She frowned, taking another look at the picture she barely remembered posing for with the sexy zombie squad. She was laughing and she looked relaxed. “Do you think it’s really that bad?” Maybe her grandmother was right—it would all just blow over in a few days. Who really cared about this stuff anyway? she thought, but her stomach was queasy.
“Let me quote—‘Ms. Hamilton’s desperate attempt to remain in the spotlight and out of her grandmother’s shadow knows no bounds.’ What do you think?” Ian said.
Shit. “Okay. Release a statement about the new movie.”
* * *
Is MFL Light-Heavyweight champ, Tyson Reed headed for Hollywood or heartbreak?
Fuck.
Tyson leaned closer to the screen as he read the article on the MMA Fanatics website—one of the biggest and most popular Mixed Martial Arts online news center. He always started his morning reading the latest MMA news on the site, and he’d been the hot topic before, but not like this.
He groaned as he scrolled through the article about him and Parker at the Zombie Burlesque party the evening before. Whoever had taken these shots of them together had been pretty close. Pictures of them laughing, dancing, kissing . . . filled the screen and his gut tightened.
Should we expect to see the champ in Parker Hamilton’s next movie or has the playboy of the MFL finally fallen in love?
No. And no. Fuck me, he thought, leaning back in his chair. This was the last thing he needed. Press about his upcoming fight was great, but not when it was framed like this.
He stared at the picture of the two of them in the hallway outside the club’s restrooms. She was leaning against the wall and he had his hands on her hips, his lips just inches from hers. She was smiling . . . but it was the look on his own face that made him ill—the intensely intimate way he was staring at her.
He sighed, resting his head against the seat and closing his eyes, though the attempt to block out the image was unsuccessful. He’d never looked at a woman like that before. He knew it, the press knew it . . . he wondered if Parker knew it?
He couldn’t let this get out of hand any more than it already had. Relationships were not his thing. Getting hurt inside the cage he could handle. Getting his heart broken was a different story. He’d never let himself get close enough to a woman to find out the damage it could have on his heart and he wasn’t about to. Not this close to a fight that mattered more to him than anything.
His cell phone chimed with a new message and, picking his phone up, he hesitated, seeing Parker’s name on the screen. He was getting in over his head with this woman and it had to stop. Telling her they’d have to cool things wasn’t going to be easy and he couldn’t help but think it might be harder on him than it would be on her . . .
Opening the message, he saw a link to a TMZ article and below it, he read.
Paparazzi strikes again. My publicist advises that we cool things . . . at least for now, until the movie starts filming . . .
He blinked. Good. This was good. They were on the same page. And her publicist had done the dirty work for them. One less complication he needed to deal with. He should be relieved.
He wasn’t.
Chapter 8
Two weeks later, Parker bit her lip as she walked back and forth in front of the scale at the gym, not sure what result she was hoping for. After all the food she’d been stuffing into her face twenty-four-seven the last two weeks, there better be a difference . . . but she was terrified to see it. “Why don’t we weigh in tomorrow?”
“Get on the scale,” Tyson said.
“Why are you so bossy and rude all the time?” She placed her hands on her hips and glared at him.
“If you’re trying to start an argument to procrastinate, it’s not going to work. Now, either step on willingly or I’ll pick you up and put you on there myself.”
She swallowed hard, half tempted to let him, if only to have those hands on her. The last two weeks, they’d cooled things a little . . . After the fiasco with the paparazzi, the last thing either of them needed was unwanted media attention. It made sense—he had a fight coming up, she had the movie to think about.
It was smart. It was the right thing to do.
It sucked.
Seeing him every day at the gym—training with him, feeling his hands on her body to correct her form but lingering just a little too long and then leaving him at the end of the day—had been tough. He still looked at her with open attraction, yet his restraint was off the charts. It annoyed her to no end, especially when she lay in bed fantasizing about him every night.
“Parker!”
Her cheeks flushed at the path her thoughts had taken and she stepped onto the scale.
He moved the lever along the bar. He smiled. “Ten pounds in two weeks. Great job.”
She wasn’t listening as she stared in disbelief and panic at the number.
“You can get off now,” he said behind her, but she was frozen in place.
She hadn’t weighed that much since junior high, since her grandmother had put her on her first diet. Her chest hurt and her breath caught. So this was what an anxiety attack felt like.
“Parker, you okay?” Tyson asked, coming closer.
She nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again.
She felt his hand on her arm, helping her off the scale. “It’s ten pounds, not a hundred. Breathe.”
Ha! Obviously he had no idea how hard it was for someone with her body shape to lose ten pounds. Oh God . . . Why had she listened to him? “I can’t gain anymore, Tyson,” she said, knowing she sounded ridiculous, but unable to stop the words or the panicked feeling from creeping across her chest.
“Just five or six more and you should be good.”
“No!”
Her yell caught his attention and just about everyone else’s in the gym. He stood in front of her and stooped lower to look into her eyes. “What is it?”
“I haven’t weighed this much in years. You have no idea what I’ve gone through in the past to lose weight . . .” Breathing became difficult again.
He took her shoulders and led her to the full-length mirror across the room in front of the free weights. Standing behind her, he lifted the edge of her shirt, revealing her stomach, which had gone from flat to the definite appearance of abdominals, giving her a new shape. “Look at those,” he said, gently running his finger along the new ridges in and around her belly button.
Her breath caught again, but this time it was from his touch—so intimate, so soft, so unlike any other touch from him. So unlike him.
She stared at his hand on her stomach and swallowed hard. Her stomach did look better—different, but better.
He moved his hands down the length of her arms, taking her wrists, lifting them, and bending them at the elbows. “Biceps . . .” Next he turned her arms to the side and a V-shape appeared in her shoulders above a muscle she hadn’t known existed. “Triceps.” He leaned closer and whispered, “Much sexier than noodle arms.”
She shivered as his breath blew the tendrils of hair at her neck, tickling her skin.
When he turned her back to the mirror, she tensed. His hands came around her body and cupped her tight ass. “Look behind you in the mirror. Better . . . hotter . . . more distracting than before, if that’s possible,” he whispered against her cheek.
Her breath hitched. His body so close to hers, his words echoing in her mind, and his hands touching her—gently, but with purpose. God, she was mesmerized. But it was his intent to show her how beautiful she was—how strong, how sexy—that was really the most intoxicating part. “Is this part of your coaching?” she asked, her breath steadying as she turned to look at him.