or Brendan. Brendan Connolly, Doyle, McCarthy, McAnything. Sully, Smitty, Murph. His hands felt like sandpaper and his skin smelled of Lever or Zest.
She knew these things, because she’d already dated this guy ten times over. Guys as comfortable as a broken-in pair of sneakers, but Steph wanted something more. She wanted to be swept off her feet, not pulled onto the couch for an afternoon of SportsCenter, with Coors-flavored makeout sessions during the ads.
“My name’s Steph, by the way,” she said, angling to learn his.
He kept his eyes on his task. “Sorry again, about your nose, Steph.”
“I’ve got a shirt on now.”
He turned and got to his feet, the promised logo from J.T.’s Contracting greeting Steph. He was tall, six feet or so, and had a handsome, honest face, the kind that advertised a man’s every emotion. Strong jaw behind a couple days’ stubble. And those blue eyes were so...blue. Steph wanted to slap herself for even noticing.
The guy frowned, squinting at her nose. “It’s not broken, is it?”
She shook her head and tossed him his button-up. “Just a nosebleed. I’ve had worse.” Though usually she at least got paid for it.
His eyes rolled back with relief. “Oh good. I mean, not good. But you know.”
“I know.” She cocked her head at him. “What’s your name?”
“Patrick.”
Of course it is. “I’ll see you around, Patrick. Maybe next time you’ll knock.”
“I will, don’t worry. Again—sorry. Seriously.”
He wore the guileless look of a scolded puppy, and Steph felt some annoyance lift. She offered a half-assed smile and turned away, tucking her gym bag in the corner.
Rich spotted her as she approached the mats, dark eyes widening. “Jesus, what happened to your nose?”
“Your electrician punched me in the face with a door.”
“You punch him back?”
She smirked. “Thought I’d save that for the ring.”
“Is it broken?”
“No. Just tell me if it starts bleeding again.” Steph could sense the well-groomed professionals forming an orderly queue outside the gym, just dying for a chance to woo such a glamorous woman as she.
Rich asked her to take the lead on grappling drills and she was relieved to find Patrick gone from the lounge when she went to pull on her gi. Wilinski’s didn’t have a proper jujitsu program yet—her arena, now—but she did her best with the ragtag group of uniformless members.
If the guys were feeling weird about having a woman in their ranks, they didn’t show it—no leering, no skepticism. Some men could be royally macho pricks, but on the whole, fighters were a sensitive group. Theirs was a humbling, emotional sport, most of the bravado reserved for the cameras.
She’d had better offers than Wilinski’s, money-and profile-wise, but there was something appealing about the challenge. She could step in as it went co-ed and feel like a part of the evolution, feel invested and valued. Feel rooted to something after way too many years of going wherever the fights were. Stability, after all that transience.
Once the lunchtime sessions wrapped, Rich showed her around the office and the computer system.
“Mercer’s better with this crap,” he said, frowning as he clicked through folders on the laptop. Mercer was the gym’s general manager.
“His wife owns the dating service upstairs, right?” Spark—a slick-looking operation whose glass-fronted office shared the foyer with the gym. The most mismatched neighbors in small-business history.
“His fiancée,” Rich corrected, managing to find and print the form he’d been looking for. “Jenna Wilinski.”
“Wilinski?”
“Her dad opened this place in ’82. She inherited both floors.”
Her brows rose. “The plot thickens.”
“She nearly gave the gym the chop, but luckily Mercer managed to seduce her away from reason.”
“I’d have thought that was your job.”
He grinned. “I know, right?”
“Doesn’t your girlfriend work up there, too?” If memory served, the woman was refreshingly down-to-earth, compared with all the glammed-out girlfriends-of-fighters Steph had met over the years.
Rich nodded, fetching the papers the printer had spat out. “It’s all very incestuous around here. Must be in the water.”
She held in the questions she was longing to ask, knowing Rich was the kind of guy who’d tease her mercilessly if she gave him the ammunition. So is she good, this matchmaker? What sort of guys might she find for a chick who’s spent the past decade scrapping in chain-link octagons? Would I look dumb for even asking if she’d want me as a client?
Steph had grown up an hour’s drive from here. She didn’t know anyone in Boston, not outside this gym, and didn’t have the first clue how to go about meeting the kind of men she’d like to date. She was useless at the bar scene, given what a teetotaler training turned one into, and didn’t relish taking up tango or speed-dating or going it alone on some freebie personals site. If she was going to find a boyfriend, she’d do it the right way. Do it through a service that attracted sophisticated, grown-up men who were looking for something serious. Spark might be the perfect solution and a worthy expense, provided she could muster the balls to ask.
“Autograph this,” Rich said, handing her a safety waiver. “And Mercer’s got tax and payroll forms for you, too, someplace.” He rummaged through a filing cabinet and Steph read and signed all the papers.
“So, how you settling in?” he asked, relaxing back in the chair. “You find a place you like?”
She shook her head. “Only a sublet. A nice one, but I have to find an apartment of my own by March first.”
“Bummer.”
“No, it’s fine. I couldn’t afford this place on my own for more than a couple months.”
Rich knocked her papers into a tidy stack and slipped them in a folder. “My girlfriend’s looking for a roommate.”
“Oh yeah?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Bear in mind, I’d be your neighbor, one floor down.”
Incestuous, indeed. Rich as her coworker, roommate’s boyfriend, neighbor? That was a lot of Rich Estrada. But it was a better lead than she’d found elsewhere.
“On the plus side,” he went on, scribbling Need copies on a Post-it and sticking it to the folder, “you’d pretty much have the place to yourself.” No doubt. Rich didn’t seem the type to suffer an empty bed. “Though there may be a surly teenage girl crashing on Lindsey’s
