Fighting for It

by Jennifer Fusco

  “Sounds like she never wanted to leave.”

  She probably didn’t, but he’d done his part to honor R. L.’s wishes. He’d watched her go.

  “You two ever hook up?”

  Jack allowed his eyes to slice across the room and stab into Mike.

  Mike lifted the corner of his mouth in a half grin. “Dude, I’m not asking for details on how you tapped that. All I want to know is if there’s going to be drama. I don’t do drama.”

  Jack shook his head. “No drama. She showed up at my house, barking orders and talking about a win. She says she’s back for the fight. I guess she’s going to see this thing through.”

  “Will you?” Mike asked.

  There it was. The real reason he’d stopped by. It wasn’t to tell Mike that Daniella was here or to recall old history. It was because if she was going to see this thing through, he needed to decide if he could do the same. So much had changed, and he’d changed. He knew too much—what R. L. knew—and therefore knew she didn’t belong here.

  Christ.

  Could he face the woman he’d wanted so much yet treated like crap? He’d hurt her. It’d marked her—marked him, with feelings he didn’t want to admit, let alone name. Guilt. Regret. Damn, he’d been a dick. Sure it was years ago, and he had been just a stupid kid. Kids make mistakes. Nobody was perfect then.

  Especially not him.

  No. He’d done the right thing. Daniella had left Vegas because of him, and gotten herself an education. Earned a degree in sports psychology. She’d lived her life without learning the seedy and sleazy business of boxing. He’d done her a favor. If he’d have been the kind of guy she wanted, she’d have sacrificed everything for him and he would have never appreciated it.

  He did right. He did good.

  And he needed to keep it up by showing her the quickest way out of town and back to whatever life she’d left to come here and mop up this mess. Boxing might be in her blood, but she was too good for it. She was somebody.

  He was nobody. And boxing was a nobody kind of life.

  The video from his last fight proved it. In case there were any doubts, which there weren’t.

  “When’s your next fight?” Mike asked.

  “Four weeks.”

  Mike nodded and pressed the remote a few times, turning the sound back up when Walter popped on the screen again. Then he lifted a bottle of water off the floor and took a long drink, presumably going back into the zone. “You run here?”

  “Yeah. Headed to Stamina later.”

  Mike lifted his arm and wiped water from his chin with the back of his hand. His bicep bunched.

  Jack’s eyes landed on the mound. “The fuck, man? Bulking up’s gonna slow you down. What the hell have you been doing?”

  Curling his arm, Mike’s bicep rose up like a mountain. “Adding powerlifting. You should try it. Next fight, a left hook to the chin is going to take the guy out. No more of this TKO bullshit.” Mike won his last match by technical knockout in the third round. His opponent’s corner man stopped the fight because Mike opened a cut over the guy’s eye and the bitch wouldn’t stop bleeding. “Trained months for that shit.”

  Mike was still pissed.

  Jack lifted himself from the sofa.

  Mike moved his gaze from the television long enough to ask, “You need to spar?” Mike bounced between light heavyweight and middleweight, a difference of fifteen pounds. But there was more like a twenty-five pound difference between him and Jack. Mike had a good reach, and had rung Jack’s bell more than once. He was a contender and a helluva sparring partner.

  Jack gave a decisive nod. “I could go a few rounds. I’ll take it easy on you.”

  “I’m not worried unless you plan on putting on a show for the new boss lady.” Mike curled his arm again, and slapped his muscle twice with his hand.

  Show-off.

  He snorted out a laugh. Put on a show for the boss lady? There was nothing for her to see. Besides, she probably wasn’t planning to stay anyway. The fastest way out of town was the only thing he wanted to show her.

  Where Jack went from there was anybody’s guess. Find a new manager, if anyone would sign him on. Get a few club fights under his belt. No titles. Nothing fancy. Just a few wins on the card.

  Or hell, maybe he’d chuck it all and get some stupid day job unloading freight or slinging hash and asking tourists if they wanted fries with that.

  “Later, man.” He walked to the door with no idea where his life was going, but that wasn’t a problem he had to worry about now. He just had to worry about getting to his next stop, Jimmie’s.

  Fried eggs, sausage, biscuits with tons of butter, and a Bloody Mary.

  The best cure for a hangover.

  Chapter Five

  Daniella sat in a folding chair, the one outside the ring, usually reserved for the trainer during sparring. Shakes brought folders from her father’s office and dumped them in her lap. Daniella didn’t expect spreadsheets and invoices categorized in alphabetical order, but she didn’t expect this. A total mess. It was going to take days to sort through it all. Papers and past due notices. Contracts and schedules. Rosters and receipts. And the real downside was that her father paid for nearly everything in cash.

  Jack, who was over an hour late, walked right past her. He made eye contact, but chose a path down the opposite side of the gym to start his work on the heavy bag. His form sagged, and he looked slow and lifeless, as if he were simply going through the motions of his training. From time to time she allowed herself to sneak glances in his direction. And as much as she’d tolerated her disdain for him, she couldn’t help but stare when he peeled off his sweaty T-shirt.

  Even from across the room it wasn’t hard to miss his eight-pack abs. The tattoo on his bicep was new. Well, he’d gotten it at some point in the last ten years, anyway. The Celtic knot for brotherhood marking his muscular shoulder wasn’t there the last time she saw him shirtless, either. She didn’t much care for tattoos, but on him they looked perfect.

  His chiseled features had weathered over time, but it only made him look more rugged. Sexy. And the weight he’d gained since she’d been gone had manifested itself in solid muscle, the kind her fingers tingled to touch.

  Jack punched the heavy bag and she averted her eyes to the paperwork. There wasn’t much she could do seated in a metal chair with a lap full of folders. She’d need to take it all back to her hotel room to make sense of it, and more importantly, refrain from giving in to the gym’s distractions. She shuffled the papers and stopped when she landed on Stamina’s most recent bank statement.

  Sixty-seven cents.

  The gym had a balance of sixty-seven cents? She pressed her lips in a tight, thin line. This was some kind of joke. She flipped through the rest of the folder, scanning each bank statement carefully.

  Up until two months ago, Stamina was in the black. There were cash withdrawals along the way, but nothing like the major debit that took place on the first day of May.

  “Shakes.” She called out to him. “What happened on May first?”

  Shakes worked, taking out the gloves for Jack from the supply room. He probably didn’t hear her. So she yelled, “Shakes, what happened May first?”

  Jack stopped hitting the bag and said, “That was the date of my last fight,” then went back to the bag.

  Shuffling the paper, her fingers worked to sort through the pages. She found a printed receipt for Jack’s flight to England, and hotel folio for the May first fight. Sure, overseas bouts weren’t cheap, but those expenses shouldn’t have had a devastating effect on Stamina. The gym should have been reimbursed by the fight’s promoter.

  Her facial muscles tightened.

  Unopened envelopes tucked in between the receipts fell out onto the floor. She picked them up and tore them open in between stealing glances to watch Jack jump rope. Bills. Some months past due and threatening cancellation.

  Her mind raced. What was this? Stamina nearly bankrupt? She didn’t unde
rstand. Her father had never has an issue with managing money. Her father had helped her pay her tuition, never missing a single payment due date, and growing up, she had everything she needed and most of what she wanted. None of the unpaid balances made sense.

  “Shakes,” she called out to him. She looked up to find him holding Jack’s feet while he did a series of sit ups.

  He finished the rep and told Jack to take a break. Daniella allowed her eyes to follow Jack. Sweat gleamed off his back as he walked around the gym, only to stop and stretch. She remained seated when Shakes arrived, and motioned for him to bend down and take a look at the papers.

  “Are you aware of any money my Dad may have left here?” she said in a quiet voice. “Is there any cash anywhere? Maybe hidden someplace?”

  It wasn’t unusual for her father not to trust banks.

  Shakes’s face fell. His expression told her that he knew what she was asking without her having to verbalize her concern.

  “Bank records show there was a large withdrawal the day of Jack’s May first fight. There are records of all his expenses. And I’m not accusing anyone of wrongdoing, but if you’ll look here”—she showed him the paperwork—“Stamina looked healthy, and now it’s all gone.”

  Shakes wet his lips. A cue. He was nervous. What did he know that he didn’t want to say? A boney hand propped on his hip as he peered over the papers. Then he shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you, because I don’t know.” His tongue darted out and wet his lips again. “Jack is really training hard today. He’s showing a lot of effort. It must be because you’re here.”

  Shakes quickly changed the subject. Another telltale sign. He had lied. What was he hiding? She sat back and gazed up into his dark eyes. “What are you not telling me? There’re thousands of dollars in past due bills here, and no money to pay them with. What did my father do?”

  Shakes straightened his stance and his eyes angled down.

  “Shakes?” she urged. “Where’d the money go?”

  He pursed his lips. Then after a moment of staring holes into the floor, he let out a long, exasperated sigh. “He bet it on Jack’s fight.”

  His words pierced her like a sword through her chest. “All of it?”

  Shakes swallowed hard, and nodded. “There’s this bookie I know across town. He took the bet when most of the guys in town know better than to accept a bet on an overseas fight. Damn things are rigged the way they are.”

  “And Daddy bet all his money?” The shock had reduced her to sounding like a little girl.

  Shakes’s expression blanched. He looked like he was going to be sick. “He bet everything. He wanted to put the lake house on the fight too, but I stopped him before he got that far. Your father convinced himself Jack was going to win. He said he felt it in his gut. He had a feeling about Jack being the next world champion.”

  And he lost.

  “But why? Not only is it illegal, it’s a huge, huge risk to his reputation. Why did he do it?”

  Shakes’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

  “Tell me.”

  Shakes sighed. “Times changed, Dani. Fewer fighters. America’s affection for the sport has hardened, and well, your father didn’t like to change. The gym was hemorrhaging money. We both knew it, and he thought the fastest way to recoup it all was to bet on Jack before Stamina bled out.”

  “Does Jack know?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Shakes shook his head. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him. Your father had passed by the time Jack got back to the States. Didn’t think it’d do any good. If Jack knew it would only make a bad situation worse.”

  “So who scheduled him to fight in four weeks?” Daniella dug through the folders and pulled out the contract.

  “Your father did. He said he had to get the money back, and quick.”

  “And then he died.” Daniella looked deeper into Shakes’s tear-filled eyes.

  “He did.”

  She nodded, fully understanding that all the pressure of Stamina sat with her. She pushed a hand through her hair. Breathe, she told herself, just breathe. She could divert some of her money into Stamina’s account to take care of the mortgage. Then she’d need to make sure Jack was trained and ready for his next fight before the creditors started calling.

  If word got out she’d inherited a bankrupt boxing gym, along with a loser boxer on the rebound, no promoter in the world would want to book her guys. She’d never get her guys slots on a fight card and that would lead to more monetary losses.

  She could sell. Separate the boxers from the gym and sell their contracts, but it’d be tough going to try to find someone to take Jack. Then there was Mike, whom she’d heard of. A talented guy, but he was still waiting for a title match to make a real name for himself. A super middleweight. Trevor. He’d climbed the amateur ranks and had only recently turned pro, and some new guy, a bantamweight who her dad’s files simply referred to as Bulldog. None of these guys’ contracts would earn good money standing alone, but if Jack led them with a nice win in four weeks, the gym and the guys would look appealing as a whole.

  All she’d need is someone to buy her out.

  No, she couldn’t sell. Who was she kidding? Her father would roll over in his grave. Besides, this was her shot to make something of herself, to pursue her passion. Women managers made up less than one percent of the boxing community, and she’d never get another chance to fulfill her dream if she bailed out now.

  Daniella stood and walked past Shakes and continued down the side of the gym to where Jack stood. He stopped stretching and faced her. His icy blue eyes fixed on hers, and his brows drew together as if it annoyed him that she had interrupted his workout.

  “You need something?” Part of his tone sounded like a sexual taunt, while the other simply sounded irritated.

  “I need a lot of things, Mr. Brady.” Her body stiffened. “But what I need from you is a disciplined routine and training schedule for the next four weeks. With my father gone, I don’t need to remind you how hard things are on all of us. Nor do I expect to have to act as your mother or your babysitter while you get yourself ready for your next fight.”

  He turned his head to the side, visibly insulted.

  “Look at me, Mr. Brady.” She placed a hand on her hip.

  He faced her. His gaze traveled down the front of her body, and his eyes stopped on her thigh, at the hem of her skirt. She let whatever immature sexual fantasy that was playing out in his mind finish. He hadn’t changed. Once a dog, always a dog. Even standing here in the midst of a serious conversation his mind, no doubt, was on getting laid.

  Men.

  She pointed to her face. “Eyes up here, Jack.”

  His gaze flashed to meet hers and he shot her a wicked smile.

  She lowered her hand back to her hip. “I want you on a five-mile run every morning at four. No more late nights. You need a minimum six hours of sleep with a nap in the afternoon. I want you at Stamina for at least six hours a day, and then plan your evenings around sparring three rounds with Michael. Use the eighteen-ounce gloves. I’ll do some research on the guy you’re scheduled to fight. Knowing my dad, he’s booked a puncher, not a boxer, and the only way you can outbox him is by winning on points.”

  He grimaced.

  “And one more thing,” she continued. “Straighten out your diet. You’re moving slow and I can smell the fried food on you.”

  His face hardened. “You’re going to see this through?”

  “Of course I am.”

  His firm gaze tightened. “You don’t belong here, Daniella. You can’t just come in here and start telling us what to do. Shakes has always done right by me, so why don’t you go back to California and let me get ready to fight.”

  She continued to stare at him. Her nostrils flared. Heat rose and spread throughout her body as rage seeped down to her fingertips, burning like candlewicks. “You’ll do as I say, Jack, because I hold your contract, not Shakes.”

 
; “You want to try your luck at getting blood from a turnip?”

  Her head jerked involuntarily. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Means I can quit, walk right out of here, and leave you holding that contract cause I got nothing to lose. But you do. Lots. So why don’t you go back to it. And leave my training to me.”

  He had no idea how much she’d have to invest just to keep the gym afloat until fight night. Four weeks was thousands of dollars, just to pay the mortgage on the building, out of her pocket. Leave it to him? Hardly.

  “Because that worked so well for you last time.”

  His body stilled, and for a moment she thought she saw pain flash through his eyes.

  “I’m running this show,” she said clearly, assuredly. “The sooner you accept it, the better off you’ll be.”

  He took a step toward her. “And if I don’t?”

  When she didn’t respond, he took another step forward. She didn’t flinch. She couldn’t. This was the time to show she was in charge. Then he took another step closer, then another until they were face-to-face.

  His musky scent radiated off his body. His icy stare bore deep into her, drilling to the core of her nerves. She couldn’t let him have his way. He’d driven her out of Stamina once before. That summer, all those years ago, she was young and did what she was told. But now she was a woman. And this was her business; he was her fighter.

  He’d learn to accept it or he could . . .

  Wait. Where was he going?

  Jack stepped beside her, then kept walking past her. She turned and allowed her eyes to follow him down the length of the gym. He opened the door. Sunlight cast across the concrete, but as quickly as it lit the floor, it was gone.

  And so was Jack.

  Chapter Six

  He’d walked out on her. He quit. Good.

  Jack opened the refrigerator and stared at the empty space. If he were training like he should, he’d have loaded up on lean meats, eggs, protein powder, and bottled water. Instead he extended his hand and pulled out a beer.