In Her Corner. Vicki Essex

      “No, sir.” He clutched the edge of his desk. “She has nothing to do with it.”

      “And you’re behaving yourself?”

      “Yes, sir.” Kyle’s cheeks burned. He took a deep breath to still the quivering in his gut, then exhaled, trying to purge the impotent anger gathering inside him.

      “Anyhow, that’s in the past. Let’s look forward, all right? You have a Fiore in your gym now—you know they don’t teach a lot outside of their tight little circle of friends. So don’t screw this up.”

      “Yes, sir.” Kyle hung up and sat back, attempting to regain his calm as he stared at the screen. YouTube had queued up another video about Bella, this one a cheaply produced feature with shots of her training at the Fiore Brazilian Jujitsu Studio in São Paulo, Brazil. He unmuted it. The video stuttered, the music was cheesy and the transitions rough. He watched it while fuming over Hadrian’s humiliating dressing-down. As much as he respected him, the UFF president was the least sensitive man he knew. Next to his father, of course.

      He pushed away from his desk and yanked his damp T-shirt over his head. He’d never gotten used to the humidity in NOLA. He applied another layer of antiperspirant under his arms and hung his street clothes in his private office locker to air, then pulled on a black T-shirt with the Payette’s UFF logo printed on the breast. The heavy cotton grew damp at his touch and chafed his skin. He knew he should have gone with the more expensive moisture-wicking uniform tees, but he’d already had a thousand of them printed. It felt like a waste not wearing them.

      Liz knocked and stuck her head past the door. “You decent?”

      “What’s the point of asking if you’re going to come in anyhow?”

      The receptionist bustled in, a cup of coffee and a clipboard in hand. She put them both on his desk and went around the room, drawing the blinds open so he could see out and everyone could see in. “Wayne’s at a dentist appointment this morning. Root canal. We shouldn’t expect him back at all today.”

      Kyle rolled his eyes. “He’s such a baby.”

      She didn’t comment. “I shuffled his clients between Tito and Orville. I’ve also got five potential members scheduled for tours.”

      “Maybe I should do those.”

      Liz regarded him archly. “Um, aren’t you forgetting something?”

      “No.” He sipped his coffee, letting the caffeinated miracle nectar flow through his veins. His headache eased.

      “Uh, yeah. Bella Fiore? It’s her first day here.” She planted her fists on her hips. “You were kind of rude to her.”

      Probably, but she was off-putting—and he didn’t like off-putting. “She’s crazy, you know. She was riding her bike against rush-hour traffic. I don’t even know where she was headed—she was going in the complete opposite direction of the gym.”

      “She told me she likes to ride around the city before a workout to warm up. It gets her blood pumping.”

      It probably got her in the right frame of mind for punching things, too. The way she biked, it was as if she was aiming to piss off people so they’d yell at her to get her good and mad. Not exactly the Zen-like discipline the Fiores were known for.

      “What did Hadrian say?” Liz asked after a beat.

      He stalled by spinning his chair around and staring at his wall calendar, noting the dates of all the different MMA events the gym’s clients were involved in. “Kyle?” Liz prompted.

      “Nothing important. He was just calling in to check on us.” And tell me to behave myself. And sell more memberships. And be nice to Bella Fiore. Or else.

      Liz looked like she wanted to say something, but whatever it was, she held back. “Bella’s warming up now. You need to go and greet her properly before she gets the wrong idea about you.” With that, she departed.

      Of course, Liz was right. He had to play nice with Bella Fiore. Her family name had been the only reason he’d agreed to train her in the first place, and he hated to admit it, but he needed her reputation more than she needed his.

      He wasn’t about to tell her that, though.

      CHAPTER TWO

      BELLA SURREPTITIOUSLY WATCHED Kyle Peters through the bars of the open vertical blinds covering his office windows. How long would she have to wait before he acknowledged her presence? Her temper simmered. She refused to be treated like a second-class student the way her grandfather and the rest of the family had treated her....

      Calm down. You just got here, and Liz did say he’s cranky. She couldn’t take this slight personally. The guy didn’t even know her, and she had come on strong—one of her less attractive traits, according to her grandfather Fulvio.

      She should probably cut Kyle some slack. Maybe he was simply having a bad morning.

      Yet with every minute he made her wait, her doubts about leaving Brazil grew. Her family all thought she was crazy to pursue her professional fighting career against Fulvio’s wishes. Marco had been the only one who’d stuck up for her and suggested she go to New Orleans to work on her wrestling skills and take-down techniques.

      “Avô will never give you what you need here,” he’d said. “You need to get away from the Fiore system. In the States, you’ll have teachers who are willing to work with you, if for no other reason than your blood ties.”

      The Fiore name might open doors, but Bella wanted to be recognized as a fighter in her own right. She was more than the granddaughter of Fulvio Fiore, father of the Fiore BJJ system.

      “Thought I’d bring you a T-shirt.” Liz interrupted her reverie and handed her a black cotton tee. “Don’t feel that you have to wear it—they’re too hot to train in. I think Kyle’s the only one who actually wears one on a regular basis.”

      Bella slipped it on over top of her moisture-wicking short-sleeved rash guard. It was stifling, but she wanted to show her new boss and coach she was willing to be a part of the team. T-shirt solidarity could be unifying, couldn’t it?

      “He should be out any minute. He’d never admit it, but calls with Hadrian Blackwell rattle him.”

      “Bad news?” Bella’s question ended with a wry, speculative twist in her tone. She’d heard rumors about how phone calls with the UFF president often went.

      “Let me put it this way. He doesn’t call to ask how the kids are doing. A call from Hadrian means it’s either horrifically bad news or stunningly good news.” She glanced back at Kyle and pursed her lips, and Bella got the distinct impression they rarely got the latter.

      Bella looked at Kyle, too. He was gathering some papers off his desk and taking his sweet time about it. “You ever meet him?” Bella asked.

      “You mean Hadrian? Yeah, once, when he cut the ribbon on this place.” She wrinkled her nose. “He called me ‘sweetheart’ and told me to get him a bottle of water.”

      Bella nodded. She’d met the UFF president on a couple of occasions when he’d visited the flagship Fiore studio in São Paulo in the early days of the UFF. He hadn’t said much to her, either, but she’d only just started competitive fighting at the time, and with the rest of the boys around...well, being passed over wasn’t anything new to her.

      “Careful,” Liz teased. “Your tongue’s going to start hanging out soon.”

      Bella blinked. “Sorry?”

      She tipped her chin toward Kyle. “You’re not the first girl to look at him like that.” Liz smiled wryly as Bella’s cheeks heated. She hadn’t even realized she’d been staring, much less drooling. “Pretty much every girl who walks through those doors falls for Kyle. He’s like a freaking calendar model.”

      Bella