Rich spotted her as she approached the mats, dark eyes widening. “Jesus, what happened to your nose?”
“Your electrician punched me in the face with a door.”
“You punch him back?”
She smirked. “Thought I’d save that for the ring.”
“Is it broken?”
“No. Just tell me if it starts bleeding again.” Steph could sense the well-groomed professionals forming an orderly queue outside the gym, just dying for a chance to woo such a glamorous woman as she.
Rich asked her to take the lead on grappling drills and she was relieved to find Patrick gone from the lounge when she went to pull on her gi. Wilinski’s didn’t have a proper jujitsu program yet—her arena, now—but she did her best with the ragtag group of uniformless members.
If the guys were feeling weird about having a woman in their ranks, they didn’t show it—no leering, no skepticism. Some men could be royally macho pricks, but on the whole, fighters were a sensitive group. Theirs was a humbling, emotional sport, most of the bravado reserved for the cameras.
She’d had better offers than Wilinski’s, money-and profile-wise, but there was something appealing about the challenge. She could step in as it went co-ed and feel like a part of the evolution, feel invested and valued. Feel rooted to something after way too many years of going wherever the fights were. Stability, after all that transience.
Once the lunchtime sessions wrapped, Rich showed her around the office and the computer system.
“Mercer’s better with this crap,” he said, frowning as he clicked through folders on the laptop. Mercer was the gym’s general manager.
“His wife owns the dating service upstairs, right?” Spark—a slick-looking operation whose glass-fronted office shared the foyer with the gym. The most mismatched neighbors in small-business history.
“His fiancée,” Rich corrected, managing to find and print the form he’d been looking for. “Jenna Wilinski.”
“Wilinski?”
“Her dad opened this place in ’82. She inherited both floors.”
Her brows rose. “The plot thickens.”
“She nearly gave the gym the chop, but luckily Mercer managed to seduce her away from reason.”
“I’d have thought that was your job.”
He grinned. “I know, right?”
“Doesn’t your girlfriend work up there, too?” If memory served, the woman was refreshingly down-to-earth, compared with all the glammed-out girlfriends-of-fighters Steph had met over the years.
Rich nodded, fetching the papers the printer had spat out. “It’s all very incestuous around here. Must be in the water.”
She held in the questions she was longing to ask, knowing Rich was the kind of guy who’d tease her mercilessly if she gave him the ammunition. So is she good, this matchmaker? What sort of guys might she find for a chick who’s spent the past decade scrapping in chain-link octagons? Would I look dumb for even asking if she’d want me as a client?
Steph had grown up an hour’s drive from here. She didn’t know anyone in Boston, not outside this gym, and didn’t have the first clue how to go about meeting the kind of men she’d like to date. She was useless at the bar scene, given what a teetotaler training turned one into, and didn’t relish taking up tango or speed-dating or going it alone on some freebie personals site. If she was going to find a boyfriend, she’d do it the right way. Do it through a service that attracted sophisticated, grown-up men who were looking for something serious. Spark might be the perfect solution and a worthy expense, provided she could muster the balls to ask.
“Autograph this,” Rich said, handing her a safety waiver. “And Mercer’s got tax and payroll forms for you, too, someplace.” He rummaged through a filing cabinet and Steph read and signed all the papers.
“So, how you settling in?” he asked, relaxing back in the chair. “You find a place you like?”
She shook her head. “Only a sublet. A nice one, but I have to find an apartment of my own by March first.”
“Bummer.”
“No, it’s fine. I couldn’t afford this place on my own for more than a couple months.”
Rich knocked her papers into a tidy stack and slipped them in a folder. “My girlfriend’s looking for a roommate.”
“Oh yeah?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Bear in mind, I’d be your neighbor, one floor down.”
Incestuous, indeed. Rich as her coworker, roommate’s boyfriend, neighbor? That was a lot of Rich Estrada. But it was a better lead than she’d found elsewhere.
“On the plus side,” he went on, scribbling Need copies on a Post-it and sticking it to the folder, “you’d pretty much have the place to yourself.” No doubt. Rich didn’t seem the type to suffer an empty bed. “Though there may be a surly teenage girl crashing on Lindsey’s couch all summer,” he added. “I’m paying her little sister’s way to come train. If and when she graduates high school.”
She smiled at that. “I’d never have pegged you for the mentoring type.”
“Me neither. Anyhow, we’ll have you over some weekend, and you girls can see if you mesh. It’s in Lynn. Do you drive?”
“No. I sold my car when I knew I’d be moving to Boston.”
“You could catch a lift with me, when we’re on the same shifts. Plus there’s the bus and the train.”
“Sounds doable.” Steph wasn’t opposed to a roommate—she’d shared a million tiny motel rooms with perfect strangers. And she wasn’t really opposed to living in the same building as Rich. Brash or not, he made her laugh, and most of the conversations they’d had on the road over low-sodium, fat-free training meals had been dominated by his laments about missing his Colombian mother’s cooking. She wouldn’t pass up an invite to an Estrada family dinner.
“I’ll fix something up,” he said. “Maybe next weekend.”
When he stood, Steph took his lead and they headed back into the gym.
There was a mid-afternoon lull—no structured sessions, everyone doing their own thing. Steph wandered around, introducing herself, stepping in to hold targets or spot the guys working out with weights. Mercer arrived at four, freeing Rich to head home.
Steph smiled and shook Mercer’s hand. “Hey, boss.”
“Hey yourself, new girl.” He gave her nose only the briefest double-take. “I guess you didn’t find your right mind and back out, after all.” Mercer was a good guy. A few years older than her and Rich, with a stern, no-nonsense face, scarred up from his years as a boxer.
“I like a challenge,” she said.
“Clearly. The next class starts up at five. You need a break? Grab a snack or a drink or anything?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.” Also wouldn’t hurt to go ahead and ask what she hadn’t been able to, with Rich. “Your fiancée owns the matchmaking business upstairs, right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
She felt herself blushing, which given her complexion meant she was already red as a brick. “Is it only for business-type people, or...?”
Mercer’s less-scarred eyebrow rose. “You want to join Spark?”
She bit her lip. “Maybe.”
“Good for you. I’m not sure what the exact criteria are, but you can go up and ask Jenna yourself. I know her last