“Anyway,” Dylan continued. “If you want, I’ll get out of your hair.”
I stared at him for a long moment. He sounded honest, and I didn’t doubt that if I said the word, he’d be gone. It only made me trust him more and I couldn’t see any reason to tell him to get lost. No yet, at least.
I pinched my lips together. Bobby was going to kill me if he ever found out that I’d been chatting up the enemy. But Bobby wasn’t here. Besides, Dylan looked sexy with his hair pushed back and piercing blue eyes.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.
I stared at him for a moment. What was the harm, though? It was only a drink, and I didn’t feel like dancing anyway. “Whiskey-ginger,” I told him.
“Coming right up,” he said, heading towards the bar. I found us a table off to the side. I wasn’t looking for anything secluded, but I wanted a place where we could actually talk. Not that I thought that there was anything for us to talk about. We probably didn’t have anything in common, besides living in Boston and liking this club.
And I guess, boxing. But boxing had never been my thing, it was Bobby’s. I knew the rules, and I could follow what was happening during the tournament, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to spend my night talking about it, necessarily.
I didn’t know why I had agreed to let Dylan buy me a drink.
Still, I had to admit I was pleasantly surprised as he came back over to the table, gave me my drink and started talking. He wasn’t just some dumb boxer. He was friendly and even made me laugh a couple times. It didn’t seem like he was just trying to get into my pants, either.
“So, you live here?” he asked.
I grimaced, sure that he was going to try to enlist me to be his “tour guide” while he was in the city. “For a few years,” I hedged.
“That’s awesome,” he continued. “I’ve been here a few times before, and I love it. That’s part of the reason why I wanted to get better after my injury and compete in the tournament. It’s a great place to come back to the sport.”
He said nothing else, didn’t request any other information. I found myself surprisingly relieved by that.
He made me laugh harder than I would’ve liked and it made me wonder what he was doing talking to me when he could have convinced any girl in here to go home with him. Not that I would ask him for an explanation.
I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d read him all wrong. Maybe he wasn’t just trying to sleep with me, or if he was, maybe he wasn’t just trying to throw Bobby off his game. And even if he was trying to do both of those things, I couldn’t help but wonder if that would have been such a bad thing.
The truth was, as the hours stretched on, he was nice to me and kept making me laugh. It didn’t look like he was just trying to sleep with me, which made me smile. The attraction was definitely there.
Now if only I knew what to do with it.
THREE
DYLAN
I was surprised when Bobby Purcell got all up in my face during training. Oh, I was perfectly aware by now that he was Lucy’s older brother and that he probably didn’t want me talking to her. I had looked him up after the other night at the bar, too curious for my own good.
Not knowing his name but knowing I had to figure it out before I really got in the shit, I had scrolled through page after page of photos of the other boxers in the tournament, trying to find one that might be the guy that Lucy had been there to see that first night. I hadn’t had much to go on, but eventually I found him.
Huh. So that’s the guy.
We weren’t scheduled to fight one another until much later in the tournament. Reading through his stats, I had to admit it would make for an interesting fight. Of course, if I beat the guy to shit, Lucy would never sleep with me. Then again, I was here to win the tournament, not to sleep with some chick.
The only thing was, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lucy. I had stumbled on her at the club out of sheer luck and I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes away from her. I’d thought about bringing her a drink, but then I’d seen that asshole hassling her friend and realized there was a better solution. I could step in and be the hero. I was sure that she wouldn’t be able to resist me, but she’d looked nothing but pissed off at seeing me there. At first, at least.
She had warmed up to me after that. Not to the point where I had dared to take her home with me, even I wasn’t that stupid, but the tournament would last all month and I had a feeling that if she was there to watch her brother’s matches this early on, she would stick around for as long as he was in the competition.
I did wish that I had pressed my luck and tried to get her number, at least. She might have told me no, but now I was left wondering if I would ever see her again—especially if flirting with her in front of her brother was out of the question.
I raised an eyebrow at him, setting down the weights that I’d been using. “What’s up, man?” I asked him, my tone cautious.
Bobby crowded up against me, clearly
