Fight for Her #4: MMA New Adult Contemporary Romantic Suspense (2 page)

I go back to the kitchen. Surely there is some clue somewhere.

The red light of the phone on its charger blinks with a steady pulse. Still charging. So it hasn’t been long enough since someone set it down to fully charge.

I walk up to it. By the phone is a notepad. On the top sheet are the words
Newark
and
Marriott
.

Bingo.

Chapter 3: Maddie
 

I call in sick to work the next morning. Lily is excited to be in the hotel room, jumping on the bed and turning the television off and on as if she’s never seen one before.

Delores sits in a chair in the corner, knitting a crazy-colored hat and frowning whenever she looks at me.

“You going to tell me what this is all about?” she asks. “You never take a day off for no reason.”

I reach over to lay a hand on Lily’s shoulder and still her incessant jumping. “Come here, baby girl,” I say to her, dodging Delores’s question. There’s no way I will tell her about what happened in Vegas. But I have to tell her something.

Lily moves to the opposite corner of the bed, out of my grasp.

The hotel phone rings, startling all of us.
 

Who could that be? We haven’t ordered anything or asked for a wake-up call. No one knows we are here. Fear sparks through my body. We’ve been found.

“I’ll get it!” Lily shouts. The phone is right next to her on the table.

“No!” I scramble to stop her, but by the time I get my arms around her waist, she’s picked up the receiver and hit the right button.

“Hello!” she says in her little-girl voice.

I reach to take the phone from her, panic slicing through me. If they’ve found me, now they will know about her!

But Lily says, “Hi, Daddy.”

I let go of her.

Parker? How does he know where I am?

I hold out my hand for Lily to give me the phone, but she holds up one finger just like I do when I want her to wait a second.

“Give me the phone, Lily,” I say, my voice low in the way I do when she’s in trouble.

Her face crumples. “Here’s Mama,” she says and passes me the phone. In a flash she jumps off the bed and hides between Delores’s chair and the wall.

Now I’ve upset her. I jam the phone against my ear and say, “How did you find me?”

Delores stops knitting. Damn it. I shouldn’t have said that either.

Parker’s voice is carefully neutral. “Why did you leave me in Vegas?”

“I — I needed to think.” I have to keep this conversation under control. Delores is listening to every word.

“You haven’t answered any of my messages,” he says.

“I had the phone off during the flight. I haven’t turned it on.” Actually, I never unblocked his number. I pick up the cell phone and flip to the contact list. I’m not paying attention to the name, so when I hit “Unblock Contact” and hear a message beep through, I assume it’s his.

“I’ve been worried sick,” he says.

“I know. I’m sorry,” I say.

A message pops up on the screen.

Be convincing.

What? I look up at the number. It’s the mystery caller. I want to write back and ask, “Be convincing at what?”

But then I see the message above it. The one I got before the flight.

Dump Power Play.

I set the cell phone back down. Lily is peeking out from the chair. Delores is trying to avoid looking at me, as if she’s not listening. Right.

“Maddie?” Parker’s voice isn’t as calm now. It’s angry.

I turn my back to Delores and Lily and head to the bathroom. When the door is closed, I sit on the edge of the tub.

“Parker, your life, it’s wrong for me.”

“Come downstairs.”

He’s here?

“How do you know where I am?”

“I found a note.”

I hear hysteria in my voice. “What note?”

Am I that easy to track? How will I ever keep Lily safe?

“Delores wrote it.”

“Delores left you a note?” No way. She hates Parker. She wouldn’t help him.

“Not exactly. She wrote down where you were going.”

“Were you at my house?”

He hesitates. “Will you come down?”

“No.”

“You have to come out eventually. I know where Delores parked her car.”

Damn it. “I need you to go away, Parker. For good.”

That gets silence.

“I mean it, Parker. The people around you with that — that sport. They aren’t good for us. It’s not right. You can’t put us at risk.”

I think of the message.
Be convincing.

Parker sounds so angry that when he speaks again, fear spikes through me. “You will not keep me from Lily. You can cut me out all you want, but I will not leave her.”

“It’s her I’m thinking about!”

“No, you’re not. She’ll be devastated. You know it.”

I glance at the bathroom door as if Lily will walk in any second. I think of her, and the pink gloves, and not seeing Parker again. But there’s nothing I can do.

“I’ll cancel the child-support payments,” I say.

His voice explodes on the line. “It is NOT about the money!”

I hang up. I don’t know what else to do. I quickly dial zero for the hotel desk.

A chipper female voice says, “Marriott, how may I assist you?”

“Can you hold all calls to my room, please?” I ask.

“Yes, of course!”

“Thank you.” I hang up again, and for good measure, I click the line back open and stick it under a towel so the angry beep of the busy signal can’t be heard.

When I come out of the bathroom, Lily is sitting on Delores’s lap.

“NOW are you going to explain things?” Delores asks.

I shake my head for no. I walk over to them and lift Lily up. She resists for a second, but I pull her legs on either side of my hip. She’s almost too big to carry like this anymore, but she immediately fits against me like she always did.

I remember the first time I shifted her to sitting at my waist, switching her from the normal baby cradle in my arms. She was around six months and strong. She wouldn’t let me hold her sideways anymore unless she was asleep.

Being a mother has definitely been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Amazing, but hard. And it’s about to get worse. At some point, I’ll have to explain about Parker.

“Is Daddy coming here?” she asks.

“No,” I say simply.

“Why didn’t you let me talk to him?”

“I needed to tell him something very important,” I say.

“In the bathroom?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Did you have a potty accident?” she asks soberly.

“Something like that,” I say.

“That’s bad,” she says.

I squeeze her against me. “You want to watch cartoons?” I ask.

“Really?” she asks.

“Really.”

“All I want?”

“For one hour,” I say.

“Okay.” She scrambles away from me and onto the bed. Within two seconds she has the remote and is flipping through channels. I’m amazed at how easily she adapts to technology. I have to stare at buttons forever to figure out how to work them.

She finds SpongeBob. I glance at the door. The front desk wouldn’t dare tell Parker which room I’m in. I seem to remember some trick in a movie about asking the operator to call and you could figure out which one it is. But I don’t remember how it worked or if it was just some Hollywood fiction.

“Sit by me,” Lily says.

I come around the bed to settle in beside her. I’ve just kicked my legs up when I see something white come through under the door. Delores sees it too.

“Probably the receipt,” I say, although I can tell by the torn ragged edge that it won’t be. I walk over to pick it up.

One side is half a flyer for karaoke hour at the bar downstairs. On the back in Parker’s handwriting are the words “Downstairs in five. Or I’m coming through this door.”

I glance down at my clothes. I’m still wearing my outfit from yesterday. I haven’t had a shower, or a change. I have nothing but my purse.

“Would you like me to get you a chocolate bar?” I ask Lily. “Cartoon candy breakfast?” It’s the treat above all treats.

“YES YES YES!” she says excitedly. “No nuts!”

“Got it. No nuts.”

“There’s a lovely little cafe next door,” Delores says. “Full breakfast.”

“Maybe later,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

Delores frowns and resumes her knitting. She’s holding her tongue for now, but I know I can’t rely on it much longer.

I pull my wallet from my purse and tuck my phone in my pocket. I don’t bother to even run my fingers through my hair. This isn’t about looking good. It’s about getting Parker to leave.

But even I have my doubts. I’m pretty sure Parker will be impossible to convince.

Chapter 4: Parker

I don’t know if Maddie will even show. The flower sofas in the lobby make me want to gag with happy sunshine overload. If I had a knife on me, I would slice the cushions to ribbons.

The elevator dings, and I turn for the thousandth time to see if it will be Maddie.

This time it is.

She’s still wearing the brown shirt and jeans from yesterday. Her hair is tied up in a loose ponytail, curly bits framing her face. I’ve been so worried and pissed off and anxious since yesterday that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to see her come into a room.

There’s no way I can let her go.

Maddie sees me on the sofa and heads my direction. I’m hoping she’ll sit close, so I can hold her hand, touch her in some way. I want to believe that she is okay, that she’s real. Everything that’s happened since the fight feels like one long horrible dream.

She sits in a chair opposite the sofa and perches on the edge as if she might fly away with the smallest provocation.

“Don’t you have another fight to train for?” she asks. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Maddie. Please.”

She doesn’t budge. “It’s got to be a terrible inconvenience to come all the way to New York.”

I don’t know what she’s doing. It’s like we never stood in front of that wedding chapel and thought about how to get Lily there to be the flower girl. It’s like she’s done.

“Please tell me why you bolted like that. What were the messages you got?”

Her face is a mask. Calm. Fake. “Just reminders that I needed to be home.”

“And why aren’t you there? Why are you at a hotel?”

“I couldn’t get a flight into the city. I had to come into Newark.”

She isn’t going to give in. I have to break through this. Find out what is really going on. “Maddie, please. Talk to me.”

She stands up. “There’s nothing to talk about. We’re just back to square one. You can video chat with Lily. But no visits for six months. You agreed to that. Six months.”

I know what she’s talking about. When we set up the child support, I would only see Lily once every six months. At the time I didn’t care.

“That’s not what we’ve been talking about these past few days,” I say. I fumble in my pocket for the ring box that I’ve carried since the night of the fight.

She backs up. “But that’s what we’re going to do.”

I leap up from the sofa. “Why are you doing this?” I try to take her arm, but she jerks it away.

The woman at the desk looks over at us.

“Don’t make a scene,” Maddie says, her voice low. “No judge with half a brain would let you see her at all if they find out what just happened.”

My worry and concern explode into rage. “You will NOT threaten me about my own child!” My voice echoes on the walls.

Now the woman has a phone in her hands.

“We’re done here,” Maddie says. “Try not to destroy Lily’s privacy with your carelessness.” She heads toward the elevator. “I’m keeping your contact blocked except for Thursday afternoons. That’s when you can call her.”

“This isn’t right!” I shout at her. I don’t give a shit anymore if the desk clerk calls the cops. I’ve got the ring box in my hand and I hold it up.

“I thought you were going to marry me!” I say.

Maddie pauses. “I thought you were going to quit fighting. Look what happened when you didn’t.” Then she hurries away, not to the elevator, but to the stairs. In just a few seconds, she is gone.

I drop back onto the sofa. This can’t be happening. I won’t let it. I stand up again, aiming to follow her. The clerk watches me, phone in hand.

This isn’t the way to go about it. Not right now. Maddie is running scared from something. I have to find out what it is. And I have to fix it.

Until then, I don’t even deserve her.

Chapter 5: Parker

I fly back to LA the same day. I need a plan. And people to give me advice.

Jo meets me at the airport. She’s just in from Vegas.
 

“Colt’s sending a car for us,” she says. “How’re you holding up?”

I shrug. My chest feels hollow. Either way, with or without Maddie, I would have been back in LA. But I expected to be packing up, heading to New York for good. Now I’m just here.

Jo threads an arm through mine. “It’s going to be okay. You have no idea how much Colt and I went through trying to get together.”

I still don’t see any way for this to work out. Maddie wants me to give up fighting. Fine. But I can’t erase the past. At this point, I don’t know if Striker and Lani will give up even if I do cancel the fight with Viper for the league slot.

Only when the familiar city is whizzing by do I start to really make some headway on thinking this out.

“I have to find out for sure who is threatening Maddie,” I tell Jo. “If it’s Lani, she has really gotten to her.”

“Maddie’s been through a lot the last few days,” Jo says. “Give her some time to sort things out.”

But I don’t want to give her time. I want everything to be the way it was supposed to be. I tug the ring box out of my pocket and pop it open. I never even got to show it to Maddie. I never got to ask her the most important thing.

Jo glances over at it. “Pretty ring,” she says. “You’ll get your chance.”

I’m not so sure.

We pull up in front of Buster’s Gym.

“Everybody’s here,” Jo says. “Well, except Brazen. Your trainer was still gambling when I left him.”

“We were supposed to stay in Vegas through Tuesday,” I say absently. “Let him have his fun.”