The Wild One by Danelle Harmon

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  The reminders were everywhere.

  Juliet saw posters promoting the match on the corner of the High Street, along East St. Helen's, in the Market Place, and along the Vineyard. When she and Becky went into town to do their shopping, people stopped and pointed her out in the street as "the Wild One's wife." Even more distressing, the betting had already started — and Nails was the ten-to-one favorite.

  Such odds didn't dim her husband's enthusiasm for the upcoming match in the least. If anything, he trained even harder, talking excitedly about the money Snelling was paying him, anticipating the following week's fight with some fearsome Scot named "the Butcher," reveling in his newfound sense of worth.

  It was that which kept Juliet from admitting how much all this fighting, and talk of it, upset her. She bit her tongue when he spoke excitedly about his upcoming Friday night match with Nails. She turned away when he came home and threw playful feints at the wall, the mantle, the doorframe. And something in her heart lurched painfully when she entered the house one afternoon and found her husband lying on his stomach on the floor, both he and Charlotte giggling as the infant crawled all over his back — for all it would take was one blow, and her baby would grow up without the gentle man who was, in every way but one, her father.

  He had turned into a diamond after all, her Wild One, and as she watched him cheerfully making a cake of himself over their daughter, she wondered how she could ever have preferred Charles.

  The days fell away, and the match against Nails loomed ever closer.