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Chapter 20

Alec

Three weeks later

Alec was (sort of) related to Easy Billy Castro.

Billy wasn't technically Alec's uncle, but they were related by marriage. Alec called him Uncle Billy, and they thought of each other as family.

Billy Castro's boxing gym, a place called Bank Street Boxing, had been a Galveston institution for years. Alec didn't pick up boxing until he was out of high school, but he had been around the gym as a boy and he was close to the Castros, all of Billy's kids and grandkids.

That was why Billy approached Alec's wife with a proposition about being the part-time nurse at the gym. Alec had only been married to Grace for two weeks when that happened. He had told her plenty of times that she did not need a job, but she said it would only be ten hours a week on an on-call basis. Grace thought that would be a perfect working situation.

It had only been a week, and she had been called to the gym three times already.

This morning, Alec left her sleeping in his bed while he went to Bank Street Boxing to do an early morning training session with his brothers and a few others.

He was in the middle of a round when he saw Grace come in. She was dressed in athletic clothes with her hair in a ponytail. She was smiling and she had her nurse's bag with her, but that was all Alec could see. Their rounds were fast-paced, and he was right in the middle of one, so he kept boxing.

It was thirty minutes later when he finished and made his way to the front desk.

"What's up, Cody? My wife came in here a little while ago, and I haven't seen her leave yet."

"No, no, she's still here. She's massaging Paul's ear."

"Massaging Paul's what?" Alec asked.

"His ear." Cody motioned to the top of his own ear. "Didn't you see Paul's ear? He's got a huge case of cauliflower ear. I think Grace already drained it once and now she said something about trying to massage it a little and maybe see if they could get any more blood out of it. His ear was huge. He got it rubbed on the mat last night at that open-mat."

"Where is she?" Alec asked.

"The office," Cody said.

Alec still had his gloves in his hand, but he headed to the office before the locker room. The door was open, and he could see his wife as he approached. Grace was standing with her back to the door, and Alec could see Paul there, sitting on the desk right next to Grace. Paul was Brazilian, so he had a really nice tan, and his six-pack Jiu Jitsu abs were on full display.

Alec wasn't usually the jealous type since he knew where he stood with his wife. But Grace was beautiful and sweet, and Alec remembered her wrapping his pretend injury at that nurse's station. He could still picture the image of her that day—the way the sunlight came through the cracks in that tent and hit her skin.

Grace was impossible not to love, and she was irresistible when she cared for people. She was standing while Paul was sitting, and Alec couldn’t see until he came in that she still had her hand on his ear. She held a cotton pad, pinching his ear with it.

"Hey Alec," she said, turning when she heard him come in.

She was beautiful, and he suddenly felt annoyed by old six-pack Paul. Alec's own feelings of attraction to his wife made him mad at Paul for being in the same room with her.

"W-where's your shirt?" he asked, trying not to sound jealous but failing.

"Oh, he had trouble last—"

"The last guy who drained it for me at my last gym got blood all over me."

"Blood all over you? What do they have you doing in here, surgery?"

"No, no, I'm just draining his ear. It's a routine thing, and we did fine. We didn't spill a drop." Grace took off the cotton and showed him the dry ear for proof.

"Whoa," Alec said when he came to the place where he could see Paul's ear. There were lumps in his upper ear. It looked like several large pebbles had gotten stuck inside.

"You should have seen it before your wife helped me out," Paul said. Grace had a mirror in her nurse's bag, and she handed it to Paul who inspected his own ear as he spoke. "Oh, yeah, man, she helped me out a lot. That looks so good, Grace. Oh, my goodness." He looked at Grace. "Thank you so much. That was way better than the other guy. You know I'm going to have to have it done again, right? It's going to swell back up."

"No, Paul. Can't you just stay off of it for a few days until it heals?"

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