Page 17 of Cinderella Is Faking It

“How are you liking the Vortex so far, Hannah?” I asked.

“It’s amazing!” She bobbed up and down on her heels. “What you and Scarlett are building here is truly special. I mean, look at them.” She threw an arm out and I was beginning to understand that her power-pose, might be more of a ‘reign in your energy’ pose.

Still, I followed suit and looked at the gym filled with girls, the smallest ones running circles around their trainers. “The special part is all Scarlett,” I said. I’d just wanted a gym within walking distance to work.

“Fiddlesticks!” Scarlett slapped me in the arm again, and I glowered at her, because I might not mind when we were alone, but this was business. “You came up with girls’ nights.”

“I would love to talk to you about some of my ideas to make the space even more inclusive.” Hannah reached out and squeezed my upper arm, scrunching her button nose at me. “Let’s get together for a more private meeting some time.” Andthatwas why I didn’t want Scarlett being overly friendly with me in front of others. “I’ll see you around, Mr. Beckett.” Hannah hopped back to reception, giving me about a dozen ideas how I could use that ponytail during a private meeting.

“She’s cute, right?” Scarlett poked her elbow into my ribs.

“She’s fired,” I said and turned for the locker rooms.

“What? Are you kidding me?”

“You don’t shit where you eat, Scarlett. Hire a regional manager who gets that.”

Ten minutes later, I was in athletic gear and Hannah was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a lanky, toothy teenager popped up in front of me. “Sneak attack!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, swinging her gloved fist at me.

I blocked her, hit her between the shoulders and she dropped to the mats with an oomph. “Maybe don’t yellsneak attackbefore getting to the actual attack.”

“Good point,” she grunted and jumped back to her feet like her joints were made of springs. Julian didn’t like to hear it, but Brody had an actual chance at going pro. Lack of sneakiness aside, she had the stamina and speed to outmatch some of the women already in the UFC.

“Did you warm up?” I asked because despite her skill, she also had the same affinity for following a strict training regimen as any 15-year-old: zero.

“Ye-hes,” she drawled, bouncing backwards on her toes to get to our station. “Can we try the flying kicks again? I’m getting really good at home.”

“You won’t need flying kicks,” I repeated for about the 100thtime. Brody had her mother’s brown skin, soft features, and naturally coiled hair - currently in dozens of tiny braids and tied together at the nape of her neck - but she had inherited the Beckett genes for height. One more inch, and she’d hit the 6-foot-mark. That already made her taller than most other fighters in her age and weight class. No need to jump through the air to land a kick.

“But flying kicks are fun, uncle Auggie. It doesn’t have to make sense. You gotta embrace the fun.” She slung her arms around her punching bag, giving me the big brown puppy eyes she’d perfected over the years.

Unfortunately for her, I’d had to steel my defenses against that when she was nine and kept asking for kittens and bunnies. I would have filled her entire room with fluffy pets, but her father would have ripped my head off after the hamster incident of 2014. I could only deny those puppy eyes in so many ways though. “If you land a single hit to my face today, we’ll do nothing but flying kicks on Thursday.”

She pumped her arms up into the air, silently twirling and jumping up and down excitedly, before clearing her throat and looking at me with a stern face. “I agree to this deal, coach.”

“Jab, cross, hook, upper-cut. Come on.”

I didn’t go easier on Brody even if she was my niece. She was a sweaty mess by the end of each training session, rubbing the fresh bruises on her arms and ribs. She usually trained with me once a week and once with a group of girls her age. The latter was less of a challenge to her, but it allowed her to practice her lifts and sprawls.

We grabbed food on the drive home and Brody scarfed down six tacos in the ten minutes it took to get from the restaurant to her house. “Hi Dad, bye Dad!” She yelled running past Julian on the front steps. He had to be tracking her with one of those apps, because he was always waiting when I brought her home.

Today, he jogged down to the car and leaned into the door that Brody had left wide open in her haste to get inside. “You messed up.”

“This?” I asked, pointing at the swollen cut on my cheek bone. “That was on purpose.” Halfway at least. I’d meant to let her land one hit, but that one had not been it. That kid had speed.

His eyes dropped to the fast-food wrappers on the floor of my car, nose scrunching up. When he didn’t say anything about Brody’s meal plan as per usual, I got a feeling that I wasn’t going to like where this was going. “I’m talking about your little date.”

Ah, yes. The one I had been perfectly happy to ignore for the last few days. The one I hadn’t told him about yet. “I can handle the Montgomery girl.”

“It looks like the company is coming out of probate sooner than we thought. Her lawyers are working on this at full steam. At this rate, she’ll be the official owner of the Montgomery corporation by the end of summer.” He tossed a flash drive into the passenger seat. It was usually best not to ask where or how Julian got the information he did. He was the reason, the sex tape that had come up during my date with Del, was disappearing into thin air - alongside all the online banking accounts of the person who’d sent it. The only upside to the tape had been that it had allowed me to gauge Del’s physical attraction to me, even if she was too skittish to act on it.

“End of summer?” I asked. “What, like September?”

“You need to up your game.”

Jesus. Engaged by Thanksgiving seemed too far in the distance now. That would mean a spring wedding at the earliest - which was way too much opportunity for her to wreck the company. “Fine. How does a Christmas wedding sound to you?”

“Music to my ears.” He grinned and tapped the roof of the car.

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