Isabel eyed me carefully. “Who says I have a problem?”
“Anyone with eyes, based on how you were treating that defenseless bag.” I hit the mitts together, the sharp snapping sound echoing around the gym. She didn’t so much as flinch. “Come on, Ward.”
For a moment, she just stared at me, and I found myself holding my breath at how she would respond.
And because it was the first moment of just the two of us, it was also the first time I saw how carefully she held herself. The sharp edge of wariness in her gaze. What, exactly, did Isabel Ward think I was going to do to her to make her look at me like that?
“No,” she said. “Not tonight.”
I nodded slowly, waiting until she’d turned away from me.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked.
Her frame, tall and strong and proud, went perfectly still. It was almost like watching her turn into a statue right in front of my eyes. If an artist somewhere had carved her out of marble, those gloves tucked under her arms, hands still wrapped, she would’ve been called something like,
A Warrior in Repose.
But when she slowly pivoted back in my direction, the wariness was gone, completely replaced by blade-sharp resolve. Isabel jammed her hands back in her gloves, and I held up my mitts.
“I am not scared,” she snapped.
“Prove it.” I stepped closer, and she held her ground. “I am the only person in the building you hide from, and that ends now.”
“You think you’re going to earn it like this?” She raised an eyebrow. “By fighting it out of me.”
“Hell yes.” I held her gaze, and her eyes went wide at my honesty. “This is probably the only place you feel like you can be yourself, be honest about what you feel. I’d bet the whole fucking gym on that, and if you and I are going to move forward, we work your reservations out here.”
Isabel’s rib cage expanded, the light from overhead catching on the sheen of sweat coating the curves of her cleavage.
“I’ll do this under one condition,” she said, bouncing lightly on her toes, arms up to guard her face. “You don’t get to ask me what I’m angry about.”
Judging by the look in her eyes, like the slightest thing could set her off, it was an easy thing to agree to. I nodded. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
We started simple. I kept just far enough away that she had to throw her weight behind each strike, and I called out what I wanted her to do, counting down until she could take a deep breath or a drink of water.
Isabel and I found a rhythm easily, and once we did, her movements became more precise, less wild. Her chest shone under the lights, sweat dotting her forehead until a few stray strands of her almost-black hair clung to the line of her neck.
After about fifteen minutes, I stepped back, and extended my arm out, tapping by my elbow with the focus mitt. “Watch your form right there, when you go in for the left cross. If I went to block, it would be really easy for you to adjust and hit me with a right elbow off your front leg.”
She nodded, breath sawing in and out of her mouth.
I jerked my chin up. “Show me.”
We started slow, almost like a dance. She came in with the left. I pushed her arm down, and when I barked the command, she pitched her right elbow up, stopping just shy of hitting me in the cheek.
“Excellent,” I told her. “Try again. Let’s move a bit faster.”
She got that down almost immediately, and I stepped back, swiping my arm over my forehead. I caught a quick flash of a grin on her face.
“I didn’t anticipate a workout tonight,” I told her.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have interrupted mine.”
I exhaled a laugh, gauging her facial expression as she said it. “You sorry I did?”
Instead of answering, Isabel tugged off one of her gloves to pull a long drink of water from her bottle. When she set it back down, she did a heavy exhale of her own.
“No,” she said. Then she put her glove back on.
I held up the mitts. “Let’s go again. After the elbow, use your right arm to push my blocking arm down, come up with a knee to my midsection while my momentum is in your favor.”
She nodded.
We practiced once. Twice. Then faster. And again. Her hair smelled like something citrus when her braid whipped past my face. The fourth time, she had her full strength behind pushing me down, and I grunted when her knee had a bit more oomph behind it than I was expecting.
“Easy,” I warned, as I stepped back.
But Isabel didn’t smile. She was watching me set up again.
“What?” I asked, dropping my mitts to take a drink of my own.
Her gaze was heavy on me while I swallowed.
“I got a job offer from Punch Fitness.”
The water stuck in my throat, and I coughed into my hand. She didn’t look very sorry about her timing as I tried to compose myself. After another sip, I was able to breathe normally.
“You taking it?” I asked. My voice was so calm and steady, but inside of my body, something roared and snarled. Another dangerous sign. Another impossible reaction to this woman. I wasn’t ready for something like this. Like her. Something big, something wild.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“That guy’s a hack,” I heard myself say. Because he was. She’d be wasted at a place like that.
I couldn’t read a damn thing on her face, not like earlier, when I’d seen more. This was the guarded Isabel, the collected Isabel. And I found I liked her transparency better. In her anger, no matter how dangerous that was to my well-being, I could see everything she was thinking.
I jammed the mitts back on my hands, even though my forearms were getting a hell of a workout. Holding them up to my face, I barked, “Again.”
She set her feet, and we started the dance all over.
But this time, there was an edge.
Each time she struck the mitts and knocked my arms back, I felt more and more coming from her. I blocked her knee when it came up a little too hard and gave her a warning look.
Her lips, full and pink, curled up in a satisfied smile, even as her upper body heaved with exertion.
“You don’t want that job,” I said quietly.
Isabel’s jaw clenched, and she ducked to the side when I was expecting her to throw the left cross. She came in with an uppercut, and I blocked it easily.
“How the hell do you know?”
I swatted her arm away when she tried to jab. “Because this is not just a job, or a paycheck for you.”
Isabel sidestepped and tried to do a low roundhouse, but I knocked her leg down with the mitts. Her eyes flashed hot, because I wasn’t holding back as much. But neither was she.
“You don’t know me,” she said, striking the left mitt hard with a jab.
“Because you don’t let me.” She hit the mitts three more times in rapid succession, the pop pop pop sound echoing around us. “But I see you, even if you don’t want me to.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.