Page 14 of The Knockout Rule

“Not in this lifetime. I’m just nervous to put it live.”

“What picture did you use?”

Isla glanced at her profile page. “The one you took this year, when I decided to open my practice, and we went out dancing.”

Isla’s hair was still long in the shot, her smile a bit sloppy from a couple of celebratory drinks, but it wasn’t one of those filtered images that didn’t look like her. Her description was accurate, too. The first line read: I love poetry.

“I approve,” Heather said. “And dating online is no big deal. There’s no commitment. You don’t have to chat or agree to meet someone unless you want to. And you’re obviously curious to try, or you wouldn’t have ruined my sleep.”

An excellent point. She’d just needed that extra push.

She also needed to get her butt in gear.

Adding tardy to her list of misdeeds with Brick was not on today’s to-do list. She’d already thought about him too much since yesterday’s revelation, wondering which languages he spoke, if he was planning to do a PhD, why he’d ever agreed to hide his intelligence. Along with those questions came snapshots of his elegant bone structure, the intensity in his piercing eyes, the huge breadth of his wide shoulders.

If a picture of him popped up on the dating app, she’d swipe right so hard, she’d send her phone flying.

“I’m hanging up now,” Heather said, her voice groggy again.

The phone went dead, and Isla gave herself a mental slap. Thinking about Brick—a freaking boxer—in any way but professional wasn’t cool.

She quickly added “I hate boxing” to her profile and published it. That was one daunting prospect conquered. With the app on her phone, she’d hear a few cute buzzing chimes when she had a match. Her mood lifted at the prospect. If her father’s Preston setup haphazardly resulted in her finding a nice man who hated boxing, she’d have to thank him.

She hurried to the elevator, tapping her heel when it made two stops before the main floor. The hotel was typical Vegas, flashy and busy, filled with people parked at slot machines and poker tables, chips slipping through their greedy fingers. Even at this early hour, the desperate were out, betting it all on Lady Luck.

The lobby’s towering ceiling accented with blown-glass chandeliers gave her a reprieve from the casino’s smoke-tinged air, but she hurried through, a woman on a mission.

She’d apologize to Brick the second she walked in, admit how bad her day had been yesterday. What she wouldn’t do was ask him which languages he spoke and how playing the role of dumb brute made him feel, her curiosity be damned. Protecting her mental health and keeping her distance from boxers was more important than untangling his interesting story.

She stopped at the gym entrance and smiled at the security detail at the door.

“Name and ID, please,” the guard said.

“Isla Slade. Physiotherapist for Brick Kramarov.” She fished her ID from her wallet and handed it over.

The guard accepted it but didn’t glance at the clipboard in his hand. “You’re Swinging Graham Slade’s daughter, aren’t you? Man, that guy was a legend.”

She pursed her lips. “He still is.”

Ignoring her hard tone, he beamed. “That fight with him and Hector Narvarez? Totally insane. Your dad took a crazy beating. But, man, that knockout at the end? One of the best fights I’ve ever seen.”

She’d never forget that harrowing match. Every time Hector’s punches had landed on her dad’s ribs, she’d flinched, feeling the sharp pain in her body.

She’d just turned thirteen, had seen his fights before, live and on TV. But her parents had fought that morning, louder and uglier than in the past. Her mother had screamed about hating boxing and all of Dad’s stupid cars and his ugly scarred face. He’d answered with harsh rebuttals, ranting that she was cold and heartless and a bad mother.

“Fuck you and her,” had been her mother’s final reply.

She’d stormed out of their room, right into Isla, who’d been eavesdropping around the corner. Her mother hadn’t apologized. No tearful excuses offered for the disgusted curse. She’d simply glared at Isla as though she’d been the cause of their fight, the child she hadn’t wanted. The kid who’d kept her chained to a man she’d grown to detest.

Her mother hadn’t returned until late that night, leaving Isla to order pizza and watch her father’s fight alone. Hector Narvarez had laid into Swinging Graham Slade. Punches to his face, hard jabs to his nose. She’d pictured her father hitting the mat, not moving, leaving her with a mother who didn’t want her. She’d pictured the casket, the funeral, earth shoveled into his grave until her heart was beating so fast she couldn’t draw in enough air to breathe.

Hector may have hit the mat at the end of that fight, but her father had landed in the hospital, with a punctured lung and nerve damage to his right eye.

And Isla had suffered her first panic attack.

She clutched her chest now, feeling the sudden rush of her heart, those memories too damn vivid.

“Can I get in?” She nodded at the door, desperate to get away from this security guy and those memories.