Ice Cold (An MMA Stepbrother Romance) (10 page)

I sat in the front row and watched in awe as Shayne made his way toward into the ring. The screams from the crowd were even louder than I remembered from the fight in Chicago, and it was obvious that he was eating the attention up. I looked all around me and saw women cheering, and some of them were even holding their panties up. That bothered me more than I was willing to admit.

Shayne caught several pairs of panties that were thrown at him when he walked through the tunnel approaching the ring. His opponent waited for him, and I felt a small amount of fear. I knew that Shayne had been working his ass off to get ready for the fight. There shouldn’t be anything to worry about. I knew he was ready, but I still felt flutters of anxiety in my stomach. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted him to be safe. It was the downside of learning so much more about the sport. I also had read about the number and kind of injuries that occurred in the ring on a regular basis.

Shayne wasn’t the only one who had been watching footage of the Hammer’s last fights. My curiosity had gotten the better of me one afternoon after I’d heard Maury chewing Shayne out for flubbing a defensive move against something that Maury said the Hammer always does in his fights. I decided to do a little Googling and felt sick after watching several of video clips.

The man standing in the corner waiting for Shayne seemed as if he was twelve feet tall. He was a mountain of muscle, and his head was bald. His expression was neutral as if he couldn’t have cared less if the crowd was cheering for him or not. His arms were crossed over his chest as he waited. Shayne took his time moving to the ring. He waved to fans and stopped long enough for several of the more enthusiastic fans to take a selfie with him.

I hadn’t ever thought about it, but he told me that he always gave pictures when he was fresh going into a fight. By the time it was over, he didn’t want to get caught if he was tired or needed a shower. I understood that.

It was the craziest thing, but Shayne had started to enter my thoughts at the strangest times. It seemed as if he was always there no matter what I was doing or thinking about. In the short span of three weeks, there was a shadow cast over my life, and the shadow’s name was Shayne Malone.

Up on the jumbotron, I watched Shayne interacting with his fans. The women were pawing at his chest and his robe even as he gave autographs out. I felt my teeth grinding together, and the ripple of jealousy that shuddered through me was so strong that I almost fell back in my chair. Which was ridiculous. I couldn’t be jealous of something that wasn’t mine, and I especially couldn’t be jealous or coveting my soon-to-be stepbrother. That was fucked up on so many levels it was crazy.

Refocusing on the ring, I saw that the Hammer had started to shift his stance. An expression of annoyance crossed his face. Shayne was taking a ridiculously long time to get to the ring, but the fans were eating it up. The chants started to get louder, and Shayne finally seemed to remember that he wasn’t there to get all the pieces of paper, that no doubt contained phone numbers, that I could see sticking of the pockets of his robe.

I tossed my hair over my shoulder. I was wearing a much more conservative outfit than last time. An off-the-shoulder fitted sweater and a pair of skinny jeans that I knew made my legs look miles long. I stubbornly told myself that I hadn’t worn them because I knew that Shayne liked looking at my legs. It was my story, and I was sticking to it.

As Shayne slipped under the ropes into the ring, he held his arm up, and the crowd went wild. I could see that Maury, who was standing behind him outside the ring, looked less than pleased at Shayne’s showboating. I wasn’t sure what he expected. It was who Shayne was when he was playing the role of Ice. The fans loved it.

Shayne bounced on his heels and tossed his head from side to side. He seemed unconcerned by the glare of the huge monstrosity of a man across the ring from him. Maury stepped into the ring long enough to help Shayne out of his robe, and then I saw the two of them drop into what appeared to be a deep conversation. Maury looked like he had just bit into a lemon when he exited the ring a moment later.

The ref came out and made the announcement that the fight was about to start, and the crowd finally started to settle down.

“God, he’s even better looking in person,” I heard the woman behind me say.

“I know. I wouldn’t mind having that between my legs tonight,” another woman replied.

I didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know they were talking about Shayne. I had to admit that he looked good. He looked better than good. His muscles rippled under the lights as he finished his warm-ups. It was as if everything was happening in slow motion when the bell rang, and the fight started.

He moved like a panther across the ring. His expression was calm but full an intense concentration. I knew that look. He’d had the same look when he stalked me in the ring last night. There was little doubt that when Ice Malone knew what he wanted, he went after it with everything he had. I felt a rush of pleasure as I squeezed my legs together. When the first contact was made between the two fighters, I yelled right along with the crowd.

This match was entirely different than the one I had watched with Stacey. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I understood the whole thing a lot better than I did then. It was obvious from the beginning that Ice and Hammer were much more evenly matched. Hammer was older than Ice by several years and had been on the MMA circuit longer. Ice was the up and comer, though, and favored despite the fact that the last time they’d met in the ring, the Hammer had taken him down.

I had nosed through some of Shayne’s medical records that I found under his client file on the firm’s share drive. I knew I probably shouldn’t have done that, but my curiosity had gotten the better of me. After his first fight with Hammer, he’d been out of commission for almost a month. Bruised ribs. A split lip. A concussion. The doctor said he was lucky it wasn’t worse. I felt the anxiety in the pit of my stomach again as the two men in the ring jabbed and swung at each other. Each hit that landed on Shayne’s body caused me to flinch. I started to scream louder.

I thought about our short match in the ring the night before. He had been kind in humoring me, but he also knew that I wasn’t any threat. I think that’s why I had been able to surprise him and take him down to the mat. I had a feeling if we mock sparred again, he wouldn’t underestimate me.

The first round passed without either fighter gaining any advantage over the other. Halfway through the second round, though, the cadence changed. Hammer grabbed at Shayne’s throat and was able to gain purchase. He pulled him in closer. Shayne tried to beat at his hands but couldn’t quite get the other man to let go. I watched in horror as Hammer started to push Shayne up on his tiptoes. Shayne’s face flushed as he started to choke. The crowd hushed.

Was this about to be the end? Time seemed to stand still. Then Shayne brought up both arms and slammed them down on Hammer’s forearms. Hammer must have loosened his grip just enough that Shayne was able to twist his arm even as he grabbed Hammer’s wrist. My mouth fell open as I watched Shayne pivot around and yank on Hammer’s arm drawing him up and over his back.

He let the momentum of the weight of Hammer’s body fling him over his head, and then Hammer landed on the mat hard after a fall through the air of almost six feet. Shayne was on his chest a moment later with his knee dug into deep into the upper part of Hammer’s chest jamming up into his throat. He twisted Hammer’s arm and slammed it down to the mat. Then he drove his fist into the side of Hammer’s head. And again. And again. It was Ice’s personal variation of the ground and pound, and it was brutal.

Hammer’s whole body began to convulse, and then the crowd went crazy when Hammer’s other hand started to slam down on the mat indicating that he was giving up. The ref sprang into action and pushed Shayne off of Hammer’s body. A moment later, he yanked Shayne’s hand into the air and declared him the victor.

I screamed and started jumping up and down. I couldn’t help myself from thinking that there was a slight similarity between what Shayne had just done and the way that I took him down during our fight. It was all about balance and the element of surprise. I saw him look across the ring, and he caught my eye. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. He was magnificent. Too bad he knew it.

An announcer entered the ring and shoved a microphone in Shayne’s face. I could tell by the slight grimace that he would have preferred to have a minute to compose himself. As much as he loved the limelight, and as much as it loved him, it took its toll on him after awhile.

“That was an amazing victory, Ice,” the announcer said. “Almost inspired in that final takedown. Do you have anything to say to the fans tonight?”

“The fans here in St. Louis are amazing,” Shayne started. I had heard what he was going to say next more than a few times. His publicist, Lucy, had insisted that he practice both a winning and losing speech for the media on the bus on the way to St. Louis. The one thing they didn’t want was Shayne doing any free speaking off-script at any point.

I knew where that came from. When Shayne first started out fighting, Cal had taken charge of his career and made him compete under a stage name. That was where ‘Malone’ had come from. Cal didn’t want people digging into their family’s past. My mother mentioned it off-handedly once during one of our conversations when I asked her about Shayne’s mother.

It turns out that Shayne had found his mother’s body after school when he was home from school on break his senior year. She had OD’d on booze and a bottle of sleeping pills. There were rumors that the OD hadn’t been accidental. Those are the kinds of juicy details that the media thought that they would have a right to ask questions if someone found out about it. After hearing that story, I realized that was probably one of the reasons he saw a therapist.

The other reason was that Shayne had gotten into trouble early in his career after a brawl with a couple of relentless paparazzi after his first couple of MMA wins.

The firm had kept most of it out of the press. There had been a swap of a large amount of cash to keep quiet. But ever since then, when dealing with the media, Shayne’s responses were always carefully scripted, and he had been told to stop the interview if he was ever asked something that he didn’t have a scripted answer ready.

“I just want to say one more thing,” Shayne said when he reached the end of his script. I felt my heart start to race. Please don’t let him say anything crazy. “I have a special shout-out for a fan in the crowd tonight who was really instrumental in this win. This one is for you, Lex!” And he pointed directly at me.

I felt as if the wind had been dragged out of my lungs as I felt the weight of a thousand pairs of eyes on me. My eyes widened when I saw my face on the jumbotron, and I ducked my head. I didn’t want to have any attention called to me, and there had been a strong innuendo of something more to our relationship in his words. I could just imagine what Lucy was thinking at that moment.

Then Shayne started to move away from the announcer waving at the fans, and it was as if they all forgot about me. At least, I hoped they did.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. “So you’re with Ice?” I turned to find the two women who I’d heard talking earlier looking at me expectantly.

“Oh, no,” I said firmly shaking my head. “We’re just…friends.” Friends. That wasn’t such a bad thing. We could be friends. We were going to be related soon. Friends was a nice, safe place to be, especially since we had to work together.

“That’s cool. Can you introduce us to him?” the one woman asked. She was the one who had made the lewd comment about wanting Shayne between her legs. She was a few years older than me and was wearing a top that was so tight I wondered how she could breathe. Her cleavage was impressive, and I thought that this was exactly the kind of girl Shayne would want to hook up with after a fight. It made me want to scratch her eyes out.

“Sorry. I’m headed out,” I said as I grabbed my purse. I skirted the ring as I made my way toward the exit. On the way, I passed Marcus, and he gave me a short nod. I paused and looked back over my shoulder. I saw Marcus talking to the woman in the tight top. She bobbed her head enthusiastically and started to follow Marcus back toward the locker room.

Of course, that was part of Marcus’s job too. Pick up Shayne’s flavor of the night and bring her to him on a silver platter. 

There was a pit in my stomach as I thought about him having sex with anyone else. I didn’t like it. Not one bit. But there was nothing I could do about it. Friends, I reminded myself. Friends was good. At least, it was unless you figured out that you were possibly starting to fall for your friend.