Page 8 of Fighting Fate

CHAPTER FOUR

ADAM more than half-thought Rosie might not show up. He stood on the dock looking at the fast catamaran which made an hourly return trip to Hamilton Island, hands shoved in his pockets, occasionally pulling one out to glance at his watch.

“You boarding?” the young deckhand at the gangway asked him finally. “It’s twenty-five past.”

“Just waiting to see if my date shows.” Adam gave him a rueful grin, and the deckhand laughed.

“Alright, mate. I can give you another two minutes. That her coming now?”

Adam looked in the direction of the man’s gaze, smiling as he saw Rosie hurrying down onto the floating dock. “That’s her,” he said, relieved.

“Rosie?”

The deckhand was staring at him in disbelief. Adam frowned at him before turning his attention back to Rosie, admiring her outfit. She was wearing a different dress, a soft floaty thing of white cotton printed with tiny blue flowers, blue ballet flats on her feet, her brown hair a mass of softly tumbling waves.

“You look beautiful,” he said warmly, and with complete honesty, delighted to see her blush a little.

“Thank you. I’m so sorry I’m late. Got caught up with a problem on my way here.” She grimaced. “We’d better board. Evening, Mal.”

“Uh, hi, Rosie,” the deckhand stammered as she practically skipped past him up the gangway. Adam followed, grinning at the obviously flabbergasted teenager.

“She showed,” he said cheerfully.

“Of course I showed! Did you think I’d stand you up?” Rosie turned to face him at the doorway to the boat’s interior.

“I thought you might have had second thoughts.” Adam shoved his hands back in his pockets and shrugged awkwardly. “We didn’t exactly meet under the best of circumstances, and you really don’t know me.”

“No,” Rosie agreed, and then she smiled, a smile which transformed her from merely pretty to strikingly beautiful, “but I think I’d like to.”

He was so transfixed by that smile he almost forgot to duck entering the boat and brained himself on a bulkhead. At the last moment he spotted it and ducked down lower than necessary, so he entered the cabin in an awkward half-crouch.

The cabin was nearly full, day trippers returning to Hamilton Island, he guessed, so he followed Rosie to a bench seat over on the other side and took a seat beside her, sitting on the edge to avoid crowding her.

“So,” he said as the boat engines began a deep roar behind them and the boat slid slowly away from the dock, “did you Google me?”

“I didn’t, actually. I slept longer than I expected and then woke up starving. And by the time I’d eaten and then sorted out the snakes’ nest my hair had turned into because I slept on it wet,” Rosie fingered one wavy brown strand and grinned, “I barely had time to rush down here and not stand you up completely by accident.”

“I’d have been just as devastated if you stood me up accidentally or on purpose,” Adam said, straight-faced.

Rosie chuckled, her expression shifting to curiosity. “What would I have found if I did get a minute to Google you?” she asked.

Adam took a moment to choose his words. “I just retired,” he led out with, “but you’d have found a lot of footage of me fighting inside an octagonal cage.”

“Octagonal… wait. You mean MMA? You were an MMA fighter?” She gawped at him.

“I told you it was him!” a teenage boy sitting on the bench seat behind them nudged his father. “Excuse me, you are Adam Gillespie, right?” The kid leaned forward eagerly. “Could I maybe get a selfie with you?”

The father looked quite keen to get in on the action as well, so Adam smiled obligingly and took a selfie with them both. He even pretended to punch the father in the head for the son to take a photo, to the boy’s immense delight.

“But are you really retired?” the boy asked as they sat down again. “Really, really? Like, no comeback in a year or so?”

“Yeah, you’ve still got plenty of good years in you,” the father chipped in.

Adam shook his head. “The heart is willing but the flesh is weak, I’m afraid. In the case of my left elbow, literally. After the third tendon repair, my surgeon told me I was done.”

“Oh man, that’s rough. Sorry to hear that. Conrad here loved watching you fight, made us stay up until four in the morning that time you fought Mossman in Vegas.”

“That was a good one. Always nice to meet a fan,” Adam said with a smile at the boy.