ROMANCE: MAIL ORDER BRIDE: The Other Man’s Baby (A Clean Christian Historical Western) (New Adult Inspirational Pregnancy Romance) (24 page)

**THE END**

She was surprised that he agreed to be interviewed.  Not that he was media shy; Mick Mantoro had made the cover of
Sports Illustrated
so often that he’d been asked if he owned stock in the magazine.  To which the billionaire boxer with brains and bucks in his corner had just smiled and answered, “Someday.”

No, the surprise was that he’d agreed to be interviewed by a nobody, a graduate student with no journalistic reputation at all except among her professors.  She wondered if he had found out who she was.  But that was unlikely; she used her mother’s maiden name, and she bore no physical likeness to brawny Carlos Jimenez, resembling instead her late dainty, fine-boned, golden-haired mother.

“Why boxing?” asked her advisor, Professor Tom “Gilly” Gilliland asked.  “No offense, Carli, but you look like the society editors from the old days; I can see you in the white gloves.”

“That’s a sexist remark, Professor,” she informed him.  Gilly was a great advisor and she’d learned a lot from him. But her professor knew her as Carli Hanover, which was not her real name, or at least not her complete real name. Although, given Gilly’s ignorance of boxing, she doubted if he’d have made the connection to Carlos Jimenez. But what everyone who followed boxing knew was that the fourth-round knockout punch that ended her father’s career had come at the fists of Mick Mantoro.  She’d been old enough to know that her father had been famous, and old enough to perceive how fast his defeat had robbed him of everything: his fame, his wealth, and his legend.  Mick Mantoro had captivated the public.  Carlos who? That was fame.  That was boxing.

Mantoro was an enigma in the boxing world: a poor kid from Boston who’d financed his college degree with his two fists and a MENSA level IQ.  By the time he’d graduated magna cum laude with a business degree, he had an agent for those lucrative fists and a start-up loan for his gym franchise.  As his boxing wins mounted, his financial empire grew.  No one in the history of boxing had ever managed to be a world champion, a business tycoon, and a heartthrob all at the same time. No one but Mick Mantoro.  “Besides, if boxing is good enough for Joyce Carol Oates, it’s good enough for me.”
“And how many boxers read Joyce Carol Oates?”  Gilly inquired, scrutinizing her over the rims of his half-glasses.  “Does Mantoro read?
“That’s low.  Boxers aren’t stupid. You’re believing a stereotype.  Mick Mantoro reads; how do you think he graduated from Princeton?”
“That’s your story,” he countered.  “Get it right and you’ll make your reputation.”

But as she waited outside the gym, shivering in the January cold, she wasn’t thinking of her reputation.  She was thinking of the defeat that had ended her father’s career.  He’d been 34, nine years older than 25-year old Mantoro.  Carlos Jimenez didn’t have an Ivy League business degree or the building blocks of a financial empire.  He had an 11-year old daughter that he’d raised as a single parent since his wife’s death from cancer when Carlita Hanover Jimenez was in the fourth grade.  All his wealth had gone into his wife’s medical care and when he lost the match, he lost his endorsements as well.  Back in New York, in the small house in Queens where he’d grown up, Carlos Jimenez had been given a job as the celebrity voice of a car dealership.  He was a mentor to young boxers and he was never more comfortable than when he was in the gym where he’d trained in his youth.  Carli had gone to college based on her grades, but she knew that if she hadn’t won scholarships, her father would have found a way for her to get an education.  “That’s what your mother wanted,” he told her.  And what Hilary Hanover wanted for her daughter, Carlos Jimenez was going to make sure she got, even if she was no longer alive to see it.

The gym door opened.  This wasn’t a run-down gym like the one her father frequented, the one where she’d spent her after-school hours while her father gave boxing tips to the young men starting out.  This gym was posh.  Wearing a ski jacket and boots, Mick Mantoro came out into the cold weather, putting on leather gloves.  He saw her huddled in the entranceway.

“Miss Hanover?” he asked.  “Why didn’t you come inside?  I didn’t know you were waiting out here.   I thought you must be running late.”
She’d chosen to wait outside because, unlikely though it was, she didn’t want to risk running into any boxers that might have known her because they’d seen her with her father.  “I just got here,” she lied, “and I figured you were busy.”
He smiled, even white teeth blazing a brilliant smile against the olive skin that showed off his Italian heritage.  “Never too busy to welcome a pretty woman,” he replied.  Although she was wearing a warm winter coat, scarf, hat and gloves, she suspected that that famous Mantoro lady radar was able to gauge, through the concealing winter garb, everything she was wearing, right down to her Victoria’s Secret underwear.

She smiled coolly.  He was known to be a ladies’ man.  But she was immune to that kind of easy, smooth-talking charm.  “Shall we go across the street?” she asked, pointing to the coffee shop on the corner.

“What about dinner?”  He named a restaurant that was well out of her budget, one frequented by celebrity athletes and actors, movie moguls, senators, entrepreneurs and tycoons.  It wasn’t just out of her budget, it was out of her league. Famous people went there, and she wasn’t famous and, thanks to Mick Mantoro’s win in the ring, she wasn’t even the daughter of someone famous anymore.

“That might be a violation of journalism ethics,” she replied with a smile.  “If I pay for the meal, I can’t be accused of being bribed to write a favorable story.  But if I pay for a meal there, we’ll both have to wash the dishes.”
He laughed appreciatively.  “I’m not much of a dish washer.  I’ll buy dinner and I promise that I won’t try to influence you to write a favorable story, although I won’t promise not to ask for a date.  Why?  Were you planning to write something negative?”  He looked intrigued rather than offended by the prospect.  Was he really that clean, or was he just astounded than an interviewer would broach the subject?

“Of course not.  But that’s really up to you.”
“Me?  The restaurant is two blocks down the street.  Walk?”
“If I can keep up with you.”
Mick Mantoro grinned.  “Miss Hanover, I don’t think you have any trouble keeping up with anyone.”
She’d been referring to his long-legged stride and he knew it.  But the frank appraisal that she saw in his brown eyes indicated that Mick Mantoro was noticing much more than her diminutive height.  He was a bachelor, although there was no lack of female companionship in his social engagements.  None that lasted, though.

“So should I be alarmed?   Are you hoping to dig up some dirty secrets from my past?”  He walked at a leisurely pace so that they could converse easily. 
“Are there any to dig up?” 
“If there were, they’d have been exposed by now, don’t you think?  But you’re more than welcome to investigate the hours I spent in the library and in the gym.” 

They were at the restaurant. The door opened immediately.  “Mr. Mantoro, a pleasure to see you.”
Inside, Carli’s eyes adjusted to the soft, low lighting.  It was early evening, not a fashionable hour for dining, but the restaurant was already filled.  There wasn’t an unoccupied table in view.  Was even the billionaire boxer going to have to wait until a table became available?
The hostess came up to them.   “Your usual table is ready, Mr. Mantoro.”

The attentive service was obviously second nature to Mantoro, and so was the assumption of command which he displayed.  He asked her what she wanted, and gave the order to the waiter for her.  It was an unusual action for a man who was too young to have been brought up in the tradition of a 1950s leading man. 
“So,” he said when the wine had been uncorked and the waiter had left with their orders, “why does a Columbia University graduate student ask for an interview with a boxer?”

“Why not?”  she retorted, sipping her glass of wine slowly.  At barely five feet, three inches, 105 pounds, she didn’t have much capacity for alcohol, no matter how good the year.
He sat with his elbows balanced on the edge of the table, his fingers intertwined, as he leaned closer to her.  It was flattering to think that her conversation mattered that much.  He was even better looking close up than he was on a magazine cover, she had to admit.  Nothing in his features gave evidence that he made his living taking a beating, unlike her father, whose beloved face revealed a nose that had been broken more than once.  Of course, she reminded herself, Mantoro was very good at protecting his face.  And no wonder, she thought cynically.   His face had made him the obvious celebrity to endorse not only the energy drinks that would be expected of an athlete, but also his own line of men’s clothing and a brand of women’s perfume.  Whatever he touched turned to gold.

She thought of her father, cutting out coupons every Sunday when he finished reading the newspaper so that he could use them when he went grocery shopping.  Once he had been in restaurants like this; now, she wondered if a maître d’ would even know who he was.  Or who he had been.

“Boxing is a violent sport where two guys—and sometimes two women—pummel each other until one can’t take it any more: ‘two men, near-naked, fight each other in a brightly lit, elevated space roped in like an animal pen; two men climb into the ring from which only one, symbolically, will climb out.’”

She stared at him and wondered how Gilly would react to finding out that not only did Mick Mantoro read, but he read and quoted Joyce Carol Oates.

“You’ve taken away my lead,” she told him.

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something better.”
“Better than a National Book Award winner?”

“Don’t let yourself be diminished by the giants,” he advised.  “If I told myself that I’d never be as good as Billy Conn, Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali or Carlos Jimenez, I’d never have had the guts to step into the ring—what’s the matter?”
 

“Carlos Jimenez?” she repeated, trying to keep her voice even. She’d come to this interview with the intention of finding Mantoro’s weakness, something that she could expose and write about, so that she could redeem her father’s reputation from the man who’d stolen it.  Now he was giving her father praise.

“You never heard of Jimenez?  You need to do your homework. No one fought with more heart than Jimenez.”
“You took his championship,” she said.

“So you have heard of him.  Good.  Yes, I took the championship away from him.  And someday, if I hang around too long, someone will take it away from me.  That’s the fate of a boxer.  Why do you think I’ve spent so much of my time building up my business network?  I want to be able to get out before I’m the one who’s down while the ref is counting to ten.  More wine?”

Why not?  She’d never have the chance to drink a wine this good again.  No grad student that she knew indulged in Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1945.

Mantoro filled her glass and his own.
“Why do you admire the man you defeated?”
“Defeat in the ring is public defeat.  But I’ll tell you this, Carlos Jimenez has something money can’t buy. He had a beautiful wife and a daughter who—“

Carli choked.  The delicious wine recoiled in her throat.  Immediately she felt a powerful hand pounding her back. “Wrong way,” she gasped as Mantoro removed his hand.

“Are you okay?”
“Fine. Just . . . talk.”
“No notes?”

“Memory.”

He smiled.  “And if you misquote me?”
“I guess I’ll hear from your lawyers.”
He drank from his glass, his eyes studying her over the rim of the glass as the candlelight on the table cast a reflective glow upon the wine.  “I suppose that’s one way of getting my due.”
Her throat was fine. “That sounds like a threat.”
“You’re a beautiful woman.  I hope you don’t regard my appreciation of your beauty as a threat.”

“No,” she said with assurance as Mantoro refilled her glass.  “I regard it as a line.”
He raised his eyebrows. She noticed how expressive and yet mysterious his eyes were.  He made no attempt to mask his interest in her, an interest that had already noted the snug lines of her purple tunic sweater and skinny jeans after she removed her winter coat.  What she saw in those liquid brown irises told her that he liked what he saw.  But what she couldn’t detect was what he intended to do about it.  He’d said in more than one interview that he had no intention of marrying before he was 40.  She didn’t see a proposal in those lucent eyes, nor should she.  But she didn’t see a one-night stand, either.

“Really?  By whom?”

“Oh . . . I don’t know.  Who were the leading men of your generation?”  The comment was intended to cut him, to point out his age, to raise the specter of the younger boxers who lurked in unknown rings, waiting to take his crown.

To her surprise, he laughed out loud.  Several heads turned their way, probably wondering, Carli thought, who was the unknown girl with the long blonde hair in a braid down her back who had made the billionaire boxer laugh.

“I’m no match for you,” he said.   “Boxers use their hands; you’re using your youth.  That’s cruel. But very effective, Miss Hanover.  You’re a worthy foe.”