“I’ll be here for a while,” she said a bit hopefully. “So just let me know.”
“Great,” Nellie said. She smiled at Sonia and Carmen then glanced back at Ella. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The second she walked away, Carmen did a little running in place thing and looked ready to burst.
“I thought you weren’t that impressed with him,” Ella teased.
“Oh please,” Carmen said, giving Ella her famous stink eye. “This is Felix Sanchez we’re talking about. Tell me you’re not already all weak in the knees.”
Maybe she was a little, and her stomach wasn’t feeling so hot all of a sudden, but she wouldn’t admit that. This was a professional meeting, and she’d behave just so. Once done with the giggling talk of meeting Felix, they got back to business.
“You didn’t tell me about the breast-cancer awareness run,” Carmen said, her eye brows pinching.
“It’s just something I mentioned to Nellie a few weeks back. I gotta remember that woman is a hell of a coordinator. It was something I only mentioned casually, and she called me the other day to tell me all her ideas and what celebrities she can get to show up. Then at the end of the run she wants to have a carnival of sorts with a mini concert. The woman is insane!”
Sonia and Carmen laughed. “Well, I imagine you’d have to be moving nonstop to run a place like this,” Sonia said wide-eyed. “There’s always something going on and TV crews are in here at least once a week.”
As they were today. It was the only hope that Ella wouldn’t get the chance to meet with Felix today, not that she didn’t want to. She was over the fact that he’d caught her staring at him. The man was a celebrity. A perfectly sculpted incredibly good looking celebrity—if you were into the type. He had to be used to being stared at. Ella just would’ve liked to have been better prepared. That’s all.
A little while later, Nellie walked in the room again. “He’ll get a break in about ten minutes. You’ll still be here, right?”
Ella gulped hard. “Yeah, I can hang around a little bit longer.”
Nellie must’ve picked up on how unnerved that made Ella because she laughed softly, touching her arm. “Don’t worry. It’ll be a very informal meeting. I’ll bring him in here so he can check out the class and then meet with you for a little bit, but then he’ll have to get back to his signing. So he’ll be in and out of here quickly.” Ella nodded, trying to act as if were no big deal as Nellie was suggesting, though her heart was already working double time. “And he’s really down to earth. You’d be surprised. Despite everything you hear about him in the paper, he’s a good guy and really cares about 5th Street. That’s why he’s anxious to meet with you.”
Anxious?
Good God. Ella could’ve done without hearing that last part.
Chapter 3
Felix
They finally broke from the spontaneous photo shoot. Hector had happened to come around to ask Abel something, and having all three there in one place had almost caused a frenzy with the fans asking them to pose together. Nellie had already told the crowd they’d be taking a ten-minute break and be back, but she’d disappeared during the frenzy of cameras flashing.
“The kids from the high school paper are asking if they can do a quick interview,” Hector said, leaning into Felix.
“Right now?” Felix asked.
Abel shook his head. “He can’t now. Nellie’s setting up a meeting with him and Ella.”
“Ella?” Hector asked, confused. “For what?”
“Because I’ve never met her. She’s the one who got the self-defense thing going, right?”
Hector’s brows shot up. “You haven’t met her yet?”
“Nope.”
“Dude, she’s been doing this for like almost two years now. Where’ve you been?”
Felix laughed. “I haven’t been away that long, ass. It’s just that every time I’ve come down she hasn’t been here.” He turned to Abel. “Nellie said something about her wanting to start a breast-cancer awareness thing. Like a run we’d do annually or something. I think that’s cool. We should’ve had something like that going on a long time ago.”
“We do all kinds of stuff outside the gym for it,” Abel reminded him. “But I agree this would be directly associated with 5th Street and something that could get bigger every year. Could be a real good thing. And you know Nellie. She’s already all over it.”
Hector laughed. “Yeah, I heard her talking about a carnival with a mini concert and contacting some celebrities to do appearances. She’s nuts!”
Abel gave him a look and Felix had to laugh. Hector then turned to Felix. “I’m surprised this chick hasn’t made more of an effort to meet you yet. Two years. Damn.”
“Ella doesn’t seem that type,” Abel said, frowning. “She’s a real nice girl. It doesn’t surprise me meeting Felix hasn’t been high on her list of priorities.”
Felix smirked, wanting nothing more than to piss off his already irritable-looking friend. He knew these kinds of events running too long made Abel grumpier than a toddler in need of a nap.
“So is she cute?”
As expected, Abel’s face soured immediately. “Don’t start with that shit. This is business and—”
“I’m just asking a question.” Felix laughed, holding his hands up in front of him. “Geez! Kill me!”
“I will if you come in here messing with the trainers and staff.”
One glance at Hector and Felix had his answer. He was shaking his head.
“Not a looker, huh?”
Abel turned to Hector with that ever-present scowl. “She’s not ugly.”
“I didn’t say she was ugly,” Hector said. “But she’s way too humble-looking for this guy’s taste.”
“What are you talking about?” Felix laughed. “I grew up in East L.A.”
“Let me put to you this way,” Hector explained. “She’s no Athena or runway model like you’re used to now. She’s not ugly but just . . . kind of . . .”—Hector glanced around—“on the plain side. She’s a typical Hispanic girl, no different from anything you see around here on any given day.”
Felix glanced around, remembering he’d seen a face or two just tonight he might consider his type.
“Well, none of that matters anyway, all right?” Abel’s tone warned. “She’s a hard worker, and Nellie said she has a lot of passion. She’s exactly the kind of person we want involved with the gym. Don’t go fucking things up by messing with her.”
“Whoa!” Felix said, attempting to sound offended. “Ease up there, big guy. I was just asking.” He smirked in Hector’s direction. “Kind of plain-looking nice girl with a lot of passion. Probably has a real nice personality too.” He winked at Hector. “Gotcha. So far it sounds like you got nothing to worry about with this one.”
Abel rolled his eyes as Nellie walked up to them. “Do you have a moment now, Felix?”
“For you? Always, sweetheart.”
“Good, because Ella is here, but she doesn’t have a lot of time,” Nellie’s tone warned.
Hector laughed and Nellie turned to look at him, curiously. When he offered no explanation for his laughter, she went on. They started in the direction of the rooms in the back, leaving Abel and Hector behind.
“She’s had finals this week, so I didn’t think she’d be here today or I would’ve—”
The building jolted suddenly. Nellie stopped midstride and reached for Felix’s arm, squeezing it. There were gasps in the room, and then everyone around seemed to hold their breath for a moment as the wave of movement subsided.
“Was that an—?” Nellie started to ask, looking back at Abel who’d suddenly caught up to them as the building rumbled again but not as hard as the first time.
Felix looked around and waited with baited breath as he knew everyone else was doing to see if there’d be more, but it settled into a slow wave until everything was back to normal. That’s when all the buzzing and talking started, and the gym suddenl
y went from eerily silent to a loud drone with everyone talking all at once.
“Are you calling my mom?” Abel asked as Nellie brought the phone to her ear and nodded.
As Southern California natives, they’d all experienced worse tremblers than this one, but Felix knew these two had a toddler and an infant they were overly protective about. Felix looked around as Hector approached him with a smirk.
“You okay, buddy?” Hector asked as he brought an arm around Felix’s shoulder playfully. “Need a change of pants?”
“Shit.” Felix laughed as he waited on Nellie to get off the phone. “I don’t, but you better check with your brother over here.”
Hector turned to Abel, who was listening intently to Nellie, who was still on the phone. The look on Hector’s face went from playful to mildly concerned. “The kids and mom okay?”
Nellie nodded in response, giving him the thumbs up, and Abel seemed to let out a slow breath. As soon as she was off the phone, she kissed Abel, saying something to him in a hushed voice. Abel walked away with Hector, patting Felix on the shoulder. Before turning away completely, Abel gave Felix the lifted brow warning look, at which Felix laughed.
Nellie looked at Felix weirdly then shook her head and smiled. “I’m not even gonna ask,” she said, rolling her eyes playfully.
“Thank you.” Felix chuckled.
“Well,” Nellie said as they started toward the back rooms, “now that the unexpected excitement is over, let’s go meet Ella. You have had a chance to sit in and watch some of the self-defense classes, right?”
“I have. The last time I was here I peeked in for a few minutes. I think it’s awesome that we offer this here now, and I’m gonna try and get my mom and sister to take a class.”
“Yes, we get a lot of that—mothers and daughters enrolling together.” They took the escalators up then walked down the corridor, walking past a few kickboxing classes and some of the private training rooms. “I like that it creates some good mother-daughter bonding time while at the same time giving them some invaluable tools to empower themselves. And Ella—well, both her and Sonia, but Ella has really been the driving force behind all this—her passion is incredible, especially for someone so young. It’s what caught my attention when I was following the story about her brother beating that guy to death a couple of years ago. So when I saw them interview her about putting together the classes at the local high school and trying to raise money—because she was determined that everyone would have the opportunity even if they couldn’t afford them—that’s when I knew I had to meet her and bring her here.”
Felix tried to remember the details of Ella’s brother’s ordeal. He remembered hearing about it back then, but he’d had so much going on in the past two years there was no way he’d remember everything. He knew someone had been raped—Sonia. That much Nellie had refreshed him on just before he met Sonia. And that Ella had been someone in Sonia’s life who went on a mission to help give young girls like Sonia a fighting chance against a predator. He’d forgotten someone had actually died. And for some reason, when Nellie had mentioned one of Sonia’s relatives or close friends being on a mission to get the self-defense classes going, all this time he’d imagined it was an aunt or mom or something. Given Sonia’s age, he’d been expecting someone a lot older to be behind all this. But now Nellie was referring to her as so young.
“How old is she?”
“Gosh,” she said, opening the door to the room where the classes were taking place. “I’m not real sure, but I believe twenty or twenty-one.”
“Oh wow.” That was something he wasn’t expecting. “She’s just a kid then.”
Nellie nodded wide-eyed as if to say I told you so. It dawned on Felix in that instant that, when this first happened, Ella couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. He had to admit that was impressive. And now the girl wanted to start a huge breast-cancer awareness campaign and event. Okay, his curiosity about this girl was growing with everything new he learned about her.
They walked into the room where the current class appeared to be wrapping it up. Nellie looked around for a bit then walked up to the girl he remembered as Sonia standing with another girl. “Where did Ella go?”
Sonia and the girl with her turned to look at Felix. Sonia smiled timidly, and the starry-eyed look on the other girl’s face was one he was all too familiar with. So he smiled, nodding at both of them.
“She had to go,” Sonia said, glancing at Nellie then back at him.
“Go?” Nellie asked. “I told her I was bringing Felix in to meet her.”
“Yeah,” Sonia said, looking a bit regretful now. “I don’t know. She just said she had to go and that she’d text you.”
Nellie pulled her phone out of the holster and frowned. “Hmm.” She turned to Felix when she finished reading the text and exhaled, continuing to frown. “I don’t know what happened. She was here a few minutes ago when I told her I’d be bringing you over, and she said she’d wait. Her text didn’t say much else other than something came up. But you’ll be back again tomorrow, right?”
“Day after tomorrow,” Felix said, feeling a little disappointed, but he shrugged it off. “I’ll meet her eventually.”
They walked around the room as Nellie showed him some of the photos taken from previous classes. They’d apparently had a radio station broadcast from there because there were photos of a D.J. booth from one of the local radio stations.
Nellie pointed at the photos with the D.J. “That’s when we first announced the classes being offered. We offered the classes for free that first weekend, and man did we have a full house.”
They continued to take the small tour of the room, and then Nellie pointed at a photo of two girls on either side of a guy in a padded suit, the kind worn so all the women in the class could kick and punch him in the nuts. “That’s her.” She frowned, looking around at the other photos. “You’d think we’d have more of her up here.”
Felix moved in for a closer look. The first thing he noticed was she was small. The guy next to her in the huge padded suit likely dwarfed her, but the girl on the other side didn’t look as small. The second was what a nice smile she had. “That tiny thing put all this together?”
Nellie laughed. “That tiny thing has a lot to say, and she says it all with conviction.”
Felix took the moment Nellie looked away to sneak in another quick examination of “Mighty Little Ms. Ella.” Judging by the photo alone, Hector was right. There was nothing extraordinary about her looks, but there was something familiar about her. From what he was hearing, Felix hadn’t been too far off when he teased that she likely had a good personality or a strong and determined one according to Nellie. He found himself looking for more photos of her, strangely intrigued, though he was quickly distracted by a text from Adelina. He’d nearly forgotten that he’d told her he’d be in town for a few days.
Since he hadn’t known for sure what time he’d be done tonight, he hadn’t made any plans for the night. But since he’d arrived, Abel had invited him to come over to his place afterward and meet his month-old son.
Felix figured he’d kill a couple of hours at Abel’s, so he texted Adelina back quickly.
I’m busy until around 11pm tonight.
This could go either way and he really didn’t care. Truth was he was tired. If he ended up at home alone tonight, that was fine by him. He had some annoying meetings tomorrow morning and a call he had to take to discuss possibly presenting at the ESPY’s, one of the last things Preston had lined up for him before he quit or Felix fired him. That was a moot point and one he was done debating with Rene. Bottom line was he could use a night off from the extracurricular activities. His phone beeped just as he and Nellie started back to the signing area. He clicked on the text, curious as to whether or not he’d be having a quiet night tonight or not.
I can wait up if you wanna come by. I’ve been thinking about you ALL day.
Felix smiled, texting back only that he??
?d see her later. Maybe a not-so-quiet night would do him some good too. Then he smirked. Who was he kidding? Knowing Adelina, his night would be anything but quiet.
~~~
The next two days were interesting. For starters, Rene had already given Felix the heads up that, as he predicted, Grecco’s people were feeling the heat of the media and sports broadcasters all over who continued to insist that his taking the title from Felix had been a total fluke. It didn’t help that Grecco refused a rematch and went on to fight nothing but bums. The ratings and sales for his last pay-per-view fight were at an all-time low for a championship fight. Felix didn’t get it. Even if his knocking out Felix in the first round had been a fluke, Grecco had a pretty impressive record. The guys he’d been fighting lately were near amateurs.
Felix had long ago told Rene to stop any negotiations for a rematch. It pissed him off to be the one begging to fight Grecco when it should be the other way around. Well, now Grecco’s team had come to them, wanting to negotiate. Rene had met with them alone because Felix told him he wouldn’t bother meeting with them until they had a decent offer on the table. So far they hadn’t, but this was a start.
One of the annoying meetings he’d had lined up for the day was a meeting with the lawyers of the asshole whose face he’d broken the last time he’d been arrested for assault at a bar—the reason Preston had given him the ultimatum.
Technically, Felix had broken a few bones in the guy’s face anyway. His lawyer had given him the medical terminology of which bones exactly, but all Felix took away from the anatomy lesson was that he’d fucked the guy up pretty badly.
They’d decided to settle out of court, and now this guy who’d taunted Felix at a club was going to walk away with a hefty sum. It burned Felix that it had to work out this way, but he knew it was his own damn fault. His lawyers and Rene had long ago warned him to expect this and that many were willing to take a hit from a former champ just to collect. Felix was fine with the taunts and could ignore the assholes. That is, until he was drinking, and that night he had been.