the heat from his body against my back.
A snarl from the hallway sends a shiver down my spine.
“Someone is out there.” I slide out from under his arm. “Did you
hear that?” I race out the door but the hallway is empty.
“Who is it?” Dr. Drake joins me.
“I don’t know. I kept hearing noises outside, and then I thought I
heard a snarl.”
“Maybe it’s just nerves.”
“Yeah. That must be it.”
Dr. Drake turns me to face him. “It isn’t nerves, is it? Your heart
isn’t in this. I could see it the minute you walked into my office, and I
can see it in your eyes now. You sparkle when you are enthusiastic about
something. You sparkle when you talk to Charlie. You sparkled at the
auction when you were with Huntington, but you didn’t sparkle with
me. That’s when I knew it was time to back off.”
My mouth falls open. “No. Really. I want to do this.”
Dr. Drake shakes his head. “Why don’t you give this decision some
more thought. I’m always here. I’m very happy to help bring a new
doctor into the fold. But if you do decide to go ahead, I want to see
sparkle. I want you to be living your dream.”
My heart clenches. “I’ve given up on dreams.”
Dr. Drake tilts my head back with a gentle finger under my chin,
forcing me to look up at him. “Never give up on your dreams. You see
something you want, you fight for it.” He pauses and frowns. “This
reminds me, I owe Huntington another round in the ring. Tell him to
give me a call.”
I swallow and look away. “We broke up.”
His face softens and he runs a finger lightly over the worst of the
bruising on my face. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope these bruises weren’t
part of the reason.”
“No.” I shake my head so hard my ears ring. “Max would never
hurt me.”
And suddenly, for the very first time, I believe it.
The hospital is in an uproar when I arrive at work on Friday morning.
Everyone is talking. No one is working. Security has been doubled.
The police are everywhere. I weave my way through the crowds and
head straight to Charlie. If anyone knows what is going on, it will
be him.
“You’ve come to the right place,” he says, when I ask about the
whispers in the corridors. He leans back in his chair and steeples his
fingers. “I am the heart of the hospital. You need information, you come
to me.”
“I’m here,” I snap. “Now spill.”
Charlie’s smile fades. “Someone attacked Doctor Drake last night
in his office. The hospital has been trying to keep it all hush-hush. They
don’t want people to panic.”
“Is he okay?”
Charlie shrugs. “He’s in critical care. Apparently he was hit over the
head with a fire extinguisher. He never saw his attacker.”
I grab Charlie’s arm. “I was with him Thursday night. I was sure I
heard someone in the hallway.”
“Who would want to hurt Doctor Drake?” Charlie muses. “I heard
his office was untouched. His wallet was still on his desk. He was still
wearing his expensive watch. He’s a nice guy. Too good-looking for my
taste, but decent. Although he is the competition.” He leans forward
and whispers, “It was his name Doris called out that night.”
Nausea roils in my belly. “Do they have any leads?”
“Not so far. They have fingerprints from the fire extinguisher, but
not much else.”
I head back to my desk and scrub my hands over my face. I can’t
imagine who would want to hurt Dr. Drake, but I know in my heart it
wasn’t Max.
The day drags. All I can think about is meeting Amanda at Doctor
Doctor to talk about Max and to plan our attack on the debt collector
over a few drinks on her client expense card. But when my shift ends,
she calls to say she’s stuck in a meeting and won’t be able to make it.
Bubble bath and ice cream time.
I send my fax to Collections R Us and throw my pack over my
back. My phone rings again. I check the Caller ID. Unidentified caller.
Could it be Ty on a different number? I grit my teeth and answer on
the last ring. I make a pathetic attempt to hide my surprise when Jake
says hello.
“I need your help,” he says, ignoring my high-pitched squeak,
“Torment challenged the Pulverizer to fight tonight. The Pulverizer is
ranked number one on the US underground fight circuit. Torment flew
him in just for the fight.”
“If he wants to fight, he’ll fight. I won’t be able to stop him.”
Jake hisses in a breath. “You don’t understand. He went crazy this
week. It’s like he had a death wish. He challenged the three guys in the
state ranked above him. He opened the club every night during the
week for the fights. He won every match, and now he’s number one.”
“I thought that was his dream.” I stop just outside a convenience
store and lean against the wall. “He said he wanted to be number one in
California. He said he would be happy when he got to the top.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
Of course not. His father’s words must still haunt him.
“Why do you need me? We aren’t together anymore.”
“You have to come to the club, Makayla.” Jake’s voice takes on
a pleading tone. “The Pulverizer has sent every one of his opponents
to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. He trains for months
before a fight. He’s won his last fourteen matches all by knockout.
He’s been undefeated for six years. But he’s a dirty fighter. If he wasn’t
on the underground circuit, he would have been kicked out of the
professional leagues. Torment is the first real threat he’s faced in years.
He’ll come prepared.”
“Max…Torment can handle him. He’s a good fighter. The best now.”
Jake groans. “Max isn’t ready for this fight. He’s tired, he’s injured,
and he’s unfocused. He’s fought more this week than the Pulverizer
fights in a year, and he won because he was willing to take risks he
normally would never take. He can’t fight like that with the Pulverizer.
The guy is good. He’s ready. He’s rested. And he’ll fight dirty. One
wrong move and Max will be toast.”
My stomach clenches. “What do you want me to do?”
“Come to the club and talk him out of it. I tried. Rampage tried.
Hell, we all tried. Even Sandy. He says he’ll be number one if it kills
him. And it might kill him. He’s not thinking clearly, and if he can’t
focus, he can’t fight.”
“We broke up. He doesn’t want to see me.”
“Please.”
A sob wells up in my throat. “I’m sorry, Jake. It would just prove
to him we were never meant to be together, and it wouldn’t change
his mind.”
“You’re making a big mistake,” Jake snaps. “If that’s what you
think, then you never really understood him at all.”
Too distressed to go home, I head to the critical care wing of the hos-
pital to visit Dr. Drake. I have a book of green slips in one hand and a
paper clip heart in the other. I hope he gets the joke.
The hallway is cool and quiet. Critical care is a place of emotional
extremes. Lives teeter in the balance. One way and families rejoice. The
other and they despair. There is a lot of despair here today and only five
rooms are occupied.
Dr. Drake is not in his room. They have taken him for CT scans. I
sit in a chair in the hallway to wait, and a man in a brown jacket walks
into the room across from me. I recognize him from the donut shop,
but he isn’t eating donuts today.
The woman he is visiting must be related. They share the same
olive skin, dark hair, and patrician nose. She is on life support. Asleep.
The machines in her room whir and beep. The man sits by her bed and
holds her hand. A nurse goes in to check the monitors and they share a
few words. As she leaves, he calls out, “Thank you Ms. Maloney.”
His voice is familiar. Very familiar. I walk up to the door and check
the name on the chart. Gloria Martinez.
“Excuse me?”
The man looks up. Not a man. A boy. No more than twenty. His
eyes are dark circles in a sunken face. A face without hope.
“Are you Sergio?”
I catch a flicker of interest in his eyes and he nods.
“I’m Makayla Delaney. You were chasing me for a debt.”
Myriad emotions cross his face. None of them particularly pleasant.
“What are you doing here?”
“Visiting a friend.” I take a wild guess given his age and the similar-
ity of his appearance to the woman in the bed. “Is this your mom? Is she
the reason you were always calling from the hospital?”
His face crumples. “Yeah. She’s dying. She needs a new heart. But
she doesn’t have any medical insurance.”
My heart aches. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve sold everything I have to pay for her treatment,” he says,
“but I don’t have enough money to get her on the transplant list. If I’d
been able to collect enough to get the bonus, I could have bought her
a heart.”
He turns his face away and wipes a tear from his cheek. Sympathetic
tears well in my own eyes, and my throat tightens.
“Would my payment have made a difference?”
He shakes his head. “Even if I had pushed all my debtors into
making their monthly payments, I wouldn’t have had enough. I needed
a big windfall—like someone paying the whole loan off at once.”
“I’m sorry.”
His cheeks redden. “I saw you in the donut shop a while back. Your
friend was saying your boyfriend was a billionaire. I thought maybe if
I pushed you harder, he might pay off your loan. But you were so nice.
I couldn’t go through with it.”
I slump against the doorframe. “He’s not a billionaire. And he’s not
my boyfriend anymore.”
Sergio gives me a half smile. “Trouble in paradise?”
“We didn’t gel. He needed trust and I couldn’t give it. He’s a
violent guy. I was afraid he would hurt me or try to control me.”
“Sounds like Ty. I heard he got your file. That guy is crazy. Always
in trouble with the law. Always pounding on people for no reason. Flies
off the handle for the smallest things. Threatens people to get his way.”
I take a seat in the chair near the door and frown. “Max isn’t like
that. I’ve never seen him hurt someone who didn’t deserve it or ask for
it. He never threatened me. He’s controlling in a protective kind of way.
He wanted to pay off my loan and I wouldn’t let him.”
Sergio’s eyes widen. “Sounds like a decent kinda guy. Too bad it
didn’t work out.”
Understatement of the year.
“I almost quit this job after the first day,” he says. “I’m not Ty. I
couldn’t do what he does. I couldn’t handle the screaming and swear-
ing. But we needed the money. My mom told me sometimes you have
to see to the heart of a person. Look below the surface. So when they
were swearing at me I would listen, and I would try to find out what
they were really afraid of. I couldn’t do anything about it. I still had to
collect the debt. But it helped me deal with the anger on the surface.
And when I could make it easier, I did.”
My breath catches in my throat. I have seen to the heart of Max. I
have seen his kindness and compassion. His fierce need to protect. He
would never hurt me. I was just afraid to believe it.
“My mom is all I have,” he says quietly. “My dad died when I was
little. No brothers or sisters. The rest of the family is in Italy.”
Tears stream down his cheeks, but this time he doesn’t turn away. I
fish around in my purse for a tissue and see the fax receipt.
Suddenly I have an idea. A windfall for Sergio. Forgiveness for me.
I hand Sergio the tissue. “I think I may be able to help you, but
we’ll need to go to your office and intercept a fax. And I need a ride to
a fight club in Ghost Town.”
“You a fighter?”
My lips curl into a smile. “I am a fighter and I’m going to fight to
win back my decent kinda guy.”
Chapter 26
Don't You Dare Leave Me Again
Sergio pulls up outside the front doors of Redemption. His face
is tight with emotion. Max’s payment went through, and now that we
retrieved the fax, it won’t be sent back. His mother will have a new
heart, and a chance at a longer life.
“Are you sure you want me to leave you here? It seems kinda rough
for a girl like you.”
“It’s perfect for a girl like me.”
Sergio leans over and grabs my hand. “I don’t know how to thank
you. I was such a bastard on the phone, and it killed me. I wasn’t lying
when I said you were the nicest debtor on my list.”
“You’ll have to thank Max. He’s the one who made the payment. I
told him once I thought people were essentially good. It never occurred
to me I wasn’t giving him the same benefit of the doubt.”
“Good luck.”
“Bye, Sergio. Stay in touch and let me know how your mom is
doing. You know where to find me.”
I close the door and race over to Amanda who is waiting at the entrance.
“I finished up at work just before I got your text,” she says. “I got
here just a few minutes ago.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Obsidian booms when we push
open the door. “I stalled the lockdown as long as I could. The main
event is about to begin. Grab your kit and let’s go.”
“That’s one hell of a voice you’ve got there.” Amanda follows us to
the first aid room and waits while I grab my kit.
“He’s gay,” I say over my shoulder.
“Doesn’t bother me.”
Obsidian laughs. “I’ve already got twice as much trouble as I need,
but when I’m free again, kitten, I’ll look you up. I’ve always had a soft
spot for angels.”
We race through the training area and head toward the ring. The
place is packed. Standing room only. The air is thick with anticipa-
tion. The club smells of stale sweat, cheap perfume, plastic mats, and
disinfectant
.
We skirt around the crowds and make it as far as the pen before
Jake blocks our way. A black bandana holds back his mass of curls and
the light glints off his oiled six-pack, visible above his low-slung jeans.
His eyes flick from me to Amanda and back to me. “Where the fuck
were you? You’re too late.”
Flesh slams on flesh. The crowd cheers.
“Get out of the way. I need to see him.”
Jake folds his arms across his chest. “He doesn’t need to see you.
Not now. He delayed the fight as long as he could. After I told him I
called you, he was sure you would come. He didn’t want to fight unless
you were here. Now, you’ll just be a distraction. You’ll never change
his mind.”
“I’m not here to change his mind. I’m here to support him. And if
he gets hurt, I’ll take care of him.”
I try to get around him but he stops me with a heavy hand on
my shoulder.
“Jake. Let her through. There’s no need to be cruel.” Amanda finds
her voice and Jake turns in her direction. There is so much heat in the
look they share; I take an involuntary step back.
“You would know about cruel. You broke up with me over nothing
and jumped into bed with someone else so fast it made my head spin. I
was just a game to you.”
Amanda sucks in a breath. “It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand.”
Jake steps toward her and takes her chin between his thumb and
his index finger. He tilts her head back, forcing her to meet his gaze.
“I understand. Perfectly. You don’t respect men. You reel them in, you
play with them, and then you throw them away. But I’m not like the
others, sugar. It doesn’t work that way with me. When I want a woman,
I don’t play around.” His chest heaves and his body trembles. For a
second I think—no, hope—he will kiss her, but then he lets her go and
steps away.
Amanda sucks in a breath and swallows. “You’re making a mistake.”
Jake folds his arms. “You made the mistake, Amanda. We had
something special and you threw it away.”
Her face crumples. “Why didn’t you tell me how you felt?”
“I thought you knew.” He runs his hand through his hair. “I
thought you felt the same way.”
Someone groans. A body hits the mat. I push past Jake and run
Against the Ropes Page 36