Outmatched

He hummed. “Maybe I will. But you shouldn’t be teaching classes. You should be in the ring. Would you consider fighting again?”

My gut turned to lead and my throat closed. I wasn’t on some fancy yacht anymore. I was sitting on the hard-plastic chair that cut into my thighs and put a kink in my back. The same chair I sat in for three days straight, waiting in vain for Jake to wake up. Sitting there as the doctor told us Jake was brain-dead. Sitting there, watching as Marcy decided to pull the plug, that Jake wouldn’t want to be left in a bed like that.

It was the day I found out my dad had lost almost all my savings on a bet that had Jake winning with a KO in the eighth round. He’d been knocked out in the seventh. Never to rise again.

Bile burned up my throat, and I swallowed convulsively. I was going to be sick. All over Fairchild’s purple and gold slippers.

A smooth, slim hand slipped into my loose grasp and squeezed.

Parker.

I blinked down at her, confused, and she smiled up at me, all bright and sunny.

“Rhys once told me it was best to tap out on top,” she told Fairchild.

Lies. But also true.

I licked my dry lips. “True. My time in the ring is over.”

Fairchild frowned but nodded with clear reluctance. An awkward tension had settled over us and I couldn’t find a way to cut it. Parker, on the other hand, glanced around the boat and then turned back to Fairchild. “This is a beautiful craft, Mr. Fairchild. Am I mistaken or are those solar panels you have there?”

He glanced at the area she pointed to. “It is. Now, Morgan. About this so-called retirement.”

I held up a hand. “Sorry, Fairchild, but can you point me in the direction of the bathroom? Nature calls.”

I barely listened to his directions before I got the hell out of there, unable to listen to another word about me going back to the sport. The bathroom was down a long hallway, near the bow. Connected to a stateroom, it was glossy and quiet. I ran cold water over my wrists and splashed my face. Bracing myself on the sink, I stared into the mirror, hardly recognizing myself.

Lines of strain bracketed my mouth and crept out from the corners of my eyes. I was thirty-four going on fifty-four, and I was hiding out in a bathroom like a chickenshit.

“Buck the fuck up, Morgan.” Pushing off from the sink, I opened the door and came face-to-face with Parker.

From the compressed line of her lips and the raised schoolmarm brow, I knew I was going to have to talk. I just didn’t know what the hell I was going to say.

Parker

As soon as Rhys disappeared to use the bathroom, Mr. Fairchild lost all interest in me. A red-haired woman with impressive breasts was clearly far more intriguing. He walked away toward her without saying a word, demonstrating beyond a doubt that I needed Rhys by my side to stay on the jerk’s radar.

It baffled me that a man wearing a white linen suit and purple slippers with gold embroidered initials held the fate of my future in his tiny little billionaire hands.

Rhys, and his not-so tiny hands, was currently off somewhere, freaking out.

He might be more stoic about it than most people, and Fairchild was too self-involved to have noticed, but the subject of Rhys’s retirement appeared to be a sore one. I was worried about his pallor when he strode away. Throwing out polite smiles to anyone who met my gaze, I hurried to follow in my fake boyfriend’s wake.

My concern was disconcerting.

Rhys was a big boy. One who showed up on a Harley to take me to a formal event. Not that I was complaining. I mean, I’d have to research its emission levels, but aesthetically the bike was delicious. It felt sexy. Really pleasantly sexy with my inner thighs pressed against Rhys’s hard thighs and the machine purring beneath me as the wind blew the tantalizing scent of Rhys’s spicy cologne around me.

Yum.

Who knew?

I threw that thought away. I could not have sexy thoughts about a man who would never have those kinds of thoughts about me in return. And I could not be hot for a guy who required a swear jar.

It wasn’t him, I reminded myself. It was the bike! The bike made everything hot.

I really hoped it had low emissions.

Still, I followed my curiosity to the bathroom Fairchild had directed Rhys to and waited outside for him. As soon as he opened the door, I blocked his path.

He sighed just before his expression shut down.

Uh-uh.

Answers were needed.

“The whole reason I agreed to this deception was because Fairchild was interested in Rhys the Widowmaker.”

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped.