Chapter One
Natalie
If there was anything I had learned from reporting for five years, it was to act as if you belonged. Even when you didn’t.
I plastered a professional-but-distracted expression on my face, one that I hoped told everyone around me that I was meant to be here but not meant to be disturbed. It seemed to work, as I marched past the reception area with nothing but a curt nod towards the woman behind the desk and soon found myself heading down towards the changing rooms.
I could still hear the roar of the crowd outside, and it made my heart zing a little. I wasn’t worried necessarily – well, nervous, but little more than that. Knowing that the guy I was hunting down could get a crowd so excited confirmed that I was right to pursue this story, and that there was no way I should have been able to break in here so damn easily. My palms were sweating slightly, and I rubbed them hurriedly over my pants. Great. I was panicking. How long had I been trying to hunt this guy down? It felt as though it had been a lifetime since I had first heard about Jacob. I pitched the story at once, bursting into the editor’s office and demanding the chance to cover this.
“Are you sure this isn’t bullshit?” Tanya, the editor of the editorials section, raised her eyebrow curiously. I would have asked the exact same thing in her position.
“I know it sounds ridiculous--” “A millionaire MMA fighter?” She cut across me. “Yeah, it seriously does.”
“But trust me, I have confirmation on this,” I assured her. “I just need the go-ahead and I’ll get him.”
“You think you can make this happen?” She sounded skeptical. I was a little offended, but then, it was her job to ask a bunch of questions and make sure that I wasn’t going to crap out on her.
“I’m certain,” I nodded, feeling that bubbly feeling in my chest that I always got when I knew I was on to a good story. “Trust me. Just give me the nod and I’ll get it to you.”
“You have my blessing,” she waved her hand, turning her attention back to the drafts pulled up on her laptop. “Good luck.”
“Thank you!” I blurted out before I had a chance to stop myself. She glanced up at me, a wry smile on her face, and I remembered the day she’d hired me. She had admitted afterwards that she was charmed by the fact that I seemed ridiculously enthusiastic and assumed it had more to do with my freshness to the business than anything else, but was pleased when I kept up my blind optimism in the face of even the most ridiculously hard-to-find story. And this one had turned out to be something of a nightmare to pin down. I mean, what was the point of this guy even having an agent or any press people if he was never actually going to talk to us? I knew it wasn’t just me who had been shot down time and time again, because I’d checked in with some of my fellow graduates at other papers and found that they had come up against a similar wall when trying to hunt him out. Jacob Dundry, it seemed, was a hard man to get a hold of.
Not that I was super-surprised by that. The whole reason I’d gone to seek him out in the first place was because I couldn’t find any decent profiles on him. And that had to be because no-one could get hold of him, and not because his story wasn’t interesting. Because, even though panic was lancing through my system as I followed the signs to the locker rooms, I could easily distract myself with the reminder that if I got this, it would be the story of my career to date.
I was filled with a whole new resolve, lifted my chin, and managed to suck in a few deep breaths to calm myself. I just had to keep my head together, no matter how tempting it was to turn around and run out of there before anyone figured out that I was in no way meant to be this far back.
Jacob had entered MMA fighting when he was twenty, after spending his teens and would-be college years studying under the best boxers, martial artists, and various defensive strategists he could get his hands on. That might have been tough for someone who came from a different background, but for Jacob, finding the cash to pay these professionals was pretty easy.
His father was Cal Dundry, a multi-millionaire in the tech industry. I had no idea what he made of the career his son had chosen, but he had indulged his passion for years before Jacob decided he had found his calling. Jacob was still set to inherit a mind-boggling amount of money from his father sometime in the future, but he was already raking in a decent amount off his own back.
I just wanted to know why a guy who could have chosen any cushy job in the world had decided that he was going to get the crap kicked out of him over and over again by some of the scariest guys in the world.
And well, he had soon proved himself to be pretty damn good at his profession of choice. From the mutterings I could hear from around the time he started to fight, most people assumed that either his father was paying people off to let him win in order to pander to his rich-boy ego, or he was fluking into a few wins with people who were already towards the end of their illustrious careers.
But soon enough, it became clear that he was more than that. He was a force to be reckoned with. It didn’t take Jacob long to work his way up the ranks and prove himself out of his father’s money, so well that soon enough, people forgot about his billionaire upbringing and he rose to become one of the most prominent and respected fighters in the city, then the state. I was catching him after a pre-tour fight, a fixture that had been put together presumably in order to get crowds pumped about his upcoming travels around the country. Another reminder of his father’s cash, he was able to indulge his whim to fight someone in every state, thanks to sponsorship from the family company.
I wondered how he felt about it; if he needed the cash and grudgingly accepted it, or if he expected it. I turned another corner, making sure that my feet never stopped moving. If someone spotted me standing still and looking around as though I didn’t have a clue what was going on, it wouldn’t take long for them to rumble me.
I had turned up a few hours ago, after managing to beg a ticket off one of my co-workers for about twice the asking price. But the money could hang, because I was in. I was barely close enough to see him fight, but I managed to catch a glimpse of him as he walked out into the ring; he was being projected on giant screens around the sticky-floored stadium, but actually seeing him in person made my heart skip a beat.
It was crazy seeing the man in person, after I’d heard so much about him, but that wasn’t the reason why a flush instantly appeared on my cheeks. There weren’t too many decent photographs of him kicking around, and none of them did justice to the man I’d barely seen, even for a split-second as he lifted a hand to acknowledge the appreciative yells of the crowd.
He stood at about six feet tall, all lean muscles and carefully curated strength. His hair was cropped short, and his eyes were blisteringly blue even on the pixelated blur of the big screen. He was gorgeous. Gorgeous.
But I put that out of my head as I marched down another winding corridor. Jesus, how far away was this damn locker room? I just wanted to get my hands on him already. I was impatient. I mean, he had no idea of how many times I’d called his agent asking for an interview, or how often I’d tried to get in touch with the venues he was fighting at in an attempt to meet him face-to-face. He’d probably never so much as heard my name before, when his was the only one that had been going around my head for the last month.
Had it been that long? Yeah, probably – I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t already exhausted every other possible option to actually get hold of him. I had promised Tanya that story and I was damn sure that I was going to get it. I didn’t pick up a position at one of the biggest sports magazines in the country only to back down in the face of adversity.
I had to be brave and strong and certainly not make eye contact with the official-looking guy who brushed past me and gave me a curious look. I kept my gaze focused on the middle distance and kept walking, kept walking. That was all I had to do. Keep walking.
The signs to the locker room finally found me standing outside a dingy-looking door that presumably had the focus of my best feature yet, behind it. I placed a hand on the wood, closed my eyes, and centered myself. There was nothing to be nervous about. He was just a guy at the end of the day, and I wasn’t scared of guys. I wasn’t scared of anyone.
I pushed the door, and it opened with a small “whoosh” of air, taking me by surprise. I had expected it to be locked, maybe even quietly hoped for it. But no, instead I found myself inhaling the unpleasantly sweaty scent of a locker room. But the scent didn’t bother me - not when I spotted Jacob standing at the other end of the wooden bench, his back turned to me.
“Angelo, can you give me a minute-”
“Uh, hey,” I cleared my throat, and he turned around at once, his eyebrow cocked. He didn’t look worried when he saw me. In fact, quite the opposite. His eyes swept up and down my body appreciatively, and I tugged awkwardly on the bottom of my t-shirt, wishing I had put on something a little more seductive.
“Hello,” He greeted me, his gaze travelling slowly back up to my eyes. A smile flicked up the corners of his mouth. “What do you want?”
“I’m Natalie Paulson,” I stepped towards him and extended my hand. “I’m from Sports in Print-“
“Oh, you’re the reporter?” He glanced over at me as he went into a locker just next to him. He opened it up, pulling out a towel, and pulled off the shirt he had thrown on after the fight. His body in close-up was…fuck, I had never seen anything like it in my life. I cleared my throat and did my best to keep myself focused on the task at hand, even if that was incredibly hard when I had those abs as a distraction. And his arms. And his chest. Jesus. Was I that easily distracted?
“Yeah, that’s me,” I nodded, averting my eyes politely. There wasn’t much professionalism in ogling his half-naked body. “I’m here to-”
“Didn’t Angelo tell you to fuck off?” He remarked good-naturedly. He didn’t sound mad, though his words implied something different.
“Yeah,” I shrugged, trying to act cool. “But I think there’s a great story here and you guys are being dumb passing it up.”
“Oh really?” He raised his eyebrows at me, apparently impressed by my moxie.
“Yeah,” I responded, trying to keep my voice cool. I had his attention, and he wasn’t chasing me out of here as soon as he laid eyes on me.
“Well, he’s heading down here right now so I suggest you pitch fast,” he suggested - and then he leaned down to pull off his shorts. I did my best to keep my eyes focused on the floor next to my feet, but I couldn’t help but sneak a little glance at his legs.
God, he was so…strong. The last few guys I’d seen naked had been arty journalism types and there had been nothing wrong with them. But Jacob…he had a power to his body that I had never seen this close up before, and it was causing a flutter in my stomach that was distinctly unprofessional.
“Uh,” I shook my head, pushing those thoughts from my head at once. “I want to do a profile on you.”
“Why?” He pressed, placing his clothes in the locker casually. He must have known what he was doing. He shot me a look out of the corner of his eye, as though checking that I was still paying attention to him. I was.
“You’ve got a good story and no one has put together a good piece on you yet,” I went on, continuing with the script that I had filled out in my head when I had been heading down here. “I could make something great. Get a whole different cluster of sports fans interested in you and what you’re doing out here.”
“Sounds interesting,” he commented casually. And then, he hooked his fingers around his boxers and slipped them down over his legs. My eyes bugged out of my head, and I looked away as fast as I could – though not fast enough not to catch a glimpse of his cock.
The image burned itself on to my memory, and I looked down at my hands that were hanging limply by my sides. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but maybe this was a test of some kind. Maybe he was playing me to see how I dealt with shit like this. I had no clue, but I knew that walking up to him and stripping naked myself probably wasn’t going to land me this interview.
“It will be,” I assured him, my face bright red. God, did I really have to give away how shaken I was this easily? Apparently so. I was such a baby in the face of a hot guy, especially one who seemed to have as little restraint as Jacob did. Maybe he didn’t even realize what he was doing, maybe this was just natural to him.
I caught him looking at me again, and it seemed like he was suppressing a grin of amusement at my obvious embarrassment. Oh, he knew precisely what he was doing, and I didn’t appreciate it. I mean, I would take the images burned into my brain away and savor them later, but he was throwing me seriously off my game in that instant.
“Come with me on tour,” he suggested casually. “We can get to know each other a little, it’ll make for a more interesting article.”
My eyebrows shot up. This hadn’t been part of the plan.
“Um, I’ll have to check back with my editor for budget and-”
“I’ll cover it,” he turned to me, full-on, giving me a full-frontal look at his gorgeous nakedness. I found my eyes darting up and down his body, and scolded myself internally for my obviousness. This was what he wanted from me. He wanted my reaction, he wanted me to look at him like that. And I would have been all for it, had I not been in the middle of hunting out the article of a lifetime.
“Are you serious?” I gaped at him. I would still need to take the time off work, but I couldn’t see them turning down this idea if it didn’t cost them a thing.
“Sure,” he shrugged. “Provided you can promise some decent coverage. I don’t see why not.”
“All of it?” I double-checked.
“Food, flights, hotel rooms,” he shrugged again, and I couldn’t believe just how easy it was for him to promise me all of this. “It’s no problem to me.”
“Won’t you need to talk to your agent about it?” I pointed out. I knew that it was his decision at the end, but it would be far preferable to have his agent on board too.
“Angelo will do whatever I want him to do,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Trust me. I’ve got this.”
“That’s…amazing,” I shook my head. This had gone better than I ever could have imagined.
He grabbed for a towel and wrapped it around his waist, finally allowing me to look him in the eye once again.
“You’re welcome,” he shot back cockily, and I realized I hadn’t even thanked him yet.
“Thank you,” I responded at once, and meant it. “I….you have no idea how much this means to me.”
“Maybe you can show me,” He cocked an eyebrow and stepped towards me, closing the distance between us. I held my ground. I knew this was a test of some kind, some way to assert his dominance over me, and I held his gaze as steadily as I could.
But having him so close, smelling the scent of his aftershave mixed with the hot sweat of the fight he’d just been in…I found myself leaning towards him, my body longing to press up against his, my fingers reaching out to pull away that towel so I could see him once more…The door opened and shut behind me, and I jumped away from Jacob at once. He grinned at me, and I could tell that he knew damn well what had been going through my mind in that instant. Fuck. I needed to get myself together. We’d be working together for the foreseeable future and here I was falling for his charms on the first meeting. I needed to sort myself out.
“Angelo, hey,” Jacob greeted his agent, and I turned around to find myself face-to-face with a forty-something guy in a neat blazer and baggy t-shirt, as though he didn’t want to admit to himself that he had long-since left his twenties.
“Jacob,” Angelo nodded, eyeing me briefly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you-”
“No, this is Natalie,” he placed a hand on my back, and I felt a sharp jolt of electricity as his fingers grazed the bare skin of my neck just above the line of my shirt. “She’s a reporter.”
“We spoke on the phone?” I extended my hand to Angelo, stepping away from Jacob’s distracting touch.
“I remember,” he took my hand and shook it briefly, a shadow flickering across his face. “Can I help you?”
“She’s going to be coming with us on the tour,” Jacob explained, a buzz of excitement to his voice. I eyed Angelo, who looked pissed but resigned to the fact that Jacob was always going to get what he wanted in these situations.
“Sure, she is,” he nodded, and eyed me with a little more warmth. “I’ll drop you a message and we can get the details sorted.”
“Sounds good,” I beamed at him, a little part of me wanting to gloat it over him but most of me knowing better. I nodded to both of them and made for
the door, glancing over my shoulder before I left.
“Thanks. And I’ll be seeing you both soon.”
The door fell shut behind me, and I allowed myself a small fist-pump as soon as I was alone in the corridor. I got the interview! And way more than I expected. As I started to make my way down the corridors and out into the emptying stadium outside, I wondered what the next few weeks were going to bring, and my brain flicked back to the feeling of his fingers against my bare skin. Yeah, I had a feeling that things were going to be pretty damn interesting around here.