It’s been over a month, and I’m still thinking about her. Maybe this was how the prince in Cinderella felt after she raced away without her glass shoe. I don’t even have a shoe. Not a single clue. All I have are the scorching hot memories that leave me hard and stroking off every chance I get.
I could have kept the panties that she left behind, but something about that struck me as a little weird, so I threw them away. There has been more than one night when I regretted that and instantly felt like a stalker.
We went to that club a few more times while I was in Atlanta, and I looked for her. But I never saw her again. Even so, I have our encounter memorized, and there have been times when I thought I might rub my dick raw trying to get even a fraction of the pleasure that I felt with her.
Even when I wasn’t inside her. Feeling her come? Sweet Jesus that was a beautiful thing.
I punch the bag harder, making it swing. It’s good to be home. Atlanta was fun—and I won the fight I had gone there for—but Nashville will always be home, and I don’t know if there will ever be somewhere else that makes me feel as comfortable. Sure, the city has its flaws, and I have more than my share of bad memories here, but that’s exactly what makes it home. My history is written in these streets, and I don’t like the way other, newer places make me feel blank like that history doesn’t matter anymore.
When I woke up with her face in my dreams again, I thought it would be a good idea to try to work the bag for a while to try to punch my way out of my own head, but it isn’t working. I’ve been going for an hour and I still have a workout with Frank later. He’s going to kick my ass if I’m too tired for it.
Besides, it’s in the past. I’m never going to see her again. And this obsession with her isn’t because of her, necessarily. I don’t even know her name, let alone anything about her. It was just an extremely hot encounter with a stranger in a nightclub, so of course that would leave an impression, an indelible impression, on my horny brain. If it had been another chick at the club that night, I’d probably be lusting after her, instead.
And I can’t ignore that she was the first person I’ve slept with since Kristy ran off with that asshole drummer. I’m sure most people who’ve been dumped by their fiancée remember the first person they slept with after that, right?
Vividly? Over and over? Every night?
Fuck.
I stop punching the bag, grabbing my towel and wiping the sweat from my face before drinking some water. Her voice enters my head, and I almost roll my eyes. Fucking hell, I’m hallucinating her voice now? I might have to go see a shrink to get this woman out of my head.
I’m sure that Frank and Ben would just suggest a trip to the strip club before jumping all the way to the psych ward. And they wouldn’t exactly be wrong.
It takes a second for me to realize that I’m not actually hallucinating her voice. No, it’s coming from the TV that I’ve got on in the corner of my home gym. It’s just there for background noise since I didn’t feel like listening to music today.
But fuck, there she is! Sitting behind a desk, perfectly put together in a dress that’s far more conservative than the one I last saw her in. Hair smooth and not tangled with sex, make-up not smudged. Her eyes meet the camera with easy grace and I think she’s talking about school board elections.
It can’t be her, right? This is just another example of my mind playing tricks on me.
But the longer I stare at the television, the more it sinks in and I know it’s true. It is her. She’s on the fucking news. Her name flashes at the bottom of the screen. Sadie Crawford. She’s not only on the news, this is local news. She’s here in town. She must live here if she’s an anchor for a Nashville station. Holy shit.
I force myself to slow down and not let my mind spin too many possibilities. She is here. A car ride away. Which means that I can see her. Or try to. What station is this? I look at the logo at the bottom.
“Ben?” I call, sticking my head out of the door.
“Yeah,” he says and comes around the corner.
He’s my assistant, and it still feels weird to say that. Never in my life did I think that I would be the kind of person to have an assistant. But it isn’t just him. Now it feels like I have a small army at my disposal to do whatever I need them to do.
It’s handy and frees up a lot more of my time for training. But it is still weird and I’m getting used to it.
I’ve only fought in a few official MMA fights, but things are blowing up in a way that no one had really anticipated. I am undefeated, and even though I hate interviews, my agent Jeremy is trying to get me to do more public stuff to help with my profile. When you have this kind of momentum, he tells me, you ride the wave and don’t fight against it.
It just so happens that riding the wave right now could bring me closer to a beautiful brunette that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind.
“All those interview requests,” I say. “Did we get one from WNSV?”
“The news station?” He looks surprised, but starts to flip through his phone. “Yeah, we did. Why, what’s up?”
“I’ll do that one.”
He stares at me before laughing. “You’re volunteering to do an interview? Are you sick?”
“Very funny. I have my reasons.”
“And those are?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Private.”
He shrugs. “I’ll make the call.”
Ben is great, and I knew him before he became my assistant, so the transition hasn’t been that difficult. But still, it feels weird having him do things for me. I need to get over that. It is going to happen more and more as my career progresses. I don’t have a huge ego, so it’s easy for me to think of all these people as part of my team. I may be the talent, but without them making things easier for me and organizing the opportunities, I wouldn’t be half as successful.
“Oh, and I told Frank that you were beating the hell out the bag and he cancelled your workout,” Ben says, phone already to his ear. “He said you can take it easy for a couple days after the win but to make sure that you do cardio in return for his generosity.”
I chuckle. “Noted.”
Ducking back into the gym, I grab my towel and water bottle. The home gym is one of my favorite parts of my new place. The prize money from the fights that I’ve won were enough to really change my lifestyle. I bought a house on the outskirts of Nashville near one of the rivers on a big piece of property. The sponsorships those wins landed me were even more lucrative.
But in the end, that didn’t matter to me. Now that I have the house, I am happy. I always wanted a place that was just mine. And I have it now. All the rest of what I live for is in between the ropes. And at the foot of my bed.
Walking into my living room, I let out a whistle and smile as the pounding sound of feet comes from every direction. Seven dogs of various shapes and sizes emerge from every corner of the house, swarming around my feet.
“Time for cardio.”
They are all jumping and barking and panting; excited by the idea that we are going outside. They missed me while I was away. I clip a leash to each of their collars in turn and grab the device that I had to order from a place that specializes in products for dog walkers.
The group in front of me is definitely a bunch of misfits, but I love them. There are a handful of missing ears and a couple of missing eyes, some with less visible injuries, too. All of them are rescues from a dog fighting ring that was exposed a few years ago, and when I saw all of them, I couldn’t imagine leaving a single one behind. So they all came home with me.
I know what it is like to be abandoned. What it is like for other people to use you as a punching bag and not care about you for anything other than what you might be worth to them. These dogs have gotten me through some tough times, and in return I spoil them.
Closing the door behind us, I start to run at an easy pace down my long driveway toward the road. The dogs are used to this. They keep perfect pace and space bet
ween each other. It’s almost like they’re psychically connected to each other, the way they can anticipate how each other will move. I never expected when I adopted them that they’d be such a tight knit family.
There are rumors floating around that Jack is out of prison and trying to start the whole thing over again. I’m not sure what would possess a man who’d been caught to try to pull off the same scheme that landed him in prison, but Jack Singleton is as single-minded as his name. He knows what he wants, and he wants the adrenaline and the money that comes with running something as illicit as dog fighting.
Two minutes alone in a ring with him and I’d show him what I really thought about him now. It would have a different outcome than the way our fights always ended as kids, that’s for sure. I am a very different man now.
The air is crisp, as it always is in the fall around Nashville. Perfect weather. In a few weeks it will get colder, and I’ll be tempted to skip these early runs and stay inside. Preferably with a warm companion in bed.
In this case, I’m not thinking about my dogs, but about the woman that I never thought I’d see again. My Cinderella.
The way she looked behind that desk wasn’t even close to the way that I’ve imagined her in my mind this past month. In the back room of the club, she’d been unrestrained and wild. She took control, and she let me have control as well. Honestly, if I’d known that she would leave without giving me her phone number or even her name, I would have held on to my pleasure harder and let her mouth tease me more.
I have dreams about those moments and what it might have been like to come in her mouth, feel her sucking me through my orgasm.
Fuck. No boners while running. That is just uncomfortable, and if I ran into anybody, gym shorts aren’t exactly the type of clothes you can hide behind. I push her out of my mind and continue my run.
But as I finish my loop and slow to a walk back up my driveway, I let her into my thoughts again as I shut the gate and release the dogs from their leashes so they can run around freely in the yard.
Sadie Crawford.
Even though she didn’t give me her name, I have it now. And I didn’t have to stalk her to get it. It was purely an accident. I bet she thought that I lived in Atlanta when we met, a safe wager for something without strings. It was the same thing I had thought when I walked down the stairs toward her in the club.
But what we did? The chemistry we had? Those were strings that I didn’t anticipate and that I can’t seem to let go of. Now that she is here, and we are living in the same city, I want to see her.
I will take Cinderella her damn shoe and see if she wants it back.
3
Sadie
“Thank you for watching,” I say. “Tune in tonight for more news from WNSV, your local news source.”
The red light turns off on the camera, and the production assistant announces that we’re clear. I breathe a sigh of relief. Even though it’s been two weeks since I started being on air full time, I still get a flurry of nerves being live.
“That was good,” Bill says. “Though you might not want to wear that color again. Not the most attractive on you.”
I struggle not to roll my eyes. So far the worst part of my job has been my co-anchor. I wish there were a more delicate way to put it, but he’s a pig. Misogynistic to his core. There hasn’t been a day where he hasn’t commented on my appearance or my performance. And I’ve been holding myself in check, smiling because I’m the new girl. But I’m tired of it, and so I smile tightly at him.
“If I need your opinion on my clothes, Bill, I’ll ask you for it.”
He raises one eyebrow, surprised that I’m talking back to him this way. “Whatever. I’m just trying to help you. You know female anchors have to look good to get views, or else…”
Or else they’ll replace me, is what he’s saying. Fucking asshole.
Gathering my notes, I head back to my office. It’s hard not to feel defeated when he says things like that. All in all, the first couple of weeks here haven’t gone as smoothly as I’d hoped they would. I came prepared with a list of stories that I wanted to investigate and present—since WNSV prides itself on the journalism of their whole team. But every story I’ve pitched, the producers have taken and given to Bill.
Clearly they were good stories if they gave them to him, but I can’t exactly crack why I’m running into this wall of blatant sexism. Everything I’ve heard about this station was that it is a great place to work.
But I’m not going to give up. Not yet. Not only am I determined to make this work until it is time to trade up to a better place, but I refuse to believe that what I thought was my dream job is actually a nightmare. After leaving everything behind for this, I don’t think that I could handle that.
I still have lots more story ideas, but I’m not going to pitch them until I have a clear and indisputable angle of why I’m the one that needs to be reporting them. My job isn’t to give Bill unearned opportunities for journalism while I sit behind the desk and look pretty, no matter what he thinks.
A soft knock on my door grabs my attention.
“Come in,” I call.
Alan, the main producer, pushes open my door. “Hey, Sadie.”
“Hey, Alan. What’s up?”
“Good job today,” he says.
I smile. “Thanks.” Internally I’m screaming, because if Bill told him to come in here and critique my wardrobe and he’s actually doing it, I might actually lose my shit.
“I’ve got a last-minute story for you,” he says. “Just came in.”
“That’s great,” I say, both relieved and suddenly filled with energy. “What is it?”
“Local athlete,” he says. “Kind of burst onto the scene and is becoming both a local and national sensation. He agreed to do a profile, which is good for us because up until now he’s been kind of shy on doing media.”
I’m still smiling, but my heart falls a little bit. “I’m not a sports reporter.”
“We know,” Alan laughs a little. “But the guy says he’ll only do the profile if you’re the one doing it.”
I frown. “What’s his name?”
“Jon Lawson.”
Quickly, I type his name into google. The pictures populate, and I freeze. Oh shit. It’s him. The guy from the club. The guy that’s been plaguing my dreams since I left him sitting naked in that VIP room in Atlanta.
Alan must see my face fall because he sighs. “Is this going to be a problem, Sadie? Because you really need to find a way to not be a problem, if you take my meaning.”
My stomach plummets. Alan must have told him what I said. “I know him,” I say. “Or rather, I’ve met him before. I didn’t know his name, though. I don’t want it to look like I’m using a personal connection to get a story.”
“Honestly, I don’t care,” he says. “This guy is the hottest thing in sports right now, and everyone is talking about him. The fact that his first real interview is going to be with us is a big deal. He wants to do it with you, and if you’ve met before, maybe that’s why. If he feels more comfortable that way it’s fine with me, but we need you to do it. This is a big deal for us, and I don’t give a shit how we got this scoop.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Thanks.” Alan turns to leave. “Oh, and he’ll be here at four o’clock to shoot it. He didn’t want to wait and neither did we.”
Plastering a brilliant and confident smile on my face, I look at him. “Not a problem.” But as soon as the door shuts behind him I let out a string of curses.
What the actual fuck. How is it him? Why is it him? How did he find me and why am I the only one he wants to do the interview with?
Of course I already know. Alan said that he is local. So when he was in that club in Atlanta, he was just passing through. And now that he is here and I am here, and my face in on TV every day, he must have seen me.
I almost have to laugh. It’s the exact situation that I’d tried to avoid by having that one-night stand in
Atlanta. I hadn’t wanted any lingering attachments. And yet…
That night has haunted me in unexpected ways. I keep reliving the way he made my body sing with pleasure and the way he fell into that slow, deep place with me. The way his eyes flashed and he made me feel like I was the only person in his world.
The roughness in his voice when he asked me what my name was. I’ve woken up more than once since that night, panting with longing and having to resort to other far less satisfying methods just to ease the arousal that thinking and dreaming about him brought me.
And now he is here, and I am going to see him in less than three hours. Last minute is right. Usually working stories and profiles like this would take at least a week for research and preparation. Maybe more than that. I’m going to have to come up with an entire battery of interview questions in a few hours, and I don’t even have a modicum of knowledge about sports. And if I can’t pull this off, then my career is in jeopardy because the last-minute nature of this interview won’t be the problem, I’ll be the problem.
I shake my head. Hopefully doing this and doing it well will solve some of the issues that I’m having here at the station, but even so, I don’t feel good about it. Journalism should always be impartial. And so the fact that I am going to interview a man whose cock has been in my mouth and who fucked me with his tongue and everything else, it doesn’t sit well with me.
But it seems like I don’t have a choice. So I need to get to work.
Taking a deep breath, I swallow all my panic and my anxiety. I can do this. Profiles aren’t my specialty, but I’ve done them before. I know what his public relations people are looking for, and I can give it to them along with reporting that makes me stand out as a top-notch journalist. Start with his history and go from there. I’ll see where that leads me.
Start early. Jon Lawson.
I find a birth certificate from here in Nashville. It seems he truly is a local. And shortly after I find his birth certificate, I find death certificates for both of his parents in the vital records database. Fuck.
Big Man’s Happily Ever After Page 17
