Page 79 of After Indigo Irish Nights
“Owen? God, I don’t care. I just want him gone.”
“Not him.Declan.” But she kept an eye on Owen as he wandered through the crowd with that other jerk. She couldn’t believe his gall, waving at her like they were chummy. Total creep.
But Declan leaving like that? She knew he’d seen her.
Ellie took her arm. “He’s probably got a concussion and isn’t thinking right. I mean, he just kept getting hit. It was awful. It couldn’t have been easy to lose.” She twisted her mouth to the side. “I can’t believe the judges didn’t award his effort. Maybe he didn’t see you.”
“I want to believe that.” He had taken punch after punch and kept getting back up. She couldn’t imagine what that had taken out of him. But this didn’t feel right…
Ithurt. She’d wanted to go to him after the fight.
“I couldn’t watch after the first few punches,” Ellie said. “I had my eyes closed the whole time. But I could still hear the sound.”
The hardthwack-thwack-thwackof punches landing on Declan’s body had made her cringe. Kathleen had never liked boxing, but she loved men who seemed to enjoy it. Her older brothers had never allowed her to watch their fights, thinking her too young, but one time she’d snuck in to watch Robbie fight. She’d come home crying.
Tonight hadn’t been any better. She hadn’t cried as Declan had taken punch after punch, but she’d felt each blow as if it had landed on her. His beautiful face had swelled and bled. Sweat had dripped. When he’d hit the floor the first time, she’d dug her fingernails into her hands to keep from making a sound or jumping up to help him.
God.
God.
She never wanted to watch him box ever again. He’d gotten up every time like a warrior, the kind of man you can’t keep down. She’d always liked men like that. She was an idiot.
Also…
Fights put him in a terrible mood. She didn’t like that either.
She watched his robe ripple as he walked into a side door and disappeared. Losing had to suck, especially hard on his male ego, but why hadn’t he looked for her afterwards? They were a couple, for Pete’s sake. She’d been about to give her version of moral support.Good job, babe. You took hit after hit and stayed with him. You did incredible for being out of the ring five years.
She wanted to march in there after him.
“The only reason I’m not jumping on him right now is that he left this very gym to check on me after Owen came to the shed.”
Maybe Eoghan had told him to go to the locker room, sensing violence.
“You okay?” Liam asked, appearing beside her. “Don’t worry about Owen. We’ve all got out eyes on you.”
“You’re safe,” Brady told her as he stepped forward and put his arm around Ellie.
They thought she feared Owen? She wasn’t stupid. He was creepy. But she wasn’t going to let him mess with her. “He doesn’t concern me.”
“Good, but we’re all still going to mind ourselves,” Liam said, his mouth grim. “Owen and Jimmy were thick as thieves tonight. That’s a sight to scare a ghost out of graveyard.”
“No one imagined Jimmy would come so far to watch a fight,” Brady said harshly. “It threw Declan off, which was exactly what he intended.”
“Wait. That was Jimmy Slavin?”
“Yes, that’s Declan’s boxing rival going way back,” Liam said.
Okay, that pacified her some.
Kathleen looked over her shoulder again and found Jimmy in the crowd. He and Owen had stopped to talk to someone she didn’t recognize. Their eyes met, and she felt a momentary pang of alarm. She knew men with eyes like that. They were always looking for ways to stir up trouble. No wonder he and Owen got along.
“How bad is the blood between Declan and Jimmy?” she asked.
“Black blood, you might say,” Brady said as Ellie shivered next to him. “The kind that doesn’t wash off. You have to scrape at it for days, but it still sticks to you.”
The Irish really had a way with words. “Lovely.”
