Uncaged Love #4: MMA New Adult Contemporary Romance Read Online Free Page A

sandbags. I’m not sure what to think. And I don’t know if I’m going to get a chance to ask her my questions.
    I wish I had more answers. But the nagging sense that something important is going on won’t leave.

Chapter Five  

    Winter has taken a vacation when I go outside at the end of the day. It’s cool, but the sun is shining bright. Even though this part of LA is seedy and rundown, it doesn’t look too bad when the weather is this pretty.
    I know it’s time to ask Colt about Annie. It’s a little after six, so he should be on his dinner break from training. I tug my phone out of my pocket and call him. I’d rather do this in person, but it can’t wait until Friday. Besides, that’s my match with Diva Delaney, and I will need to focus.
    “Do you have your mouth full?” I ask when he picks up.
    “Not with what I want in it,” he says huskily.
    “Killjoy keeping you strong and fit for me?”
    “Man, everybody is a mess. All they can talk about is you and your hat. And the footage is blowing up all over ESPN. Everyone thinks this is going to make MMA go mainstream.” He laughs. “They seem to forget I still have a whole lineup of matches coming up,” he says. “And here they thought I was distracted.”
    “Is the date for the actual title fight set?” I have no idea how these things work.
    “No. Every fight from now on is televised, so there’s contracts and schedules to deal with.”
    “Wow.” I think about the cameras aiming at me and feel another sense of panic. “Do you think I could get recognized?”
    “You mean as Kettle Belle? I think that cat is out of the bag.”
    “No. Not that.”
    He’s quiet a moment. “You mean as Joanna.”
    My old name sends a chill through me. I haven’t heard anyone else say it out loud in so long. “Yeah, that.”
    “Let me get some affairs in order with the separation from my father’s corporation, and I’ll hire a lawyer for this,” Colt says. “He’ll discreetly look into what happened to your stepbrother and see if any charges were filed.”
    “You mean if there’s a warrant out for my arrest.”
    “You think that’s likely?”
    I come up to a group of people waiting at a crosswalk and hustle through. “I don’t know. He had to have gone to the hospital.”
    I can still hear his bones crunching beneath my punches, and picture him bleeding on the fallen shower curtain.
    “But is he the type who would never admit that it was his stepsister? One of those macho men who would claim it was an intruder?”
    I make the last turn to my apartment complex. It hasn’t occurred to me that he might not blame me. The situation seemed so obvious. He gets beaten. I disappear. Obviously I did it. Obvious to me, anyway.
    But Colt is right. “You think they might think an intruder attacked him and then kidnapped me?”
    “How old were you then?”
    “Seventeen.”
    “You were a minor. Did you ever check the Amber Alerts or missing-kid networks?”
    I haven’t. I start to feel hope that maybe I’m okay, that some terrible fate isn’t waiting to catch up to me.
    “Jo?”
    I realize I never answered. “I never did.”
    “I’ll do that myself,” he says. “As soon as I’m sure I can hire someone my father’s estate can’t trace, I’ll look into clearing your name if we need to.”
    I’ve made it to my apartment now. “Thank you, Colt.”
    “It’s time we got this taken care of,” he says. “Hey, can you ask Buster to send your fight schedule to my team? I want to make sure they don’t book anything on top of one of your matches.”
    I want to laugh as I unlock my door. “I think I should be working around you. You are way more important.”
    “Not to me.”
    I pause on the doorstep. “I can’t wait to have you at one of my fights,” I say.
    “I can’t wait to have you after one of your fights,” he says.
    A flush of heat spreads through my body. “That will be something.”
    “Talk to you before bed?” he