see the gym close over his dead body.
But four months wasn’t going to cut it. If he could get Jenna to agree to postpone the execution, maybe through the next year… An extra twelve months to start turning things around could make all the difference. There was a tournament fast approaching, and if all went well, a couple of their homegrown fighters could land pro contracts as a result. That would boost membership. They could shed a bit of their black-sheep rep as an old-school boxing gym gone to seed, and start proving they were an up-and-coming force to be reckoned with in the MMA scene.
But that was a big-ass if.
And if Jenna’s word was any good, she’d maybe approve a few hundred bucks here and there to replace old equipment, but for a contractor to build a women’s locker room, for serious advertising, for anything that’d bring in enough new members or the sponsorship to drag them out of the red…? Yeah, right.
Mercer needed some aspirin—Jenna was promising to be a royal pain in his ass. If a rather good-looking one.
And she looked roughly how he’d expected. More stylish, maybe. More grown-up. And sure, she was hot—sort of uptight, college-grad hot, and way out of Mercer’s league. He wondered what Rich would make of her. Then again, his shameless right-hand man would hit on a fire hydrant if you perched a nice enough wig on it.
Mercer—and more than a few of his fellow fighters—had held theoretical candles for Jenna. Monty had spoken about her often and flashed her latest school portraits around, and she was like a celebrity inside these walls. Mercer had built her up as some exotic creature, his mentor’s mysterious daughter off in California, moving to college in Seattle, living some exciting West Coast life, all blue eyes and pink cheeks, shiny brown hair, like a girl from a TV show.
He’d heard nothing but praise about her from Monty since he’d been a teenager, and he’d always assumed they were close, or at least speaking. It wasn’t until the man was dying that he’d confessed to Mercer how much he regretted the way he’d treated Jenna’s mom when they’d still been together, and how deeply it broke his heart that he and his only child had been out of contact for twenty-five years. Nearly her entire life.
Emotional crap had never been Mercer’s strong suit, and Jenna made him feel way too many things for his comfort. Threatened, fascinated, confused, annoyed. Plus a strong and completely inappropriate attraction—like the AC had broken, the office suddenly filled up with muggy August heat.
He shook his head, banishing all that sultry bull. There were pressing crises that demanded his focus, thanks to Jenna Wilinski.
He’d been living for free in the apartment upstairs since Monty had gotten really sick and needed assistance, but it was doubtful Jenna would be eager for him to stay. And if they were stuck splitting the bottom floors between two mismatched businesses for the next few months, he ought to avoid stepping on her toes whenever possible.
Mercer had absolutely no issue being pitted against someone, provided that someone was his physical match. Could even be a man six inches and fifty pounds bigger than Mercer, no problem. Bring it on. But this…
He was used to proving himself with fists and knees and elbows, not the business acumen he frankly didn’t possess, despite the title he’d grudgingly inherited. He was a trainer, not a general manager. Not an accountant or promoter or a secretary, though all those jobs had fallen to him since Monty had passed. Why the old guy had thought Mercer was up to the challenge, he had no clue. Monty had always given him more credit than he deserved, and in the ring it was a pressure he’d relished. But this just sucked.
He was up against a woman, a stranger beloved by the man Mercer had considered his own father. The conflict weighed heavily on his heart, confusing and complicated, not a dynamic he knew how to process. Nothing so simple as stripping down and climbing into a ring to let his fists do the proving.
Though it didn’t change one fact—nothing got Mercer’s blood pumping quite like a good fight.
2
JENNA RETURNED THE NEXT MORNING. Her gaze panned the foyer once more, but the uncertainty of the coming months cast her daydreams in shadows. She’d barely slept at the hotel, tossed around between excitement about her new venture and dread regarding the one she’d been saddled with…and some other curious, confusing feelings about the man at its helm.
The office was locked and dark, so she had no choice but to head for the wide set of steps in the rear and search for Mercer in the gym. She glanced at her clothes, one of a dozen new outfits she’d bought, needing a wardrobe that said competent young business owner. Clothes that might convince a professional man or woman to trust Jenna with their love life, though the choice would probably look stuffy and prim to a concrete basement full of blood-lusting boxers. Her new neighbors, for better or worse. Her new employees until the New Year arrived. Thank goodness their management was Mercer’s territory.
She descended the steps, and the stairs doubled back at a landing with a watercooler and a framed vintage fight poster, Marciano v. Walcott. What struck Jenna first was the smell. Sweat. Rubber and leather. Disinfectant. The odd, pungent potpourri of her father’s legacy. Not a fragrance that softly whispered blossoming romance! But a well-placed fan could probably keep it from wafting into the foyer.
The sounds came next, slapping and grunting and the squeak of equipment joints. Jenna took a final breath and stepped through the open double doors and into the gym.
It wasn’t quite what she’d expected—not the shadowy, smoke-clouded drug-and-gambling den old newspaper articles had so vividly conjured. Roomier, brighter, even orderly. But the rest was as she’d imagined.
A dozen fighters worked out at punching bags and on mats. A pair of men in one of two elevated rings carried on a practice match, tapping one another, not hitting. Her heart hurt, as she’d expected it might.
There was something about fighting she found upsetting. A sport that put so much emphasis on the physical—on hurting people—and whose glory went to individuals. Jenna believed deep in her heart that people needed each other. They needed family and friends and partners and teammates, support systems and tribes. At the end of the day, fighting was about establishing who was the best, standing triumphant in some sweaty ring with your fist in the air, the loser cast aside, all alone.
Jenna had always gravitated to the opposite. As a teen she’d been a camp counselor during the summers, in charge of building communities out of groups of nervous strangers. In college she’d majored in social psychology and enjoyed it, but all the theorizing in the world didn’t give her a fraction of the satisfaction that working with actual people did. In the end, she’d proudly framed her diploma and abandoned her intentions of becoming a therapist in favor of taking a job on a cruise ship as activities director. She was great at that stuff—bringing people together.
She looked around the gym. It’s a lonely sport, she thought. For lonely, distrustful people. Give her a softball league, any day.
It was looking as if she’d come down into this gloomy den for nothing, that Mercer wasn’t here, that she’d have to come back later and feel this awfulness all over again—
“Hook, hook, hook!” The voice jerked her head to the left.
Mercer was shouting at a beefy young man, who dutifully doled out the punches he was ordered, thwacking the padded targets Mercer held between them. Both were shirtless, Mercer as pale as his
