Below the Belt (3 page)

She pushed herself away from the bag and turned her back on both men. She didn’t care that he was here. He didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter that he’d seen her lose the other night.

Concentrating on her combinations with renewed determination, she attacked the bag some more, trying to keep all of her grandfather’s advice top of mind:
keep your guard hand up; shuffle forward, never step; snap your punches, don’t push them; punch through your opponent, not into her
.

After four minutes of hard work, she paused again.

He was still there, she could sense him. Damn him. Why didn’t he get his business with Ray over with and leave?

Sucking much-needed air into her lungs, she began to rain kicks on the bag—a snap kick from the knee, then another thundering roundhouse and a spinning back kick that sent the bag swinging.

“That’s some kick you’ve got there.”

She ignored him.
Asshole.

“What style do you do, Tae Kwon Do? Maui Thai?”

She kneed the bag and followed up with some elbow work.

“Tae Kwon Do. State champion three years in a row, right, Jimmy?” Ray answered for her.

She spun another kick into the bag. “Two years,” she corrected.

“You’re good,” Cooper said.

Because she was out of breath and gasping for a drink, she stopped and tugged one of her gloves off so she could grab the water bottle.

“Thanks. Coming from you, it means so much,” she said.

He lifted an eyebrow at her sarcasm and, even though he was wearing those dark sunglasses, she could feel his gaze slide over her body. She felt a ridiculous, completely unwelcome surge of awareness and covered by throwing back her head and gulping water.

“How are you pulling up after your fight?” he asked.

She swallowed then brushed at the sweat beading her forehead. She knew exactly how she looked: red in the face, shiny with exertion, hair stuck to her forehead and neck. She was also sporting one badly bruised eye, a swollen lip and numerous bruises across her belly and ribs.

“I’m fine,” she said. She didn’t want to talk about the fight.

“You found yourself a trainer yet?”

“What is this, twenty questions?” she asked, reaching for her towel.

“Just wondering if you’ve got someone other than that old man to tell you where you’re going wrong,” he said.

Jamie’s hands curled into the towel. If he had any idea who her grandfather was, he’d know how stupid he sounded right now. But telling him would open a can of worms she wasn’t ready to deal with yet. She was going to face the boxing world down one day—but it would be on her terms, on her schedule.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about me,” she said. “I’ll get sick of this boxing thing soon enough and go back to my needlework and cookie-baking like a good Stepford wife.”

Flashing him a saccharine smile, she slung the towel around her neck and strode over to her gym bag.

She tossed her workout gloves inside and hoisted the bag onto her shoulder. Ignoring Cooper, she kissed Ray on the cheek as she passed by.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

Then she headed for the house, her stride long, her head high, every muscle in her body signaling to Cooper Fitzgerald that he could go hang, thank you very much, as far as she was concerned.

C
OOPER SLID HIS
sunglasses up onto his head, the better to watch Jamie Holloway stalk away from him.

He was still coming to terms with the way his body had reacted to seeing her again at close range. The tight black shorts and form-hugging crop top she’d been wearing left precious little to the imagination, especially when soaked in sweat from a good, hard workout. She had a sizzling body—all firm muscle, with high, full breasts. His body had gone to red alert the moment he’d recognized her, then she’d turned around and a visceral stab of emotion had ripped through him when he’d registered her bruised and battered face. He was still trying to work out exactly what that emotion had been. Protectiveness? Anger? Frustration?

As her rounded, muscular butt disappeared into the house, he turned to Ray, a frown on his face.

“Who
is
the old guy, anyway?” he asked.

“Her grandfather. He did a bit of fighting in his time,” Ray explained vaguely.

Cooper swore. “You’re kidding me? She’s got her
grandfather
giving her advice in the ring? No wonder Jovavich ate her for breakfast.”

“She wants it. She’ll learn. Losing that fight is burning her up. It won’t happen a second time,” Ray said.

Cooper gave the other man a frustrated look. “I saw the fight, okay? She’s a long way off being ready to go pro. She’s got bad habits—and now I can see why. She’s used to fighting with her feet as well as her fists.”

“I had to be in Melbourne and I couldn’t make the fight. What happened?”

Cooper slid his sunglasses back onto his face. “She wasn’t ready. Someone ought to tell her that.”

Ray spread his hands wide. “You think I want her in that ring in the first place? I felt freakin’ sick when I saw her face this morning.”

You and me both.

“Yeah, well,” Cooper said, suddenly aware that he was wasting way too much time on a dead-end subject that had nothing to do with him. “I wanted to talk to you about your training schedule for next week.”

He sat beside Ray as he began to outline the new training regime he’d come up with, a plan designed to build stamina and capitalize on Ray’s speed in the ring. They talked for half an hour or so before Cooper checked his watch.

“I’ve got to be someplace else, but I’ll see you at the gym tomorrow, yeah?” he asked as he stood.

“Yeah.” Ray ran a hand over the bristle on his scalp, his gaze fixed on the horizon for a beat as he thought something through. “She’s got another fight in two weeks time, you know,” he said.

Cooper palmed his car keys. “Then she’ll lose again. Someone needs to tell her to quit while she’s ahead.”

“She’s not a quitter,” Ray said, looking at Cooper as though he was the one who could do something about the situation.

“She’s not my problem,” Cooper said very firmly.

He was almost sure he meant it, too.

Y
ET TWO WEEKS LATER
,
Cooper was watching as Jamie Holloway made her way to the ring for her second pro fight, the old man following in her wake with bucket and water and stool.

Why am I here?

He’d asked himself the same question about a million times. There was no promising young fighter to scout here tonight—there was only Jamie and her pigheaded determination. And still he was sitting here, on the edge of his seat, hoping to see a different outcome for her this time.

Stupid. Pointless. Frustrating. Because if she fought the way she did last time—and the odds were she would—she was going to lose.

He leaned his elbows on his thighs as the MC read out the fighters’ stats. Jamie’s opponent this time around was a girl from Queensland, taller than Jamie, more experienced. Not that that was hard.

He could see Jamie’s grandfather talking steadily near her ear as she waited in her corner for the referee to call her forward for instructions. What was the old man saying? And did it matter, when she had years of training, fighting and thinking in another discipline holding her back? As soon as the pressure was on, Jamie was going to want to use her knees and legs again. And that split second of hesitation where her brain overrode her instinct was going to leave her wide open to attack. Just like last time.

Nodding one final time, Jamie moved away from her grandfather toward the center of the ring where the ref was waiting. Cooper watched the old man climb down from the ring, his movements slow.

Talk about the blind leading the blind. What a ridiculous bloody situation.

Cooper stood. He’d seen enough. Then the bell rang, and the two women came out fighting. As before, Jamie threw the first punch, a nice straight armed jab that rocked the other fighter’s head back on her shoulders.

He sat down.

It didn’t take long for Jamie’s old habits to undermine her natural talent. And she was talented—Ray hadn’t lied when he said that. She was strong, fast, quick on her feet. She had good power in her punches, good control. She wasn’t afraid to go in hard and risk her opponent finding an opening. But that hesitation and that fumbling footwork let her down every time.

As the round ended and the bell rang, he watched with frustration as she sank onto the stool in her corner. She had a lot of potential. But she was never going to reach it if someone didn’t take her in hand.

After the regulation minute, the bell rang and the second round started. Again Jamie landed some good punches first up, and Cooper looked to the judges, urging them to score her high. But as the round ticked into the second then the third minute, those hesitations of hers began to tell again.

“Think with your fists, not your feet,” he found himself yelling in frustration at the ring. His voice was one of many, drowned out by the crowd, and he sprang to his feet, unable to watch anymore.

She was taking a pounding, her head bobbing on her neck, her steps slowing as her body reacted to the pain. He couldn’t stand by and watch her go down. It was like watching a bully kick a dog.

He excused his way past the other fans to get to the aisle. Descending the stairs, he headed for the nearest exit. At least, that was where he thought he was going. The bell sounded the end of the second round and somehow he found himself smooth-talking his way past the security guy guarding the ring and barreling up to Jamie’s corner where she was sitting on her stool, breathing heavily and washing her mouth out while her grandfather rinsed her mouth piece over the bucket.

“Stop lifting your goddamned feet,” he barked at her as soon as he was within earshot. The ring was four feet off the ground, putting him well below her, but her head snapped around when she heard him. “You keep wanting to use your feet and it’s killing your technique.”

She looked dazed, a little punch drunk he figured, but then her eyes cleared and she frowned.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Listen to me. She drops her guard every time she hits you with a cross. Watch her, you’ll see it. Block her with your forearm, and move in with a hook. You get her right, you can lay her out,” he said.

He shot a glance toward the center of the ring. He could see the ref gearing up to begin the third round.

“Why?” Jamie demanded, staring at him intently.

“Why what?” he asked, gaze darting to the ref again. Their time was nearly up; had she taken in a word he said?

“Why are you giving me advice?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea. Call it charity.”

She shook her head in turn. “Not good enough. I don’t take charity.”

The ref gestured for Jamie to move away from the corner, but she stood there, holding his eye.

He swore. Loudly. Was he insane? Was he really going to allow some misplaced sense of guilt and sexual interest and God knows what to push him into this decision? He had his training ambitions to think of, his reputation, his future…

“All right. I’ll take you on. Now get out there and lay her out,” he said.

She gave him a fierce, almost feral grin before giving her attention over to the fight.

Still not quite believing what he’d done, Cooper stood back and watched as Jamie took it up to her opponent again.

Man, but she was full of pluck.

“Name’s Arthur,” a voice yelled near his ear, and he tore his gaze from Jamie—his fighter—to see her grandfather standing there, gnarled hand extended.

“Cooper,” he said, shaking hands.

The old man bobbed his head and Cooper switched his attention back to the fight just in time to see Jamie step inside the other woman’s guard and send a smoking right hook toward her opponent’s jaw.

He knew before it landed that the fight was over. The other woman’s head snapped to the side. Her eyes rolled white, and she staggered into the ropes then down onto the canvas. The ref stepped in to deliver the eight count. Like a pro, Jamie kept her eyes glued to her fallen opponent until the ref signaled the fight was over.

Then Jamie lifted her arm in a single, triumphant punch to the sky.

Her first win. Despite his misgivings, he felt the rush, too. And when she glanced across at him, grinning, he grinned back.

Her grandfather was whooping with joy, and Jamie slid between the ropes and out of the ring to hug him.

“I told you,” she kept saying. “I told you I could do it.”

When they finally broke, she looked toward Cooper almost shyly.

“She dropped her guard just like you said, so I did what you told me to do,” she said.

“I know. I saw.”

She bumped her gloves together. He could feel her uncertainty. He guessed that she hadn’t thought beyond this moment, she’d been so focused on scoring her first win.

“So, what now?” she asked.

“Now the hard work really begins,” he said.

S
HE HAD A TRAINER
.
And not just any trainer—she had Cooper Fitzgerald. Lying on the ratty couch in the apartment she shared with her grandfather later that night, Jamie lifted the bag of frozen peas from her cheekbone so she could see her grandfather where he was puttering around in the kitchen.

“He wants to see me at his gym first thing tomorrow,” she said.

“I heard. Not deaf yet,” her grandfather said. She could hear the smile in his voice.

She fell silent again, reliving in her mind the moment when her fist connected with her opponent’s jaw and she’d won the fight. All because Cooper showed her the way. Excitement and anticipation bubbled up inside her. With him at her side, she was going to make her mark.

“He’s good,” she said, dropping the bag of peas again. “The way he spotted her weakness like that.”

“Yep. He knows what he’s doing.”

Crossing over from the kitchen, he slid a plate onto the battered coffee table in front of her. Toasted cheese and ham, his specialty.

“Should have more protein after a big fight, but you know my cooking’s not up to much.” He shrugged as he sank into his favorite armchair and rested his plate on his knees.

He was wearing an ancient green shirt her grandmother had bought him back when they were first married, and what was left of his gray hair sat up in tufts over his ears. His once-strong shoulders curled forward with age and tiredness, and the hands that held his plate were thick and twisted with arthritis.

A fierce rush of love filled her. She adored this old man with everything she had. He’d never let her down, never betrayed her, never stopped protecting her. And now it was her turn to do the same for him.

Her critical gaze scanned the room, noting the grayed curtains, the stained walls, the chipped tiles in the kitchenette and the way the stuffing was exploding out of one corner of the couch where the upholstery had given way after years of wear and tear. Arthur Harrison Sawyer deserved better than this. In his day, he had been a boxer of renown, one of the greats who had forged a name for Australian boxers around the world. He’d fought both Muhammad Ali and Frazier before he’d dropped down a weight class and carved out his own niche. He’d fought hard and long and with enormous heart.

He deserved better.

She was going to make things better for him, for both of them. They were going to get out of this apartment. She was going to make sure he had heating in winter and cooling in summer, and that he never had to think twice about buying his monthly copy of
The Ring,
his favorite boxing magazine, because it was a luxury they couldn’t really afford.

She was going to make it possible for him to hold his head high again after what her father had done. She was going to right the wrong, remind the boxing world that the name Sawyer was an honorable one, a great one, not a symbol of weakness and greed and failure.

“We’ll be able to leave this place soon,” Jamie said as she reached for her toast. She bit into it without testing it for temperature and hissed with pain as she burned the roof of her mouth.

“Every time,” her grandfather said, shaking his head and huffing out a laugh as she lunged for her water glass.

“What can I say? I’m a creature of habit,” she said with a grin.

Leaving her toast to cool some more, she lay back on the couch, repositioned her bag of peas and closed her eyes.

Tomorrow she had her first session with Cooper Fitzgerald. Things were finally on the move.

She frowned as the one reservation she had about her new trainer circled to fill her thoughts, as it had on and off ever since the fight and Cooper’s unexpected appearance in her corner: she didn’t know what had changed his mind about her.

She wanted to think it was because he saw the potential for greatness in her, but she was also uneasily aware that every time they’d met, he’d looked at her the way a man looks at a woman he wants to get busy with.

And she hadn’t exactly not noticed the fact that he was a whole lot of man, either.

Was it going to be a problem? She opened her eyes and stared at the water stain on the ceiling.

She’d make sure it wasn’t a problem, one way or another. This was her shot, and it was way more important than sexual curiosity or whatever it was that existed between them.

Sitting up again, she tested her toast with a finger before taking another bite.

“Smart girl,” her grandfather said with a half smile.

“Absolutely,” she said.

T
HE MOMENT
Jamie Holloway walked in the door of his gym in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Newtown the next morning, Cooper realized he’d bought himself a whole world of trouble when he signed her on.

For starters, every single male in the gym stopped what he was doing the moment he noticed her long legs clad in tight black Lycra, her bodacious ass and her generous breasts. It didn’t matter that she was wearing a loose white T-shirt over her leggings. Or that she was sporting a bruised cheekbone, didn’t have a scrap of makeup on and her hair was pulled back into a tight, high ponytail. She was sexy, hot, gorgeous, and every man in the place knew it and wanted to do something about it.

And that wasn’t even the most disturbing part of it all. No, that honor belonged to the fierce, fundamental surge of jealousy and territorialism he felt when all those male eyes checked her out.

Mine,
his body and his animal instincts screamed.
Get your freakin’ eyes and minds off her.

He was about to embark on an intimate, intense relationship with her that was supposed to be based on mutual trust. He was about to become her
mentor,
for Pete’s sake. And all he could think about was how it would feel to have her body against his, skin to skin, and how wet and tight and hot she’d feel as he slid inside her….

Shit.

Take a cold shower and get over it, Fitzgerald.

It wasn’t as if he was hard up for booty action. Hell, he could pick up his phone and have a woman just as sexy and hot in his bed within the hour.

The thought didn’t provide the release valve he needed and he was frowning by the time she’d crossed the gym floor and stopped in front of him, her expression open and sunny.

“You’re late,” he said. “Lesson number one, I expect my fighters to be punctual.”

The smile froze on her lips.

“We couldn’t find a parking spot. My grandfather’s still looking,” she said.

He eyed her coolly. “Warm up, then we’ll talk,” he said.

She frowned, opened her mouth, then shut it again without saying a word. Slinging her bag to one side near the wall, she pulled out a skipping rope and began to jump.

He went over to the counter near the front door and started checking some paperwork his lawyer had sent through, keeping a discreet eye on her all the while.

Slowly, the guys around him stopped gawking and started working out again.

Pathetic. Men really did think with their dicks—and he was as bad as the rest of them.

Arthur Holloway entered a few minutes later, stopping alongside the counter to greet Cooper.

“Hiya,” he said, his gaze sharp as he checked out first Cooper then the gym. “Nice place you got here.”

Cooper glanced around at the raw brick walls, the exposed ceiling beams, the scarred wooden floors and the single regulation boxing ring that occupied the very center of the space. A long time ago the building had originally been a grain store, but it had been a gym for many years now and the smell of leather and sweat had soaked into the mortar. When he’d bought the place he’d repainted, fixed broken windows, installed new bathrooms and equipment and updated the offices, but the place retained its old-school feel.

That and the fact that he was around the place a lot more now that he was retired had helped build membership numbers and business was booming. It didn’t hurt to have pros like Ray training here. Guys who sat behind desks for a living liked to sweat alongside real fighters. Made them feel as if they were playing with the big boys.

“Thanks. You always come to Jamie’s training sessions?” Cooper asked. He hoped he wasn’t going to have problems with the old guy countermanding orders or sticking his oar in.

“Nope. Just wanted to check this place out, make sure it’s everything Jimmy seems to think it is,” Arthur said.

By which the old guy meant check Cooper out.

Cooper was about to respond when he registered that Jamie had moved onto the long bag and was pounding it with a series of powerful kicks.

“Excuse me,” he said. He strode across the floorboards and didn’t stop until he was standing in front of her.

She stopped. Her eyebrows rose toward her hairline as she registered his annoyance.

“What now?”

“From now on, I don’t ever want to see you using your legs to fight again. You got that?” he said. “You’re a boxer. Boxers fight with their fists, not their feet.”

“What?” Her silver eyes flashed defiance. “It’s a good workout, a good warm-up.”

“You lost that first fight and you nearly lost last night because you’re used to relying on your legs too much. Every time you want to fire off a roundhouse or a back kick, you lose precious seconds reminding yourself that you’re in a boxing ring and only your fists are legal,” he said.

She shook her head. “No way. I lost that fight because she was faster than me.”

Why was he surprised that she was disagreeing with him at the very first hurdle? Had he honestly expected anything less from a woman with so much attitude?

He was tempted to yell at her the way his first trainer used to yell at him back when he was young and hot-tempered and lacking in discipline. But Jamie was a smart fighter. She learned quickly when she wanted to—she’d shown him that in spades last night when she took his advice and knocked her opponent out. He wanted to harness those smarts straight off the bat. Going head-to-head with her wasn’t going to achieve that.

“You warm enough to go a few rounds?” he asked.

She looked surprised that he wasn’t pressing the issue.

“Sure.”

Cooper scanned the gym, honing in on Mick. At around a hundred and sixty pounds, Mick was a middleweight like Jamie and only had an inch on her in height.

“Mickey, suit up. I want you to go a few rounds with Jamie,” Cooper called out.

Mick looked as though all his Christmases had come at once. Cooper rolled his eyes. The sooner the rest of the team started to see Jamie as one of the boys, the better.

One of the gym assistants helped Jamie tape and glove up and fitted her with a padded head-guard while Cooper did the same with Mick.

“I don’t want you to go easy on her,” he instructed as he worked.

Mick kept throwing glances Jamie’s way, especially when she pulled off her T-shirt to reveal a tight-fitting sports crop top. Cooper grabbed the other man’s chin and brought his gaze back to meet his own.

“Listen to me. I want you to press her—not too hard, she’s probably still feeling last night’s fight. But I want you to make her sweat, okay?”

Mick nodded. Checking the laces on Mick’s gloves, Cooper gave him the all clear and held the ropes for him to climb into the ring. Then he signaled for Jason, one of his gym assistants.

“Yeah, boss?” Jason asked, his attention glued to Jamie.

“Grab the video camera. I want you to get everything she does,” he instructed.

It was a common enough tool—football players used tape all the time to review plays and understand their own strengths and weaknesses. Jamie was so stubborn and strong-willed that he knew the only way she’d understand his no-kick rule would be if she saw her faulty footwork herself.

Cooper glanced across to see Arthur had joined him, arms crossed over his chest.

“This’ll be interesting.”

“At the very least,” Cooper said.

They grinned at each other. Arthur had a tooth missing, a common hazard for boxers despite the protection of mouth guards. Curious, Cooper studied the other marks that boxing had left on the old guy’s face.

“You used to fight, Ray said?” Cooper asked.

“Did he? Yeah, I’ve seen a few rounds,” Arthur said with a shrug. He kept his focus on the two fighters warming up in the ring and didn’t offer up anything more.

Taciturn old bugger.

Cooper switched his attention back to the ring.

“Okay, let’s get into it,” he ordered.

Jamie and Mick met in the center and tapped gloves before falling into orthodox stances and starting to circle one another. True to form, Jamie was the first to move in, feinting with her right before hitting Mick’s torso with a left cross. Mick let her get a few shots in before he began to work her over. None of the hits were hard or intended to hurt, but both fighters had worked up a sweat within minutes and it didn’t take long for Jamie’s footwork to become compromised as she began to feel the pressure.

Cooper let them fight for a few more minutes before calling a halt.

“Thanks, Mick. Nice work. Jamie, my office,” he said.

Grabbing the video camera from Jason, he led the way to his domain.

By the time Jamie followed a minute later, towel in hand and without her gloves and head gear, he had the camera hooked up to the TV and the tape ready to play.

Jamie’s expression was wary as he gestured her toward a chair opposite his own.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to film us,” she said.

“Didn’t I?”

She was still breathing heavily. In the enclosed space of his office he was very aware of her scent—something fresh and bright that he guessed was her deodorant.

Instead of taking a chair, she leaned against his desk, her butt propped on the edge. He had to force his gaze away from her long legs as she crossed her ankles and leaned back on her arms.

For a fleeting second, he allowed himself to wonder what those thighs would feel like clenched around him as he pounded into her.