Below the Belt (7 page)

Like the rest of the house, Ray’s bathroom was large and modern, although he’d personalized it with some boxing memorabilia. After washing his hands, Cooper stopped to admire a Muhammad Ali poster, a montage of classic images from the great man’s career alongside his complete fight history.

It made him think of Arthur Holloway’s boast that he’d fought Ali, and the way the old man had colored when Cooper had called him on it. Man, talk about an awkward moment.

He was about to turn away and rejoin Ray and the other guys when he caught sight of a name on the fight record: Arthur Sawyer. He’d fought Ali in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1961.

His gut tightened as he stared at the simple line of text.

Again he remembered the flush of color rising up Arthur’s neck and face that afternoon. He remembered the old man’s evasiveness when it came to talking about himself or his family. Then he remembered the way Ray had looked uncomfortable when he first introduced Jamie to him, all those months ago out by the pool.

See
him? Went seven rounds with him in Louisville, Kentucky, one time.
Jesus, he could still hear the pride in the old guy’s voice.

Cooper swore under his breath.

He hadn’t caught Arthur lying about his fighting record—the old man had been busted lying about something much more fundamental: his identity. Because while the world had never heard of Arthur Holloway, Arthur Sawyer was a legend of Australian boxing—surpassed only by his son, Jack Sawyer, who had held the heavyweight championship title for an impressive five years before he retired, only to return for an ill-fated comeback that resulted in him being charged with fraud for throwing a fight. He’d taken his own life a few years back, after being ostracized by the boxing community, and had instantly become as infamous as he’d once been famous.

Jamie had lied to him.

She’d lied to him right from the word go.

J
AMIE PROPPED HER FEET
on the coffee table and dipped her spoon into the container of low-fat vanilla yogurt she’d allowed herself as a treat instead of having sex with Cooper. It wasn’t quite ice cream or chocolate. In fact, it almost tasted
healthy,
which was a sure sign it wasn’t doing it for her in the food-as-consolation stakes. More the pity, since she wasn’t going to get a shot at either of her two favorite poisons—or Cooper, for that matter—anytime soon.

The flickering light from the muted TV sent shadows up the wall. She stared restlessly at the screen as she dug into the yogurt. It had been a while since she’d been home on her own. Her grandfather usually went to play seniors poker on Friday nights. Typically she’d go out, too. She didn’t have a lot of friends, but those that she did have were close—Ray, Narelle, a couple of guys from Tae Kwon Do. But she hadn’t felt like playing with any of them this evening.

Dropping her spoon into the empty container, Jamie leaned forward to dump it on the coffee table. There was nothing on TV, she’d never been a big reader and she’d already sucked the life out of her grandfather’s most recent copy of
The Ring.

Closing her eyes, she indulged in her favorite pastime: imagining the moment when she stood center ring with the women’s world middleweight boxing championship belt in her hands. She could almost feel the magic of the moment. All the sacrifices would have paid off, and the past would be obliterated. People would remember what the Sawyer name stood for in boxing. Her grandfather could hold his head high again. Her promise to him would be fulfilled. And the lump of anger and hurt and guilt that had been sitting on her chest for the past two years would be gone.

She almost leaped out of her skin when someone pounded on the front door. The security chain rattled with the force of the blow and she stood warily. She and her grandfather lived close to the city in Glebe—the seedy, down-at-heel part, not the expensive, double-income-no-kids part—and there’d been trouble in their apartment building before. Kids chroming and doing other drugs, alcoholics on benders.

She checked through the peephole and frowned when she saw the hard lines of Cooper’s angry face.

What was he doing there? She shot a glance over her shoulder, acutely aware of how low-rent her apartment was compared to everything he owned. She shut down the thought immediately. So, she didn’t have a lot of money. She had nothing to be ashamed of.

“Is something wrong?” she asked as she opened the door.

Cooper gave here a cold look and pushed past her into the apartment.

“You lied to me,” he said.

She didn’t even bother trying to cover—he knew who she really was. She could tell by how angry he was.

“I didn’t think it was relevant?” she said.

“You didn’t think your real name was relevant,” he said. “Jamie
Sawyer,
daughter of Jack
Sawyer,
granddaughter of Arthur
Sawyer.
You didn’t think your boxing trainer might find that pedigree even vaguely interesting?”

“I didn’t think it mattered,” she said.

“Bullshit. If it hadn’t mattered, you wouldn’t have lied.”

She couldn’t meet his eye. “I didn’t want people to know. Not until I had a few fights under my belt.”

Or maybe a world title.

“Yeah, well, that was a decision we should have made together. But there’s no point chewing the air over it. I just came over to let you know we’re done. You’re no longer welcome in my gym,” he said.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach.

“What?”

“This—” he gestured between the two of them “—relationship is supposed to be about trust. Me to you, you to me. You lied to me. You withheld important information. I can’t work with that.”

He headed for the door. She couldn’t believe what he’d said, that he was going to dump his decision on her that way and leave.

“No. Wait,” she said, darting forward to block his path. “At least give me a chance to explain.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to hear excuses. This was a mistake.”

She didn’t move. “I’m not letting you go until you at least hear me out,” she said.

Panic surged inside her. It had been so hard to get Cooper to take her on, and everything had been falling into place with him. But now she’d blown it and he wasn’t even going to give her a chance to put things right.

“Do you mind stepping away from the door?” he asked, his jaw tensing.

“Let me explain,” she insisted.

He moved forward, and she did the first thing that came to mind—she squared up and punched him in the chest.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Right, that’s it,” he said, grabbing her wrists.

She wrenched away from him when he tried to haul her out of the way, bracing her legs, putting all she had into it. His grip was unbreakable. Panting, she glared at him.

“You think you know everything, that everything’s so cut and dried.
You
try living with the legacy of Jack Sawyer hanging over you.
You
try watching your grandfather fade a little more each day as everything he values turns to shit and his friends turn their backs on him and he’s left with nothing.”

She gestured with her head toward her grandfather’s armchair.

“That old man is the bravest, most honorable, most generous person in the world. All I wanted was to give him back what my father took away from us five years ago when he sold his career for a few thousand dollars.”

Angry, desperate tears stung her eyes. She blinked furiously but she couldn’t stop them from falling. She twisted her face away and yanked on her wrists again. She never cried in front of anyone, ever.

“Could you let me go, please?” she asked in a low, intense tone.

He released her. She dashed the back of her hand across her eyes and swung around to open the door.

“Go,” she said, not looking at him.

She strode across the room and into the small hallway that led to the bedrooms. In the privacy of her room, she sat on the bed, her back to the door.

Her hands clenched into fists, she pressed her knuckles against her forehead. Crying was such a weak, pointless exercise. It didn’t change anything, it just signaled to the world that a person was down and vulnerable and ready to be exploited.

She would find another trainer. Or she would continue with what Cooper had started. Either way, it didn’t matter. This wasn’t over. She was nowhere near ready to give up.

Her shoulders started to shudder as a sob rose in her throat.

She’d been fighting for so long—ever since her father’s betrayal had become a public scandal. Five years. Fighting to keep him out of jail for a year, then fighting to save their home and their savings while he was doing two long years for fraud. And, finally, fighting to keep her grandfather alive after her father had compounded his crimes by killing himself.

“Jamie.”

Cooper was still here. Gulping, she swiped at her tears and kept her back to him.

“Get out. You wanted to go, so do it,” she said, her voice cracking.

The mattress sank as he sat on the end of the bed and she shot to her feet.

“For God’s sake, will you just go?” she said.

He watched her, his expression unreadable.

“Explain it to me,” he said quietly.

She stared at him for a beat before she got it.

“Oh, right. I cried a bit, and you feel sorry for me now. Well, you know what you can do with your pity? You can take it and shove it up your—”

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” he said, talking over her. “You’re a pain in the ass, you irritate the hell out of me, but the last thing I feel for you is pity.”

She frowned, thrown.

“Sit and talk to me. Tell me what I’m up against,” he said.

“You’re not
up against
anything,” she said. “Don’t try to make me sound like a head case.”

“Anything that messes with a fighter’s mindset is a problem,” he said. “I don’t want you thinking about anything except hurting your opponent when you’re in that ring.”

Maybe it was the way he said it, as though she was still his fighter and he her trainer. Or maybe it was the steadiness of his regard. Or maybe she simply wanted to say it out loud, she’d been holding it all inside for so long.

Sitting, she started to talk.

“My grandfather had a major heart attack six months ago. He’d been not great for a while before that, ever since Jack…Anyway, he nearly died. The doctors didn’t give him much of a chance. He’d been so worn down by everything. After Jack’s fraud case, we had so many legal bills. We had to sell the house, the car, everything. And all of Grandpa’s old boxing buddies turned their backs on us. What my father did, throwing that match…he shamed so many people. He made it all a lie, his whole career, my grandfather’s career. And then he didn’t even have the courage to face up to what he’d done. He’d been out of prison one week when he killed himself. Grandpa found his body….”

She paused to suck in some air. Cooper waited her out, a silent presence at the end of the bed.

“When he got sick, I knew Grandpa didn’t feel as though there was anything to live for. He’d been so tapped out. He used to walk into his old gym up in Queensland and everyone would stop what they were doing to talk to him, just to look at him. He was a living legend, you know? But after Jack, people turned on him—he was no one, nothing. I wanted to give that back to him. So I made him a promise.”

Jamie paused, remembering the muffled quiet of the hospital room, the rhythmic swish of the ventilator, the pitying looks of the nursing staff. For the first time in her life she’d held her grandfather’s hand in her own and felt the frailty of his old bones. He’d always seemed so big to her, larger than life.

“I made a promise that I would change things. That I would get back his respect for him. That I would make people forget what Jack had done,” she said. “He woke up the next day. And he’s been better every day since I started training for the ring.”

There was a long silence as Cooper processed her words.

“You’re doing all this for your grandfather?” he asked. “There’s a lot of pain waiting for you out in that ring, Jamie. Fighting for someone else isn’t enough.”

“I’m doing it for me, too,” she said in a low tone. “I’m a Sawyer, too. I don’t want my father to be the measure of all of us. I hate him for what he did.”

She’d never said it out loud, but it was true. She’d looked up to him, idolized him, and he’d sold his reputation for money he didn’t need. He’d betrayed them all then committed the ultimate betrayal by taking his own life and leaving them to clean up the mess.

The mattress dipped as Cooper moved closer. The warm weight of his hand landed in the middle of her back. She realized she was crying again, the tears leaking from her eyes and dripping off her nose and chin and onto her clenched hands.

“I never cry,” she hiccupped.

He didn’t say anything, just rubbed comforting circles on her back until the tears stopped and she started sniffing. He shifted then, pulling something from his pocket—a handkerchief.

A bubble of laughter rose inside her.

“You’re kidding, right? Big bad Cooper Fitzgerald packs a hanky?” she said, her voice husky from crying.

“It’s about to save your ass, isn’t it?” He tipped her chin up with one hand and wiped at her tears with the other.

She let him, mostly because he was bigger than she was and she wasn’t up to fighting him. But her gaze slid away from his. She had no idea what he was thinking or feeling right now. She hated being so exposed and vulnerable.

“Blow,” he said, holding the handkerchief beneath her nose.

She took the handkerchief from his hand, not about to let him blow her nose like a little kid. Once she’d finished, she shifted awkwardly, not sure what would happen next.

“I’ll wash this for you,” she said, indicating the scrunched-up handkerchief.

He shrugged. “That’s usually the way it works.”

“I suppose I look like one of those goldfish with freaky puffy eyes,” she said.

He didn’t respond.

God, what had she told him?

Everything.

And
she’d bawled like a little kid.

“I guess this is why you wanted to stick to male boxers, huh?” She twisted the handkerchief in her hands.

“You can’t fight all the time, Jamie,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, even though she knew.

“It means it’s okay to let your guard down every now and then,” he said. “You think I don’t have bad days? Ray? The other guys at the gym? Almost anyone who gets in that ring has got some kind of monkey on their back. Who else would volunteer for all that pain?”

“What’s yours, then?” she challenged, not prepared to take his get-out-of-jail-free card. Last time she’d trusted a man, last time she’d made herself vulnerable, she’d been taught a lesson she wouldn’t forget in a long, long time.

“I lived on the streets for four years until Harry Muldoon spotted me when I was sixteen.”

She stilled. She hadn’t been expecting that. Homeless…On the streets at the age of twelve…

Slowly, she lifted her head and met his gaze.

“Like I said, everyone’s got a monkey on their back,” he said.

She wanted to ask more questions, but she didn’t. He had offered her a quid pro quo to even the confessional score, not an invitation to pry into his personal history.

“Thank you.”

He nodded. Then he stood. She felt a clutch of something—need? fear? desperation?—in her chest when she looked up at him. He was going?

“You going to be okay?” he asked.

Jamie stood. She didn’t want him to leave. She’d just bared her soul to him. She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want him to walk out the door and to never see him again.

“Don’t go,” she said.

Instantly the air crackled with awareness as he looked into her face. His gaze dropped to her lips, then lower, to her breasts. That quickly, her heart shifted into overdrive and her blood turned thick as treacle. Without waiting for him to say what he always said—no—she stuck her thumbs into the waistband of her workout pants. She peeled them over her hips and butt and down her legs in one move, taking her panties with them. Then she whipped her T-shirt over her head and unclipped her bra. When she was naked, she moved closer to him, pressing herself against him. She could see a telltale pulse hammering at the base of his neck, could feel the tension in his body.