Full Contact (Worth the Fight #2) - Sidney Halston Page 0,107

months to change before coming here. He needed a drink and a warm, able body for the night, and he didn’t want to be around anyone he knew, so he picked this particular club located a few miles outside Tarpon Springs. The thumping music was deafening, and Club Zee was packed full of sweaty, dancing bodies, reminding him of the clubs he loved to frequent in Miami. Normally women swarmed to him, but tonight his fuck-off vibe was keeping everyone away.

He had his drink in his hand when a group of drunk women squished between him and the stranger next to him in order to get the bartender’s attention. His drink almost spilled, which pissed him off. Lately everything pissed him off. A few months ago, he would’ve been dancing with some woman he’d take home for the night after a few rounds on the floor. Instead, he sat at the bar, unable to enjoy the beats or the beautiful ladies.

His move to Tarpon Springs—and WtF—had come after a series of tabloid mishaps, or, as he liked to call them, overreactions. The bar fight that had almost gotten him arrested wasn’t his fault—it was the smug bartender’s fault. Tony had heard the bartender making a lewd comment to some woman and had intervened—but, of course, the media didn’t care about that part of the story. All they reported was that he’d been in yet another bar fight after one too many drinks. He probably could’ve handled the entire situation differently, he could’ve called security or management and reported the bartender instead of breaking the kid’s nose, but containing his temper had never been his strong suit. After that, his agent had threatened to quit, and there were rumors that some of his endorsements wanted to pull out. His career was on the line. He needed to get his shit together, as his agent, his PR person, and his lawyer had all warned him.

Now that he was thirty-four years old, the younger fighters were beginning to pose a serious threat to his career. It was getting hard to ignore how sore his body felt after a full sparring match during training, or how his knees creaked in the morning. Hell, if he were being completely truthful, he’d admit that everything creaked and cracked in the morning. He used to knock his opponents out in the first round. Now he sat in a dark bar licking his wounds, having almost been knocked out after three strenuously difficult rounds.

Tony swirled the thin red-and-white cocktail straw around in his empty glass. The heat from all the bodies pressed together was getting to him. “Hey, I know you. You’re that guy.” Tony’s focus went from his drink to the red fingernails wrapped around his forearm. He didn’t even bother to look up at her face because he was pretty sure he knew exactly what he’d find: a ready, willing, and probably very able female who undoubtedly wanted him to buy her (and her friends) drinks before going back to her house for a night of no-strings sex. When you had as much money and fame as he did, you didn’t have to try. Dating, flirting—it was not something he did. His m.o. was satisfying, emotionless sex. Something he’d never pass up. Something he’d never complained about before. So what the hell was wrong with him tonight?

“Lindsey,” the woman shrieked. “Look, it’s that guy.” Her grip on Tony’s arm tightened. “You know, the guy from the magazine. What’s his name?” She asked her friend as if he weren’t sitting right there next to her. He noticed that the friend had red hair, similar to Francesca’s. He’d never had a “type” before. They could be blond, brunette—hell, they could be bald, so long as they went home with him. But tonight, the redhead in particular was annoying the hell out of him.

“Oh, yeah.” The other woman, Lindsey apparently, leaned closer to him. “You’re that bad-boy fighter. Scarface.” She yelled into his ear. “What happened to your eye?”

Tony pushed his chair back. If the music hadn’t been so loud, the chair would’ve screeched loudly against the floor. His movement was so abrupt, the women were left no choice but to wobble backward or they’d fall.

“Hey, don’t leave. We’re okay with the eye thing,” the one who wasn’t Lindsey yelled over the music. “Come. Buy us a drink. We’re real fun. Actually, the scar’s really sexy.” She reached toward his face, but he grabbed her wrist to stop her