Against the Ropes by Carly Fall Read Free Book Online Page B

make sense since his days were generally spent training with Max.
    Or so she had been told.
    Spending time with Dylan these past couple of days had brought back the same old feelings. Her body warmed as she worked on his shoulder, and her heart melted when he smiled at her. Talking between them had been stilted, but it was getting easier.
    Nothing could happen, she decided as she picked up the pace. It couldn’t. She needed to protect herself from Dylan, and she didn’t need to know the why’s of what happened in the past.  She just needed to focus on getting his shoulder in the best shape possible, and then move on with her own plans for the future.
    With that resolved, she turned around and headed back to the house.
     

CHAPTER TWELVE
     
     
    “Left, right, left,” Max said, holding up the mitts, and Dylan did what he was told.
    “Jab, hook, duck, uppercut.”
    Dylan got through the jab and hook just fine, it was the duck that didn’t compute and Max landed the mitt on Dylan’s cheek.
    Thankfully, he hadn’t put much strength behind it.
    They were out in the backyard, the spring sun warm against Dylan’s bare back. They’d been doing mitt work for an hour, and Dylan knew he still needed to complete his ab workout and then meet with Regan. No rest for the guy trying to make it to the pros.
    It had been a week since Dylan told Regan about his prison time, and things had thawed a little bit each day between them, which only made him hotter. He was stroking himself off nightly now as he thought of her on the other side of the wall, curled up in bed. Perhaps it had been his imagination, but he thought he had caught her staring at him a time or two with that look in her eye that she used to get when she wanted him in the sack.
    It was probably wishful thinking.
    His shoulder actually felt a little better, which was surprising considering how long he’d been living with the pain. At the same time, it was expected as Regan had a magic about the way she manipulated the joint that seemed to bring out the best in it.
    “You need to focus, boy,” Max said, hitting him upside the head with the mitt. “C’mon. You got ten minutes left of this, and then you move onto the abs.”
    Bringing his attention back to Max and away from Regan, they completed the ten minutes without incident.
    “Damn,” Max said, wiping the sweat from his eyes. “Get the ab workout done. I’m going to go to the store and then lay down for a while.”
    Dylan wiped the sweat from his head with a towel. “You sure you’re okay, Max? You seem to be resting a lot lately. Maybe you need to see a doctor.”
    At the sliding glass door, Max looked over his shoulder. “I’m old, Dylan. I don’t need no doctor to tell me that. Now get to those abs. I want to be able to bounce a quarter off them, you hear me?”
    Dylan nodded, sat down at the picnic table and put his head in the towel. He just needed to rest for a few minutes, and then he could finish his workout. Even at twenty-seven, he could feel the difference in his body and stamina from when he was twenty-two. He couldn’t imagine what Max felt like at sixty-five.
    He heard the door slide open and turned. Regan stood there in a pair of black leggings that hugged her slim, toned thighs and a black tank top. The blood in his body made a mad dash for his groin.
    She came and sat down next to him and smiled. “So, I was just talking to Max before he left,” she said. There was a glint in her eye, and he knew from experience that usually meant she was going to say something he wasn’t going to like.
    “And?”
    “I asked him what he thought about you doing some yoga.”
    Dylan rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding me? Yoga? I’m a boxer, Regan, not some tree-hugging ballet dancer or cheerleader or some shit.”
    Now, it was apparently Regan’s turn to roll her eyes. “There are a lot of athletes that participate in yoga, Dylan. They find it helps with their flexibility, which, by the way, you