Текст книги "Worth the fight"
Автор книги: Vi Keeland
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Worth the Fight
MMA Fighter 1
by
Vi Keeland
“Someday, someone will walk into your life and make you realize why it never worked out with anyone else.”
Unknown
This book is dedicated to my someone.
Chapter 1
Elle
I’d like to think my past doesn’t follow me around like a shadow on a sunny day that I just can’t outrun. I have a good life. I’m smart, have a great job, long legs, perky boobs, and I’ve been told the guy I sort of date is a catch-and-a-half on more than one occasion. So why is it that as I look across the room, scanning for William in the crowded restaurant, part of me hopes he stands me up? What twenty-five-year-old wants to be stood up? One that will continue to coast through life on autopilot, unless circumstances in my perfect life force a change. Perfect is highly overrated. I’m a character in my story, going through the chapters of my life as if it was written by an imaginary person, when I should be the author.
I’ve been this way for a long time. I make responsible choices. My life is neat and organized and my heart rate stays constant. I like it that way most of the time. I should be proud of where I am in my life. But the truth of the matter is sometimes I feel like I’m suffocating in my perfunctory life.
William catches my eye and raises his hand to me at a table in the far corner of the restaurant. The one we almost always sit at. Same time, same place, every week, week after mundane week. I notice the two girls sitting at the bar near me, eyeing William and giggling. Their faces drop when they realize he’s waving at me and hasn’t even noticed them. I put on my best fake smile as William, always the gentleman, stands as I reach the table. He kisses me on the cheek and wraps his arm around my waist with a familiar touch.
“Sorry, I’m a little late.” I say with rehearsed speech as I take my seat.
“No problem, I just got here myself.” William replies, and I know it’s a lie. William Harper would never be late. I’m sure he was here fifteen minutes early and since I’m twenty minutes late, he’s probably been waiting more than half an hour, but he would never complain.
“Can I get you a drink?” The attentive waitress smiles at William, even though her speech is directed at me. If I were the possessive type, her overt flirting would probably piss me off. But I’m not. Possessiveness and jealousy would be emotional reactions, something I’ve spent years working to restrain.
“I’ll have a vodka cranberry. Diet cranberry, please.” I look to William and notice his glass is already empty. I inwardly smirk, thinking how well I know this man. He nurses the single drink he allots himself, a vodka tonic, for a solid half hour, then he switches to water.
“Just water for me, thank you.” William smiles at the waitress and she beams from his attention. William Harper is a handsome man. You’d have to be blind not to see that. Tall, blue eyes, blonde perfectly coifed hair, and always dressed like he just walked out of GQ magazine. His teeth are white and perfectly straight and dazzle from beneath his perfect smile. He comes from a respectable family and at only twenty-seven he’s already a partner at his dad’s law firm. So why is it that right now as he speaks, I’m seeing his lips move, but I can’t hear a word he’s saying?
“Elle, are you okay?” William senses my distance and I know the concern in his voice is genuine. He truly is a great guy, a catch-and-a-half as they say.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I pretend I just snapped out of a daze. “My head must still be in the case I was working on.” I lie.
The answer seems to satisfy him. “What kind of a case is it?”
It didn’t take long for us to get on the topic of work, it never does. I should be happy we have our work in common and he’s someone that understands what I do, but work is pretty much all we ever talk about.
“It’s an unlawful termination of employment case.” I latch onto the first case that pops into my mind. Luckily the waitress comes back and sets down our drinks and asks to take our order, giving me more time to think of something interesting from the dull case that I just told William my head was stuck in.
The waitress leaves and an older couple approach our table. “You’re Bill Harper, Jr. right? Bill’s son?” The gentleman extends his hand with a friendly smile.
“It’s William, but yes I’m William Harper Jr.” I’ve heard him correct dozens of people over the last few years. I’ve always wondered why it bothers him so much to be called Bill or Billy, that he feels the need to correct people. I mean, when someone uses a nickname it’s meant to be friendly, isn’t it? William has the polite manner in which he corrects people down to a science. Somehow it doesn’t come off as rude. It’s telling that I wonder why it bothers him, yet never ask.
The two men chat for a while and in less than ten minutes William manages to solicit the guy’s legal work and the man promises to call the office the next day. The way he does it doesn’t come off as sleazy ambulance chaser type speak. William is smooth and professional. It probably comes naturally to him, being his father, grandfather, and brother are all lawyers too.
We finish our dinner without interruption and our conversation is easy and natural. It’s been that way since we met in our last year of law school. We clicked instantly and I would categorize him as one of my closest friends, if I wasn’t sleeping with him once a week for the last eighteen months.
“I rented Possible Cover. I was hoping you’d want to come back to my place after dinner.” It’s just like William to rent the latest action movie, which he will most likely despise, because I am an action movie junkie. William is more of an artsy-Woody-Allen-type-movie person.
“Can I take a rain check?” I see William’s face wilt slightly. This is the second week in a row that I’ll be cutting our date off after dinner…and before sex. “I have to be in the office at 6am to prep for a deposition.” I feign disappointment in my voice as yet another lie flows freely from my lips.
I’m not sure if he buys my excuse or if he’s just too polite to call me on it. But I don’t care. I’m not in the mood tonight. The last few months our sex life has become a challenge for me, although William doesn’t seem to have any idea. It’s not his fault either. He has good equipment and it operates well, for the most part. But I’ve been having trouble getting myself to my happy place during our nights together lately. Maybe that was part of the problem. If I wanted a happy ending with William, I had to get myself there. He just doesn’t seem to be able to get me there on his own anymore. So I seem to have become one of those sex-once-a-week women who have to fake it. And I’m not in the mood to fake anything else tonight.
Chapter 2
Elle
My co-workers at Milstock and Rowe are an eclectic group of people. William and I did our internship here in our last year of law school. After graduation William went on to his father’s Madison-Avenue-type law firm that was started by his grandfather more than seventy years ago. The firm is well established and caters to the elite advertising industry. Leonard Milstock, the namesake in Milstock and Rowe, offered me a position as a junior associate at the end of my internship and I happily accepted.
William and I don’t disagree often, but we argued quite a bit when I had decided to stay at Milstock and Rowe. He didn’t think it was a good career move to take a job with such a small unknown firm. But I was comfortable there and Milstock allowed me to do work that most junior associates at a big firm could only dream of getting their hands on. That was one of the perks of working for a small place, and I thought it outweighed the low salary and lack of prestige. William, on the other hand, thought the scale tipped completely in the opposite direction. Salary and prestige were high on William’s career priorities. Not so much on mine.
“Morning Regina.” I smile at the receptionist as I walk into the office fifteen minutes past the official start time of eight. No one seems to care that I’m perpetually late, especially since I usually stay until long after seven on most nights. Timeliness just isn’t my thing.
“William called, he wants you to call him back. He had me check your calendar to see if you’re available for a consultation for a new client of his.”
Damn. Now he knows my early morning deposition was a lie. “Regina, would you mind having Gigi call him back and book whatever he needs on my calendar?” I raise my eyebrows at Regina and she knows what I’m asking and smiles, excited to be in on whatever it is that I am asking her to do.
Regina has been our receptionist for almost a year. She’s in her late forties and has eight cats and way too many cat themed decorations at her desk. From the outside she looks like your ordinary middle-aged woman. A little on the heavy side, with pants that spread just a bit too tightly over her plump ass, a penchant for floral, flowing crepe shirts, and comfortable flat shoes. To the eyes, the package she delivers seems to fit the bill. That is, until she opens her mouth.
I’ve never met another woman in my life that has a sexier voice. For that matter, I don’t think there’s a man with a sexier voice either. The sound that comes out of her mouth is the purr of a sex kitten, not the roar of the teddy bear standing before you. I am absolutely, one hundred percent positive she could earn a million dollars a year being a phone sex operator, or the voice for audio erotica books. Men are rendered powerless to deny her when she asks for anything in her sultry voice. I dubbed the woman with the irresistible tone Gigi.
I’d solicited the assistance of Gigi’s god given gift on more than one occasion. Sometimes to have her call clients when I knew they would be upset with my having to cancel an appointment last minute. Somehow when Gigi called in her sexy voice, the male clients took the news much better.
No one in the office knows how Regina and I met so many years ago. They probably all think she’s a friend of my mother’s because of how different we look on the outside. But she’s not; she’s my very best friend…the woman who saved my life. Although if you ask her, she’d tell you I saved hers. Who knows, maybe we actually saved each other.
* * *
Leonard Milstock is my seventy-five-year-old boss. I’ve only met Frederick Rowe, the other half of Milstock and Rowe once. Yet his name stays on the door and rumor has it he still receives a salary each year. The two men had been best friends since grade school and partnered up together before I was even born. Apparently Mr. Rowe was the Felix to Milstock’s Oscar and kept things flowing smoothly in the office. But he’d retired a few years back due to his wife’s ailing health and now all we had was the messy half of the odd couple.
I enter Leonard’s office and attempt to find a chair under the piles of files with papers haphazardly sticking out all over. I remove three suit jackets I am positive have been there for at least two years and hang them up as Leonard begins to talk about the case we’re working on together. As he talks, I reorganize all of the files which had been left ajar on the chair and throw out a dozen Wall Street Journals that have dates more than a year old. Leonard either doesn’t notice my tidying or it doesn’t bother him at all, because he doesn’t miss a beat as he brings me up to speed while I go about tidying the place.
“You’re going to have to handle the deposition yourself this afternoon.” Leonard wraps up the discussion while chewing on a sausage and peppers hero that Regina delivered a few minutes ago, even though it’s only ten thirty in the morning.
“I can do that.” I can, but I’m surprised that he is asking me to. The afternoon deposition is for one of our largest clients and usually Leonard leads and I take a back seat. Leonard sees the question written on my face.
“I’m having angioplasty this afternoon.” Leonard waves off the comment as if he had just told me the time and not that he was having serious heart surgery.
“Angioplasty? Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes. I’m fine. The doctors today make a big deal about nothing. He probably just wants me on the table because his kid’s got a tuition payment due.”
“So it probably doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you eat a sausage and peppers hero every day for breakfast then? It couldn’t be that you haven’t taken care of your heart, right?” I stand, assuming the lecturing daughter position that Leonard, on rare occasion, has allowed me to act out when his unhealthy habits rise to disturbing levels.
“Listen missy. When you get to be my age, we’ll see how much you give a shit about what you eat. So keep your salad-eating, skinny thoughts to yourself and go prep for our client who I’m counting on you to please.”
I laugh, knowing Leonard isn’t really mad, it’s just his way. Neither of us do warm and mushy, but he knows I care about him. “Tell Millie to call me when you’re all patched up, okay?” Yes, Leonard Milstock married a woman named Millie, which makes her Millie Milstock. I would have kept my maiden name, but I’m sure that wasn’t even a consideration when they married more than fifty years ago.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” I smile at my boss and shake my head watching him finish off the last of his hero. When they scope out his veins I’m pretty sure they’ll find whole pieces of sausage are causing the clog.
Chapter 3
Elle
A few days later, Regina buzzes into my office to tell me that William and Mr. Hunter are here for their eleven o’clock appointment. Of course, William is fifteen minutes early and me…I’m running late. I do my best to wrap up the case I’m working on quickly. I recognize I’ve been taking advantage of William lately, almost daring him to call me on my lies and lateness. But he doesn’t. He won’t mention that he caught me in yet another lie the other night when I said I had to work early, and I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t care or if he really is that polite.
“Thank you Regina, would you please show them to the conference room for me and tell them I’ll just be a few minutes.” I buzz back.
“Sure thing Elle.” Gigi responds back to me in her sex kitten voice, definitely not Regina. I smile, wondering if she is letting me know that they are not happy to be kept waiting and she is going to appease them, or maybe Mr. Hunter is a nice looking older guy who calls for Gigi to make an appearance.
It’s only a few minutes after the hour when I make my way into the conference room, which is early for me. I’m actually pleased with myself for being timely. William and his client both stand as I enter and I get the sudden urge to salute both men for some reason. My hands are filled with my coffee, notepads, cell phone, and laptop. I don’t even look up at the men until I have arranged my pile on the conference room table.
Regina comes into the conference room and purrs, “Can I get you gentlemen some coffee?” No sign of Regina, she’s still in Gigi mode.
I look up at William, half expecting to find a scowl on his face the way Gigi is pouring on her act so thick, but he’s smiling at me in his usual friendly demeanor.
“Elle, this is Nicholas Hunter.” William motions to the man sitting next to him.
I finally look up at the man sitting at William’s side and I’m startled at what I find. The man knocks the wind right out of my lungs. He is quite possibly the most handsome man I have ever laid eyes on. William, who is sitting right next to him, is no slacker in the looks department, but this man is everything that William isn’t. Tan skin, deep green eyes, unruly dark hair, and a rugged jaw frames the man who extends his hand to me.
“It’s Nico, nobody calls me Nicholas except this guy,” Nico motions to William with his thumb, “my mother, and my priest.” He reaches over the table and extends his large hand to me. My petite one gets lost in his and it feels like I’m shaking the hand of a man with a baseball glove on. His handshake is firm and warm and he looks directly into my eyes as he speaks, a slightly cocky smile on his face. I feel the warmth spread from our joined hands through my body and parts of me tingle as the heat finds its way to my most private of areas.
Nico. The sexy name matches the sexy man. It isn’t lost on me that it must kill William to call the man Nico, knowing he has such a befitting formal name available to him. But I think Nico matches the man before me much better than Nicholas. I’m staring at him, but not just because he is utterly gorgeous, I feel like I know him from somewhere. Even the name is familiar, Nico Hunter. I’m sure I know him from somewhere, but the appointment had been with Nicholas Hunter and that name didn’t ring any bells.
“Elle?” William calls my attention back to him. I hope I wasn’t staring for too long. And did I have my mouth hanging open too? That would just be rude.
“Nicholas, umm Nico, has an endorsement contract that he wants out of. My firm has taken a look at it, and it looks ironclad to us from a contract prospective, but we thought maybe you could apply the Weiland case to this.”
Interesting. Weiland was a case that I wrote a paper on in my last year of law school that was published. It was a big deal for a student to get published outside of law review, so I’m not surprised that William remembered the case. The case was about an athlete who had a three-year endorsement contract with a company that sold an energy drink when he signed the contract, but later merged with another company. The other company manufactured a drink that was marketed as a drink to mask the use of performance enhancing drugs. Weiland didn’t want to be associated with a company that touted masking performance enhancing drugs from testing. Unfortunately his contract was airtight. But in an ingenious move by his attorney, rather than sue alleging one of the contract terms was invalid, which he would have lost, they sued based upon a violation of the contract’s moral clause.
So Nico is an athlete of some sort? That’s not surprising by the way he looks. He’s a large man and I can tell he’s in great shape even with a suit covering his body. “Why don’t you give me a little background, Nico?”
I can’t wait to hear his story for some reason. It’s more than just for a prospective case, I’m curious who the man is in front of me.
Nico starts out by telling me that he is in mixed marital arts. I don’t really know what that entails, but I assume he means some sort of karate expert. As he talks I try to take some notes, but I find myself staring at him, unable to move my eyes to the paper to write. When he speaks, he looks directly into my eyes and it makes it even harder to break our gaze. I forget William is sitting right next to him. There’s no one in the room but me and the man with the deep green eyes who won’t give me a break from the intensity sucking the energy from my body.
Regina enters the room with coffee for our guests and I’m grateful for the break as Nico turns his attention to Regina to say thank you. When Nico turns his attention back to me, I glance up at Regina who looks back from the door then looks between me and Nico and wiggles her eyebrows suggestively. I pretend to cough to cover my smile with my hand and William offers me his water. Always the gentleman.
Nico picks up where he left off and I take a minute to get a better look at his face before he locks my gaze with his again. I notice a small, healed scar above his left eye and another longer one on his right cheek. They are faint, like they’ve been there for years, but his tan skin color yields a lighter shade to scars, making them stand out more than they normally would. The scars make his face look even more rugged and somehow emphasizes the masculinity of his chiseled jaw. The face belongs to a strong man, a man I can’t take my eyes off of for some reason.
William speaks when Nico is done and his voice finally makes me remember that he’s in the room. I hope I wasn’t drooling while his client was speaking. I try to focus on William as he talks, but my eyes keep wandering back to Nico, who catches me each time. I see an ever so slight twitch at the corner of Nico’s mouth each time, secretly acknowledging that I’ve been caught.
William is able to refocus me by drawing me into a conversation about how the Weiland case could apply. Nico wants out of an endorsement contract he is in because the manufacturer uses child labor. The fact that the man is willing to give up what amounts to a multi-million dollar contract for such a noble cause makes him even more sexy to me.
After almost an hour, William looks at his watch and begins to wrap things up. Nico asks me my opinion on his case and I tell him I need a copy of the contract and some time to do a little research on the company before I can give an educated opinion.
William nods and stands, “Are we on for Thursday, maybe we can discuss it further then?”
“Umm, yes.” I catch Nico looking between the two of us. I think he is observing our interaction.
Nico shakes my hand again and my heartbeat speeds up at the simple contact. He doesn’t release my hand right away. Instead he uses his other hand to motion between William and I and asks, “Are you two a couple?”
I respond no at the exact same time that William responds yes. I look to William and then to Nico, who is still holding my hand from our handshake, and I think I catch a glimmer in his eye that matches the smirk on his face. He’s amused at our answer and I don’t blame him. He finally releases my hand and I find myself oddly disappointed that he’s not touching me anymore.
I turn to William and find he is still looking at where Nico’s and my hands had been joined. His face looks conflicted and confused and I feel badly for the disrespect that I’ve just shown him. He lowers his voice to me, “I’ll see you Thursday?”
I nod, thinking it best to have whatever conversation needs to be had between us in private. I stand at Regina’s desk as the two men walk out the door. Nico looks back at the last second and smiles at me. William never looks back.
* * *
I toss and turn all night, unable to get the picture of Nico Hunter out of my head. The man is sexy as hell and it bothers me that I can’t control my thoughts. It feels like I only fell asleep ten minutes ago when I wake up to the music blasting on my phone alarm. I drag my half-sleeping body into the shower and let the cool water pour over me in an attempt to force myself awake. After a few minutes of self inflicted torture, I adjust the temperature on the water and close my eyes to relax into the warmth. It hits me then. My eyes dart open, trying to force out the picture that appeared from the darkness of my memory without warning.
Nico Hunter. Nico “The Lady Killer” Hunter. I was there the night that he killed a man. It was the one and only fight I’d ever gone to. And it all comes flooding back. I referred to the fight as the cage fight, but now that I think about it, it was called MMA, mixed martial arts.
My stepfather is a retired policeman. Sometimes he works security at sporting events, a lot of retired cops do. He had been given two tickets to a big MMA championship fight, and offered them to me. I wouldn’t normally go, considering my past and how I feel about watching people pummel each other, even if it is consensual. But my little brother Max is a huge fan of the sport and I got suckered into taking him. I just couldn’t say no to the excited twelve-year-old who momentarily forgot he was supposed to act cool and was jumping up and down like he did when he was four.
The fight didn’t last long, two rounds. I remember it clearly. It was probably less than ten minutes in total. The pre-fight festivities lasted an hour longer than the actual fight. Our seats were good, only about 10 rows back from the center of the ring. I remember flinching every time one of the men threw a punch, yet I couldn’t turn away. I close my eyes and watch instant replay of those last seconds. Most people think having a photographic memory is a blessing, but in my case it’s a curse. Yes, I remember lots of figures and words, but I also remember all of the bad things I’d rather forget.
It’s as if I flipped on a video and hit play right as those last few seconds play out. I see Nico throw the punch, and then I watch in slow motion as his opponent’s head turns to the side with the force of ten men. He drops to the floor, his head limp and rattling around before it even hits the canvas. The screaming crowd becomes silent and the medical team rushes into the cage seconds after it all happens.
As horrible as it is, seeing that all play out in my mind isn’t what haunts me. It’s the still of the fighter dropped to his knees when he realizes the man isn’t getting back up. He’s shattered. I can’t take my eyes from his face as I watch him break into a million little pieces. I should’ve felt sorry for the man that just lost his life, but I don’t even look his way. I’m fixated on the man who will never be the same. Never. I know it. I feel connected to him for a stopped moment in time.
In my mind, it’s high noon and the shadow of my past is twice the size of me. Towering over me. I can’t escape it.
