by Josie Kerr
“Lemme call Cal. He knows plenty of people.”
“You know, you’re a real peach, Nolan. Just a really good guy.”
“Um . . .”
Meghan cackled. “Just get the menus here and you’ll be good. I gotta run. Bye, Nolan.”
“Bye, Meghan.”
Nolan shoved the menus into his briefcase, and with another glance down the hall, made a beeline for the side door. It would take him longer to get out, but he’d have less of a chance of being intercepted in the elevator. He’d made it all the way down the stairs and halfway through the parking lot when he heard a familiar voice calling his name.
He feigned not hearing Steve’s insistent yelling, but then he slid on a patch of oil in the parking lot and went down hard. Fuck. And when he’d finished gathering his scattered papers, he stood up and came face-to-face with Steve.
“Harper, I was calling you—what the hell?”
“Oh, sorry. I’m a little preoccupied. What’s up?” Nolan asked through gritted teeth, silently cursing himself for not watching where he put his feet.
Steve huffed impatiently. “I need you to fill in for me this weekend.”
I knew it. “No can do, Steve. My girlfriend’s got a fight, and I need to be there to support her.”
Nolan wished he’d thought to snap Steve’s photo because the look on the guy’s face was priceless.
“You have a girlfriend? Who is a fighter?”
Nolan bobbed his head. “Yep. She’s got a match at the colosseum tomorrow night. I had to miss the weigh-ins this afternoon because I thought we had a conference call.” Nolan gave Steve a pointed look because said conference call was canceled at the last minute at Steve’s behest. Nolan had been livid enough to consider walking out right then, advance permission be damned.
Steve blinked but then shook his head as if to clear it. “Regardless. You need to be here at nine o’clock sharp, and plan on working overnight because there’s a deadline.”
“No. I told you I can’t come in.”
“Well, we need to get this invoicing done, and I can’t do it by myself in two days.”
“Lack of planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on mine.” Nolan hoped to hell he seemed calmer than he felt.
“Look, Nolan, I don’t want to be a hard-ass, but you owe me.”
Nolan barked a laugh. “Owe you. Let’s see—who picked up your last four weekends on? And who still hasn’t gotten his promised trade? No, I do not owe you anything.”
“I’ll have to write you up if you don’t come in.”
“Are . . . are you threatening me?” Nolan scoffed at his team leader. “Because if you are, I quit.”
“I’m not threatening, but I’m just saying that you might find yourself with a lot of free time if you don’t perform your duties”
Nolan stared defiantly at Steve, and then he made a decision. “So let me see if I understand: my job might be in danger if I don’t do your job and cover your ass. Right?”
“Right.” Steve’s eyes rounded as he realized what he just admitted. “No, no, I’m just saying that you knew some weekend hours were expected, and if you don’t work your hours, well . . . I can’t be responsible for any sanctions.”
“Let me make it easy: I quit.”
“Whu, what?”
“I. Quit.” Nolan plucked his passkey off his lanyard.
“You can’t just quit. You have to give at least two weeks’ notice.”
“Nope. I don’t. And don’t threaten me with some bullshit ‘you’ll never work in insurance again,’ because damn straight I’m never going to work in insurance again. I took this job so my work-life balance wouldn’t be insane; it’s not—it’s nonexistent. So I quit.” He reached into his car and ripped the parking hangtag from his rearview mirror. “I quit, Steve.”
“What . . . what are you gonna do?”
“Right now, I’m gonna go kiss my girl’s ass for missing the weigh-in.”
And Nolan got into his car and drove away and didn’t give Steve another glance or the insurance job another thought.
“Hey, babe. Sorry I didn’t make it to the weigh-in today.”
“It’s fine, Nolan.”
“What’s wrong, Birdie?”
Nolan heard her sigh. “Nothing that you can do anything about.”
“Talk to me, darlin’. Please.”
“You don’t want to hear this.”
“Babe . . .”
“Kevin was at the weigh-in.”
Nolan bristled. Dammit, I knew I should have blown off that meeting. “Did either of them do anything to you?”
“No. She barely acknowledged me, other than the face-off, which is worrisome. I don’t trust her at all. Kevin completely ignored me.”
“Good.”
Bridget sighed. “Yeah, it is good. So how was your day?”
“Oh, Steve threatened me, so I quit.”
He held his breath, waiting for her to tell him how foolish he was.
“Finally!”
“What?”
“You were so miserable, Nolan. You were making yourself sick.”
Nolan smiled at the woman on the other end of the line. She was so good for him, so supportive.
“You did the right thing,” Bridget continued. “You’ll find something else soon. I know it.”
“Well, I might have something already. You know I’ve been doing menus and meal prep stuff, right?”
“Yeah?” He could hear blankets rustling, a sign that she was settling into bed. He couldn’t wait until tomorrow night, when they’d be somewhere together, hopefully.
“Well, Cal wants some, too, and C wants me to coordinate with the nutritionist and do some things with the private clients. So . . .”
Bridget squealed. She squealed. “Oh, Nolan! That’s wonderful!” She babbled on, singing his praises until he was blushing, even though they weren’t in the same room for her to see the effect her words had on him.
“Thanks, Birdie.” He heard her yawn. “Okay, babe, that’s my signal to get off the phone. I’ll see you at the fight, all right?”
“You have your passes and everything?” she asked, her voice sleepy.
“Yeah, I got ’em.”
“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow, Nolan. Love you.”
He sucked in a breath. “Love you, too, Bridget. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He hung up the phone and did a karate kick and a fist pump. She said, “Love you.” Holy fuck!
“She said it, Iggy!” Nolan picked up the cat and swung him around. “She said it! I don’t know what the hell to do with it, but she said it!”
“Mrowwp!”
Chapter Thirty-one
Fight Night
The fight official applied his signature to Bridget’s wraps and then stepped aside for Ryan to finish strapping on her gloves. Bridget swayed to the music on her headphones, her eyes closed. Her thoughts raced behind her deceptively placid demeanor.
Fight your fight, Birdie. That’s all you have to do.
She felt two strong hands grip her wrists and opened her eyes to meet Ryan’s whiskey gaze.
“You got this.”
“Yeah, I do.” She grinned at him, and he patted her shoulder.
“Bridget.” Colin stepped inside the door. “You’re ready.”
She grinned at the big former champion. “Yep. That’s what I told Ryan.”
He nodded. “Good.”
Another fight official poked his head into the small dressing room. “Doherty, you’re up.”
Bridget blew out a breath and hopped off the table. She rolled her neck and shoulders. “Let’s go.”
The DS Fight Club corner team followed Bridget down the hall and out to the cage. She didn’t really even hear the crowd because she was so focused on the octagonal cage at the end of the corridor. She handed her hoodie to Colin and toed her shoes off before giving each of her corner members a tight hug. Then the match official applied Vaseline to her face and p
roceeded with an obligatory frisk and a glove check. With a final nod to the official, Bridget bounded up the steps to the octagon.
While she continued to shift her weight from foot to foot, she focused her attention on the woman advancing down the aisle. Bridget had thought a lot about Hanna Kowalczyk during the weeks between the press conference and the weigh-in and had decided that regardless of how she felt about her as a fighter, she pitied the woman who accepted another woman’s engagement ring. She’d wondered more than once if Hanna knew that that solitaire had once graced Bridget’s ring finger.
Hanna entered the cage, and soon the announcer was introducing the two fighters, the man pointing first at Bridget and then at Hanna. The two women moved to the center of the cage, the announcer asked them if they were ready to fight, and then they touched gloves, which shocked the shit out of Bridget. She was not expecting niceties at all.
Hanna started out aggressive, as usual, kicking at Bridget and attempting to take her down. Bridget kept her hands up and her head down, looking for an opening. By the time the first bell sounded, round one ended with neither fighter knocking the other down and very few shots landed.
Bridget sat on a stool, and Ryan put ice on her back, cooling her down as Paddy shot rapid-fire advice at her for the next round. Sixty seconds passed quickly, and the buzzer sounded, so both sets of cornermen moved from the cage and the fighters began again. The next round went much the same as the first until the last ninety seconds, when Bridget got Hanna’s back to the cage and put her in a clinch hold, her hands around the back of Hanna’s neck. The round ended with Bridget pulling Hanna’s head down and driving her knee into the other fighter’s side while delivering a few punishing elbows to her face.
“Good aggression, good aggression,” Paddy complimented her as Ryan took care of a small cut above Bridget’s eye where Hanna made a fortuitous strike. “You know she doesn’t like being punched. Keep her in the clinch, Birdie, and you got this.”
Bridget nodded, the buzzer sounded, and she leapt off the stool, ready to do battle. She could tell Hanna was tiring and used that to her advantage, mentally thanking Paddy for making her spend what she earlier considered an excessive amount of time building up her cardio on the Jacob’s ladder machine.
Bridget moved into Hanna’s space and readied to hit with another clinch hold, when Hanna charged her, grabbing her around the waist and spinning. The two women fell to the mat, and Bridget knew she had to get back on her feet if she wanted to win this match.
“Fucking bitch,” Hanna growled in her ear. “You need to stay down.”
Bridget struggled to get to her feet, elbowing and kneeing Hannah as hard as she could to loosen the other woman’s hold. She knew there were only moments left in the fight, and if she could last until the final bell, she could win on points. Hanna’s arm slipped, and Bridget popped up, only to bend and punch Hanna in the face once, twice, three times before the final buzzer sounded.
Bridget rolled off her opponent, and both women held their arms in the air in victory. Ryan, Paddy, and Colin came into the cage and began wiping Bridget down and pulling a T-shirt over her head. Colin wore his usual inscrutable expression, but Ryan and Paddy both beamed like idiots, and Bridget couldn’t help but grin back.
The last of Bridget’s blows had opened up some ugly cuts on Hanna’s face, and Bridget and the DS Fight Club cornermen milled around the cage until the cutman got Hanna’s bleeding under control. Bridget felt good about the fight, but she’d also felt good about her last fight. Finally, Hanna pushed herself off the stool, and Bridget joined her and the announcer in the middle of the cage.
“The official scoring of Hanna ‘Killa’ Kowalczyk versus Bridget ‘Pressure Drop’ Doherty—the judges scored 28–28, 29–29, and 29–30. The winner, by majority draw, is Bridget Doherty!”
Bridget collapsed onto the ground, her hands splayed on the floor of the octagon. She said a silent prayer of thanks and then popped up. She impulsively grabbed Paddy in a hug, and then Ryan and Colin joined in. Tears streamed down Bridget’s face, and she struggled to regain her composure before Matt stuck the microphone in her face.
“How does it feel to have a rematch some five years after the fact?”
“It feels good to meet her again. But I’ll say that Hanna is a great competitor, a great fighter, and I look forward to meeting her in the octagon as a featherweight.”
“Girl, running to the press conference isn’t going to make it end any faster,” Colin said with a laugh.
Bridget grinned over her shoulder but didn’t slow down any. She was ready to get this presser over with and then get to Foley’s to celebrate. She couldn’t wait to see Nolan.
No, she couldn’t wait to climb all over Nolan. They’d been good for the last four weeks of her camp, sending flirty photos but nothing too risqué. She was ready to be risqué. Bridget was always revved up after a fight, and a win? Yeah, she hoped Nolan ate his Wheaties this morning.
Bridget, Colin, and Paddy sat down at the banquet table, and thankfully, the press conference started on time. She answered some questions about what she thought was next and about her next opponent, including Colin and Paddy in the discussion of the new women’s featherweight class, knowing that, as the owners of DS Fight Club, they had a vested interest in attracting more fighters. They answered a few more questions, and then her portion of the conference ended.
Bridget and the DS Fight Club crew passed Hanna and Jett Raptor as they left the conference room, and Hanna rammed Bridget, hard, on the shoulder.
“What the fuck, lady?” Bridget rubbed her upper arm as Hanna moved into her personal space.
“Stay the fuck away from him,” Hanna spat. “Just remember, you may have won the fight, but I have your man.”
Bridget gawped at Hanna and then threw back her head and laughed. “Bitch, please. Ask yourself what kind of man gives his new fiancée his ex-wife’s engagement ring.” And she pushed by Hanna, leaving her looking like a goldfish gasping for breath.
Chapter Thirty-two
Nolan felt completely out of place as he walked down the ill-lit corridor, clutching a dozen roses in his fist. When they’d talked the night before, after the ceremonial weigh-ins, Nolan and Bridget agreed that he wasn’t going to come see her in the dressing room before the fight. He was conflicted about watching the fight and contemplated, for a brief second, not attending the actual match, but thanks to Cal and Tobias’s thorough dressing-down, he realized he would be foolish to not be at the fight to support her. So he sucked it up and watched every excruciating minute. He was glad he did, but he was also glad that Bridget was true to her word and didn’t get hit a lot. He didn’t think he could stand it.
After the fight, Nolan proceeded to the fighters’ area. He flashed the pass at the security guard and slipped into the dingy dressing room to wait for Bridget to return from the post-fight press conference. After knocking over a cart of wraps and tape, Nolan perched on the edge of a chair, facing the door, to wait for his fighter.
He was jittery, bouncing his knees up and down and wiggling in the seat. If he was this hyped up after one of Bridget’s fights, he could only imagine what she felt like. Time seemed to crawl, and Nolan checked his watch every minute or so to see how much time had passed.
He’d just leaned his head against the wall when he heard the snick of a door opening. He grabbed the roses from the small table where he’d laid them and was getting to his feet when a dark head of hair peeked in the door.
The dark head of a man.
“Bridget? Where’s my little Birdie girl?” the man singsonged as he entered the room. “Congratulations, ba—” He froze, and the grin crumbled from his face when he saw Nolan. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I might ask you the same thing.” Nolan stood up to his full formidable height. He had a sneaking suspicion who the little brunet man was, and if he was right, he wanted to give Kevin Donahue the scare he so richly deserved.
The other man pointed
to the center of his chest. “I’m her husband, Kevin,” he sneered. “Now, I’m gonna ask you again: Who. The fuck. Are you?”
Nolan took a deep, calming breath. “The name’s Nolan Harper.”
“And? What the fuck are you doing creeping around her dressing room, hmm?” Kevin took two strides forward. He looked from the top of Nolan’s head down to his feet, seemingly sizing him up.
“I might ask you the same question.” Nolan arched an eyebrow, and he noted with satisfaction the twitch that appeared in the vein in the smaller man’s temple.
“What?”
“What are you doing creeping around Bridget’s dressing room? How the hell did you even get back here?”
“I might ask you the same thing,” Kevin said mockingly and smirked at Nolan.
“I’m her guest.” Nolan calmly blinked at Kevin and held up his pass with “Bridget Doherty—Guest” scrawled on the back. “I’m guessing you can’t say the same thing.”
“I’m her husband,” Kevin repeated.
“Ex-husband,” Nolan corrected. He looked up at the corner of the room and put his index finger on the side of his mouth. “And, if I’m not mistaken, her opponent’s fiancé, correct?”
And then Kevin laughed. “Oh man, you actually think Bridg is gonna get with you. With you?”
Nolan stood there, impassive, and watched Kevin hold his stomach, bent over and cackling. He had a flickering moment of insecurity, of doubt, of all the cruel taunts and rejections that he’d endured for the past thirty-eight years. And then he snapped out of it because he knew Bridget wanted him, all of him. All his extra weight, physical and emotional, meant nothing to her, and he knew that when she stepped through that door, if Kevin was foolish enough to still be in this room, she was going to see two things: Kevin’s dumb ass knocked out cold on the floor and the man who was going to be making love to her as soon as he could get her alone and naked.
Kevin took another step toward Nolan, getting close enough to him that he had to crane his neck to meet the taller man’s eyes. “Fuck Hanna Kowalczyk. She’s a stupid cunt. She’s a loser. I knew she was gonna lose the second I saw the tape of the weigh-in. And you know what? Kevin Donahue doesn’t date losers. Bridget belongs to me, me. Not a fat fuck like you.” Kevin poked Nolan in the chest.
