Fearless: An Enemies to Lovers Romance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Bonus Chapter

  Also by Ellie Bradshaw

  FEARLESS

  By Ellie Bradshaw

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events reside solely in author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright 2020, Ellie Bradshaw. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any way without prior written consent from the author with the exception for a fair use excerpt for review and editorial purposes.

  Chapter 1

  Sean

  The thing to understand about me is that I simply do not give a fuck. Not about things. Not about people. Not about you or your expectations.

  Think it’s wrong that I called that paparazzi guy an asshole and smashed his camera on the ground?

  Don’t give a fuck.

  Disapprove that I got tired of sharing my dinner space with a bunch of graduated frat boys and their plastic wives, so I bought out an entire Blackened Angus prime steak house just so I could eat in peace?

  Don’t give a fuck.

  The tee shirt I’m wearing cost five hundred dollars. It has a drop of blood on it, just above my left nipple. It will never come out. Doesn’t matter. I might toss it in the garbage later. I might wear it to work out tomorrow. Or maybe to dinner with ESPN executives next week.

  I’ve got like nineteen microphones in my face again. A roomful of sports reporters are looking at me, again expecting an interview to explain something about how I’ve been able to do the things I’ve done. Charlie Bean, the organization’s promoter, stands just to my right. He’s expressed his (rather narrow) views on how little of a shit I give, and how it would do him and the MMA world—myself included—a lot of good if I’d just act a little. Show a little more of myself.

  A flash pops. I squint.

  A fat man in a stained polo leans closer to the table that separates us.

  “Mr. Kelly, I’m sure we’re all surprised at how quickly—and how brutally—you just beat the champ. Can you tell us how you trained these past months to hand such a decisive upset to Ricky Hendon?”

  More flash bulbs. I feel my shoulders get tense.

  “You were surprised?” I keep my voice light, emphasizing the Irish that’s remained in my accent for all these years. “Fuck you, that’s how.” The room takes in a collective deep breath as if they’re all clutching their collective pearls.

  Bean mutters, “Come on, Sean.”

  Why would my response shock them? Did they think I would be a whole different person now that I’ve taken back my belt? “I trained the way I always train: to beat the hell out of whatever’s in front of me. Tonight that was Ricky Hendon. Pay me enough money and I’ll fight the next wannabe tough guy tomorrow, and he can leave in an ambulance just like Hendon.”

  The new champ—the guy that was keeping your belt warm for you, I reminded myself—had been tougher than I’d thought. Not to brag, but normally I hold back in a fight. Just a little bit. I’m a fighter, not a murderer. But that wasn’t enough to put Hendon away in the first. He went down once, but not out. I didn’t want the fight to drag out, so in the second round, I unleashed hell in the ring. I kept most of the power shots away from his head—because I’m no murderer—but I felt his ribs soften and crack, and the knockout left hook dislocated his jaw. If was a different man, I’d feel worse about that than I do. It’s the kind of thing I could care about.

  But I don’t get paid to care. I get paid to win.

  So, caveat: I do care about one thing.

  Winning.

  More than that. I love fighting. Outside the arena, I’m dead-eyed, disengaged, flippant, hostile. Whatever it takes to get people to leave me the hell alone. I throw money around as if it doesn’t mean anything because it doesn’t. I get drunk and wreck hotel rooms.

  But the moment I’m standing there in the tunnel, bouncing on my toes, sweating from my warm-up, my hood down over my eyes, something happens to me. I become what they call me. The King. The unstoppable force. Everything engages, all my senses, all my emotions. In that moment I am filled with energy and power and an amazing rush I can only identify as “connectedness.”

  Love.

  And then Zombie starts screaming “Superbeast” from the speakers above the cage and the whole world crystallizes to a single, bright point. That cage, my destiny, the only thing that gives my life meaning.

  War and love and winning.

  It’s better than drinking. Better than fucking. Better than everything in the goddamn world, and I’m really fucking good at it.

  I am untouchable.

  The reporters seem to be done with this latest edition of the King Kelly show and they start filing out of the room, grumbling. But one fights the tide, pushes forward toward my table. For a moment I can’t even see her; she’s so short that the only indication she’s there is an eddy of muttering, middle-aged, overweight men. And then she breaks through.

  Stunning. If I had to pick just one word to describe Theresa Vaughan, that’s the one I’d pick. Long, dark hair hangs straight down her back, almost to her perfectly round ass. Today she wears a clinging black dress that shows tan legs up just past mid-thigh, curved and muscular. Her eyes are almost black as her hair, wide and direct and boring right into mine. She looks like a tiger, this woman. All sleek sinew and barely contained predatory aggression.

  Looking at her is like looking at another version of myself. Smaller. With a much better rack.

  I’ve seen her before, of course. Vaughan is famous for invading football locker rooms, interrogating giant naked men as if she was just their sister cajoling them at dinner. Pushing her way out onto the field at the world cup to ask the MVP of the championship if it was true that he had left his wife for another man.

  I want her to try to punch me so I’ll have an excuse to wrestle with her.

  That smile. It’s like a lamp in a dark room. Illuminating. Disarming. Shining right at me. I have a brief image of that smile shining up at me, her face framed by all that luxurious hair spread out on a pillow, encouraging me to move. To take her. To make her mine.

  “Sean, one last question” she says, her voice just loud enough to catch the attention of the dozen or so reporters still nearby. They turned, some looking irritated, some expectant.

  I’m irritated at her use of my first name. Hot or not, she’s a reporter and I’m Mister Fucking Kelly until notified otherwise. Or King. She could call me King. I make a mental note to let her know.

  The smile never leaves her face as she says, “Is it true that your ferocity in the ring is an effort to make up for the guilt you feel for the drowning death of your older brother fifteen years ago?”

  That smile.

  The flashbulbs.

  Suddenly I’m dizzy.

  The collective muttering of men who know they’ve just been sidelined. The crashing realization that my world is turning inside out.

  Fuck.

  Fuck her.

  I step back from the table, my eyes never leaving hers.

  “Interview’s over.”

  Theresa

  God, I hate sports superstars. I hate looking at them, with their cocksure, arrogant grins and the unabashed way they undress me with their eyes, as if I’m just some nightclub floozie that’s showed up to show them a good time. I hate talking to them, lis
tening to their vapid, self-congratulatory bullshit. “I’m fucking awesome, a real gift to the sport. Oh, also, thanks to God and my team and coaches and stuff. What are you doin’ later? I gotta be back to my wife and kids by midnight, but if you’re not doin’ anything before then I’m sure we could show each other a good time.”

  Did I say hate? I hate those guys. They don’t take me seriously because I’m a “woman in a man’s world.” All their blatant innuendo and strafing gazes at my tits and legs are just misogynistic chest-bumps designed to keep me in my place. Well, fuck those guys. They want to know why I ask the hard questions? Why I dig into their lives and rake them over the coals on national television? Why I say things like, “Is there any truth to the allegation that you beat your wife in a steroid-fueled rage?”

  They have only themselves to blame.

  I started out a sweet little cocker spaniel of a reporter, but those pricks turned me into a pitbull.

  And of all those badass superstars I hate, who do I hate most?

  Sean Kelly.

  In the sports world, he is the anomaly. The standout. What Michael Jordan was to basketball in the 90s, what Tiger Woods was to golf, Kelly is to MMA of the 2010s. Times about a thousand. A rocketship of superstardom. Never beaten. Never even knocked down in the ring. Nobody’s gotten close. His standup game reminds boxers of Mike Tyson, and his grappling skills are even better. Completely unstoppable in the cage. Blessed isn’t a word I use often, but if anybody is blessed, it’s Sean Kelly. Like an entire pantheon of gods touched him and said, “You are one of us.” The call him King Kelly for the same reason they called all the original conquerors “king”.

  And he just does not give a fuck.

  If he’s a god inside the cage, outside of it he’s a nightmare. Completely self-absorbed, narcissistic, ill-tempered. He’ll say anything that comes into his head—to anyone—because he can’t be bothered to care that what he does or says from his lofty perch can have a huge effect on people. Hell, the only reason Ricky Hendon held Kelly’s belt (technically, the belt belongs to World Fighting Association, but nobody would argue that Sean Kelly is the rightful owner) is because it was stripped from Sean a year ago for refusing to do interviews, sign autographs, or do any promotion work at all. Leno’s been trying to get Kelly on his show for years; hell, Charlie Bean tried for years to get him on the show. Nothing. Nada. A big “fuck you” to everybody who’d ever been interested in him at all. To the media, to the fans. To goddamn Nike.

  “Part of your contract,” the WFA said, and took the belt.

  “Up yours,” Sean Kelly said.

  He doesn’t stand grinning in front of the cameras and pat himself on the back like the other superstars. He doesn’t care enough about anything to even bother. And that’s why I can’t stand him. Because to be so blessed and to care so little about it is bullshit.

  And now here he stands, all six foot two of him, staring at me across a table like I don’t even exist. Gray eyes made of stone.

  But they’re not really gray, are they? That’s just something I’ve read. Now that I’m actually close to him, I can see they’re much more blue than gray. And I wouldn’t necessarily call his look stony. More…icy. And ice can be melted, can’t it?

  I don’t have much time to get in my question, but our eyes are locked and I see something shift behind his, some hint of…what? Curiosity? And looking at him, big and lean and square-jawed, blessed with looks as much as his gifts in the ring, I feel something shift in me, as well. And not in my eyes. I have a sudden vision of him suddenly much closer to me, close enough that his chest hair brushes my nipples. His hands are on me, hard and rough and hot. A weight, heavy and insistent, presses against my lower belly.

  I almost have to shake myself to break the reverie. What the hell is this? This is not me. I’m the woman who charges into rooms full of naked men, naked athletes, without batting an eye, without a hint of attraction or desire. And here I am debating with myself about the color of his eyes. And, you know, imagining him naked. While I’m naked. His hard fighter’s muscles flexing above me. His hard…

  I bite the inside of my lip. Head in the game, Vaughan.

  Gray eyes, blue eyes, whatever, Sean Kelly is one of the most stand-offish, off-putting men ever placed on earth.

  By gods, some voice inside me says. Pretty sure he was put here by gods, so it’s okay to appreciate their work, whoever the hell they are. Now do your job.

  I’ve done my research. I’ve talked to everyone in the States who’s ever known Sean Kelly, and nobody knows much. I’ve flown to Ireland, tracked his past back to the small town outside Dublin where he grew up, and talked to people there. And finally found out much, much more.

  I know Sean Kelly better than anyone in the room except for Sean Kelly himself.

  Maybe even more than he does.

  And…maybe it’s the eyes. Maybe the sense I got that the ice in there could melt. But suddenly I don’t really want to ask my question. It’s not a nice one.

  But I do it. Because it’s what I do. I’ve fought to get where I am in life, and now I have to fight to stay.

  He still looks at me, eyes still showing that hint of curiosity. His curly brown hair is still unruly from his post-fight shower.

  “Is it true that your ferocity in the ring is an effort to make up for the guilt you feel for the drowning death of your older brother fifteen years ago?”

  I had expected the question to take him by surprise, but not to wound him. He looks the way I imagine he would look if I stabbed him in the gut. For a moment.

  And then a wall crashes down behind his eyes like a guillotine. I feel something between us, some connection that hadn’t even completely formed, sever, and it almost feels as if something important has been tugged out of me by the root. And now I can see what I’d read is right. His eyes really are gray. Like stone.

  He takes a step back from the table. His voice is flat.

  “Interview’s over.”

  Chapter 2

  Sean

  It didn’t feel like much at the time, but apparently Hendon got in at least one good shot. The skin over my left cheekbone is swollen and it aches like a mad bastard. Fortunately the beer goes down smooth, and the whiskey even smoother. The hotel bar doesn’t serve the Irish stuff, but Jack Daniels will always do in a pinch. The combination works pretty quickly to numb the pain in my face.

  Really, to numb the pain all over.

  The bitch. The conniving, prying, nosy, gorgeous, drop-dead-sexy bitch. I can’t get a real handle on how I feel about her, and that makes me crazy.

  Don’t get me wrong. I know what I’d like to do to her. Just not necessarily about her.

  Fortunately, the alcohol washes over me and lets me step back from the whole thing. Gives me perspective. So that I know how I feel.

  And how is that?

  Like I don’t give a fuck, that’s how. I move the beer mug in circles on the table, smearing condensation. The fingers of my other hand drum a tune only they understand, the little finger catching from where I broke it on Jerry Tyler’s head four years ago to earn the contender spot. I barely even notice my teeth are grinding until I have to consciously relax my jaw to pour the shot (fourth?…fifth?) down my throat.

  I’m sitting in the back of the bar, in a dim booth. Across the room a broad door opens onto the hotel lobby. I can see out there, but anybody looking my way would only see a man sitting in shadows. It’s really the only way I can be in public and have any peace.

  Not that I feel any peace at the moment. I might never again.

  How did she find out? I haven’t talked about Aiden with anyone on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Nor anyone on the other side of it in over a decade. Personal vow. I’ll never speak of him again. Since my parents died, I keep him to myself.

  At least, I did.

  I’m chewing on the inside of my lip again, and I haven’t done that in years.

  I get up and the world goes a wee bit shimmery. Drunker
than I thought. Might be a good idea to head to my room for a night of sleep. Instead, I head through the mahogany doors of the men’s room, have a piss. I splash cold water on my face to clear my head some. It doesn’t do much good.

  I leave the restroom to head back to my booth. I see her before she sees me.

  Theresa Vaughan. A sexy apparition that’s just appeared out of nowhere. She’s just sitting right there. In my booth, right across from where I was sitting, looking just pleased as punch to be there. My breath catches in my throat and I tell myself it’s just because I’m pissed at her, both for her blasted question and for having the luck and nerve to find me here. Certainly nothing more than that. But she looks damn good. Better than on the telly, and I thought it was supposed to be the other way round. Her dress is different. This thing she’s wearing now, it’s a red bit that slashes down in a low vee over her bosom. I want to say that I’m a man that can’t be swayed by a flash of cleavage. But I’m only a man, by god, and it is quite the cleavage. The skin is tanned and warm-looking, and I can’t help but imagine what she looks like with that dress wadded up on the floor of my room, my mouth trailing kisses down that cleavage, one nipple going hard between my lips…

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” I plant my hands on my hips and set my feet wide. Not to keep from swaying, mind. To be imposing. I don’t sway.

  She looks up, sees me standing there, and has the audacity to smile. For a moment, the dimness of the booth flees, lit up by that smile.

  “Waiting for you,” she says, motioning for me to take my seat.

  Like I need her damn permission. It’s my seat.

  I sit.

  “And how did you know I’d be here?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “After this afternoon, I’d think it’s obvious. I know you.”

  Something inside me goes tense and hot. “You don’t know me.” Muscles in my hands start to bunch up, and I will them to relax.

  Theresa points to the bottle, her finger long and then and elegant. “I know you drink that.” She nods in my direction. “I know you sit here, always, whatever bar you’re in.” She points to my lone beer mug. “And I know you always drink alone.”