Read Online Pride (Bareknuckle Boxing Brotherhood Book 3) by Cara Nelson - Free Book Online

arse,” Paul said bitterly.
    “This is just another kind of fight, and you know Dolans were born and bred to win.”
    “That’s why I come to you in the first place. I know your family don’t give up. It just looks awful bleak right now—”
    “Are you looking at my speed rope?” Bronny asked, indicating the jump rope hanging on the coat hook. “Because I listened to the depositions from the Normans over and over again while I was doing speed drills, and it came to me. He’s tripped up, made an error. You see, he said first that he informed you in writing of the increase in rent, as the law dictates. He was quite puffed up about that and his law abiding self, and made that remark about you, saying maybe you just couldn’t read it. Then, later on, he says he told you, that you shook on it. So if he informed you in writing, according to the letter of the law, unless he’d stood awkwardly in the street and passed you a note and waited for you to peruse it, he’s lying. The letter he copied us on has to be a fake. I’ve a friend of mine, real computer whiz, going into the document he attached on the email, checking the creation date on it. That ought to do it. I’ll know by next week. You needn’t disturb yourself.”
    “That’s good to hear, and it’s glad I am you’re fixing it so we can stay—but, what about Ronnie? I mean, she’s taking the boys—”
    “Go with her. You’re not vacating the property but going to visit your wife’s family, taking the kids to see their granddad. No judge would have a problem with that, and it’d set you at ease that she ain’t leaving you.”
    Paul stood up and shook his hand, gratitude in his eyes. “Thank you, Bronny. Now go win that fight.”
    “I will. For us all. And then come Monday, I plan to have the Normans begging forgiveness and paying a hefty fine for the privilege of setting your rent back where it was.”
    He walked Paul out and drove to the Cheeky Bowman. The wave of heat from the kitchen struck him almost forcibly. She must have been cooking all day, he thought. She hurried by, carrying heavy platters laden with food. Camila had stripped down to a thin tee shirt and a pair of cut-off shorts—the same woman who’d been complaining of the cold. The sight of her made him catch his breath. He purposely barreled through the crowd and down the basement without speaking to anyone, without looking at her again. His eyes were so full of her: the curve of her hips, her long smooth thighs, the way her white t-shirt clung damply between her shoulders as she delivered food. Even as he went down the stairs, he could have sworn he picked out her laugh, throaty and beautiful, from all that noise.
    He was keyed up, bouncing on the balls of his feet, full to bursting with the energy that came from wanting to prove himself. The tension from resisting Camila and keeping away from her, the strange physical pull, made him want to take the stairs three at a time. He’d find her, pull her hard against him, and kiss her until she was tearing at what was left of his clothes. But he couldn’t do that, so he stretched and readied himself.
    His opponent was Joey Carney, whose name he’d seen in the papers when he first started fighting—a man two or three years older than himself who’d made a name, a sort of career out of prizefighting throughout Ireland. A while back, before uni, this was what Bronny had wanted to be. He had basked in the idea of his family’s approval that he could make a whole life out of winning fights—but he’d found he wanted to win other kinds of fights as well, the kind that protected an idea, or a person that mattered. It made Bronny want to knock him out even more. Because he knew bone deep that his father would rather have Joey Carney for a son than himself.
    Bronny ripped the tape off his knuckle and stepped between the ropes. The crowd roared. He refused to look at them, looking just over their heads so he didn’t see his family,