Can't Fight Love, page 1
Can’t Fight Love
KC Luck
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
products of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events, locales or persons either living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 KC Luck Media
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in
any form whatsoever.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
About the Author
Thank You!
Also By Kc Luck
iReadIndies
Chapter One
S hifting left and right on the balls of her feet, Kara
Roberts waited with her blue eyes fixed on the blank,
white wall twenty-five feet in front of her. Her right hand
held the leather wrapped handle of the short racquet. Firm but
not too tight. She was ready to spring in any direction, trusting
her instincts to move her body the right way before there was
even time to calculate trajectories. “Fourteen-fourteen,” Kara’s
best friend, Annette, said a moment before she bounced the
rubber racquetball and smacked it with her racquet. The blue
sphere shot toward the front wall and then ricocheted back. It
was a good serve, but not great, and Kara pounced on the ball
as soon as it bounced. A swift backhand sent the thing flying
at an angle to hit the sidewall first, then the front wall, before
dropping to the ground. Annette ran to make a volley but came
up short and Kara pumped her fist.
“My serve,” she said as Annette picked up the rolling ball
and tossed it to her. While tucking the loose end of a pesky
light brown curl back into her ponytail, Kara took her place in
the server’s zone.
“You always get me with that same damn shot,” Annette
said, taking up a position where Kara stood a moment before.
Kara grinned. “Stop serving to my backhand,” she said,
bouncing the ball once in front of her. “We go over this every
time.”
“I thought you were distracted today because of the new
job,” Annette replied. “And maybe I could sneak it by you.”
Holding the ball against the strings of her racquet, Kara
shook her head. “Nice try,” she said. “Yes, I’m thinking about
the production assistant gig, but beating you comes first.”
“Sometimes you are too competitive, but let’s see what
you’ve got,” Annette said, and Kara forced herself to focus.
Her best friend was right. Her mind was on the new job she
picked up for a few months. Nothing permanent because the
last thing she wanted was to be a bottom rung production
assistant for long, but the work would pay her rent with a little
extra money to spare. Money she very much needed to keep
her documentary film project afloat.
Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly and concentrated
on her next shot. Keep the ball down and to her left, she
thought a moment before she served. Annette wasn’t fooled
and returned the shot, but softer than she should have, leaving
Kara time to set up her swing. With a perfect stroke, the ball
flew true and struck the front wall less than an inch above the
floor. Even though Annette raced forward, the rubber skipped
twice. Game point. Match over.
Annette groaned. “Nice shot,” she said, taking off her
goggles as she led the way off the court. “You’re ruthless
today. I give up.”
“Giving up doesn’t mean you aren’t buying dinner,” Kara
said, picking up her towel from the bench and wiping her
sweaty face. “Where do you want to go?”
Swallowing a gulp of water from her bottle, Annette
shrugged. “The Arena?” she asked, and Kara rolled her eyes.
“Can we not do a sports bar tonight?” she said. “I think I’ll
be getting enough time with jocks starting tomorrow.”
“True,” her best friend said with a laugh. “But nobody said
you had to sign on with ESPN. There were other PA jobs.”
Annette was right. Kara picked the position from a list of a
half dozen others the hiring agency offered her.
There was one clear difference with the one she decided
on. “It’s the only PA spot working on documentaries,” she
said. “Sure, they are about athletes and coaches, but still make
for good practice. Even more importantly, it looks good on my
resume.” And I need to keep building that up, she thought
while putting her racquet away in the sleeve and zipping it. If I
ever want to get help with funding stuff of my own.
Alexa Knight loved the purr of the sports car beneath her
while she waited at the stoplight on Sunset Boulevard. It was a
turbocharged, midnight-black Camaro that went from zero to
sixty in five point four seconds. Of course, the car was only
one of her four vehicles, but overall, her favorite. Alexa liked
speed and the power that generated it. The temptation to floor
the accelerator the moment the light switched to green made
her fingers tighten on the steering wheel. But I’m going to
resist this time, she thought with a glance at her passenger—a
sexy blonde woman in a very short, white dress. There’s no
sense scaring the shit out of her and besides, I don’t need the
publicity of another speeding ticket.
When the light changed, Alexa behaved and eased the car
off the line to roll with the flow of light traffic around her. “I
love your car,” the blonde gushed, as she had been since Alexa
picked her up from her condo ten minutes ago. “I mean it’s so
cool. And fits you, you know?”
Alexa raised her dark eyebrows over her vivid green eyes.
“Fits me?”
“Yes,” the woman said, touching Alexa’s shoulder. “You’re
a little mysterious and so…” She bit her lip. “So dangerous.”
Forcing herself to refrain from rolling her eyes at the obvious
come on, Alexa cruised the Camaro around a slower moving,
brown UPS van. Why did I agree to this blind date? she
wondered. I can’t believe they talked me into this. She sighed,
frustrated at the entire situation, but not sure why. The blonde
was both attractive and a popular television actress. When
Alexa’s manager suggested the date, Alexa reluctantly agreed.
Go out. Be seen with a beautiful woman. Show the world
there’s more to me than fighting. She clenched her jaw. There
seemed no point. She was, in fact, Alexa Knight: mixed
martial arts star, and UFC bantamweight champion.
“Thank you,” Alexa finally replied. “But I’m not that
dangerous. Only when I must be.”
The woman’s hand lingered on Alexa’s sleeve. “And when
that happens, you’re so exciting,” she said. “I find it very
sexy.”
“I see,” Alexa said, once again wondering what could
possibly be sexy about MMA fighting. Strangely, she received
the compliment a lot, from men and women. Alexa understood
the excitement part, the thrill of two fighters face to face in a
ring trying to outmatch their opponent through strength, skill,
or both. There was something electrifying about the pairing of
wills, the standing up to a challenger, and seeing who wanted
victory more. Sexy, however, made little sense to her.
Understandably there were women who asked Alexa to
dominate them and take part in varying degrees of BDSM, but
she always politely declined. Often that met with confusion as
if delivering a spinning backfist into an opponent’s face
somehow translated to pleasure in spanking another woman.
&
Alexa the impression tonight would be another one of those
nights.
Putting all that out of her mind for the moment, she
focused on the fact they were less than four blocks away from
the restaurant where Alexa most enjoyed eating. A bit off the
main drag, few tourists ever found it so she could have a nice
dinner without interruptions for autographs. Not to mention
the chef made the best lasagna in the city. She had been
craving some for weeks.
Yet, as she made the turn to take them away from Sunset
Boulevard, Alexa suddenly had second thoughts. She rarely
took anyone to her little hideaway and as the blonde beside her
continued to babble about life as a television celebrity, Alexa
didn’t want to take her there. No, she thought. No pasta
tonight. As they started to pass in front of her favorite
restaurant, Alexa looked at her date. “I’ve changed my mind
about what I want to eat tonight,” she said. “What are you in
the mood—”
“Hey!” she suddenly heard a woman yell a beat before
noticing two people were in the street. She slammed on the
brakes a split second before hitting anyone. “What in the hell
is wrong with you?” the woman in the street said, slapping the
hood of Alexa’s car. Blinking with surprise, Alexa looked
through the windshield into the angry blue eyes of a woman
with a racquetball bag slung over her shoulder.
One minute Kara walked with Annette toward a restaurant she
wanted to try and then in the next a black sports car came
roaring at them. Throwing out an arm to stop Annette from
taking another step into the path, Kara hoped the driver would
pay attention in time. Or the son of a bitch is going to hit me,
she thought in the same second she instinctively yelled “Hey”
to get the person’s attention. Thankfully, the car came to a
screeching halt less than an inch from her leg. With fear and
anger pumping through her veins, she slapped her hand on the
hood of the expensive vehicle. “What in the hell is wrong with
you?” Her eyes met the sharp green ones of the driver. A
woman with shoulder-length, black hair sat behind the wheel
staring at her. For a second, she looked shocked but that was
quickly replaced with a stare that Kara couldn’t read. Like
she’s about to apologize? she wondered. Or is mad I slapped
her a car?
Suddenly, the passenger side window went down. “Are
you stupid?” yelled a blonde woman who Kara hadn’t even
noticed yet. “You can’t walk out into traffic and then be pissed
when you almost get run over.”
Oh no she did not call me stupid, Kara thought moving
toward the passenger side. Still high on adrenaline, she wasn’t
about to back down. “What did you say to me?”
Annette grabbed her by the arm before she could get into
the blonde’s face. “Kara, wait,” she said. “Let’s leave it and go
to dinner, okay? Nobody got hurt.” Her friend’s warning did
no good when the blonde opened the passenger door and
stepped out in five inch heels and a white dress that barely
covered her ass. After a beat, Kara noticed the driver’s side
door opening too. That was fine with her because the reckless
driver was the one she was mad at, not the stripper in the white
dress.
Still, the blonde stomped in her direction. “I asked if you
were stupid,” she said, but Kara dismissed her with a wave as
a waste of time. She knew a B-list Hollywood actress when
she saw one. Instead, she focused on the black-haired woman
slowly walking toward her. Unlike the clumsy movement of
the irritating passenger, the driver moved with a certain
graceful confidence as she came around the hood. Her green
eyes, framed with long, black eyelashes, met Kara’s again and
held them for a moment. The stare was intense, and like
before, completely unreadable. For a moment Kara wondered
if she made a mistake not walking away, but then the
stranger’s eyes flicked in the direction of the blonde.
“Get back in the car, please,” the driver said in a quiet tone
that left no room for argument. “I don’t want a scene.” The
blonde opened her mouth as if to talk back, but then closed it
before retreating to her car door.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled as she slipped back into the
passenger seat.
The driver returned her attention Kara. “I apologize for
that,” she said. “But you should be more careful where you
walk.”
Kara’s eyes widened. “I should be more careful?” she
asked. “How about you should watch where you are driving
your fancy sports car?”
The driver shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe,” she said starting
to walk away. “At least I didn’t fly off the handle.” She opened
the driver’s side door and paused before slipping behind the
wheel. She met Kara’s eyes again. “And slap your car like a
child.”
Stunned by the insult, Kara couldn’t think of a cutting
response before the woman was in her car and driving away.
The last thing she saw was the bimbo blonde giving her a little
wave as they drove past and then the black Camaro turned the
corner to roll out of sight.
Chapter Two
W aiting at yet another stoplight, Alexa drummed her
fingers on the steering wheel. Her earlier pleasure
sitting in the Camaro was gone. The altercation
irritated her, but not nearly as much as the tirade from her date.
“Can you believe that woman’s nerve?” the blonde in the
passenger seat said with a huff while pulling the car visor
down to look in the small mirror. Running her fingers through
her hair as she turned her head left and right, she kept up her
rant. “I mean, she hit your car. Who does that?” She closed the
visor as the light changed to green, but clearly wasn’t done. “I
don’t know why you let her get away with it.”
Alexa took a deep breath to relax but it wasn’t enough to
keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Did you expect me to grab
her in a rear naked choke?”
There was a pause, making Alexa glance over. “Maybe,”
the blonde said, her eyes narrowed. “I expected you to at least
do something. You let her get away with assault on your
property.” She was turned in her seat to face Alexa. Clearly,
she intended for the conversation to go on, which was the last
thing Alexa wanted tonight. Or any night, she thought
beginning to wonder if there was a way to end the date early.
“I didn’t see what she did as assault and frankly, the whole
thing wasn’t worth starting trouble over,” Alexa said
refocusing on the street ahead. “Before long someone would
have come out of the restaurant and started filming us with
their phone.” She shook her head. “My manager would shoot
me.”
“Fine,” the blonde said, making Alexa hope the
conversation was over. No such luck. “At least we should go
back and get her name.”
Alexa pursed her lips. “Why would I need that?”
“So, you can consider pressing charges.”
Alexa blinked. First her date said they were assaulted and
then suddenly brought up pressing charges. What is going on?
she wondered, becoming more and more uncomfortable. Is she
one of those celebrities trying to go viral on Twitter? After all,
she did jump out of the car and start making a scene. Alexa
nodded. The time had come to cut bait and go home.
Slowing the car to whip a U-turn in the street, Alexa
already looked forward to a quiet night in her home gym. “I’m
not feeling well,” she said before her date could ask what she
was doing. “I’m afraid I need to take you home.”
“What? You can’t be serious.”
