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“Yeah.” Ray ran a hand over the bristle on his scalp, his gaze fixed on the horizon for a beat as he thought something through. “She’s got another fight in two weeks time, you know,” he said.
Cooper palmed his car keys. “Then she’ll lose again. Someone needs to tell her to quit while she’s ahead.”
“She’s not a quitter,” Ray said, looking at Cooper as though he was the one who could do something about the situation.
“She’s not my problem,” Cooper said very firmly.
He was almost sure he meant it, too.
YET TWO WEEKS LATER, Cooper was watching as Jamie Holloway made her way to the ring for her second pro fight, the old man following in her wake with bucket and water and stool.
Why am I here?
He’d asked himself the same question about a million times. There was no promising young fighter to scout here tonight—there was only Jamie and her pigheaded determination. And still he was sitting here, on the edge of his seat, hoping to see a different outcome for her this time.
Stupid. Pointless. Frustrating. Because if she fought the way she did last time—and the odds were she would—she was going to lose.
He leaned his elbows on his thighs as the MC read out the fighters’ stats. Jamie’s opponent this time around was a girl from Queensland, taller than Jamie, more experienced. Not that that was hard.
He could see Jamie’s grandfather talking steadily near her ear as she waited in her corner for the referee to call her forward for instructions. What was the old man saying? And did it matter, when she had years of training, fighting and thinking in another discipline holding her back? As soon as the pressure was on, Jamie was going to want to use her knees and legs again. And that split second of hesitation where her brain overrode her instinct was going to leave her wide open to attack. Just like last time.
Nodding one final time, Jamie moved away from her grandfather toward the center of the ring where the ref was waiting. Cooper watched the old man climb down from the ring, his movements slow.
Talk about the blind leading the blind. What a ridiculous bloody situation.
Cooper stood. He’d seen enough. Then the bell rang, and the two women came out fighting. As before, Jamie threw the first punch, a nice straight armed jab that rocked the other fighter’s head back on her shoulders.
He sat down.
It didn’t take long for Jamie’s old habits to undermine her natural talent. And she was talented—Ray hadn’t lied when he said that. She was strong, fast, quick on her feet. She had good power in her punches, good control. She wasn’t afraid to go in hard and risk her opponent finding an opening. But that hesitation and that fumbling footwork let her down every time.
As the round ended and the bell rang, he watched with frustration as she sank onto the stool in her corner. She had a lot of potential. But she was never going to reach it if someone didn’t take her in hand.
After the regulation minute, the bell rang and the second round started. Again Jamie landed some good punches first up, and Cooper looked to the judges, urging them to score her high. But as the round ticked into the second then the third minute, those hesitations of hers began to tell again.
“Think with your fists, not your feet,” he found himself yelling in frustration at the ring. His voice was one of many, drowned out by the crowd, and he sprang to his feet, unable to watch anymore.
She was taking a pounding, her head bobbing on her neck, her steps slowing as her body reacted to the pain. He couldn’t stand by and watch her go down. It was like watching a bully kick a dog.
He excused his way past the other fans to get to the aisle. Descending the stairs, he headed for the nearest exit. At least, that was where he thought he was going. The bell sounded the end of the second round and somehow he found himself smooth-talking his way past the security guy guarding the ring and barreling up to Jamie’s corner where she was sitting on her stool, breathing heavily and washing her mouth out while her grandfather rinsed her mouth piece over the bucket.
“Stop lifting your goddamned feet,” he barked at her as soon as he was within earshot. The ring was four feet off the ground, putting him well below her, but her head snapped around when she heard him. “You keep wanting to use your feet and it’s killing your technique.”
She looked dazed, a little punch drunk he figured, but then her eyes cleared and she frowned.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Listen to me. She drops her guard every time she hits you with a cross. Watch her, you’ll see it. Block her with your forearm, and move in with a hook. You get her right, you can lay her out,” he said.
He shot a glance toward the center of the ring. He could see the ref gearing up to begin the third round.
“Why?” Jamie demanded, staring at him intently.
“Why what?” he asked, gaze darting to the ref again. Their time was nearly up; had she taken in a word he said?
“Why are you giving me advice?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. Call it charity.”
She shook her head in turn. “Not good enough. I don’t take charity.”
The ref gestured for Jamie to move away from the corner, but she stood there, holding his eye.
He swore. Loudly. Was he insane? Was he really going to allow some misplaced sense of guilt and sexual interest and God knows what to push him into this decision? He had his training ambitions to think of, his reputation, his future…
“All right. I’ll take you on. Now get out there and lay her out,” he said.
She gave him a fierce, almost feral grin before giving her attention over to the fight.
Still not quite believing what he’d done, Cooper stood back and watched as Jamie took it up to her opponent again.
Man, but she was full of pluck.
“Name’s Arthur,” a voice yelled near his ear, and he tore his gaze from Jamie—his fighter—to see her grandfather standing there, gnarled hand extended.
“Cooper,” he said, shaking hands.
The old man bobbed his head and Cooper switched his attention back to the fight just in time to see Jamie step inside the other woman’s guard and send a smoking right hook toward her opponent’s jaw.
He knew before it landed that the fight was over. The other woman’s head snapped to the side. Her eyes rolled white, and she staggered into the ropes then down onto the canvas. The ref stepped in to deliver the eight count. Like a pro, Jamie kept her eyes glued to her fallen opponent until the ref signaled the fight was over.
Then Jamie lifted her arm in a single, triumphant punch to the sky.
Her first win. Despite his misgivings, he felt the rush, too. And when she glanced across at him, grinning, he grinned back.
Her grandfather was whooping with joy, and Jamie slid between the ropes and out of the ring to hug him.
“I told you,” she kept saying. “I told you I could do it.”
When they finally broke, she looked toward Cooper almost shyly.
“She dropped her guard just like you said, so I did what you told me to do,” she said.
“I know. I saw.”
She bumped her gloves together. He could feel her uncertainty. He guessed that she hadn’t thought beyond this moment, she’d been so focused on scoring her first win.
“So, what now?” she asked.
“Now the hard work really begins,” he said.
Chapter Three
SHE HAD A TRAINER. And not just any trainer—she had Cooper Fitzgerald. Lying on the ratty couch in the apartment she shared with her grandfather later that night, Jamie lifted the bag of frozen peas from her cheekbone so she could see her grandfather where he was puttering around in the kitchen.
“He wants to see me at his gym first thing tomorrow,” she said.
“I heard. Not deaf yet,” her grandfather said. She could hear the smile in his voice.
She fell silent again, reliving in her mind the moment when her fist connected with her opponent’s jaw and she’d won the fight. All because Cooper showed her the way. Excitement and anticipation bubbled up inside her. With him at her side, she was going to make her mark.
“He’s good,” she said, dropping the bag of peas again. “The way he spotted her weakness like that.”
“Yep. He knows what he’s doing.”
Crossing over from the kitchen, he slid a plate onto the battered coffee table in front of her. Toasted cheese and ham, his specialty.
“Should have more protein after a big fight, but you know my cooking’s not up to much.” He shrugged as he sank into his favorite armchair and rested his plate on his knees.
He was wearing an ancient green shirt her grandmother had bought him back when they were first married, and what was left of his gray hair sat up in tufts over his ears. His once-strong shoulders curled forward with age and tiredness, and the hands that held his plate were thick and twisted with arthritis.
A fierce rush of love filled her. She adored this old man with everything she had. He’d never let her down, never betrayed her, never stopped protecting her. And now it was her turn to do the same for him.
Her critical gaze scanned the room, noting the grayed curtains, the stained walls, the chipped tiles in the kitchenette and the way the stuffing was exploding out of one corner of the couch where the upholstery had given way after years of wear and tear. Arthur Harrison Sawyer deserved better than this. In his day, he had been a boxer of renown, one of the greats who had forged a name for Australian boxers around the world. He’d fought both Muhammad Ali and Frazier before he’d dropped down a weight class and carved out his own niche. He’d fought hard and long and with enormous heart.
He deserved better.
She was going to make things better for him, for both of them. They were going to get out of this apartment. She was going to make sure he had heating in winter and cooling in summer, and that he never had to think twice about buying his monthly copy of The Ring, his favorite boxing magazine, because it was a luxury they couldn’t really afford.
She was going to make it possible for him to hold his head high again after what her father had done. She was going to right the wrong, remind the boxing world that the name Sawyer was an honorable one, a great one, not a symbol of weakness and greed and failure.
“We’ll be able to leave this place soon,” Jamie said as she reached for her toast. She bit into it without testing it for temperature and hissed with pain as she burned the roof of her mouth.
“Every time,” her grandfather said, shaking his head and huffing out a laugh as she lunged for her water glass.
“What can I say? I’m a creature of habit,” she said with a grin.
Leaving her toast to cool some more, she lay back on the couch, repositioned her bag of peas and closed her eyes.
Tomorrow she had her first session with Cooper Fitzgerald. Things were finally on the move.
She frowned as the one reservation she had about her new trainer circled to fill her thoughts, as it had on and off ever since the fight and Cooper’s unexpected appearance in her corner: she didn’t know what had changed his mind about her.
She wanted to think it was because he saw the potential for greatness in her, but she was also uneasily aware that every time they’d met, he’d looked at her the way a man looks at a woman he wants to get busy with.
And she hadn’t exactly not noticed the fact that he was a whole lot of man, either.
Was it going to be a problem? She opened her eyes and stared at the water stain on the ceiling.
She’d make sure it wasn’t a problem, one way or another. This was her shot, and it was way more important than sexual curiosity or whatever it was that existed between them.
Sitting up again, she tested her toast with a finger before taking another bite.
“Smart girl,” her grandfather said with a half smile.
“Absolutely,” she said.
THE MOMENT Jamie Holloway walked in the door of his gym in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Newtown the next morning, Cooper realized he’d bought himself a whole world of trouble when he signed her on.
For starters, every single male in the gym stopped what he was doing the moment he noticed her long legs clad in tight black Lycra, her bodacious ass and her generous breasts. It didn’t matter that she was wearing a loose white T-shirt over her leggings. Or that she was sporting a bruised cheekbone, didn’t have a scrap of makeup on and her hair was pulled back into a tight, high ponytail. She was sexy, hot, gorgeous, and every man in the place knew it and wanted to do something about it.
And that wasn’t even the most disturbing part of it all. No, that honor belonged to the fierce, fundamental surge of jealousy and territorialism he felt when all those male eyes checked her out.
Mine, his body and his animal instincts screamed. Get your freakin’ eyes and minds off her.
He was about to embark on an intimate, intense relationship with her that was supposed to be based on mutual trust. He was about to become her mentor, for Pete’s sake. And all he could think about was how it would feel to have her body against his, skin to skin, and how wet and tight and hot she’d feel as he slid inside her…
Shit.
Take a cold shower and get over it, Fitzgerald.
It wasn’t as if he was hard up for booty action. Hell, he could pick up his phone and have a woman just as sexy and hot in his bed within the hour.
The thought didn’t provide the release valve he needed and he was frowning by the time she’d crossed the gym floor and stopped in front of him, her expression open and sunny.
“You’re late,” he said. “Lesson number one, I expect my fighters to be punctual.”
The smile froze on her lips.
“We couldn’t find a parking spot. My grandfather’s still looking,” she said.
He eyed her coolly. “Warm up, then we’ll talk,” he said.
She frowned, opened her mouth, then shut it again without saying a word. Slinging her bag to one side near the wall, she pulled out a skipping rope and began to jump.
He went over to the counter near the front door and started checking some paperwork his lawyer had sent through, keeping a discreet eye on her all the while.
Slowly, the guys around him stopped gawking and started working out again.
Pathetic. Men really did think with their dicks—and he was as bad as the rest of them.
Arthur Holloway entered a few minutes later, stopping alongside the counter to greet Cooper.
“Hiya,” he said, his gaze sharp as he checked out first Cooper then the gym. “Nice place you got here.”
Cooper glanced around at the raw brick walls, the exposed ceiling beams, the scarred wooden floors and the single regulation boxing ring that occupied the very center of the space. A long time ago the building had originally been a grain store, but it had been a gym for many years now and the smell of leather and sweat had soaked into the mortar. When he’d bought the place he’d repainted, fixed broken windows, installed new bathrooms and equipment and updated the offices, but the place retained its old-school feel.
That and the fact that he was around the place a lot more now that he was retired had helped build membership numbers and business was booming. It didn’t hurt to have pros like Ray training here. Guys who sat behind desks for a living liked to sweat alongside real fighters. Made them feel as if they were playing with the big boys.
