you know what you’re looking for?”
Did she ever. “A nice, grown-up, professional guy. With a half-decent car and some kind of dress sense.” She pictured that hopeless Patrick guy, and all the other incarnations of him she’d dated. “Somebody moderately sophisticated.” Who’d take her to a nice restaurant instead of the corner bar, so she could dress up and feel girly after all these years of training and touring. A man who’d make her feel like a lady, not a chick.
“I’ll call the powers that be first thing tomorrow morning,” Jenna promised. “Give me your number and I’ll let you know the verdict.”
She scribbled it on a Post-it, feeling hopeful. As she handed it to Jenna she said, “I promise if I get a date with one of your clients, I won’t go dressed like this, or all banged up. I’m just on a coffee break, and I knew you were closing at five, so...”
Jenna waved the excuses aside. “If any two matchmakers are sympathetic to the hazards of your job, you’re looking at them.”
“Okay, great. Fingers crossed. I better get back downstairs.”
They said goodbye and Steph jogged down the steps, mindful to approach the double doors with caution. In her absence, Patrick had moved his debris and tools to the side, and she hurried through the threshold, half expecting to trigger an explosion.
The dangerous man in question was at the other end of the gym, standing beside another worker at the emergency exit, scratching his head as they stared at a mess of wires spilling from an electrical panel.
God help him, Steph thought.
He was one of those men who just floated cloddishly through his life, helped along by those endeared by his good looks and hapless charm. Probably had sympathetic teachers who’d passed him so he could stay on the hockey team. Likely was coddled by girlfriends even after he’d forgotten their birthdays three years running. She knew his type well enough to make these wild assumptions—her younger brother was exactly the same. The lovable, harmless oaf.
She touched her nose. Well, perhaps harmless wasn’t quite the word for Patrick.
Steph loved her brother too much to feel bitter toward this kind of man, but a part of her did find it unfair. She’d had to work three times harder than any man in her field to be taken seriously, had to push herself to succeed, since so few people at the top of the MMA food chain cared to invest their energy or resources on a female fighter. Women didn’t get juicy coaching deals or promotional opportunities, not the way the guys did, and Steph’s biggest payday for a professional fight had probably been as much as what a guy like Rich earned before he’d even signed with an organization.
She was a hard worker and she loved her job, but she was tired of struggling financially. She hoped she’d find an equally driven man, someone in a competitive—if civilized—field, who could offer the financial security she’d been missing her entire life.
Her family had been pretty poor, her father losing a good job as a machine mechanic when his factory was bought out in the nineties. After the layoff, Steph’s mom had started working behind the deli counter at their local supermarket to supplement their income “until things picked up.” Two decades later, she was still there.
Once upon a time, they’d been able to pay for Steph’s first karate classes without a care, but those days were short-lived. If she’d pushed herself to excel—at karate, judo, jujitsu, MMA—it was because being an overachiever had garnered her favoritism. The kind that had allowed her to keep coming to classes at a discount or in exchange for doing odd jobs around the dojo. Martial arts had never been a simple extracurricular to Steph. She’d loved it the way other girls loved horses or ballet or boys. And she’d fought to keep it in her life.
Still, she’d been doing this for over twenty years. She was tired. She’d never grow weary of the physicality of the sport, but the financial struggle... She was ready to leave that behind her. Wanting a man who could offer that wasn’t shallow—it was practical.
She eyed Patrick as she stripped out of her warm-ups.
Handsome, to be sure. Sexy even, and probably perfectly sweet despite the alarming frequency with which he caused her bodily harm. But even if her blood quickened at the sight of him, her rational brain knew what a guy like Patrick would bring—more struggling, little stability. Maybe a great sex life, but that wasn’t a fair trade-off, not if it came at the price of all that uncertainty.
She wound medical tape around her injured hand and pulled on her gloves, ready for the evening’s first workout. Down here it was business as usual—physical strain, sweat, satisfaction. Beyond these walls, though, things could be different. Would be different. A sophisticated man waiting for her at a restaurant, maybe kissing her cheeks, if that happened outside the movies. She’d let him teach her which wine went with which dish. Show her how it tingled to kiss a man who tasted of burgundy or merlot.
“Son of a—”
Steph whipped her head around at the sound. It was Patrick, of course. His averted cuss had accompanied an unmistakable zap! and a flickering of the lights. He shook out the hand he’d shocked. “Sorry!” he told everyone who’d turned, flexing his fingers. “My bad.”
At least it wasn’t me that time.
He was over it in a moment, back to joking with his colleague.
God help you, she thought again, watching him.
And God help the poor woman who falls for you.
2
STEPH WAS WORKING early the next day, and during lunch she checked her voicemail, finding a message Jenna had left at nine-thirty. The woman was as good as her word. She sounded chipper, asking Steph to swing by Spark when she had five minutes. Heart thumping with cautious hope, Steph jogged up the steps, smoothing her hair.
Both matchmakers were in the office, eating sandwiches off brown deli paper.
“Oh,” Jenna mumbled through a bite, chewing impatiently. She swallowed and blurted, “It’s you! Yay!”
“Hey, it’s me.”
Lindsey waved, also preoccupied with her lunch.
“Good news,” Jenna said, beaming as she dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “Turns out you are allowed to join Spark, if you so wish.”
“Yeah?” Steph couldn’t hide her smile. Even if the service cost an arm and a leg, it wouldn’t burst her bubble. “That’s great.”
Jenna nodded. “I just can’t give you preferential treatment and I have to disclose to any potential dates that you and I are affiliated.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“It’s not. And actually, if I can speed you through the application process, I have a man who’d love to meet you for a drink tomorrow night.”
She blinked. “Tomorrow? Wow, you’re good.”
Jenna laughed. “It was a little flukey. He’s a brand-new client, and I wound up emailing him last night with some follow-up info, and we had a little back-and-forth. Anyway. He’s a doctor.”
Steph
