Pride (Bareknuckle Boxing Brotherhood Book 3) Read Online Free Page B

flannel shirt up so it exposed a sliver of olive skin along her midriff. She took a rough washcloth, wetted one of the shamrock tattoos, and stuck it on her lower back. The Irish tramp stamp, she thought with a laugh. She shook her hair out of its ponytail and undid one more button of her shirt, hooking in long silver earrings. She looked way more Italian than Irish, she knew, but at least she’d fit the atmosphere a little more.
    Down in the cramped and outdated kitchen, she boiled pasta and sliced tomatoes and eggplant. A quick sauté, and her first batch of Mattie’s Pasta Norma, straight out of Sicily, was done. Camila inhaled the aroma and took a huge forkful. It was heaven, rich and robust, with a generous sprinkle of that cheese grated on top.
    “Hey, Rabbie, come taste this,” she called. “It’ll change your mind about adding brass to the joint. This is nothing but good honest peasant food. Perfect for a beer crowd.”
    He didn’t come. She stepped out into the front of the house and saw Bronny Dolan standing there. Not really standing, since he didn’t loll about with his hands in his pockets, staring like most men. He circled, he moved lightly on the balls of his feet, surveying, predatory. She bit down on her lip a little too hard.
     

Chapter Four
Bronny
     
    The belligerent bartender, as he had nicknamed Camila Saunders, was looking fetching when she came out of the kitchen holding a wooden spoon. A tanned sliver of her belly showed above her jeans, and he wanted to put his mouth to it, to taste her caramel skin. She bit down on her lip when she saw him, in what was probably dismay, but it made Bronny Dolan want to bite her lip for her. That was a thought which crowded out twenty-two years of conversational charisma.
    “Here,” she said, as if startled awake. “Try this and see how you like it?” She held out the spoon to him. The upward lilt of her voice, which made it into a question, was what decided him to accept.
    Bronny took a bite of the tubular noodles coated in something orange and chunky. It tasted phenomenal, hearty with tomato, garlic, and something else he couldn’t identify. But he wanted more of it, whatever her secret ingredient was. He nodded appreciatively.
    “That’s amazing.”
    “Pasta Norma alla Mattie,” she said, and her face broke into a smile.
    Bronny Dolan had survived many a bloody fistfight, plus three years of uni being ridiculed for doing his law degree by his fight enthusiast family. Nothing in his past had prepared him for Camila’s smile. It was brilliant: her dark eyes flashed, her entire face transforming. She was incandescent, and the need to kiss her was an irresistible, physical pull. He even took a step toward her, not straight on, but from the side, approaching as if she were an opponent.
    “Do you want some more?” she asked, oblivious to the firestorm of lust and desire she’d unleashed in him.
    He nodded, settling himself on a stool so he wouldn’t embarrass himself by grabbing her. Although on a stool, he would be able to pull her across his lap and—get thrown out of the Cheek, he told himself. This was no County girl who’d lead him behind the barn with a twinkle in her eye. This was some foreigner who hated Ireland, hated fighting, hated her dad, and probably Guinness, too.
    When she turned back to the kitchen, Bronny watched that sliver of exposed skin and, Lord above, there was a tattoo of a shamrock, green as the hills, riding just above her jeans. One more part of her he wanted to put his mouth on. While she was in the kitchen, he dropped his head in his hands. He wanted to convince her to keep the fights going, to get her on his side. This attraction was something that he couldn’t afford. He needed her to keep the fight club open, needed to prove himself in that tournament. His whole life was coming apart at the seams, and he didn’t need some black-haired girl with a shamrock tramp stamp to rip the rest of it asunder.
    Camila was