“Holy shit,” I murmur under my breath.
I know who they are, of course I do, but suddenly, my bowels are feeling a little… liquified.
Abort mission. Abort mission!
Bobby chuckles beside me, waits while a clock on the wall counts down – twenty seconds to go – and when the brunette one, Bean, lands a solid fist to Evie’s jaw, he ducks, weaves, grits his teeth when Evie cusses her frustration.
“You fucker!” Evie roars. She drops her shoulders in a heartbeat, pumps her arms, and then she runs at her cousin until the pair slam to the floor with so much power that I swear I feel the concrete foundations vibrate.
The clock buzzes to signify the end of a round, but they don’t stop. Evie climbs onto Bean’s hips, and with fire in her eyes, throws fist after fist at her cousin’s face.
And I stand thirty feet away, stunned and almost in tears, because if someone sat on me like that to hit me, I’d be useless. I’d cry for mercy and pray that my attacker would listen.
Evie rides Bean like a bull, absorbs the way Bean rolls her hips, the way she tries to buck her off, and when they tangle legs and Evie slams to the floor, I literally find myself bringing my files up to half cover my face.
What the hell was I thinking, coming here? What the actual fuck was I thinking, trying to meet with any one of these people?
Alcohol made me brave on Friday. A crowd and a swift knee made me brave last night.
Today, I’m feeling a hell of a lot like the cowardly lion from Oz.
“Girls!” Bobby claps his hands so hard that I jump, and though they don’t stop, the boys that are watching them do.
Wearing only shorts and a pair of fingerless gloves, they each turn and study me with twin grins and curious eyes.
I’ve done my homework, so I know the one on the left, the broader one, is Ben Conner. The groom for that infamous, upcoming wedding. And the skinnier one with a scar that stretches all the way along his chest is Mac Blair. He’s with the chick they call Bean, though I know her real name is Lucy.
I shrink under their gazes. Burn up under their study. Then I jump when Ben snaps out a loud “Eve!”
The girls in the ring fall apart. They drop to the sweat-covered floor amid panting breaths and giggles – giggles! – and a second later, the curly-haired blonde turns to her side, and stops when her eyes meet mine. Hers are bright blue and, despite her giggles from a second ago, dangerous.
I’m a suit inside her shed-gym.
“Who are you?” she demands.
“Evelyn.” Bobby’s word is low, scary as hell, as he waves me forward and leads me closer to the ring. “Guys, this is Madilyn, and she’s from Monaco Auto. She’s head of their PR department.” He looks to me for confirmation. So I nod. He turns back with a grin. “Nailed it. She was hoping she could have a moment with Stacked Deck. Business to discuss, I suppose.”
Evie’s eyes continue to scour me. My shoes, my skirt, my shirt and hair. She turns to Bean for a moment, then back to me. Finally, with narrowed eyes, she looks back to Bean. “We still have that pile of clothes in Daddy’s office?”
Bean nods.
Evie looks back to me. “Sizing’s about right. Uncle Bobby, can you take Madilyn from Monaco PR to Daddy’s office and find her a pair of shorts and a tank? Send her back out here, but without the shoes. We can talk once she’s ready to spar.”
“Wait, what?” My voice literally comes out on a squeak. “I don’t… uh… I never… ha.” I let out a nervous laugh. “You’re funny. I don’t know how to…” I shake my head. “Nuh uh.”
“Uncle B?” She gives Bobby the puppy dog eyes that I’m certain gets her anything she wants in life. “Please?”
“I can’t force a stranger into a room and demand she undress, Smalls. Pretty sure the law frowns upon that.”
“Ugh.” She rolls her eyes and pushes to her hands and knees. Then she flips to her feet and turns to offer a hand for Bean. “What do you want, Madilyn? We’re kinda busy.”
“You… uh…” I point at my own lip. “You’ve got a little blood…”
What the fuck have I walked in on?
“I’m bleeding?” Evie brings her free hand up to swipe at her lip, and when she pulls it away to confirm the words, she releases Bean’s hand and lets her cousin splat back to the floor. “You made me bleed, fucker.”
“Well if you kept your hands up more often, you wouldn’t bleed.” Bean pushes to her feet and snickers when Evie glowers. “I’m not even a fighter anymore, and I’m still better than you.”
“Fuck you are!” Evie turns to run at her cousin, only to be pulled off her feet when Ben dives in and grabs her. “Let me make her bleed, Sasquatch!”
“Let’s try to act professional, Evelyn.” The heavy fighter laughs when Evie throws an elbow back to hit him, then he punctuates it with a noisy kiss to her cheek that turns her to jelly. He pulls her out of the ring, sets her on her feet in front of him, and wraps his beefy arm around her trim stomach.
She has a fucking six-pack!
Ben smiles when he’s got his fiancée under control, then he pushes his shoulders back and looks to me. “You don’t have to fight if you don’t wanna.”
“I’d rather not,” I murmur. Where has the girl from the tracks gone? Where is the girl who was seven bottles deep on Friday night? “I would probably cry, to be honest.”
He chuckles. “How can we help you, Madilyn?”
“Um…” I stumble forward a couple steps until I’m no longer on concrete, but on rubber mats. I juggle my folders, snag out the cover letter – I spent all day yesterday working on it – and offer it to the least scary person here. The irony isn’t lost on me that the biggest is the most approachable. “I work in the public relations and marketing department of Monaco Auto.”
“Okay…” He lets his eyes scan my letter. “I don’t need a new car, so…”
“Uh, no…” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth. “I was actually thinking along a different line. My company enjoys sponsoring sporting events. We would negotiate pricing, and in exchange, you offer us a promo package and a plug when you stream your tournament each year.”
Evie’s lip curls back much the same as mine did when I walked in. “You wanna buy ad space at our tournament?”
I swallow and take a step back when the other chick, Lucy, joins the couple, and brings her fighter boyfriend with her. They could kill me. Literally. With their fists. “In a nutshell, yes. We would buy ad space. You sell millions of streaming subscriptions a year for folks wanting to watch your fights. We would buy a twenty-second ad during that live feed, plus have a sign or two displayed on the outside of the octagon.”
Evie’s eyes narrow. “So… we built this tournament ourselves, we backed it with our own money, we busted our asses to create a successful event, and now that we’ve done that…” She leans a little closer. “You’d like to put your name on it. Am I hearing you right?”
“Well… uh…” I nod. “Yes.”
She bursts out laughing. “Get the fuck outta here, Corporate Barbie. We built it!” She points to the three other members of her exclusive little club. “We did! We busted our fucking asses to make it happen. We bled for it, cried for it, trained so fucking hard and ensured it would all work out. We took all the risks, and even when we win our own divisions, we don’t get to keep our prize money, because that shit goes straight back into the bank to make sure we can continue paying bills.” She shakes her head, not to say no, but as though to shake around a little sense. “Why the fuck would I let you piggyback on that?”