Tate grabbed his duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t have even been in the same bracket as him, dumbass. He’s more than ten years older than you.”
Kellan sat in the chair behind the front desk and grabbed a notepad. “Hey, be easy on Roman. You know he was never good at math.”
“Pfft. He wasn’t good at math, but that didn’t keep him from getting a damn ‘A’ in the class.” Tate shook his head. “Although when you manage to cop a feel of the teacher, anything is possible.”
“She was just another checkmark on my list,” he muttered.
“Oh hell,” Tate groaned. “Not the fucking list again. You still have shit you haven’t crossed off yet?”
Roman sat up and set his bo down next to him. “Just one thing left to cross off.”
“I’m scared to ask what it is,” I drawled. I sat down on one of the chairs along the edge of the mat where parents sit to watch their kids practice and kicked out my feet. “The fact you made a list of types of chick to sleep with speaks volumes on how big of a douchebag you really are.”
“MILF.”
“Oh Jesus,” Kellan muttered. “I’m sure you’ve done that without even knowing it.”
“Nope,” Roman said, popping the “p” on the end. “I know for a fact that I haven’t.”
“Wait, didn’t your math teacher have a kid?” Tate asked.
“She got pregnant after I hit it.”
Even I had to admit that Roman sounded like a complete asshole. “You sure the kid wasn’t yours?” I asked.
“No, he did the math,” Kellan snickered.
Tate and I busted out laughing, and Roman stood up, flipping us off. “It was like a year after I slept with her, asswipes.”
Tate shook his head. “Dude, she was like Dante’s age. She could have been your mom.”
“I’m twelve years older than Roman, dumbass. Pretty sure his mom didn’t have him when she was twelve.” I sometimes wondered about these three assholes.
Tate tapped his chin. “Maybe she was a little older than you. She had to have been in her early thirties when Roman sweet-talked her.”
“She was thirty-two. And for the record, she was the one who approached me. I just didn’t say no.” He grabbed his bo off the ground, tossed in the air, and caught it behind his back. “She did this one thing with her tongu—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s enough. I feel I’m breaking the law when you talk about that shit. The woman could have ended up in jail if anyone had found out.” Kellan held up a piece of paper that he had laying on the desk. “Can we get back to Dante competing and not Roman’s dumbass list?”
“With only one thing left on it, it really isn’t a list anymore. It’s more like my last conquest.” Roman propped his hands on his hips and stuck out his chest. “My quest shall be complete soon. I can feel it.”
Kellan ignored him and held up the paper in his hand higher. “I’m signing you both up for the Amex. You can work on getting the Powerhouse name out there. I want to become a name that people associate with sport karate more.”
“How much is the entry fee?” I asked.
“Seventy for the first division, forty for every one after that,” Kellan read off of the form.
“Well, at least I’m only doing one division. I forgot how expensive the tournaments can be.” Paying to compete was only part of it. Then you also had to add in travel and hotel expenses. “They got a discount rate for the hotel?” I had money, I just didn’t like spending it.
“I’m sure all that shit is online. Powerhouse will pay for your fees to compete, but you two can fight over who’s going to drive and who is going to pay for the hotel.”
“I call not it!” Roman shouted.
I shook my head. “You can’t call not it to all of it. There are two things. Each of us takes one. I can drive, and you can pay for the hotel room.”
“I don’t see how that is fucking fair. The hotel is probably at least one-fifty because I’d be damned if these tournaments had this shit at a cheap hotel,” Roman grumbled.
“What? You wanna compete at the Norman Bates Hotel Open?” Tate snickered.
I got where Roman was coming from, but it was hard to find a place that had a big enough room to hold a tournament that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. “Fine, you drive and get gas. I’ll cover the hotel room.” I was going to have to look into booking a room today. Normally, rooms booked up fast at a tournament this size.
Roman smiled smugly. “Sounds good to me.” He spun his bo over his head then tossed it at me trying to catch me off guard.
“Nice try, fucker. I still got pretty good reflexes.” I nabbed it out of the air and managed to toss it back at him.
“All right, grandpa,” Roman mocked.
I flexed my fists at my side and took a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time to beat the shit out of him. I needed to save that for the ring tomorrow when I fought him to train. I bent over, zipped up my bag, and grabbed it off the chair. “What day is the tournament?” I asked Kellan.
“November nineteenth. The weekend before Thanksgiving.”
That gave me just under five weeks to crack down and actually get back into fighting shape. It was doable. I turned back to Roman. “You think you can grow up for a few minutes at the tournament and be my coach?” Sparring was always the last event at tournaments, so Roman shouldn’t have any excuse why he couldn’t help me.
He rolled his eyes. “I am grown up. I just know how to have a good time.”
“Call it whatever you want. I just want to know if I can rely on you.” If Roman bailed on me, it wouldn’t be the first time. I had fought before with no on in my corner, but having someone there watching and coaching me helped. A lot.
“I’ll be there,” he grumbled. “Not like I’ll have anything else going on.”
“Well, I need to run to the store, figure out what a cookie sheet is, and then go home to bake some shit,” I mumbled.
“You still going to try to Betty Crocker it?” Kellan asked.
“Better than going over to the café and dealing with Sage, the Cookie Nazi,” I complained. I had seriously thought about biting the bullet and just buying cookies that were baked from the café, but then I would have to deal with Sage, and that chick ground my gears something fierce.
“I think she has the day off tomorrow,” Tate put in. “You could always go over there then. You know Molly won’t give you shit and charge you five dollars a cookie.”
The idea sounded appealing, but I was hankering for cookies now. “I will be over there tomorrow, but tonight, I’m going to conquer using my oven. I paid a pretty penny for the thing, you would think that I should at least figure out how it works at least once.”
Kellan chuckled. “Guess I can’t really argue with that reasoning. Thankfully, Molly knows how to cook and has definitely broken in my kitchen.”
Tate snickered. “You know having sex on the counter doesn’t count for breaking in the kitchen, right?”
Kellan smiled wide. “In that case, she’s helped me break in the kitchen in more ways than one.”
“Later, fuckers,” I called before the door shut behind me. Roman was about to go into detail about how Kellan should have a list of places to have sex, and I didn’t want to stick around for that conversation.
I beeped open the locks on my 2017 Lincoln Navigator L Reserve and slid into her smooth leather seats. I loved this damn car. I had worked my ass off, and this is exactly the car I deserved. The white paint, blacked- out windows, and twenty-inch rims made everyone look at her as I drove by.
As I slowly rolled past the cafe, I saw Molly, Sage, the laundromat guy, and the yoga chick all sitting outside at one of the tables Molly had at the front. Laundromat guy looked like he was telling one hell of a story with his hands flailing and motioning to Yoga Chick.
When we had been trying to shut down Molly with the whole “you're too loud” petition shit, I had drawn the short straw and had to go to the la
undromat while Tate and Roman had been able to go talk to the Yoga Chick. I had seen her around, and each time, I did a double-take to etch into my memory how good her ass looked in the yoga pants she wore all the time. Every single time, I thanked God for creating yoga pants.
Kellan had mentioned her name in passing before, but I could never remember what it was. I knew it was a president or something like that. Reagan?
I scoffed. That chick looked nothing like Reagan.
“I am not a crook,” I mumbled under my breath, chuckling. If that was her name, I knew I would never be able to look her in the face without thinking of that. “Fuck, that was Nixon.” Wouldn’t that be fucking crazy if her name was Nixon?
Someone's parents weren’t very fond of them if they named them Nixon.
“Dante!”
Dammit. Molly had seen me drive by. I gently pressed on the brake and rolled down my window. “What’s up, Molly?” Yes, I ignored Sage because I was still pissed off about the cookies yesterday.
“Where are you going?”
Huh? Did it really matter where I was going? I chuckled and shook my head. “The store and then home.”
“Oh, okay.”
What the hell was going on? “Did you need something? I thought the café closed at four?” Or was it three? I really couldn’t remember. I knew it was open in the morning and at noon. Those were the times that I normally made my cookie run.
She moved toward my truck but glanced over her shoulder at Sage and the other two. Laundromat guy shooed her, and Sage glared at me. So charming.
“Um, how’s it going?” She leaned against my door with a nervous smile on her lips.
“It’s going.”
‘So, um. Is Roman still at the studio?” she stuttered.
Huh? “He was there, being his usual dick-ish self.”
She hummed quietly and stared at me.
“Is there anything else you wanted, or you just need to know where Roman is?” Molly was pretty, but she was damn quirky.
“Do you know if he’s dating anyone right now?”
I shifted my truck into park and leaned toward Molly. “You thinking of dating Roman too? I’m not too sure Kellan would be down with that.”
Molly gasped and shook her head. “What? No! Of course not. Kellan is hot, and well, Roman isn’t bad to look at, but he ain’t no Kellan.”
A smirk spread across my lips. “Then you wanna tell me why you wanna know who if Roman is dating anyone?”
She sighed and leaned into the truck. “I’m trying to help Karlton find a date.”
I busted out laughing. “Mol, you do know that even though Roman is a dick, he’s not into them, right?” Hell, I couldn’t wait to tell Roman that Karlton was into him. This was going to make for years of amazing jokes.
She rolled her eyes and slugged me on the shoulder. “No, you ass. He’s trying to find a date for Kennedy. Well, it’s not a real date. It’s more like a fake one.”
“Now you really aren’t making sense. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You wanna know if Roman is dating anyone because of ol’ Karlton over there wants to hook up with him. Oh, I mean, he wants someone else to hook up with him. That someone is not you, for the record.”
“Yes, exactly.” She turned toward the three sitting at the table and shouted, “He gets it! We’re making headway.”
Headway? I get it? I was confused as hell why Molly was asking me who Roman was dating. “Step back.”
Molly tilted her head and quirked her eyebrow at me. “Excuse me?”
“Step back, woman. I’m gonna park, and I don’t want to run your ass over.”
She jumped back from the truck, and I turned into the parking spot that was in front of the table the other three yahoos were sitting at.
I was going to find out what the hell these three were up to.
**********
Chapter 6
Kennedy
Oh hell.
He was getting out of his truck, and he did not look amused.
“The Silver Fox has landed,” Karlton muttered under his breath.
Dante approached our table, and I couldn’t help but appreciate his lean yet muscular body.
The man checked every last thing off the list that a woman could want.
Tall.
Athletic.
Broad shoulders.
Sculpted.
Protective.
Don’t ask me how someone could look protective, but Dante did. He looked like he could kick the ass of any of my past boyfriends. He may be a Silver Fox, but you could tell he took care of himself. Well.
“Silver Fox Ninja, up close and personal. And you said this day sucked, Kennedy.” Karlton pushed his sunglasses on top of his head and surveyed Dante from head to toe. Blatantly.
I had at least tried to nonchalantly check out Dante. I was sure that Karlton was seconds away from pulling out a magnifying glass and asking Dante to take his shirt off.
“What the hell are you three putting Molly up to?” he demanded.
I could add his husky and captivating voice to list of things that could melt off panties.
Karlton leaned back in his chair and pushed his glass back over his eyes. “I’ve contracted her to help with a little project that I’m doing.”
I held back a laugh at Karlton’s ability to make his haphazard project sound like something that was actually important.
“Your project involves Roman and who he’s dating?” Dante asked skeptically.
Karlton crossed his legs and folded his arms over his chest. “It’s rather pertinent to my plans.”
I scoffed and covered my mouth with my hand. Karlton shot me a look telling me to put a sock in it. I cleared my throat, trying to get a handle on my soon to be erupting case of the giggles. It was working.
For now.
“Don’t you have some baking to do?” Sage asked Dante.
Sage had spoken to him, but his eyes were trained on me. I turned my head toward Sage who was sitting on my left, hoping he would get the clue that he didn’t need to be looking at me. I had never been formally introduced to him, but I knew about him from all of the stories that Karlton had regaled me with.
“That’s what I’m supposed to pay you to do.”
Oh hell.
Sage looked like she was ready to explode as soon as the words left Dante’s mouth. She shot up from her chair, grabbed her coffee cup off of the table, and stormed into the café.
Dante crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Molly smugly. “You might want to tell your girl to take a chill pill.”
Molly plopped down in the chair that Sage vacated and sighed. “I’m going to have to deliver your cookies to you from now on. There’s no way that Sage is going to let you come into the café now without assailing you with frozen flying cookie dough pucks.”
He shook his head. “And now I’m the bad guy.”
He had been a dick to her, but Sage wasn’t really the nicest to him, either.
“She’ll be fine,” Karlton replied. “She’s just upset about my idea.”
My gaze fell on Karlton. “I highly doubt that is the problem,” I snickered. I don’t think anyone would want to be in my shoes right now.
Karlton scoffed. “Girl, please. Everyone would love to sit back and have someone take control of their love life. I am providing you a huge service, and you have yet to even thank me for all of the things I’m doing for you.”
“Wait, wait. Rewind and tell me why you need to find her a date?” Dante’s eyes slowly scanned me over with a smug smile on his face.
I had no idea what he was thinking. He either thought that I was a lost cause or he actually liked what he saw. “It’s just a decoy.”
He tilted his head slightly, confused even more.
“You know what, I’ll just go over to the Powerhouse and talk to Roman. I’m sorry to have brought you into this, Dante,” Molly rambled. She had been resistant when Karlton hissed at her to make Dante stop, and no
w she was climbing back into the quiet shell where she tended to retreat when uncomfortable.
“Nope,” he replied. “You’re not going to get out of this that easily.” He pulled out the chair next to Karlton, spun it around, straddled it, and pointed at Karlton. “Spill.” He had, of course, pinpointed the right person who was going to gleefully tell all. Karlton could talk to a brick wall and be content. He had already been telling everyone who he could get a hold of about his brilliant plan and how he was going to save my non-existent love life.
“Vivian Kramer.”
I rolled my eyes. That was how he was going to start this, with my mother’s name and that was it?
“Kramer Realty Group?” Dante asked.
Oh hell. He had heard of my mom and dad before. Just great. He was going to think I was some trust fund baby and completely write me off before he even knew anything about me.
Why I was concerned about this was beyond me, because I barely knew anything about him and his opinion of me shouldn’t be a concern. No one else's opinions mattered to me, but for some reason, his did.
Karlton smirked and glanced at me. “You’re popular, sugar.”
I rolled my eyes. Only Karlton would be excited about the thought of being known for something that had nothing to do with him. “Not me,” I muttered. It was times like these that I would change my last name. When it came down to it, I loved my parents, but I hated everything about them.
“Our dear Kennedy here is their one and only daughter.” Oy vey. “Her mother is constantly on her back asking when she’s going to quit the yoga studio and settle down with one of their stodgy old friend’s kids.” Karlton frowned and crossed his arms over his chest.
“You really think you can fool her parents into thinking that Roman and her and dating? If anything, she’s going to alert the police and never let Kennedy leave the house.”
“I don’t live at home.” I quickly averted my eyes. Shut up, Kennedy. Did Dante need to know I didn’t live at home anymore? Think before you speak. “Good to know.” His voice was low, and the words meant more than what he said.
“Well, I’ve been searching for forever, and he’s the only likely candidate that I have right now. Well, I should say that is the only candidate that Kennedy didn’t shoot down.”
Black Belt in Love (Powerhouse MA Book 3) Page 3
