I took a long sip of my drink before I played with the straw, swirling it around the glass. Glancing up at Millie, I told her what I’d been thinking from the minute I met his gaze, “My reaction to having his eyes on me was the same as the night of the fight, and last night in the bar.” I gave a mirthless laugh. “I’m going crazy, right?” I cast a glance at Millie and bit my lip. “Do you think the fighter and the bar guy are one and the same? That would explain my reaction. I don’t want to think I’ve started getting aroused by every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”
She laughed. “Tom, Dick, and Harry? Now you’re just being weird. He could be the same guy. He’s big and you said the bar guy was big.” She snickered. “No pun intended.”
Millie grasped my hand. “Look, I think he felt it too. Whatever is going on between the two of you, he couldn’t take his eyes off you.” She sounded worried, glanced around us, then confessed, “I mean his stare even turned me on and it wasn’t directed at me.”
The server interrupted to place our food on the table and after a quick glance at our joined hands, smirked, and left us alone.
Rolling her eyes, Millie chuckled, and started to eat while my stomach felt twisted in knots.
I picked my fork up and started to slowly eat, but my mind was in turmoil.
I’d always considered myself a one-man woman, so why couldn’t I stop thinking about the fighter who’d looked isolated from the others in the gym. My mind should be on my fiancée, but now, when I thought about him, I felt nervous.
Since my first few dates with Patrick, I’d known that we were wrong for each other, or at least he was wrong for me. Except the more I tried to back away, the more he pushed forward. Dates had become long term commitments, which had become engagements and plans for the future.
It had just been easier to go along with what he wanted while I’d secretly been cursing him. That was wrong and I needed to get some balls and stand up for what I wanted for a change, which unfortunately wasn’t Patrick.
“Get rid of Patrick.”
Startled at Millie’s words, I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth and stared at her. “What? Are you a mind reader now?”
She smirked and laughed. “Nope.” Her fork waved through the air, salad flew across the table, which she ignored. “You get that look on your face when you’re thinking about Patprick…the screwed up look as though you’ve just bitten into a lemon.”
“I don’t—”
“Yes, you do.”
I cast my eyes down to look at my plate. I’d hardly eaten anything while I was lost in my thoughts but I knew that she was probably right. “The engagement has been in the national newspapers because of my father. What will it do to his reputation if I break off the engagement? He won’t be happy.” I gave up trying to eat and placed my fork down onto the plate.
My father’s career was important to him, to my mother, and to me. Maybe not completely but I’d been trained to think of the campaign and my dad’s career before anything else. He loved his job as a state senator in Washington and he always had. At times, I think he loved it more than he loved his family. He was born to be a politician, after all. But any sign of scandal—like a failed engagement—was a sign of weakness and blood in the water drew sharks. My dad had gained some enemies along the way because he would always fight for the underdog and I knew they would use the scandal as a way to hurt his reelection.
I sighed. The last thing I wanted to do was disappoint him, which I’d do if I called everything off at such short notice. If I was honest though, Patrick’s father, Declan, was the one I feared the most.
“You know what I think?” Millie started. “I think you need to visit your father in DC, tell him how unhappy you are and explain that you can’t go through with the wedding. Tell him that you feel everyone has pressured you into it when it’s not what you want. Admit to him that you don’t love Patrick.” She finished the last of her salad and before she’d finished chewing, pointed her fork at me. “You’re daddy’s girl and he’ll understand more than your mother. I know all she wants is a baby in the family. Probably to bring your father into the headlines, again.”
“I’ll think about it.” I smiled to reassure my friend and sighed when I’d succeeded as Millie buried her nose into the strawberries and cream that had been placed in front of her. I chuckled because we’d just worked out at the gym and she was eating fresh thick cream, and didn’t bat an eye.
We both had good metabolisms, which was good considering we both loved our food. Apart from doing research at the gym, I wanted to get fit. I wasn’t skinny and I had curves in the right place, but I wanted to be able to jog through the park, run up a flight of stairs, all without wanting to fall over in exhaustion once I’d reached the top.
Once I was finished at Patrick’s family training gym, I’d look into membership closer to where I lived, where I’d be given a personal trainer to kick my butt.
“So,” Millie drawled.
I raised a brow and waited for her to continue.
“Stryker, huh?”
“What? You change direction so quickly that you leave me behind half the time.”
“Sorry. My brain never stops. So, back to Stryker. What do you know about him?”
“Nothing.
” I shrugged, finishing my drink.
“I thought you’d researched the fighters before we arrived there.”
She was right. “I did. The picture on their web site for Stryker is dark and you can’t really make him out. But watching the fight, I would never have recognized him. The only information was his fight statistics. Nothing personal like the other fighters profiles. It’s as though he didn’t exist until he won his first fight. I was curious about him before I saw him today…” her voice trailed off as she thought of the puzzle that presented, “and now, I’m still curious, but I felt a connection with him, even though the way he watched me sent a mixture of fear and desire down my spine.”