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.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN