Free Axel: A Bad Boy Romance by Laura Day Page B

after she had tucked Cate into bed and the alarm had been set, Marie stood next to an open window in the mansion and looked down onto the little town below. She imagined what it looked like back in Edith’s day. There would be no electrical light, only fires and candles. She would be able to see more stars. Trees would stretch in all directions and there would no real roads, only cleared tracks in the mud.
     
    What would she have been like back then? Could she have done what Edith had done? Could she have built a town out of nothing? Probably not, but it was fun to imagine. She had another training scheduled with Axel and she was nervous. She didn’t feel stronger. If anything, she felt weaker. Her legs and arms were like jelly and they hurt with every move. But she wasn’t going to quit or pull a no show. She was going to get up and go and prove her worth.
     
     
     

 
    Chapter Thirteen
     
    There was no way he was going to get away with this for much longer. He didn’t train people. Axel hadn’t worked as a trainer in over five years. He made enough money from his fights and the gym that he didn’t need to. So why was he standing at the juice bar in the gym waiting for Marie to show up? He was planning on giving her to another trainer, a female trainer. But when the time came, he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.
     
    Marie wasn’t ready yet. She technically shouldn't even be in the program. If he gave her to another trainer, they might send her away, or put her on a treadmill instead of a boxing ring. She didn’t want to get into better shape. He understood without needing to ask that Marie wasn’t interested in bikini season or slimming down to look better in photos. She wanted to learn how to fight.
     
    Hayden was out of town; he was in Philly meeting with the promoters. There would some kind of press tour leading up to the fight with magazine interviews and television interviews that would need to be scheduled. It was a lot of work, but that was Hayden’s job. Axel’s job was to train and mentally prepare for the fight. Hayden didn’t know about Axel’s little training sessions with Marie and he was hoping he could keep this going a little longer.
     
    She arrived five minutes early. Her long dark hair was pulled in a sleek ponytail. She was wearing tight fitting, black stretch pants and a black tank top. With a bottle of water in her hand she looked ready for a work out and he was going to give it to her.
     
    “You’re back,” he said when she walked into the gym.
     
    “Did you doubt me?” she asked.
     
    “Not for a moment,” he responded. “But you know it only gets harder from here on out, right? It doesn’t get easier. The weights get heavier, the reps grow higher; it’s an uphill climb the whole way.” He didn’t know why he was trying to scare her away, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
     
    “I’m ready,” she said.
     
    He led her back down to the boxing gym, which was almost empty at this hour of the day.  “This is the heavy bag,” Axel said, hitting the large punching black bag that hung from a heavy chain on the ceiling. “We’re gonna work on this today. Now, I don’t want you to just hit it. I want you to imagine it’s an enemy. Imagine it’s someone coming to get you, someone who’s determined to fight you. You can’t run away; you have to face it.”
     
    Something shifted in her face when he said this. The fear wasn’t pretend for her; it was very real. But he wasn’t going to shield her from it and he wasn’t going to coddle her. If she did have someone coming for her, gentle whispered words weren’t going help. Only hard work would help.
     
    “Give me your hands,” he said. Tentatively she held out her hands, like a criminal waiting to be cuffed. Her took her delicate wrist in one hand and he couldn’t help but caress the back of her hand with his thumb. It was a quick gesture, one that could easily be confused for an accidental touch.