Chapter Four
KARLI
I spent two hours at that miserable party Michaela dragged me to on Saturday night before I couldn’t take another minute of it. She was already almost drunk when I left, but Trent was there with her, so I knew she would be okay.
I took a cab home and was less than enthusiastic to find Dad had invited the son of one of his old fighter friends to stay with us…indefinitely. He was a nice enough guy, but I wasn’t looking forward to living with two messy men, and I also knew this guy had had a big crush on me when he was eleven and I was fourteen. Kevin Andrews was painfully shy at the time, but had somehow managed to tell me how he felt. I was worried it would be awkward living in the same house. That was eight years ago, but I still felt bad when I thought about how disappointed he was when I told him I didn’t feel the same. Maybe I was more worried about myself being uncomfortable than him.
But, Dad hadn’t bothered to ask my opinion, so I’d just have to deal with it. As it turned out, he had matured quite a bit, which wasn’t too surprising since he was nineteen now.
He and I actually had a pleasant conversation about his life in Philly and underground fighting. He was cute when he talked about it. His face lit up and I could almost see a fire burning in him when he talked about wanting to be good enough to fight for a title someday.
I finally couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. I said goodnight and was showered and tucked into bed by midnight. I regretted the time I lost on my studying, but I was happy that I got at least six hours sleep before I had to get up and go to the gym.
By six a.m., I was on my hands and knees using a brush and a bucket of diluted bleach to scrub the mats in the octagon in a cut off pair of sweatpants and a tank top, with sweat rolling down into my eyes. I wished, not for the first time, that Dad and I had stayed in Minnesota after he retired. I missed the seasons and even the snow sometimes, especially around the holidays…or when I was sweating my ass off in the heat in the middle of October.
I’d been in Vegas for almost ten years already and I still hadn’t acclimated. I sat up to wipe a stray piece of hair out of my eyes as I looked at the big clock hanging on the wall. It was almost seven, which meant Dad would be here soon and the sweaty boys would soon follow. I wanted to be done with this before they got here. I started to bend back over when I heard the door open. I looked back up and I actually felt my head spin – just a little.
The man from the billboards walked in. Nick Storelli, in the flesh…and what hot, sexy flesh it was.
He was wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts. His arms and legs both flexed and rippled as he walked. His dark hair was longish, touching the collar of his shirt in the back and ending in little ringlets. His eyes were the color of the sky right before a storm hits, a dark blue, and as much as I didn’t want to feed some big, arrogant fighter’s ego, I felt like I couldn’t look away.
A slow smile spread across his face when he noticed me and two, deep slashes appeared along the sides of his face. He wasn’t just gorgeous; he was like a fucking God and that one little smile made my panties damp. Damn.
“Hello.” He stopped right outside the cage and the subtle, woodsy scent of him wafted through the mesh and jockeyed with the bleach for top spot in my senses. I had to concentrate as I opened my mouth and said,
“Hi.”
“I’m Nick.” I knew that, of course. It was hard to live in Vegas and not know that. I smiled and said,
“Hi; I’m Karli.”
“Pretty name for a pretty girl.” Such a line, but of course this guy could probably be a mute and still have women lining up.
“Thanks,” I said, hopefully dismissively, and I returned back to my work. I could still feel him hovering over me, and as big as this guy was, if we’d been outside, he probably would have blocked out the sun.
“You work here?”
I gave him a “Brilliant deduction, Sherlock” look before saying, “No, I just sneak in and scrub the mats on Sunday mornings. It’s what I live for.”
He laughed. Either he missed my sarcasm or he appreciated how stupid his question was; I was not sure which. I bent back down in hopes of discouraging more conversation and he said, “Is Charlie here yet?”
I blew a piece of hair out of my eyes as I looked up again. My neck was going to be sore tomorrow morning. “Not yet, but he should be in soon.”
“Hopefully he got some last night,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
He grinned and winked at me. “It always puts me in a better mood. No offense, but your boss can be kind of a dick.”
“Really? I’ve never noticed.”
“You’re kidding? Maybe he’s nicer to you,” he ran his eyes over my body and said, “For obvious reasons.”
I was becoming nauseated. Never again would my mouth water as I passed one of this guy’s billboards. I’d just have to remind myself what a prick he was. “He’s always nice to me,” I said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to what I was doing.”
“I don’t mind, and no offense about Charlie – he’s just way too uptight for my liking.”
“I’m sure he’d be crushed to know that you’re not a fan.”
He laughed again. “You’re adorable. We should hang out sometime.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Probably not,” I said.
He looked surprised. It was no surprise that he wouldn’t be used to women turning him down. Like I said, he was sex on a stick dipped in colorful ink…but I wasn’t interested. I looked at him for a few minutes, waiting for him to get the hint and walk away. When he didn’t, I went back to work and tried to forget that he was there.
“So, you live in Vegas, Karli?”
“Yes,” I said with a tortured sigh. I didn’t look back up at him that time.
“Hmm, I can’t believe I’ve never seen you around.”
“Maybe there was a mirror in the room and you just didn’t notice me.”
He laughed again. “Oh, I would have noticed you.” I scrubbed the mat harder and scooted away from him another foot to concentrate on a dirty spot there. I hoped he was finished with his stupid questions and remarks, but unfortunately, he wasn’t. “So, Karli, have you caught any of my fights?”
I looked up at him, smiled, and said, “I don’t think so. I’m sure I would have remembered.”
He grinned again. “I’m sure you would have.”
Wow, this guy’s arrogance might just surpass anyone I’ve ever met. “I’ll have to catch the next one, after my father teaches you how to fight.” The look on his face was classic. I wished I had a picture of it.
“Your father?”
I smiled sweetly and looked over toward where my father just walked in the door.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“Hi, Sweetheart,” my dad said. Then he looked at Nick and said, “Why aren’t you geared up and ready to go?”
I smiled at Nick again and went back to work. It might be a good day after all.
********
By the time I finished cleaning the octagon, Nick was geared up and Dad was sparring with him in the practice ring. A few of Dad’s other fighters had wandered in and I thought right then might be a good time to escape to the office and get some work done there.
As I passed the ring, I tried not to look at Nick, but in spite of the fact that I’d only known him five minutes and he already annoyed me, I couldn’t not look. He had changed out of his gym shorts into a pair fighter shorts. The front of his thighs looked like steel and as my eyes made their way up across his shirtless, washboard abs and very well-developed chest, I actually shuddered.
Thank God Dad had him dodging punches so he didn’t see me looking. I wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I found him attractive.
Once in the office, I tried to shake off that image and concentrate on paying bills. I was in the middle of that when my phone rang. It was Michaela. “Hey, girl,” I said as I put the phone to my ear.
“Don’t ‘hey, girl’ me, I’m mad at you.”
“For what?”
“Sneaking out as soon as I got drunk last night.”
I sighed. “You were with Trent, and Lisa and Danielle were with you, too.”
“It’s still not nice to sneak out on a person.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “But in my defense, I wasn’t sneaking. I said goodbye. You may have been a little too drunk to remember. But you were safe.”
“That’s not the point. You keep sneaking out. When are you going to do something crazy and have some fun?”
“Tell you what, let’s do brunch at Bouchon in an hour. I’ll buy and even have a bloody Mary or two before I come back to work. I never drink while I’m working. Crazy, huh?
She snorted. “That’s not what I had in mind and you know it.”
I laughed. “Well, that’s all you’re going to get for now; take it or leave it.”
“Can I have the lobster?”
“Whatever your heart desires.”
“Fine, I’ll meet you at the Venetian in an hour.”
“Make it two. I have to finish a few things up and then shower. I smell like bleach.”
“Okay, eleven it is.”
I hung up with her and got back to paying bills. I was in the zone with the sounds of men grunting and weights dropping in the background almost completely blocked out when I glanced down at the time at the bottom of the screen. It was ten fifteen. Damn!
I shut down the laptop and took the back hallway to the locker rooms so that I didn’t have to go through the gym. I bypassed the men’s locker room and went to the private one in back that I finally talked Dad into designating women only. We hadn’t gotten around to posting a sign yet, but my father’s gym was mostly men, anyways.
I stopped at the door and knocked on it. I thought I could hear water running inside. I knocked again when I hadn’t gotten a response and waited several seconds before pushing open the door. The room was steamy and I didn’t want to surprise someone half-naked, so I said,
“Hello?”
My heart nearly stopped when who other than Nick Storelli stepped out of the shower stall. He was as naked as the day he was born and beads of water dripped from the curls in his wet hair and rolled down his hard chest and abdomen. As if by a will of their own, my eyes followed them and landed on something I never should have seen, but couldn’t not look at. He had an erection and it was as big as the rest of him.
“Well, hello there, beautiful.” I forced my eyes up to his face. He was grinning.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Taking a shower. I had a great strength work-out this morning so Charlie said I could go get some lunch.” He put his arm up on the tile of the shower and said, “What about you, gorgeous; what did you have in mind?”
It was the first time in a long time that I was absolutely speechless. There was no way in hell that I was telling him what was on my mind…but I’ll be damned if I could think of anything else to say.