TKO (A Bad Boy MMA Romance) Read Online Free

and beckoned to me, his salt-and-pepper moustache twitching as he smiled. “Good morning, ladies,” he greeted in his deep voice. “Trina, your first patient will be in around nine-thirty, and I think Mrs. Smythe is coming in this afternoon for her aquatic therapy.”
     
    “Got it. Thanks, Danny,” Trina said brightly. She gave me a wink and headed into her own private office to set up for the day. Then Danny looked at me and waved his hand to call me into his office. I hoped I wasn’t in trouble or something. I tended to jump to the worst conclusions without much provocation. It was something Alice gave me hell for all the time. “You gotta stop assuming the worst, Gem. You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack worrying about everything,” she told me more than once.
     
    I followed Danny into his office and he shut the door behind us before taking a seat in the cushy black swivel chair behind his desk. “I need to talk to you about an important assignment,” he told me, folding his hands on the wooden surface in front of him. I nodded and sat down across from him, my heart starting to race. What important assignment? I was both nervous and excited; I’d been waiting for months to finally be taken seriously as a therapist.
     
    “Okay, shoot!” I said, maybe a little too enthusiastically. Danny beamed at me.
     
    “Gemma, you’re our newest staff member and your workload is the lightest at the present moment, plus you’ve proven yourself to be an excellent physiotherapist. So I have selected you as the best choice for a new client we’re taking on. He trains here pretty regularly, and you may have heard of him. But I need you to refrain from making a big deal about his, ah, celebrity status. Okay?”
     
    I blinked a few times, struggling to take in this information. I was going to be working with a guy famous enough to merit the term “celebrity status”?
     
    “Who is it?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
     
    Danny sighed. “His name is Marc Montoya.”
     
    My eyes grew large and round with surprise. I’d never been as much into the fighting scene, since my specialty was running, but even I knew that name. Montoya was a well-established MMA fighter with countless wins under his belt. I’d never seen him around the gym before, but then again, I usually spent all my time in the medical offices except for when I did my early morning workout sessions.
     
    “Wow,” I breathed. “He--he’s coming here for therapy?”
     
    Danny nodded and replied, “Yes. He injured his left shoulder and hip during his last fight. He won, but he needs to reduce the damage to his body before taking on another tough match. As I’m sure you know, he keeps a pretty tight fighting schedule since he’s a big name right now. Since you don’t have any other major commitments in the field right now, I want you to be his therapist. Do you think you can handle it? If not, I can see if maybe Robert can--”
     
    “No,” I interrupted. “Uh, I mean yes. I can handle it. I’ll do it. Definitely.”
     
    Danny gave me a firm nod and a wink. “I know you’ll do great. I’ll just warn you, though, Montoya has a reputation of being kind of… difficult to work with at times.”
     
    I frowned slightly, my former elation simmering back down to the usual worry.
     
    “What do you mean?” I asked, a little suspiciously.
     
    “He’s a good guy overall. But, you know, he comes from a sort of bleak background and he had to work his ass off to rise through the ranks and overcome that, and I think he’s still got that chip on his shoulder. You’ll see what I mean. I have no doubt that you’ll be able to take him on, though,” Danny finished, trying to assuage the concern evident on my face.
     
    “Well, if you think I can handle it, then I’ll prove to you I can!” I replied, determined to live up to Danny’s expectations of me. I just hoped I could live up to my own expectations for myself, which had always been much