Below the Belt

He made a rude noise. “I’m sixty-seven years old with a brain that’s been pounded around more boxing rings than you’ve had hot dinners. You need better than an old slugger, Jimmy.”

Before she could respond, they heard the roar of the crowd from out in the auditorium and the sound of the bell ringing.

“Okay. That’s me,” she said. “I’m up.”

Suddenly she felt dizzy and out of breath. Careful not to show it too much, she took a handful of deep breaths.

She was going to get hurt out there today. She knew what that felt like—she’d trained in Tae Kwon Do for nearly ten years and had plenty of boxing sparring rounds more recently; she knew what it was to take a hit. But this was the first time she was going to be facing someone who wanted to mow her down, knock her out, annihilate her.

She was still trying to get her head straight when her grandfather pulled her around to face him. He held her by both gloves and looked her steadily in the eye. She stared into his watery blue gaze, forcing herself to focus, to be hard, to think of only one thing: winning.

“Okay,” he said with a sharp nod after a few long seconds. “You’ll do. Go take her apart.”

The towel still on her shoulders, Jamie followed him out of the change room.

COOPER SAT BACK in his seat and checked the messages on his cell. Around him, the sound of the crowd filled the auditorium. It was a full house, and the atmosphere was charged with energy.

Despite himself, he could feel his heart starting to hammer against his chest. He’d probably never be able to be around boxing and not have the same visceral, instinctive reaction. He was a fighter. Even if he never stood in the ring again, he would always be a fighter, and the roar of the crowd would always lift him and fire him as it did now.

A journalist he knew walked past. Cooper shifted in his seat, made a show of checking the fight bill. He’d been fielding back pats since he arrived, and he’d just spent a solid ten minutes signing autographs. He might only be the former heavyweight champion of the world, but everyone still wanted to bask in his glow. He wondered how many months it would take before people failed to recognize him. Not long, was his guess. There would be a new contender soon, someone else the public and the media would fall in love with.

It couldn’t happen soon enough for him; the mass attention wasn’t a part of the sport that he’d miss very much. He’d never quite come to terms with the loss of privacy that came hand-in-hand with fame.

He saw from the fight bill that there were still another two ‘exhibition’ bouts to be endured before the real action began and the young fighter he was here to scout was scheduled to fight. As was becoming more and more usual, the exhibition matches were both women’s bouts, part of the sport’s attempts to lift the profile of women’s boxing and build a following.

He considered going outside to grab a drink or make a phone call, tossing up the relative risks of being hit up for more autographs against the boredom of watching fights he wasn’t interested in.

Then he saw her.

She made her way toward the ring with the inward-focus common to all fighters before a bout. She had a large white towel draped over her shoulders, but her long, strong legs were bare beneath the loose satin of her red-and-white trunks.

Jamie. Realizing he had no idea what her last name was, he scanned the fight bill. His finger found the names: Jamie Holloway vs. Maree Jovavich.

Jamie Holloway. Right.

He studied the old man walking in front of her. Was this her trainer? Surely not. But even from a distance he could see the old guy was a former bruiser—there was no hiding the damage years in the ring did to brow, ears and nose. Where the hell had she dug him up from?

He switched his attention back to her, leaning forward as she climbed into the ring. She flipped the towel off her shoulders. Man, she was in good shape. The ring lights caught the ripples of her belly muscles. The defined, firm muscles of her thighs glistened with oil. She wore a chest guard, but beneath the bulk of it he could discern the swell of her breasts, full and generous. Her arms were strong-looking but not too bulky—she was good poster-girl material for the boxing association, a contender who still looked like a woman. The crowd was going to love her if she could actually fight.

She wore her dark hair braided tightly back against her skull in small plaits to keep it out of the way. Her face was shiny where her trainer had greased her brow and cheekbones with Vaseline to help deflect blows. Her gaze was hard and flat as she waited.

He sat back in his chair. She’d been serious about fighting, then, that day at Ray’s. He crossed his arms over his chest and wondered if her talent matched her attitude.

Her opponent, Maree Jovavich, climbed into the ring. Shorter, broader, bigger, she looked like she wasn’t going any-where fast, no matter how nicely anyone asked. He bet himself she had a hard head, too, the way she scanned the ring, marking out her territory.

He felt a stirring of interest despite himself. This might actually be a good match.

He watched Jamie Holloway as the MC announced the fighters and ran through their stats. Jovavich had ten wins under her belt to one loss. Jamie was untried, but she had two inches on the other woman in height and at twenty-seven was two years younger.

The whole time the MC went through his spiel, Jamie didn’t take her eyes off her opponent, letting the other woman know she planned to wipe the floor with her. Cooper grinned, giving her full points for style. Psyching the other guy out was an important part of the game.

As the MC exited the ring, the referee called both fighters to the center of the canvas. He’d be saying the same thing referees always said, about wanting a good, clean fight, and how he was going to signal when he wanted them to break or stop fighting. Both women nodded. The referee waited for them to tap gloves and move back to their corners. Then he signaled that the round was ready to begin.

The bell echoed around the stadium. The crowd yelled as the two women zeroed in on each other like heat-seeking missiles.

Jamie wasn’t shy—she took the fight straight to her opponent with a jab, followed by a left cross before dancing away from the other woman’s fists. They were both good, powerful hits, and he could see Jovavich reassess Jamie as she shook off the blows and circled in again.

A flurry of punches followed, with both women landing good hits. But Cooper frowned as he began to register a worrying trend in Jamie’s form as the round progressed.

The longer a fight went, the less a fighter thought and the more she fell back on instinct and habit—he knew, because he’d been there a million times. And it soon became clear that Jamie had some bad habits. For some inexplicable reason, she kept hesitating when the other woman was open, and her footwork was off. Instead of maintaining her stance and shuffling in and out, always moving, always weaving, she seemed to forget herself and lift her feet, almost as though she was going to kick the other woman or lunge toward her. The first time he saw it, he frowned. The fifth time, he swore under his breath.

“What are you doing, man?” he muttered as Jamie took hit after hit, the price for those hesitations and that poor footwork.

He could see the writing on the wall by the end of the first round, but he had to sit through all five of them and watch Jamie get pummeled around the ring before it was over. She took every hit and came back for more, even though it was clear to everyone that there was no way she was going to win unless she scored a lucky shot and knocked the other woman out.

By the time he was shaking his head in grudging admiration of her sheer pigheadedness, the final bell rang and Jovavich was declared the unanimous winner on points.

Cooper watched Jamie’s old trainer tend to her in her corner, taking her mouthpiece, mopping at her face, checking her for cuts and bruises. He was saying something to her, but she was shaking her head vigorously, her gloved fists thumping down onto her thighs as she emphasized her point. Finally, the old man gave up and simply held the ropes open so she could exit the ring.

The crowd was still cheering Jovavich as Jamie made her way to the change rooms. She didn’t slouch or slink away from her defeat. She held her head high, staring out into the crowd as she passed, daring them to pass judgment on her loss.

He couldn’t look away, even if he’d wanted to.

Then their eyes met across the sea of people, and he saw her burning defiance and determination.

She’d be back. Even as part of him admired her chutzpah, the fighter in him regretted the lessons she was going to have to learn the hard way until she broke her bad habits—or they broke her.

Not your problem, man, he told himself. She’s nothing to you.

He watched her all the way to the change room.

WHY DID he have to be there? Jamie slammed an uppercut into the long bag two days later. She punched again, throwing all her weight behind it.

Better yet, why did I have to notice that he was there? She kneed the bag, then followed up with a roundhouse kick that sent it rocking on its heavy chain.

Of all the people she could have locked gazes with in that huge auditorium, it had to be Cooper Fitzgerald. What were the odds? Too high for her to calculate. And yet she’d stared straight into his deep blue eyes as she walked away from the first defeat of her professional boxing career.

“Remind me to never let you get near me with one of those kicks,” Ray said.

He was working the speedball behind her in his lavishly equipped home gym, the rhythmic thudding of his punches a constant in the background.

Her years of Tae Kwon Do had given her the leg strength, speed and accuracy to ensure that her kicks were a force to be reckoned with. She’d been club champion for six years and state champion for two before she’d dropped out to start training for the boxing ring six months ago, following her grandfather’s heart attack. She thought wistfully of the days when she was at the top of the food chain in her chosen sport, rather than the bottom. From where she was sitting right now, they seemed a long way off.

“Let’s take a break,” Ray said, hitting the speedball one last time. “You need to give yourself some recovery time after that fight.”

Jamie kept her focus on the bag, slamming another combination into it—cross, jab, cross, hook, cross, jab. She was sweating bullets and her face ached from the bruises she’d scored in her fight but she wasn’t even close to being ready to stop.

“Not yet,” she panted.