by Teagan Kade
It hadn’t just been Shaun’s demeanor that sparked murmurs amongst the mothers at the gym, either. I let Jerry do his thing moving unassumingly around the ring, snap a few strategic photographs. It was best I stayed out of his way. I blended into the background, which was the reason I caught random drifts of the conversations happening here and there.
Does he have a girlfriend?
Is he seeing anyone?
I’d gladly go one-on-one with him all night long.
I bet the real knockout is hiding in those pants.
God, he’s fucking sexy. Look at the way those biceps bulge. Speaking of bulges...
It was hard for me to take my eyes off of his arms. I couldn’t disagree with the women’s assessment, and I studiously avoided looking any lower. The sleeves of Shaun’s fitted polo seemed to stretch over his hard biceps and accentuated every inch of his muscles. As much as I wanted to remain neutral, I couldn’t help but notice the heat pooling between my thighs as I watched Shaun throw one fast punch into the air after another.
The man was beautiful and I was acting far too irrational for my own good. I had to watch. Agreeing to have dinner with him was probably the stupidest thing I could have done. But I couldn’t resist. Plus, I’d been trying to get reservations at Lys Blanc for months. A little food wouldn’t hurt, right? A girl had to eat.
That’s what I continued to tell myself right up until I walked through the doors of Lys Blanc and approached the host stand. A tall man looked at me and then back down at his desk. I hadn’t even opened my mouth before he gave me a short nod. “Ms. Ellis?”
I was surprised. “Yes.”
“Mr. Nichols is waiting for you at your table. Let me show you in.” He turned. I moved to follow. I had to admit I thought Shaun might have been pulling my leg about getting a reservation for the same night, but no. It looked like he really did know the owner.
I saw him in a cozy booth at the back. I couldn’t stop the flutter in my stomach as he stood when he spotted me. He watched me warily as if he wasn’t sure how I was going to react. I had to remind myself this wasn’t a date.
It’s just business, I told myself. Nothing more.
I pasted on my most professional smile even though I couldn’t help but notice the cut of his sport coat across his broad shoulders. He cleaned up good, which was another reason I had him dress more preppy than sporty for appearances. People needed to see Shaun had more sides to him than the scary, sweaty guy in the ring—not that there was anything wrong with that side of him.
I stuck out my hand when I reached him. “Good to see you again.” It sounded lame as soon as it left my mouth. I’d seen him earlier in the morning, after all.
“Thanks for coming.”
I was struck again by the gravely tone of his voice. He motioned for me to join him in the booth. I made sure to keep an appropriate amount of space between us despite the close quarters. I took the menu from the maître d’ and started to study it. I needed to focus on something benign, anything other than the panty-melting muscle mountain across from me.
“Talking strategy is always a good plan,” I said, settling in. My eyes didn’t leave the menu. “Part of our debriefing after every event, including your fights, will be hearing what you thought and felt about how things went. I can tweak here and there based on your feedback.”
“Today was good,” he said simply. “I had fun.”
“Even better.”
There was silence as the waiter came by and rattled off the specials. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to eat at all the way my stomach flip-flopped every time I caught Shaun’s eye. He looked hungry, and given way he was undressing me with his eyes, I sensed it wasn’t for anything on the menu.
I certainly wasn’t unaccustomed to attention from good-looking men. But my career took almost all of my time and attention. I didn’t have time for anything even closely resembling a relationship. In fact, my longest relationship to date was with my rabbit vibrator. A girl needed a tool she could count on.
“What is it?” I finally asked when I couldn’t stand the weight of his stare any longer.
“I like your hair down.”
Consciously, I moved my hand to smooth the waves around my shoulders. For work, I always wore my hair up in a simple chignon because I thought it made me look older. It also kept wayward strands out of my face. But for some reason tonight, I had broken my rule and left it down to cascade around my shoulders.
Shaun picked up the glass of red wine that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. I didn’t plan on having a drink tonight, but it didn’t seem as if I was being offered the option to decline. I picked up my glass. “What are we drinking to?”
“To new, friendly partnerships,” he said. His eyes never left mine even as he took a sip of the wine.
Shaun
I couldn’t read Tori’s body language to save my life. I had no idea what she was thinking. I was flying blind. It was a wholly uncomfortable feeling, one I was starting to get used to when I was around her. I knew I forced dinner on her and I sensed that she wasn’t happy about it.
She barely acknowledged my toast and its thinly concealed innuendo. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting or even what I wanted, but something inside of me was hankering for something more than just a ‘friendly’ business dinner.
It felt as if my heart was going to pound right out of my chest when I spotted her across the room. With her cascading mahogany curls and skin-tight black slip dress, she made herself the object of attention for every man in a three-mile radius. Immune I was not. Tori in her business get-up was a fucking fox. Dressed up for an evening on the town, she was a fox I wanted strewn across my bed, twisted up with me in my sheets begging for more.
Christ. I was rock hard and couldn’t help but continue to shift in my seat like a schoolboy. I hoped she didn’t notice. I felt unsure of myself and off-balance again. How did I play this situation? Tori had made it abundantly clear she didn’t date the clients she worked with, so why did I care? I wasn’t hurting for pussy when I needed to scratch that itch, but I was drawn to Tori. Simple.
“Why athletes?” I asked, attempting to break the silence between us.
She gave a mirthless laugh. “You mean why would a girl want to work with a bunch of sweaty meatheads if I wasn’t planning on screwing any of them?”
I frowned. I had clearly struck a nerve. “No, I didn’t mean—”
She pointed at my face. “Like I said, you have to start smiling more. Have you ever looked the pictures of you that get posted in the media and online? You always have a serious, slight scowl on your face.”
I blinked. This wasn’t the response I was expecting. “I never really thought about it.”
“You come across as a bit of a grump, too, so give me something to work with, Shaun. Baby steps, remember? Step one is ‘smile more often.’”
I took another sip of wine and resisted the urge to loosen the ring of my tie. I didn’t like feeling encumbered by so many clothes, but this kind of place required digging out a sport coat. “Okay, I’ll work on it. It would help if you’d say something that made me smile, though.”
I could see a visible struggle on her face when she realized how she’d stepped right into that one. Tori was trying to keep things entirely professional, and I wasn’t playing her game.
“My father was an athlete, and he encouraged me to play a lot of sports growing up. It’s always been an area I was interested in. So, when I started doing PR work, I gravitated in that direction.”
“What sport did your father play?”
There was a brief pause while her eyes flickered to mine and then back to her wine glass. “He was a boxer.”
“No kidding,” I laughed. I knew my face had broken out into a wide smile. We had something in common. “Anybody I’d know?”
She shook her head and traced the lip of her glass with her fingertip. I could just imagine that soft, deft touch trailing around the head of my cock. It twitched in my pants as
if it was actually happening. I barely kept the groan from escaping my lips.
“My dad was small-time. He quit when I was a baby. He loved it, though. Taught me everything I know.”
I rested my arms across the back of the booth. Talking shop was an easy topic. I was delighted to hear Tori had an interest in my chosen profession that extended beyond the average person’s knowledge of the sport. “You’ll have to show me your moves sometime.”
Although it hadn’t been my intention to slide more innuendo into the conversation, I couldn’t help but grin when I heard the words in the air and saw her widened eyes.
“My moves are irrelevant,” she said tersely, gulping down a large sip of wine.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said. I noticed a slight flush across her cheeks. Perhaps my icy PR agent wasn’t as immune to me as she wanted me to believe.
When the waiter appeared next to my elbow to take our order, I thought Tori looked relieved. After he left, I was eager to turn the conversation back to Tori’s moves, but she had other plans as she turned the conversation.
“I have an appointment with Nigel in the morning to review your upcoming schedule,” she said, all business again. “Normally I’ll tee up different options and run them through him. The two of you can decide which ones make the most sense given your other commitments. I’ll handle all the bookings and subsequent press inquiries. You can stay focused on your training. Once we get a few months of positive PR under our belts, the rest of the stories from the past should fade away.”
“Sounds too good to be true. I wish you had been around during Rio.”
Tori’s expression was unreadable. “I think you handled Rio as best you could considering the circumstances. The trick is making sure Rio doesn’t happen for real all over again. I’m assuming you plan on making boxing your career for the foreseeable future?”
“I do,” I wanted to kick myself. Why had I decided to bring that up? I wanted everyone to forget what happened so badly, but it felt like the elephant in the room. “I don’t have any underlying issues, if that’s what you’re asking. I can control my temper. All of those other things have been blown way out of proportion.”
“I understand.” She looked away from me. Her gaze took in the entire restaurant. “But they don’t, so we have to make them see you aren’t who they have perceived you to be since that happened. So smile. Keep your nose clean. It will be easy. I promise.”
This time, the smile on my face felt fake and wrong, but I lodged it in place. Tori deftly moved the conversation to more benign questions about my past. She said it was information she needed to make sure she could pull the right emotional strings.
By the end of the meal I realized Tori probably knew more about me than Nigel or Hammer, yet I still knew next to nothing about her. I insisted on picking up the check using the excuse it was a business expense. She could hardly argue that.
I couldn’t help but put my hand on the small of her back to guide her out of the restaurant. I thought I felt her shiver beneath my touch. She was close enough I could smell the sea-breeze smell of her hair again. I wanted to bury my nose in it and find the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck, perhaps turn that shiver into a full-blown tidal wave.
Tori moved away from me as soon as we stepped onto the sidewalk. “My car’s here,” she said pointing to the same sedan I’d seen earlier that day.
“How about a night cap back at my place?” I offered.
She shook her head with a soft smile. “We’ve gotten as friendly as we’re going to get, Shaun. This is it.”
“What good is a rule if it can’t be broken on occasion?” I asked. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew what she was thinking. I was thinking the same thing. The inadvertent memory of Rio shot up between us. Everything might have gone down in my favor, but I had broken a pretty big rule that almost cost me everything.
She frowned. “Thank you for dinner, Shaun. I’ll be in touch.”
I shut the door behind her and waited for the car to drive away. I pulled my sport coat tighter to block the cool evening air. I could walk home. Hopefully by the time I got there, I wouldn’t need a cold shower.
Chapter Five
Tori
“I’ve told you I’ll get back to you, Ms. Ellis. Calling me ten times a day doesn’t endear me to you, by the way.” The male voice on the other end of the phone was smarmy and self-assured in a way that made my blood boil.
“I would be happy to stop calling if you or Shaun simply called me back, or even sent me an email about which of these events he wants to do,” I said, tapping my pen on the top of the desk. “I need to be able to do my job.”
“What exactly is your job again?” Nigel asked.
So far, Nigel Ross had proved to be extremely difficult to work with. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. I had made it clear from our initial introduction my only interest was ensuring Shaun’s public face was positive so there wouldn’t be any further issues with his sponsors. That made Nigel’s life easier in the long run too, so it didn’t make any sense why the guy was being such a dick to me. I figured it had to be because I was a woman. I ran into that more often than I liked, working in the inner circle with athletes’ entourages.
I rubbed my fingers along the bridge of my nose and took a deep breath. Time to try another tack. “Nigel, I want Shaun to be successful. You want Shaun to be successful. We’re on the same team here. If Shaun can just pick one event a week from the list I sent over that fits into his schedule, that’s better than nothing. I just need something to work with.”
“Shaun is ramping up for his next fight. It’s in less than two weeks. He doesn’t have time for any of this high-brow charity nonsense,” Nigel responded, tone snide.
“I picked several charities I know Shaun would be interested in supporting,” I said. “His father is a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for ten years. His sister was diagnosed with leukemia when she was eight and has been in remission for the last nine years. He had a friend in high school who suffered from severe depression and committed suicide. Any one of these causes would be delighted to have the support of an Olympic gold medalist and have an event scheduled here locally in the next week. It would only be a few hours, and I’ll do what I can to work it around his training schedule.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree at the wrong time, Ms. Ellis. Maybe after the next fight. Look, I have another appointment at the top of the hour. We can speak again in a few weeks.” The other end of the phone went dead.
I stared at my phone in disbelief. The prick hung up on me. I leaned back in my chair and sighed. I heard a knock on my door. Kevin Shaffer, my colleague and best friend, stuck his head inside. “Bad time?”
I waved him in. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
He dropped into the chair across from me and glanced at the paperwork sprawled across my desk. “How’s boxer boy going?”
“At a standstill,” I said as I started gathering up the documents and tried to put them in some semblance of order. “So far I’ve had zero luck getting him to agree to any appearances, and I’ve found some good ones—high-visibility events that would set him up well before his next fight.”
“That guy seems like a loaded cannon if you ask me,” Kevin said. “And what about that story from Tulsa? The roofies? Guy must have been pretty desperate to resort to those kinds of measures. Maybe he has a problem in the bedroom.”
I loved Kevin, but he was also the office gossip. It was a good thing we all had confidentiality agreements in place for our clients.
“I don’t think he has any problems in that arena,” I said, clearing my throat.
He leaned forward in his chair. “Oh my. Have you finally broken your precious ethical rules and gone in for a closer look at the merchandise?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him. “It isn’t just an ethical rule I made up. It is an actual rule of employment here, remember?”
Ke
vin waved it off. “Rules are meant to be broken.” I could only guess how many times Kevin had broken the one in question. He was only limited by the number of gay clients Kommen and Russell had at any given point in time.
“He did flirt with me. At least, I think it was an attempt at flirting,” I admitted.
“Tell me everything,” Kevin said with a dramatic flourish as he leaned closer to my desk. “The man is gorgeous, and you are a hottie. Of course he’d flirt with you. Otherwise, he’s either dead… or gay. Do you think he might be gay?”
I couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of my chest. “If the way I caught him checking out my cleavage the other night was any indication, I think you’re out of luck, Kevin.”
“Damn,” he said with a sigh. “His eyes are so pretty.” He picked up the 8x10 slick from my desk and stared at it with a longing look. “Did you flirt back at least? There are no rules about flirting, right?”
“No, I did not flirt back,” I said, swiping the picture out of his hands and tucking it back into my file folder. “I am not going to lead anyone on. But he’s sweet in an awkward kind of way. He doesn’t like talking much, I think. It took every bit of my Q&A charm to pry details out of him the other night at dinner. Most guys love to talk about themselves, but not Shaun.”
“Dinner? You had dinner with the hot boxer? That doesn’t sound like it was entirely on the straight and narrow, Tori. Hate to tell you, but you like him.”
“I like him as a client. I don’t like him like him.
“Oh, you like him A LOT,” Kevin said, standing up. “If I know you, you’re doing the typical avoid-and-conquer routine by working everything through his agent instead of just talking to him directly.”