Badass

by Gracia Ford

  “Your visitor,” Tina declares with eyes that say trouble. Whoever she has brought into my office she’s not comfortable with, which makes me nervous.

  “Nathan Black,” he says, holding out his hand as he leans across my desk. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  He’s the one.

  Shit, has Mia left me? Did she send him to do her dirty work? It doesn’t make sense because he’s the one she no longer wants to marry, right? This is the one who fucking broke her heart.

  I want to kick him in the balls and fuck his face up. I feel a wave of confusion, making me feel sick. He glances around my office, scanning my pictures and the products I sell in the gym.

  “I’m sure I don’t have to explain who I am. You already know,” he says, scanning me from the waist up, he eyes my track pants, my shirt, my face, and my hair.

  “Let’s cut to the chase. I’ve come to make you a proposition.”

  I welcome that chair to a variety of people, but that chair is not for the man who wants my woman, the asshole who broke her fucking heart.

  He sits down in the chair in front of my desk anyway.

  “I’m offering you a million dollars,” he blurts out while he strokes his pant leg, as if he’s brushing dust off his expensive suit.

  I slump down in my chair and face him, eye to eye, and man to man.

  “A million for Mia,” he commands.

  Is Mia a fucking doll? Idiot. Sure, I’ll bring her in my car and drop her at yours as if doing a drug deal.

  “And why should I take you up on your offer?”

  Fury is running through my body and mind as I clench my fists. The piece of shit thinks he can buy her by paying me off? He doesn’t have a clue who he’s messing with.

  “I know about your gym and your extra activities. It’s not even legal. What will happen if you get shut down? You think Mia would want you then? I’m sure this gym alone isn’t turning enough profit to keep you living in a way that will keep her happy.”

  I shake my head. “Of course it’s legal. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m doing. They come freely, pay to become fit.”

  He doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Now who’s the piece of shit?

  “I’ll get you shut down! Do you know Mia’s family? Or mine? I mean, what’s she going to do? Work in a gym? Keep the books while you fuck clients? I don’t fucking think so! Her class and yours are on different levels.”

  I stand up, making my way around the desk to kick him out. He has a fucking nerve to come into my place of business and order me around.

  “She’s a college graduate, educated, well-spoken, and my flower. I want her back, and I want her now. This is not a negotiation. This is a once in a lifetime offer. Take my money and return her to me. This is me asking nicely. Next time will be different because I will get what I want one way or another. Feed her some bullshit: you made a mistake, it’s not working out; you’re tired of her. I really don’t give a shit what you tell her. You’ll come up with something. I’m sure you’ve done it a million times before.”

  He stands up and quickly paces to the door, avoiding my eyes, avoiding my fist, and avoiding me kick-boxing him into tomorrow.

  “The money is in your account. Mrs. Watson gave me the details. I think you’ll find that it is more than enough. I expect Mia back in Philadelphia tomorrow.”

  With his last words he slams the door in my face. I clench my fists with only one thing on my mind: never do business with a bad boy. It only ends up one way.

  Bad!

  ***

  I make a few calls and then head to my apartment. I call Mia on my way, telling her to get there quick, and that we have to leave.

  “What is it?” she asks as she storms into the apartment. She was still shopping when I called her to come home. I say one word. The one fucking word she hates to hear.

  “Nathan.”

  She walks up to me with hatred in her eyes. She looks beautiful in her little red denim pants and vest. “What?”

  I’m pacing back and forth. “He came to the office demanding you back; a trade, he said. He gave me a million dollars to deliver you back to Philadelphia, or he’ll close the gym.”

  “What did you say?” One question. She’s not even screaming. She looks void. Is this some kind of test?

  I pull her into my arms.

  I take her hand, pleading with her. Stroking her hair, I start thinking about Nathan’s words: she’s educated, has a family, and a life, but I have nothing to give her, nothing to offer. I don’t know anything about love, except that it’s real. This is new to me. I’ve never been in a relationship.

  “I have a friend in Mexico with a bar. I’ll get my lawyer to sign the gym over to Tina. I could be charged with a crime and lose the gym if I stay here. I could end up losing you. Come with me. It can be just the two of us.”

  Mia questions, “You never said that before you told me it was legit.”

  Shit it is, but I don´t fucking trust men like Nathan. He´s the type to come out with a story or make out that I rape the women. I know his type. I have come across them once or twice in my life and he could make things difficult. I knjow he can, “Yes, but people like Nathan. Shit, I´ve dealt with them before. They can make it to be something it isn´t –“

  Before I could even finish explaining it to her, she stands on her tiptoes and asks, “What time does the flight leave?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  6 months later...

  Once in a while I check up on Tina, the gym, and see how everything is going back home. She’s always been like a baby sister to me. I don’t want her to think I’ve forgotten her, or that I’m worrying about her messing up the gym. Hell, she’s probably doing a better job than I ever did.

  I used to get distracted by some of the ladies. Shit, I’m a guy. It’s only natural. Not anymore. Those days are long gone. Only one woman turns my head now and she’s mine. She’s this delicious, strong-willed woman who keeps my bed warm, morning, noon, and night.

  Mia has taught me that I can love, and more importantly, be loved. How can one person change you in such a small space of time? I’ve learned more in the last six months than I have in twenty-three years.

  My Mexican friend, Carlos, not only has a bar, but when we moved he was in the midst of building a hotel too. We had a million dollars in our pocket and couldn’t think of a better way to invest it, so we partnered with him and helped him finish his hotel. With Mia’s marketing management degree it was a dream come true. She loved the challenge and took to it like a duck to water.

  Four months after moving and working side by side, Mia drew up the business plan. Presentations, market research and ground breaking got the show on the road. At first, I was resentful, thinking that once the hotel was up and running she would get bored of me. Nathan’s words are always running through my mind.

  She had drivers, cars, and money in abundance. No questions asked, we left the States in economy class with only the shirts on our backs and a duffel bag each. We were eating out most nights when we came. She spoke Spanish fluently and wandered around like it was her hometown.

  I, on the other hand, was completely lost. Mia has an eye for everything. Sometimes I wonder if she feels that way about me, if she puts me in some dumb equation. Shit, if she did the answer would be zero.

  We live on the outskirts of Cancun. Our hotel has a special something that no hotel has to offer. Yes, the Brand New You program for the ladies and the guys too.

  There were a couple of close calls when I thought it wasn’t going to happen, like when the private detective her mom had hired found us. It took a few thousand bills to keep him quiet, but seems to have worked. That was two months ago and we haven’t had a whisper since then. I got paranoid and thought it was best to keep running. Shit, we changed our names, IDs, everything. Nathan was a powerful man. Mia said it was best to start again and keep away from her family.

  We still can’t figure out how he found us, but that’s th
e problem with Mexico. You just have to pay a little something or slip someone a margarita and they start talking like there’s no tomorrow.

  It took shit loads of time to train the instructors, nearly the same amount of time it took to build a fifty-room deluxe hotel resort. The boot camp programs are a bit different than the ones back home. We couldn’t get the right location for them. In the end, we managed to find somewhere secluded that did the trick. Well, Mia seems to think so anyway.

  As soon as the hotel was finished we had them lining up. Our orientations are booked halfway into the year. This shit’s so fucked up.

  There’s only one condition in the training sessions. I can teach, but I certainly can’t touch. Mia wants to do it her way. She wants to start the first session; not sure she understands what she’s set herself up for.

  The End##

  More Books By Gracia Ford...

  ***Chosen By Him***

  Description

  He wants her and will stop at nothing to claim her...

  Alisha Clark comes from a small town in Kansas. She ran away to the Big Apple, a place where no one will judge your past or even care about it. She wanted to get away from locals knowing your business and then turning against you due to your past. She is nervous about her decision to leave Kansas, but within days of arriving she secures a job and a place to live. Everything falls into place for Alisha until she meets her boss. Carl Reid immediately becomes obsessed with her curves and starts toying with her mind. His obsession starts turns to possession as he leads her into a world of wealth and power.

  A world that a girl from a small town in Kansas never knew existed, until now.

  ***This book was previously called The Billionaire's Toy by T. B. Weakes & Secretary by Foxy Tale ***

  Chapter 1: Kansas

  “Don’t go,” mamma cried as I reached for my bags, trying to drag them into the truck.

  “I need to,” I wept as Tyler, my brother, held the truck door open, ready for me to jump in.

  “The Big Apple will eat you alive.”

  “I can’t stay,” were the last words I said to her as I closed my eyes, jumped into the truck, and drove to the airport.

  I’d lived in the small town of Montezuma for all of my life. I got fed up of not seeing the outside world and only seeing the same people at church, at the grocery store, and at work. We lived in a bubble, but I knew there was more to life than I’d seen. Mama begged me to go to New York on holiday and not to make it my home, but with the events in town it was too late for that. I had to leave.

  I wanted to go somewhere where no one cared about me, where no one wanted to know what I was doing or wearing. I wanted to be ignored. Living in Montezuma was unbearable.

  I left high school and started to work as a secretary for the local realtor—the only realtor in town. I enjoyed it a lot. John, my boyfriend at the time, hated it. He said he didn’t see the point of me working, but he would entertain the idea until we had kids and settled down. The bonus was when I was working I never had to be home for him to visit. I had that excuse to avoid the talks about when we were getting married, or even worse, about when we were starting a family.

  John was my childhood sweetheart and the nicest guy in the world. That was his problem: he was too nice. You could never argue with him, if you did you would just feel guilty afterwards. He was a nice guy. Everything about him was nice. He was slender from working on the farm. Brown hair, nice eyes. Nothing striking about him and nothing out of the ordinary. He was the same John from when we were little to when we finished high school.

  We finished high school, and soon after he started work and we started saving up to get our own place. “Why wait?” he would say, echoing the sentiments of both of our parents. It felt like the whole town was saying the same thing.

  That was when the pressure started. I had to leave. If I didn’t I would be hated by everyone. My fears were soon confirmed when I decided to go ahead with it.

  “When you two gettin’ married?” was the question I heard all day long, every single day.

  His mama wanted us to live with her, and my mama wanted us to live with her. I couldn’t bear the idea of being in a bedroom which I had been in since I was a child, with my old Backstreet Boys posters on the wall and with John fighting for space with my Barbie dolls. It was an excuse, the realization of which hit me when we moved into our own place.

  I also needed us to get a place so that if it didn’t work out, I had somewhere to go—back home to my parents. Besides, it just didn’t feel right. You grow up and you move out. You don’t grow up and then have your boyfriend move into your parents’ house with you.

  His bedroom antics consisted of asking the same question every time, “You wanna do it?” My answer would always be the same, “Sure.” What else could it be? If I refused him, he would tell me it didn’t matter and then spend all night asking why I wasn’t happy. It was easier to agree.

  I would lie in bed thinking about David Beckham or Justin Timberlake. Once, I made the mistake of calling David’s name while John was on top of me. It was actually an improvement on the previous time when I had been counting sheep. It was always the same position with him, the same question, the same everything. I got bored of sleeping with him, of being with him in general, and of living in that town.

  I was meant to be in the big city. Maybe even with a bad boy who treated me like dirt, who knows? I lived with creature comforts, with everything any girl could want, and I didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t want it. I wanted more. Mama said it was because Pops used to give me anything I wanted. Pops used to spoil me rotten; he never could resist my big blue eyes and curly blond hair.

  As I got older, men started to notice me. Not only did I have big blue eyes, I also had G-sized boobs to. I’m gifted in that department, and I like to make it known that they’re natural and all mine.

  I wasn’t happy. I was bored with our friends, our lifestyle, and my job. I needed to leave. I loathed being with John, and sometimes I would dread the time he came home. Sometimes I would make myself physically sick just so I didn’t have to talk to him. I realized it was time to move on. I needed to set him free so that he could find true love with someone who would appreciate him for the great guy he was, something I would never do.

  Maybe they were right, I´m selfish and only think of myself. His mama called me a whore. She said all blonds were whores. Not sure where she got her philosophy from, considering most people in town were brunettes, and the ones who weren’t had blond highlights in their hair.

  Mama said I take after my great grandmother, who had the longest blond hair in town. Everyone was jealous of her hair and all the men chased after her. Like a great woman once said, and as Mama always repeated, “Blonds have more fun!”

  In a small town, everybody knows everybody else’s business. So they all knew when I broke up with John. In a small town these acts are not forgivable, so it wasn’t just John's heart I broke, everybody seemed to suffer.

  Everyone refused to let it lie. Even nearly a year later, they were still talking about it. Carol Winters, the reverend’s wife, gossiped about it every Sunday at church. “I had your dress all sketched out. Ali, why’d you do that to little John? All he ever did was make you happy.”

  My response would always be the same, “I know. I don´t deserve him, so I let him go.”

  “Did it take you 15 years to realize that? You could have set him free a long time ago.”

  Really, I was supposed to realize that when I was only 5 years old? Please!

  They began to call me names at the realtor where I worked. They castigated me for breaking poor Little Johnny’s heart. Mama and Pops stopped being invited to the local fairs and other events, and Pops, who loved a good game of cards, was excluded from the local bridge game. I felt that the only reason for this pain was because I wanted to follow my heart, and that didn’t lead me to John.

  After moving back in with my folks, I thought the best thing was to follow my
heart and move to New York. I had no money, no job, and nowhere to live. It felt crazy at the time, but it felt even crazier to stay. The townspeople had conspired against me and I had very little chance of ever finding work again, not that I needed to work–I just loved having my own money and independence. My family was not welcome anywhere. I did it for them as much as for me. As soon as I left, the family resumed their previous schedule. The invites returned as soon as the whore left town.

  The town’s deputy used that word to describe me when playing a card game with Pops. He received a jab in the face. My departure for the big city hurt pops a lot.

  It was clear that I had to leave work. There were hardly any clients as it was, and with the news of my breakup things went to an all-time low. One day I overheard one of the townsfolk say, “If you didn’t have a slut working for you, then maybe you would have clients.” My boss kept me on because he didn’t like to be intimidated, but it’s hard not to be in such a small town.

  John ended up with Kelly, my best friend growing up. “You never wanted him, so what’s the big deal?” Mama asked me, and she was right, but it still felt weird. I was happy for him, but it seemed a little too close for comfort. I didn’t mind that they were together. It just got me thinking. I couldn’t understand why he chose her. Although there weren’t many people to choose from, with only around three hundred people in town.

  I saved a little money, and with the help of my brother and sister I moved to New York, hoping to get a job within a week. We didn’t have much, but we didn’t need much to live in our old town. Everything was taken care of. We owned the farm—passed on by my great, great, great granddaddy—and we all worked the land. I stopped when I graduated and I wanted to work at the realtor’s. Mama said that watching all those house programs when I was little put ideas in my head. The good folks of Montezuma do the work their families did; they don´t have any fancy ideas. “Next thing she’s going to be on Baywatch, running down the beach with bouncing breasts,” she added.