Love On The Ropes (Ringside Romance) (3 page)

Are you proud of me, Pops
?

“Don’t ever do that again.”

A steel hand gripped her upper arm
and pulled her to a stop. Sandy looked up, way up, into The Stripper’s eyes,
now nearly black. Sweat beaded on his forehead indicating he struggled against
severe pain.

“Don’t do what again?” she asked.

“Humiliate me in front of them.”

“You didn’t need my help with
that.”

Stunned, he loosened his grip and
she pulled free of him. Instead of turning and running away, she put her hand
on his back and led him the rest of the way to first aid. He limped, probably
from hitting his knee against the cement, but he went willingly.

You could have knocked her over
with a feather. Feeling a bit victorious, she decided to engage him in
conversation. It wouldn’t hurt to know how he’d cut his head open, and if he
had a tetanus shot recently.

“So you’re the new guy. Where did
you come from?” she asked, steering him toward the first aid door.

“Why do you want to know?” He eyed
her and slowed down.

“Because I write the gossip column
for the
Times
,” she retorted. “What’s your problem, dude? I’m just
trying to make conversation.”

“I hate conversation.”

She swung open the door and
spotted Johnny tending Big Red. “Good. You probably wouldn’t be any good at it
anyway.”

“What?” The Stripper grabbed her
arm again.

“Would you stop with the
manhandling?” She yanked on her arm and pulled free.

“What did you say to me?”

“Look, you’d better get that chip
off your shoulder and leave it in the Dumpster outside where it belongs or you
won’t last two hours here.” She put down her bag. “Actually, I’m surprised
you’ve lasted this long.”

“What’s up, doll?” Johnny asked,
stepping up beside her.

“New guy needs his head examined.”

“Me? I need my head examined?” The
Stripper said.

Oh, for Pete’s sake, was
everything an insult with this guy?

“You’re the one with the bloody
knot on your head.”

“Who is he?” Johnny asked.

The new thorn in my side, Sandy
thought. “He’s the new jobber, Jack the Stripper.” To think Cosmo asked her to
keep an eye on this self-destructive, disagreeable bonehead. Days like today
made her seriously reconsider her career with BAM.

With a hand on his arm she lead
the patient to Johnny’s table. “The Stripper might need stitches.”

“Don’t call me that. And I don’t
need stitches,” he said.

“Well, you need something, cuz
you’re bleeding all over yourself.”

“I’m fine, I’m…” He hesitated,
took a step and turned white. The adrenaline rush must have worn off.

“Grab his arm!” she cried. She and
Johnny got a grip on The Stripper and guided him to the examining table before
he collapsed.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he mumbled.

Okay, so he didn’t want to be
called The Stripper and she needed him to calm the hell down so they could
examine his head wound. What was his name again? Jackson, Jacob? She knew it
started with a J.

“J, I need you to relax,” she
said.

Johnny handed her a washcloth and
she wiped the patient’s forehead. “You still with us?”

He didn’t answer.

“Check this out, Johnny.” She
turned The Stripper’s head and pointed to the bump.

“Who did that?”

“Maybe Floyd, I don’t know. When I
found this guy he was in the process of killing Floyd with a pink stiletto.”

“Killing Floyd?” Red croaked.

“Not really killing him,” she
said. She didn’t want to ruin The Stripper’s career before it got started. Then
again, he was doing a good job of that all by himself.

“We might have to take him to the
hospital,” Johnny said.

“No hospital. I’m fine, I’m ...
fine ... fine,” The Stripper muttered.

“Sounds broke to me,” Red offered.
“Like a scratched record.”

“Thanks for the diagnosis,” Sandy
shot over her shoulder. “What do you think?” she asked Johnny.

“Could be a nasty concussion.
Clean the wound and see how deep it is. Then we’ll determine if we need to get
him to the hospital.”

A conservative approach was always
Johnny’s way. He knew the medical bills could empty out a pro wrestler’s life
savings. It’s not like they qualified for affordable health insurance.

She washed her hands in the sink,
keeping an eye on her patient. He didn’t move but continued to mumble that he
was fine, over and over again. She couldn’t argue with him in one respect — the
man did have a fine body.

“Damn,” she whispered. She’d
worked with these guys 24/7 and never thought twice about any guy’s body except
for it being broken or on the mend. But there was something different about
this guy. Something vulnerable ...  and incredibly sexy.

Snap out of it
! She had to
stop being drawn to lost causes and stay focused, assess his injury, administer
first aid and move on to the next patient.

A lunatic — that was her first
impression of The Stripper, so she’d keep thinking of him that way to keep this
silly attraction out of her head. She walked back to him and tried prying the
shoe out of his hand.

“I think you’re done with this.”
She tugged, but he wasn’t letting go.

“Okay,” she whispered. So what if
he had a shoe fetish?

She tried to gently turn his head
for better access to the wound, but he resisted.

“You are a stubborn son of a bitch,”
she muttered.

* *
*

You are a stubborn son of a
bitch
. The words echoed in Jason’s brain.
Stubborn, stupid, insane
.
Familiar words uttered by a medic in Bosnia as he patched Jason up to be flown
out of that hellhole to a real hospital.

No, he couldn’t go. Couldn’t leave
Chauncy.

“Gotta get back,” he mumbled,
trying to sit up. A firm grip on his shoulders kept him flat.

“Come on, J. Work with me here,” a
voice said.

A woman’s voice, and she’d called
him J. He opened his eyes but was staring at a bare, white wall. Pressure at
the base of his neck made him wince. He turned his head and looked at the
source, a beautiful woman with big, catlike green eyes and an angry expression.

“Stop it already,” she said.

Jason drifted in and out of la-la
land. Who was she again? A nurse? A field medic?

Wait, no, he’d left Special Ops,
became a cop, and joined the DEA. The DEA. Right. His current assignment: to
infiltrate a pro wrestling organization. Take off his clothes, act like an
idiot, and nail phantom drug traffickers. Steroids. Christ, he wished he hadn’t
remembered.

“Come on, just relax,” the female
said. It was the girl from before, the petite blonde who’d challenged him in
front of the guys.

A sudden crash vibrated across the
room.

“Where’s that son of a bitch?” a man
threatened.

The girl moved in front of Jason,
placing an open palm on his chest. Her fingertips grazed his naked skin,
calming him, making him feel like he was being lowered into a foxhole where
he’d be safe.

“It’s over, Floyd. Get out of
here,” she said.

“I’m gonna kill him!”

The woman’s cheeks flushed, red
creeping down her neck. One eyebrow slightly raised, she stared Floyd down
while patting Jason’s chest with her fingertips.

“You’re not going to kill anyone,”
she said.

“Right, I forgot. You’re into
jerks like Cody Monroe and this whack job.” He motioned to Jason. “That’s why
none of the other guys can get into your pants.”

“Hey!” Johnny said.

Something flared in the woman’s
eyes and instinct demanded Jason knock Floyd’s teeth out of his head. He
struggled to sit up.

“Relax,” the woman ordered, then
looked at Floyd. “Did it ever occur to you that there’s no one in this organization
worthy of ‘getting into my pants’ including pretty boy Cody Monroe? Go on, get
the hell out of here.”

She turned to Jason, her touch
warming his skin like a heating pad, relaxing his muscles and uncoiling the
knot in his chest.

“Turn your head so I can get a
good look at your wound.”

Her voice had softened, soothing
him in a way no amount of whiskey could. Then she did something completely
unnerving: she smiled. It was a bright, young smile, though it didn’t quite
reach her eyes. It radiated an innocence he couldn’t comprehend. Her smile made
him look away, turning his back on Floyd, his enemy.

“That’s good,” she whispered.

He felt her swab his head wound.
Scuffling and grunts echoed in the background. A door slammed and the woman
hesitated, her fingers resting against his shoulder. Her deep sigh warmed his
skin. She was relieved. About what? That Floyd didn’t pound on J in retaliation?

Nah. She didn’t even know him.

Yet, she’d called him J—the
nickname only a handful of people knew about.

“I don’t think he’ll need
stitches,” she said. “Take a look, Johnny.”

“It’s not bad. Put a butterfly on
it and get some ice.”

He couldn’t believe he’d
surrendered, laid still and listened to their conversation like a fly on the
wall.

Exhaustion knocked him flat,
exhaustion from training to be a pro wrestler for the past six weeks, then
being thrown into this insane world of testosterone-charged gorillas. Today was
his first practice with the guys and he’d lost it, getting into a territorial
fight with Floyd.

J hated the fakeness of pro
wrestling and the bravado of the guys. Hell, he hated everything about this
assignment. Pro wrestlers were nothing more than grown-up kids play fighting.
Or, in his case, stripping.

Stripping, the part of this job he
hadn’t mastered, the part he despised. But stripping provided him with access,
and the sooner he uncovered the source of the steroid distribution the sooner
he’d be out of here and on to something big.

He needed help. He needed to earn
someone’s trust within the organization. He opened his eyes, blinking against
the fluorescent light. Damn, his head hurt.

“How about something for the pain?”
the woman said, as if she’d read his mind. She stood over him with a cup of
water in one hand and a bottle of pills in the other.

“No, thanks.”

“It’s just aspirin.”

Again, he freaked that she’d been
able to read his mind so easily. He refused to take anything stronger than
aspirin, and only took it when he suffered from severe migraines. He didn’t
mind pain. It kept him sharp.

“You don’t have to be macho. That
doesn’t impress me.” She raised her eyebrow as if she were growing impatient.

“Not much impresses you, does it?”
he guessed. He wanted to know more about this woman but knew she’d never willingly
give up information.

“Well,” she said, “I’m impressed
by a truly amazing sunrise over the Grand Canyon, and the sight of Mount
Rainier on a clear day.” The corner of her mouth curved up. Was she smiling at
him?

He sat up and rubbed his knee,
realizing he’d banged it up but good. 

“You messed up the knee, too?” she
asked.

Damn, she read him like the Sunday
comics, quickly and with little effort. How could that be? His best friends,
Chauncy and Beef, always accused him of playing his cards so close that even
they couldn’t begin to guess what was going on in his head.

Right now the only thing
registering in his head was the pain from his bloody head wound and bruised
knee.

“Change your mind?” she asked,
rattling the bottle of pills.

He’d have to watch himself around
this female.

“I could use one, I guess,” he
said.

“Just one?”

“Please.”

She tapped a pill into his palm.
He noticed she was careful to avoid skin-to-skin contact. Strange. Her hand was
all over his chest a minute ago yet now she couldn’t stand to touch him?

He swallowed the aspirin and she offered
him the cup of water. This time his fingers grazed hers. She froze for a second
before stepping back.

“X-rays wouldn’t be bad idea,” she
offered, stuffing something into her backpack and avoiding eye contact.

“No thanks, doc.”

“You’re a smart-ass, you know
that?”

“What am I supposed to call you? I
don’t know your name.”

She planted her hands on her hips.
“Sandy.”

“Thanks, Sandy.” He extended his
hand, waiting to see what she’d do.

To his surprise, she stuck out her
petite fingers and shook his hand. “Hopefully, I’ll never see you again,” she
said.

He wasn’t expecting that response.
“Excuse me?”

“If you use half the brains God
has given you, you’ll make nice with the boys, stay out of trouble and take
care of yourself.”

She was insulting him again,
wasn’t she? And here he thought she was starting to like him, that maybe she
could be his insider for this assignment.

“I’ve got more brains than you
think,” he said, taking another swig of water. Suddenly he felt dehydrated.

“If that’s true, you’ll apologize
to Floyd.”

“Apologize?” he snapped, then
grabbed his head to ease the pain.

She placed an ice pack on his
knee. His head, his knee, this woman, this stupid assignment. He was going to
lose it. No, she’d avoid him for sure if she thought he was hot tempered and
dangerous. Yet she’d gotten in his face before. Nothing seemed to intimidate
her.

“I have nothing to apologize for,”
he said. “Floyd started it.” And Jason sounded like an eight-year-old.

“Swallow your pride and smooth
things over. You don’t want enemies before you step into the ring.”

She made a good point. He’d learned
that wrestling was a team effort, that if everyone executed the moves the way
they were supposed to, no one got hurt. Not severely, anyway.

But that son of a bitch Floyd
crossed the line.