A Fighting Chance Read online

  His brown hair was shorter than before, though still long enough to have the thick, bedhead look she’d found so sexy. Shirtless for the photo, he showed off rippling muscles, a sheen of sweat, and tattoos across his chest and down one arm. Those were new since the last time she’d seen him. But all she had to do was look into the dark eyes framed by eyelashes that would make most women weep with envy to know the intense man in the photograph was her Brendan.

  Or was her Brendan. He wasn’t anymore, and he hadn’t been for almost six years. After taking a deep—if shaky—breath, she flipped off the poster and kept walking.

  * * *

  Brendan leaned against the elevator wall, bobbing his head slightly in time to the bass thumping through his earbuds. The music calmed him, blocking out the noise around him, as he focused on stepping into the persona that the fight fans expected him to be.

  The elevator was almost full, but he stared straight ahead. His manager and trainer were talking to each other, but Brendan couldn’t hear them and he didn’t care what they were talking about. A uniformed security guard stood by the control panel. There was also a member of the hotel’s security team and two people representing the fight’s promoter, one of whom was a very attractive woman named Janie whose job seemed to be making sure his every need was met. And she’d let him know that really meant every need. Brendan had ignored the blatant offer and told her he’d let her know if there was anything he wanted. There wouldn’t be.

  The only thing he wanted was for this fight to be over so he could go to the family cabin in Maine, maybe hit the snowmobile trails with his cousin Scott, if he didn’t take too much of a beating, and have some quiet recovery time before showing up at his parents’ for Christmas.

  There had been a time, after he walked away from the woman he loved, that he’d dreamed of becoming an MMA superstar. To fill the void in his life, he’d joined a gym and found out the owner trained a couple of fighters. He had some natural skill and it wasn’t long before he’d stepped into the octagon. He’d replaced his desire for Del with desire for the cage. A desire for guts, glory and money. Pay-per-view and endorsement deals. And a flashy belt draped over his shoulder as the camera flashes blinded him.

  Then, two years before, his older brother had hit black ice going too fast and the whole world stopped. Unable to leave his dad to run his roofing business alone, Brendan had scaled back on his dreams and his training time. Heading to New York or Los Angeles and fighting his way into a top gym wasn’t an option, so he’d gone back to his Boston gym. He fought on the local circuit and got some marquee fights from time to time. He won some and he lost some. And he made a little extra money to supplement the paychecks from Quinn Roofing without giving up fighting. He was happy. Mostly.

  This would be his toughest fight in a couple of years, for a big promoter who’d lost a guy to a training injury only three weeks before. Brendan was a local favorite and would be the only East Coast fighter on the card, so the crowd would love him and that would help fill seats. He’d been offered enough money to make the training crunch and the risk of showing up at his mom’s Christmas dinner with his face and body bashed up worthwhile.

  When his manager’s elbow jabbed him, Brendan lowered his hood and popped one earbud out. “What?”

  “He’s talking to you.”

  He was the guy who seemed to be some kind of liaison between the promoter and the casino, and Brendan struggled to remember his name. “Sorry. What’s up?”

  “There’s a pretty good line already, so we’re having extra security brought in. People have been waiting a while, so we need you to go straight to the table without stopping, because if you do a photo or autograph for some random person where the folks who’ve been waiting can see, we’ll have a potential crush to get to you.”

  Brendan nodded. Corey was the guy’s name, he thought. Corey something. “No problem.”

  He thought crush was a bit of an exaggeration. While he might be the hometown boy and he had a decent fan base, none of the fighters had exactly reached celebrity status. Not even Bryan Lavaud—whom he’d be facing in the cage and who was expected to win—though he’d been on a few pay-per-view undercards. Brendan was definitely the underdog, but he’d have a good chunk of the crowd chanting his name and anything could happen when the energy level was high.

  Today they’d be signing autographs and probably posing for endless selfies with fans who cared enough about the fights to show up a day early and put more money in the casino’s pockets. Even the fans who didn’t stay in the very expensive hotel rooms would eat overpriced food and drop money in the casino before heading home or to the cheaper motels down the road.

  “It’s showtime,” Janie said as the elevator settled on the casino-level floor.

  Brendan put the earbud back in and pulled his hood up as the doors slid open to reveal two more security guards, big guys in black suits with earpieces, as though they were pretending to be secret service or something. All part of the show, Brendan thought. The more important the security looked, the more important the person they were protecting appeared to be.

  Corey put his hand over the door bumper to give them all time to disembark, with the fighter going last. It was all a performance and it wasn’t Brendan’s favorite part of being a fighter, but the better the fan experience, the higher the ticket sales.

  They’d set up for the autograph session near the entrance to the main casino, and he could hear the noise as they walked down the hallway. The others were around him, like an entourage, which always amused the hell out of him. Brendan Quinn with an entourage.

  But he didn’t let the amusement show. Stone-faced, he concentrated on walking tall, with a swagger that crossed the line into arrogant. As Janie had said, showtime.

  As they neared the end of the hall and he could see the crowd standing in line, he watched a curvy brunette standing in front of the giant poster, staring at his face. Maybe it was her upscale outfit that caught his eye—since she wasn’t wearing the merchandising T-shirts that most of the other women were—or the way she was so intent on the poster, but he couldn’t stop himself from watching her.

  Then she flipped his giant face the bird and spun on her heel to walk away.

  “Okay, that’s weird,” he heard Janie say in a low voice, and he sensed the circle of people around him closing in as the woman veered in their direction.

  She was looking at her phone, but she must have sensed she was approaching a crowd because she glanced up and started stepping to the left to avoid them.

  Adeline.

  Brendan stopped in his tracks, the name ricocheting through his mind like the echo of a primal scream, but it left his lips in a whisper.

  Their gazes locked before her eyes dropped to his mouth as if to read her name there. Then her eyes lifted and her green stare seemed to bore straight into his soul.

  “Del.” He said it out loud, ripping the hood back and yanking the earbuds out, but he didn’t need to. He knew she’d recognized him because he could see the shock in her expression, but she didn’t speak.

  He watched her gaze sweep over the entourage surrounding him before returning to his face.

  Missing this woman had been a constant ache he’d learned to live with over the last six years—like the dull throbbing of a bum knee—but as he looked at her it flared to life. He took a step toward her, but the anger that flickered over her expression made him stop.

  The Del he’d known would have run and thrown herself into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist as he lifted her. He’d loved her laugh. Not the polite laugh that was all most people ever got to hear, but her real laugh, when she would have to hold her stomach as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  But he’d walked away from that Del and even as he tried to think of something to say, she started walking away from him.

  “Del, wait.” He pushed past Janie and his trainer, Eric Maxwell, desperate to get to her.

  “Brendan, we don’t have time for this
,” Janie called after him.

  He ignored her. “Del, please.”

  She hesitated, and he knew she was weighing her desire to get away from him against her distaste for public scenes. Then she turned to face him, her mouth fixed in a cool, polite smile that cut him to the core. It was the kind of smile a woman gave an annoying stranger she’d rather not talk to.

  “Hello, Brendan.” She spoke quietly, looking him directly in the eye.

  Then she reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear in a familiar nervous gesture. It was her left hand and he looked for a wedding band, his stomach in knots. But there were no rings. No telltale indent or tan line. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  “Your entourage looks nervous,” she said, looking at some point past his shoulder.

  “We’re running late. And they saw you flip off my picture.”

  Her cheeks flushed a light pink and her smile thawed, becoming a little more genuine. “I didn’t expect to stumble across a giant picture of your face.”

  “Where are you headed now?” He was afraid she’d leave and he’d never see her again, even though he’d been the one to do the leaving last time.

  He wanted to know how she’d been—whether his decision had been the right one, no matter how painful.

  She tilted her head toward the signs for the restroom. “I was going to the ladies’ room to text my sister and tell her I saw your face on the poster so she could remind me what an asshole you are. Not that I really need reminding.”

  That hurt, probably more than she would ever guess, but he had it coming. “I have to do this thing for like an hour. Will you meet me after?”

  Her eyes widened. “Meet you for what?”

  “I don’t know. For coffee. To talk.” Talk about what, he didn’t know. He just knew he wanted to see more of her. He needed to know that she was happy.

  “Brendan, we have to go.” That was Jonathan Campbell, his manager, and he didn’t sound very happy.

  “Del, please. Just a coffee. There’s a little coffee shop on the hotel level that’s reasonably quiet. Give me one cup’s worth of time.”

  He was prepared to beg if he had to, but to his surprise, she gave him a curt nod. “I’ll be there in an hour and a half, in case you run late or whatever. One cup.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  She nodded again and then walked away, not toward the restrooms, but back the way she’d come from. He watched everybody watching her walk by and knew they’d be full of questions, but he had no intention of telling them who she was.

  “Brendan,” Janie said, her voice tense. “Bryan’s already at the table.”

  He replaced the earbuds and hood, mustering an expression suitable for sitting next to a guy he was supposed to pretend he was looking forward to punching in the face. In reality, he didn’t know Lavaud well, but he seemed like an okay guy. Good fighter.

  But he didn’t even care about the fight anymore. He would sign autographs and glower into front-facing smartphone cameras with the fans who insisted on selfies, but part of his mind was already trying to figure out what he was going to say to Del.

  He had one cup of coffee’s worth of time to convince her he wasn’t an asshole. And to convince himself that, even though it had damn near broken him, letting her go had been the right thing to do.

  Chapter Two

  Del entered the coffee shop, thankful to find it almost deserted despite the number of people still milling around the lobby. She looked around, thinking she’d beat Brendan there until a head turned and she found herself looking into his dark eyes.

  He’d changed his clothes. Instead of a dark gray hoodie with some kind of logos on it and worn, ripped jeans with heavy black boots, he was wearing soft-looking but untorn jeans and a beige sweater. He looked even more like the Brendan she’d loved and lost, and she sucked in a deep breath. Whether it was to steady herself or in preparation for running away, she wasn’t sure yet.

  She’d gone back to her room after leaving him in the hallway, intending to call her sister to get some sense talked back into her. Why had she agreed to meet with him? She should have nothing to say to him after what he did.

  But there’d been something in his eyes that had tugged at her, made her want to pull him into her arms and comfort him. In the end, she hadn’t called her sister. She hadn’t even sent text messages to Kate or Brittany. She’d ordered a salad and grilled chicken sent up to her room and hadn’t given anybody a chance to talk her out of sitting down and having a cup of coffee with the man who’d broken her heart.

  She wanted to know why he’d told her he loved her and then changed his mind. At the very least, she wanted to make him look her in the eye when he said goodbye this time.

  Brendan stood as she approached the table, his happiness at seeing her evident in his eyes. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You changed your clothes.”

  “I wanted to fly under the radar. There are a ton of fight fans here, but none of them look twice at the mild-mannered guy in the beige sweater.”

  “Mild-mannered?” She arched an eyebrow at him.

  “I have my moments.” He grinned, which coaxed a reluctant smile from her. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want, but I’ll go order for us both now.”

  “I’ll take a decaf, black.”

  He grimaced. “I don’t remember you taking your coffee black.”

  She shrugged. “If you don’t put cream and sugar in your coffee, you can have an extra cookie without worrying too much about the calories.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that.” He gestured toward the empty chair. “Have a seat and I’ll get the drinks.”

  She sat and watched him walk up to the counter, unable to stop herself from admiring the view. Unlike her, he hadn’t put on any extra pounds since they’d last seen each other. If anything, his body was even more toned than it had been, although it was hard to tell with the sweater covering his torso. But judging by the hard lines of his face and the ass and legs hugged by worn denim, his broad shoulders and rippled abs would probably still feel like rock under her hands.

  Brendan hadn’t been her first and he hadn’t been her last, since she hadn’t been sitting around pining for him for the last six years. But he was the one man whose touch she’d never been able to forget. Even now, as she watched him tug his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans, she remembered the way those hands felt on her body.

  When he began his return trip to the table, though, she pretended to be interested in reading the banner advertising their specialty coffee flavors so he wouldn’t know she’d been checking him out. He set her coffee down in front of her, along with a huge chocolate chip cookie wrapped in waxed paper. Then he went back to the counter for his coffee and a matching cookie.

  “I can’t eat this whole thing,” she said, pointing at the cookie, which looked just the right amount of soft-baked. She hated crunchy chocolate chip cookies.

  “Isn’t that why you drink your coffee black?”

  “The bonus calories really only apply to normal-sized cookies.” It looked so delicious her mouth was practically watering. “I did have grilled chicken with a salad for supper, though.”

  He broke off a piece of his and popped it into his mouth, and she watched him chew and swallow it before he smiled at her. “Oh, it’s really good.”

  That smile—or rather the memory of how his smile had been the thing that had turned her head at the college party where they first met—hurt, so she took a bite of her cookie. The chocolate chips might be small, but they were still chocolate.

  He’d been right about it being really good, so she had another bite before taking a long sip of the decaf. Then she tucked her hair behind her ear and looked at him across the table. “Why are we here, Brendan?”

  His smile faded. “When I saw you standing there, I just... I don’t know. I didn’t want you to disappear without me getting to talk to you.”

  “Yeah, that sucks. I know a lit
tle about that.” She watched the words land like blows, and he flinched.

  “I’m sorry, Del. I really am. I thought it was for the best.”

  “You thought disappearing on me and then breaking up with me over the phone was for the best?”

  His jaw tightened for a second. “I didn’t have the balls to face you.”

  “Wasn’t meant to be,” she said quietly, almost under her breath. “I’ve always wondered if you met somebody else and didn’t want to tell me.”

  “No.” He denied it quickly, without thought. “There was nobody but you.”

  She believed the sincerity in his voice, and he really had no reason to lie to her at this point. “I’ve never understood how you could tell me you loved me one day and then just take off. And then just tell me it wasn’t meant to be.”

  After taking a sip of his coffee, he wrapped his hand around the mug. “Does it really matter now?”

  “Yes, it does. I don’t know why. It shouldn’t.” She snorted. “I’m a little disgusted that not only am I sitting here eating cookies with you, but I’m asking you to tell me why you didn’t love me. It’s sad.”

  “It’s not sad. I hurt you, but I did love you.”

  “Not enough,” she said with fake cheer, lifting her mug to drink so she wouldn’t say anything else. She had no idea why she was poking at old wounds, but once she’d agreed to have coffee with him, she’d decided she wasn’t leaving without an explanation. Maybe she’d finally be able to put his memory to rest if she had some closure.

  “Things changed when you took me home to meet your parents and then we started spending more time with your family.”

  “Too much commitment for you?”

  He shook his head, and then took another bite of his cookie. She wasn’t sure if he was buying himself time to think or not, but he sure took his time chewing it. Then he washed it down with coffee before speaking again. “It wasn’t about commitment. I loved you, Del, but it wasn’t going to last so I let you go. I was hoping to talk about your life now, though. That’s in the past and I can’t change it.”