Taking Him Down

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.