cuffed to his coaches in the run-up to his April match in Vancouver.

It was a stroke of astounding good fortune that he was good enough at what he loved to support his family doing it, and to be a viable age when MMA had all this commercial steam. The chance to make up for everything his father had fallen short on.

Rich’s father had been a small man, in both stature and character. He’d been crippled by a depression Rich had found alternately heartbreaking and infuriating. He knew the depression had come about because the man mourned his homeland, his culture, his identity. But that didn’t make it okay.

Rich’s sympathy had run out at puberty. He’d gotten lucky, though, and stumbled into boxing, a pastime built for seething young men looking for the next best thing to hauling off and punching their fathers in the face.

Now he was twenty-nine—a little old to just be breaking out, but he had a hotter fire under his ass than plenty of these twenty-four-year-olds, and no ego aside from the act he put on for the audience and acquaintances, for everyone but his mother and younger sister. Strip all that bravado away, leave Rich alone with himself—here in this restaurant, in fact—and he felt like little more than a dog. A tough, loyal dog, alternately protective and savage.

It left no room for a life outside the ring and the bonds of his family, but in no time at all, he’d wake up and find he was thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven…past his prime, shunted to the backseat to train or manage younger prospects. A worthy and important role, but one Rich wouldn’t ever take to without bitterness, not the way Mercer had. But he still had five good years or more, hopefully enough to banish the Estradas’ financial worries for good, so his mom could quit giving herself Catholic guilt fits every time she needed a procedure to keep her heart beating.

Every time she cried, another patch of Rich’s heart turned black toward his father, another vertebra calcified, rock-hard, steeling his determination that he’d never be like his dad. Better a strong, dumb dog than a weak, cowering ghost.

He tossed his banana peel onto the plate, fished out some bills and weighted them down with the otherwise neglected saltshaker.

Back to the grind. Back to the routines that kept this body sore and brain quiet, kept his mind off his anger and worry. Kept his muscles taxed and his energy spent, too beat to succumb to any distracting thoughts about Lindsey at night, in whatever anonymous motel room he called his kennel that week.

“OH, SHUT UP! It’s starting.” Lindsey waved her hands, shushing Brett and Jenna’s conversation about…whatever they’d been talking about. She cranked the volume as the pay-per-view coverage began, heart thumping in her throat.

The announcer ran down the event’s matchups, and she whooped along with Jenna when head shots of Rich and his opponent slid in from either side of the screen, their stats appearing beneath them.

“Wow,” Jenna said. “Second-to-last fight. What a difference a few months make.”

Nine months and three weeks, to be precise, since that fight in Boston. And yeah, a lot had changed.

Jenna was engaged. Mercer had won the money to buy her a ring back in the spring, his first paid boxing match in years. Seemed fast to Lindsey, but the two had been living together since the week they’d met. At this clip, Jenna would be pregnant with twins by Halloween.

Lindsey, on the other hand, was still thoroughly not engaged. So not engaged, in fact, that she and Brett were officially over, even if they’d agreed to share the apartment until Lindsey found a new place she could afford. And in this college town, that wasn’t likely until September rolled around. Five weeks was a long time to cohabit with your ex, civil though things were.

At least work was good. Her own relationship might be over, but she could still drum up enthusiasm for other people’s, and she seemed to be pretty adept at matchmaking. A few of her clients were pains in the butt, but on the whole, she looked forward to going to work. Though some of that could be attributed to her desire to escape her awkward living situation.

Brett stood. “Anything from the kitchen?”

Lindsey handed him her empty beer bottle. “Thanks. And thank you for coming over,” she added to Jenna. “I would’ve thought you’d had it up to your eyeballs with fighting by now.”

“I have to see if Rich wins, live and in color.”

Lindsey nodded, filled as ever by a stupid rush of badgirlfriend adrenaline at the mention of his name. Though she wasn’t anybody’s girlfriend now.

“And a night out is nice,” Jenna said. “Beats watching at Hooters with the guys from the gym and all that testosterone. You’ve certainly gotten into all this—enough to shell out to watch.”

“Oh, yeah,” Brett said, returning to the couch with two bottles. “You should see Lindsey’s porn stash.”

She rolled her eyes as Jenna’s widened.

Brett passed Lindsey her beer then leaned over to pull open the side table drawer. He plopped a few glossy MMA magazines in Jenna’s lap.

“I see.” Jenna flipped one open, then immediately winced at a photo of a freeze-framed punch.

Lindsey nearly distracted her by mentioning Rich was in that issue, then stopped herself. Best not reveal to either of her couch mates that she knew which page he was on.

Her embarrassment preempted as the first match began, Lindsey took the magazines back, leaned over Brett and shut them in the drawer.

This event had cost her fifty bucks to order—fifty bucks that should probably have been put toward a security deposit or moving van rental. She ought to be absorbing every second of it, but all she could concentrate on was the clock, and how soon Rich’s fight would be starting.

Her crush was ridiculous. And harmless? Now, perhaps. But she had to admit, it may have contributed to her permanently breaking up with Brett. It wasn’t as though she’d thought about Rich while she’d been kissing Brett or anything heinous…but she did occasionally space out on the subway, lost in the memory of those minutes in the back of that cab.

Stupid girl. For all she knew, she’d kissed some other woman’s lover.

Whatever the case, they’d never gone out for that drink. And Rich hadn’t been back to Wilinski’s more than twice in the past six months, too busy training in California. She’d seen him during those visits, but they’d exchanged only passing pleasantries, nothing that indicated they’d shared anything special. Not that they’d been alone and in any position to flirt, but still—there hadn’t been any of that old fire in his eye contact. Something cagey, she’d thought, something more than she’d find in a friend’s gaze, but no hot promises, none of the heat she’d glimpsed that night in October, the wickedness she’d assumed came standard with Rich Estrada.

The opening matches went on forever. She knew a few of the names, enough to have favorites to root for, but she was too antsy to concentrate.

“Popcorn?” she asked Brett and Jenna, not waiting for an answer.

As she stripped the cellophane from the packet in the kitchen, she commanded her heart to slow. For the entire three and a half minutes the popcorn bag twirled in the microwave, she counted her breaths. How dumb, to get this wound up over seeing some man she kind of knew on TV.

Why should her heart hurt this way? Well, probably because she’d been stalking his career for long enough to gestate a baby.

Yeah, stalking—she could admit it. She wasn’t alone in her admiration, only alone in denying it. Rich had a bona fide fan base, a digital harem of noisy groupies who called themselves the Courtesans and swooned about him in tactless, filthy detail on message boards.

Did they go to the events? Follow his fights in person from city to city, not just on-screen? Did they toss themselves at him after the matches, and if so, did he like that? Was his hotel bed warmed by some new admirer every night?

And most important, why should she even frigging care?

She sighed as the microwave beeped, frustrated to the bone. With herself, for having gotten so hung up. With her living situation, and for what was surely going to prove the longest August in history. And from a phone call she’d gotten earlier—her mother calling to say Lindsey’s youngest sister, Maya, was threatening to not go back to high school in September for her senior year. Lindsey had promised to talk some sense into her this weekend. As always, the peacekeeper mitigating others’ drama.

Yet even with all that on her mind, her thoughts wandered back to Rich. His face and mouth, those fingers on her neck. Whatever she felt, it was no glimmer, no silly stirring. It was infatuation like she’d never suffered before, made all the worse by the way they’d parted. Some nights she was tempted to demand his number from Mercer, drink half a bottle of wine and text him, What the heck was in that message that made you stop kissing me?

But for all she knew, the reply she’d get would be, We kissed? When was that? Lindsey who?

She carried the popcorn and a roll of paper towels back through to the living room and settled between her ex-boyfriend and her boss.

“Nearly time,” Jenna said, sitting on the edge of the cushion with her knuckles pressed to her lips. “Oh, God, I hate this stupid sport.”

Brett took over the popcorn, which was just as well. As soon as the announcers began discussing Rich’s match, Lindsey felt sick.

“Should be a close one,” the first announcer said. G“Estrada’s been on his game, but can that stack up against Moreau’s experience?”

“It’s going to come down to who’s hungrier for it,” a second announcer declared. “Though the odds in Vegas say Moreau’s belt won’t be going anywhere tonight.”

The screen flashed to backstage prep, to Nick Moreau jogging in place. He was good—a mean-looking thirtysomething from Quebec with a shaved head, a bit of a veteran. Then to Rich, and Lindsey’s heart stopped. A close-up of that handsome profile, his expression stern and set. He stretched his neck and licked his lips, then suddenly he was moving, the camera swiveling to follow as he was ushered through double doors into the dark arena.

“Oh, God, oh, God,” Jenna muttered.

Rich’s cocky, regal shtick hadn’t changed. He walked down the aisle to the same music, welcomed with a mix of cheers and boos as his stats were announced. He was extremely popular with Hispanic fans—and with any woman possessed of eyes and a pulse—but hated by his fair share of enthusiasts, too.

Moreau strode out to some hard-core rock song, minimalist in black warm-ups, his scalp gleaming under the lights.

Lindsey felt a pain in her palm and realized she was clenching her fist hard enough to leave nail marks.

The fighters had stripped to their shorts and gloves, both hopping and jogging in place, keeping warm. Rich shook out his arms and tossed punches in the air.

The announcer went through the rigmarole, rattling through the rules for the three-round match, and the men went back to their corners. A ring girl circled, and with a shout, the fight was on.

“Oh, God,” Jenna said again. If the throw pillow in her lap had been an animal, she’d already have crushed the life out of it.

Lindsey held her breath and bit her lip, hands squished between her clenched thighs.

Rich took the offensive early. Moreau was a more cautious, strategic fighter. Rich baited him with a few quick swipes, but Moreau waited for an opening.

“Oh!” Jenna cried when the first punch landed. It was a soft, harmless jab to Rich’s shoulder, but she buried her face in the pillow all the same. Lindsey teetered at the edge of the cushion.

The two fighters clinched for a few seconds, each landing a couple of good shots.

“Stay on your feet,” Lindsey murmured. “Stay on your feet.” Moreau was good on the mat—a far stronger grappler, even after Rich’s past months of world-class training. Or so she’d read in one of her incriminating magazines.

Rich knocked his opponent with a sharp hook then dodged aside, clearly content to keep this fight upright.

“Good. Good.” How had Mercer survived being in Rich’s and Delante’s corners? Lindsey felt a heart attack brewing just watching from the other side of the country. Yet she could practically feel everything, live and in three dimensions. Hear the crowd all around her as she had at the Boston fight, smell the sweat and feel the heat of the lights and bodies.

“Estrada’s come out strong,” the first announcer observed. “But Moreau’s known for his pacing.” True.

“Be cool,” she muttered. “Save something for the other two rounds.”

“I have no idea who’s winning,” Brett said.

“No one yet.”

By the time the horn blared to end the round, the two men had had a good dance, but neither was the clear favorite. Lindsey shoved popcorn in her face, just to have something to do.

Jenna peeked from behind her pillow. “What happened?”

“They’re both holding steady,” Lindsey said.

Jenna went back into hiding the second the ring girl was done prancing.

Lindsey didn’t know what Moreau’s trainer had said to him during the break, but he came out with a fire under his ass, going right for Rich’s legs. Get him on his back. That’s what he’d been told.

Rich dodged Moreau’s efforts to kick his feet out from under him, and with a solid roundhouse to the ribs he sent the other man stumbling into the chain-link.

“Yes,” Lindsey groaned, hugging the bowl. Her heart punched her ribs with every beat, easily a million times a minute.

Rich sneaked in a flurry of jabs, then took a mean hit to the ear. He gave twice as good as he got, banging Moreau in the ribs with his knee. Thirty seconds before the horn, Moreau hooked him behind the legs and got them onto the ground, but they ended the round in a mutual tangle, neither in danger of submitting. Lindsey gulped a breath when the air horn sounded, the first she’d taken since the fighters had hit the mat.

“Anything?” Jenna asked from behind her pillow.

“Nothing deciding.” But Moreau was probably winning now, if this fight came down to points.

“If Moreau can manage that again, early in the third,” noted the announcer, “we might just have a match on our hands.”

“He better not!”

“Linds.” Brett zapped her a look, the kind you’d send your kid when they lost track of their indoor voice. She shot one back, feeling no need to be ladylike, given the occasion. Especially considering how noisy Brett got whenever the Pats played the Giants.

The third round started. Moreau had gotten a taste for dominating and wanted more. He was going for Rich’s legs, looking to get them back to the mat. Before he could, Rich seized an opening, landing a half dozen serious head shots and taking only a single nasty hook to the cheek. There was blood beside Moreau’s mouth, more of the same slicking Rich’s curled fingers.

“Jesus,” Brett muttered, clearly missing the civility of football.

Then, disaster.

Moreau bent low and caught Rich behind his knee. Rich retaliated with an elbow between Moreau’s shoulder blades and wormed his way out of the clinch. They traded jabs, then Rich nearly snagged an opening, missing Moreau’s ribs with a roundhouse kick but still banging his arm, and hard. Something had happened—the crowd’s collective voice flared in a passionate ruckus, but Lindsey didn’t know why. Had that kick been illegal?

“That’s not good,” the announcer said.

She straightened. “What’s not good? For who?”

Then something strange happened. After a moment of staggered circling and punching, Moreau lunged, looking to take Rich down. And Rich seemed to let him.

She shot to her feet, popcorn jumping from the bowl. “No!”

The men tumbled to the ground, scrambling for position before they even hit the mat. Moreau came out on top and landed three brutal punches to Rich’s face, and panic rose in Lindsey like bile. “No, no, no!”

“Linds, chill.”

She shushed Brett.

The advantage was gone as quickly as it had come. Rich clamped his legs to Moreau’s waist and turned them onto their sides, getting his arm locked around Moreau’s neck. Moreau’s limbs were wild, lashing and kicking, fighting for purchase. They rolled and thrashed, arms and legs a gleaming blur.

“A reckless strategy. Can’t see this ending well for Estrada,” commented the first announcer.

“What? What?”

“Don’t be too sure,” the other announcer said. “He’s not letting up.”

The grappling raged on, and Lindsey couldn’t tell who was in control. Rich, she thought. He had a leg clamped over Moreau’s and an arm pinned, but Moreau had the other flailing, knocking Rich with an odd, awkward thump to the jaw.

The screen shifted to a different angle, mat-level, and Lindsey winced at the agony contorting Rich’s face—agony and unmistakable desperation. For ages it felt as though nothing was happening, the two men locked in a slick knot of jerking muscle. Then at long last, Moreau reached his hand out and smacked the mat. the horn blast was swallowed in the crowd’s roar and the announcer shouting, “And there you have it! Rich Estrada is the winner by submission.”

“If that doesn’t get Fight of the Night, I don’t know what will,” claimed his colleague.

Jenna dropped her pillow in time to scream with Lindsey.

“Quite the match,” quipped the first announcer. “Though you can bet Estrada was hoping for a knockout.”

“A bittersweet victory,” said the other announcer.

“What?” Lindsey froze, not seeing any bitter side to this. “Why?”

Unlike his bested opponent, Rich hadn’t stood. His trainer and some other staff member rushed into the ring and crouched over him.

“What’s going on?” Jenna asked.

“I don’t know. Something happened just before they went down, but…” She fell silent and sat. With help, Rich had gotten to his feet. His foot, rather. He held the other one a couple inches above the mat.

“We’re waiting for confirmation,” the announcer revealed, “but it’s looking like…yes—”

“Looks like what?” Lindsey demanded, throwing popcorn at the screen. A medical official knelt by Rich, messing with his foot.

“Yes, looks like Estrada’s right foot is probably broken.”

“Oh, no,” Jenna said, while Lindsey opted for a fouler expression.

They showed a close-up replay of the moment Rich’s kick slammed the top of his foot square into Moreau’s elbow, the impact looking a hundred times worse in slow motion. She swore again, earning a glare from Brett.

“Calm down, Linds. He won.”

“Do you have any idea how long it takes a foot to heal? It could take a guy out of commission for months—”

“This time last year you didn’t even know what MMA was—now you’re a groupie. Give it a rest.”

A guy with a mike made his way to Rich. “Your second consecutive win since you signed, and your first title. How do you feel?”

“I feel like I just broke my frigging foot.”

“Unusual to see you dominate on the mat.”

“Desperate times,” Rich said, annoyance seeming to give way to exhaustion. One thing was certain—he was not happy. Someone presented him with a flashy gold belt, but he did little more than clutch it to his ribs.

“Anything else before we let you get that foot taken care of?”

Rich said what he did at the end of every match. “Thank you, Mamá. Thank you, Diana.” Then he added something he never had before. “See you soon.”

Lindsey shivered.

The guy with the mike moved on to Moreau as Rich hopped down from the cage with the help of his corner, belt slung over his shoulder.

Jenna shook off her alarm. “Rich is healthy. He’ll be back in no time, I bet.” She stood and replaced the throw pillow.

“You heading out? The main event’s next.” Don’t leave me with Brett.

“I think I’ve hit my threshold for stress. Plus I’ve got a client first thing, and who knows how late Mercer will keep me up rehashing this.”

There was more to Jenna’s hurried exit, though, and Lindsey couldn’t blame her. She and Brett weren’t exactly bringing out the best in each other lately. She went to fetch Jenna’s purse.

“Well,” Jenna said when they met at the door. “At least there’s one rather selfish upside to this.”

“What?”

“We’ll probably get to see a lot more of Rich around the office again.”

“You think?” Lindsey glanced back at the screen, a queasy sensation tumbling around in her stomach. The camera followed Rich as he was led hopping from the arena, supported by his trainer and a medic. His face was pained, glistening with sweat. He didn’t look like a man who’d just won his first title fight. He looked…uncertain.

“I’m sure he’ll come home during his rehab,” Jenna said. “Mercer said he’s really close to his family.”

“Right. Yes.” The coverage had shifted to the next match, leaving Lindsey dangling, feeling too many conflicting things: dread and relief, fear and triumph. Pride. Worry. More emotions than she’d felt in the past month combined. The result of Rich’s injury? Partly. And the thought of him coming home.





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