Wild Keepers

by Dee Bridgnorth

  She had wrestled a six-foot man to the ground as if he were a child. A man who was obviously dangerous. A man who could have been armed, in any manner. But she had not thought about any of that. She had simply acted on impulse.

  Shay stared at her, talking to the woman. How had she been able to do it?

  This wasn’t normal. She had told him that she knew how to look after herself after she had jumped him successfully, and he had assumed she had taken a self-defence class of some sort. But this was different. Tess had acted confidently and accurately. Almost as if she had been trained to do it.

  He gaped at her, trying to work it out. The mugger struggled underneath his hands, trying to break free.

  “Cool it, buddy,” he hissed at him. “You chose the wrong time to attack someone, you cowardly piece of trash. Does it make you feel powerful jumping women so you can feed your habit?”

  He pressed into the man’s back harder, almost grinding him into the ground. The man yelled, screaming for him to stop.

  Shay eased off, just a little. It wouldn’t do to harm him. The police had been called, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of the evening at the local precinct explaining why he had taken the law into his own hands.

  He gazed over at Tess, again. She had successfully calmed the woman who had been mugged, soothing her with big, circular strokes on her back. The woman shuddered every now and again, but she was still. Shay frowned, staring at them. Again, it was all done so confidently. As if Tess had done this a thousand times before. As if she had been trained for it.

  It made little sense. Tess was an art forger, who obviously had little regard for the law. Or ethics. And yet she had acted instinctively to help a vulnerable woman, without any thought for her own safety. Would someone who was a professional criminal do that, even if they could? And then there was the fact that Tess didn’t exactly have the physique of a female bodybuilder. She was average height, and slim. Not a woman you would assume would have the strength to pin a guy to the ground, especially one who was inches taller. Shay knew the guy was strong, too. He wasn’t having much trouble holding him, but a regular woman? And she had instinctively called the police. Shay knew that people who operated on the wrong side of the law rarely did that. They preferred to handle things themselves.

  It was a mystery. Tess Nolan was a mystery. Who was she?

  Shay suddenly realised he didn’t know. Not at all. And questions started to swirl around in his mind, twisting in new and unexpected directions.

  ***

  The police came after ten long minutes, handcuffing the mugger and taking the woman to the local precinct.

  The young officer questioned both Shay and Tess briefly, but seemed satisfied that all was in order. He held out his hand to Shay. “Good job. It must have taken a bit of effort to wrestle that guy to the ground.”

  There was an awkward pause. Shay stared at Tess, trying to suppress a smile.

  “Actually, it wasn’t me,” he said. He indicated Tess with a sideways jerk of his thumb. “It was her.”

  The officer’s eyes widened. He stared at Tess. “Excuse me? You pinned that guy to the ground?”

  He gazed at her as if he had just been told that she had landed from the moon.

  “What of it?” Tess glared at him.

  “Nothing,” said the officer, backing away slightly. “It’s just…unexpected, that’s all.” He took a deep breath. “I won’t disturb your evening anymore, folks. Thanks for your intervention.”

  And then they were gone.

  Shay turned to Tess. He could feel the resentment at the officer’s question coming off her in waves. Tess Nolan didn’t like to be questioned about it. Why was that?

  “Come on,” he said, staring at her softly. “I’ll buy the hero a hot chocolate.” He paused. “My shout.”

  ***

  In the end, he had persuaded her that they were both hungry and needed food. They had ended up at a Turkish shop downtown that had the best kebabs in the city.

  Shay watched her order, asking for extra tzatziki and onions. She didn’t seem to be fazed by what had just happened in the slightest. He couldn’t even discern any residual shaking, a common reaction to having a huge adrenaline rush like that. No, Tess was coolly taking it in stride, as if wrestling muggers to the ground was an everyday occurrence for her.

  Shay straightened, staring at the kebab spit rotating in the corner. Perhaps it was an everyday occurrence for Tess.

  They sat down, both attacking their kebabs with gusto. She seemed famished, and he was starving, too. They polished them off in record time, then sat there staring at each other in silence.

  “Well?” Tess sounded sour. “What is it you want to say? I can tell something is eating away at you.”

  “You need to level with me,” he said slowly. “I know you aren’t a regular art forger, whatever that is. Who are you, Tess?”

  She stared at him coolly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Shay smiled, shaking his head. “You have got to be kidding me. What you did back there is not normal. Most women would never have had the strength or skill to do it, and yet you tore into that situation as if you had been trained to do it.” He took a deep breath. “As if you had done it a thousand times before.”

  Tess didn’t blink. “Hey, I did what anyone would do in that situation,” she said in a low voice. “Vermin like that, attacking vulnerable women in a park, make my blood boil. I acted on instinct.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I got lucky, I guess. The guy was obviously a junkie, and weak with it. They usually are.”

  Shay sighed. “Tess, I’m not questioning your instinct,” he said. “People like that make me very angry, too. It’s just that women don’t usually go on the attack like you did. They are too scared of getting hurt. They know that the guy is likely physically much stronger and might have a knife or a gun. But you didn’t care about any of that.”

  Tess tossed her hair over her shoulders. It had come loose from its top knot in the attack, and now swung down her back, messy and wild. He caught his breath as he watched the motion, his eyes narrowing. She was so damn sexy, sitting here with her wild hair and fierce attitude. It took all his strength not to lean across the table and kiss her, right now.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said, staring at him. “I can look after myself. I have made damn sure of that, Shay. Never again will I be the damsel in distress, waiting to be rescued.” She took a deep breath. “I’m my own knight in shining armour. If it makes you uncomfortable to see a woman empowered, you can walk out the door now. I don’t apologise for who I am.”

  Shay swallowed a sudden lump that had formed in his throat. He had never found her more attractive than he did in this moment, and yet he knew that she was lying to him. Not about being empowered—that was so obvious as to be blinding. He didn’t think he’d ever met a stronger woman in his life, and the fact that she was proud of it just made her sexier.

  No, she was lying about the fact that she was just a regular woman, who had maybe done a self-defence course. That might mean that she knew how to defend herself if she was suddenly attacked. It certainly didn’t explain a woman who knew how to attack so precisely and control a situation like what happened in the park. Not by a long shot.

  But she wasn’t about to tell him the truth. He saw the set line of her mouth and the fierce glittering of her eyes and knew that he would get no further with it. He had to try one last time, though.

  He laughed, shaking his head. “I think the cop who came tonight was going to have a fit when I told him it was you who had restrained the attacker,” he said, staring at her. “He couldn’t have looked more shocked than if I had have told him you’d just sprouted another head! Maybe you should think about joining his ranks. You’d make a good cop, Tess.”

  She smiled slowly. “Really? What a strange thought. An art forger who suddenly wants to join the force.”

  “Yeah,” he said, gazing at her. His eyes held hers for a l
ong moment, before she looked away. “A strange thought. You as a cop.”

  Her gaze slid back to his, and she shrugged. “It’s over and done with, now. Shall we leave?”

  Shay shrugged, too, and they both got up, walking out of the restaurant. The night had darkened considerably. He could hear the thump of a bass guitar from a bar on the corner, and then the loud twang of the lead guitar. A band was setting up for the evening. A roar from the audience filled the air.

  Tess turned to him. “I should head home. I’m beat.”

  Shay tried to smother the disappointment that suddenly sprang up in his chest. He didn’t want her to go. He wanted to stay by her side. Even though it was all so, so wrong. She was a criminal, wasn’t she? And not only that, she was hiding something else from him, he just knew it. She was like one of those Russian nesting dolls. Just when you thought you’d figured her out, another woman popped out. And then another.

  Lies. She was a liar, and skilled at it, too. Almost like she was trained in that, too. There was something, if he could just put his finger on it…Shay took a deep breath, trying to think clearly. But the waft of her perfume and the proximity of her body was messing with his head in a big way.

  “Do you want to share a cab home?” he said, in a rough voice. “I know you can take care of yourself, but I have to head home anyway, and we could split the cost.”

  She blinked rapidly, gazing at him. He thought for a moment she was going to refuse him.

  “Why not?” she said, stepping out onto the street and hailing a cab.

  Chapter Ten

  They both slid into the back seat of the cab.

  “Where to?” asked the driver, staring back at them.

  Tess shrugged. “Well, I might as well go first,” she said, grinning at Shay. “Seeing as you know my address anyway.” She rattled it off to the driver, then leaned back in the seat.

  She was hyper aware of Shay sitting so close beside her; his hand was sitting on the seat between them. She studied it for a moment, resisting the urge to put her own over it. What was happening to her? It was as if she was being drawn into a dark web, one that she had no hope of extricating herself from. Nor any desire to.

  The evening had gone in such a strange direction. Running away from him, and then his re-appearance. The incident in the park. Tess bit her lip. She shouldn’t have done what she did. He was suspicious of her now; his mind was grasping that she wasn’t who she claimed to be. But she had operated on pure instinct, and her training had kicked in. She had dealt with situations like that before, and she knew what to do. She couldn’t let that scumbag escape with that woman’s bag, especially when he had left her broken and traumatised. Hell would freeze over before she would let that happen.

  Her eyes strayed to him. He was staring out the cab window, but she knew he was as aware of her as she was of him. She felt it in every way he moved his body, and the look in his eyes when he gazed at her. He felt it, too. This sexual tension brewing between them like a thick fog of desire.

  Shay Sullivan. A criminal. The man who had left her to deal with everything on that night all those years ago. He was a scumbag, wasn’t he? Just like that guy in the park. And yet, she knew that it wasn’t as black and white as that. How, she had no idea. But there it was. Was she letting her fierce attraction to him obscure her focus?

  Tess tried to distract herself by staring out the other window. The streets whizzed by. Then they rounded a corner, and she saw it. Something so large and majestic and beautiful that she just had to examine it closer.

  “Stop!” she called to the driver. “Pull over here, just for a minute.”

  The driver pulled up, staring back at her quizzically. Shay was looking at her, too, with a questioning air.

  She pointed out the window. “Look.”

  It was a huge mural, done on the side of an office building. A mural of a woman’s face, with doves encircling it. It was so large it almost reached into the sky. Tess studied it, amazed at the detail the artist had captured. Large, expressive eyes, where every individual eyelash was discernible. It was one of the most magnificent pieces of art that she had ever seen.

  “Do you want to get out and look at it?” Shay asked.

  She turned to him. “Yeah, I think I do.”

  They both climbed out of the cab, standing on the opposite side of the road to the mural, to be able to see it better. The cab driver pulled into the curb, waiting for them.

  They gazed at it in silence for a moment. Tess felt her breath quicken. To stand here, before work on such a grand scale was a little overwhelming.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Shay, eventually. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.”

  Tess shook her head. “I definitely haven’t. But then, I haven’t been back in this city that long.” Her eyes were glued to the wall. “I’m not familiar with this artist. To tell you the truth, I’m not familiar with most street artists. I always thought that it was just graffiti. But this…”

  “It’s certainly not just graffiti,” said Shay, studying it. “It’s art. And to tell you the truth, I like this more than paintings hanging in a gallery. Places like that always make me a bit nervous. Like you are in a church or something and have to whisper.”

  Tess nodded. “Yeah, a lot of people feel that way.” Her eyes squinted as she studied the mural. She pointed. “Is that writing, at the bottom?”

  Shay looked where she indicated. It was a scrolling banner, just below the woman’s face, with a quote in cursive script. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” he read. “Gandhi.”

  “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” she repeated slowly. “How beautiful. And how true.” She felt a lump form in her throat, and for some strange reason, she felt like crying. She wanted to lean into Shay and sob against his shoulder. And yet it wasn’t out of sorrow. Rather, it was a bittersweet feeling elevated by the beauty in front of her.

  This artist had probably spent so long doing this work and to impart this message. Art for the masses, that didn’t cost anyone a single cent. No one had to spend money to come here and view this. People would pass it on their way to work, or home, and contemplate it. Some might never give it another glance or thought. But a lot would. They would think about that quote, and what it meant. And how much more pleasant was it to see this rather than a grey, blank wall?

  For a single, blinding second, Tess could see what art could be for, once again. She saw a new vision of what it could accomplish. She had lost that, a long time ago. So long ago, and it was only now that she could admit how much she had missed it.

  She had seen some of the world’s masterpieces. She had been to Florence, for God’s sake! She had queued at the Louvre in Paris and stood with a crowd in front of the Mona Lisa. But it was only here, contemplating a wall in this gritty city that she had never wanted to come back to, that she felt the true power of art.

  Shay’s voice seemed to come to her from a distance. She turned to him. “What did you say?”

  He smiled. “I think you are spellbound,” he said. “I just asked if you had seen enough and wanted to keep going.”

  She smiled. “Sorry. I was a million miles away. Yes, let’s get going.”

  They climbed back into the cab. They didn’t speak. It sped off into the night, leaving the image of the woman and the doves and the quote about change far behind.

  ***

  Shay watched her out of the corner of his eye. She seemed to be on the brink of tears. The mural had moved her in a profound way. Once again, he contemplated who Tess Nolan really was. Another layer had emerged.

  A hardened criminal, who merely thought that art was for making big bucks, and for deceiving people? But then why would she have such a reaction to that mural? He frowned slightly. None of it made any sense.

  Her instinctive reaction to stop the attacker in the park, and console the victim. And whatever she claimed, she had known what to do. Like she was a professional. And then there
was her comment about the quote on the wall.

  How beautiful, she had said. And how true.

  How many criminals were touched by a quote about changing the world for good?

  “Tess,” he said gently.

  She turned and looked at him. He could see the tears glistening behind her eyes.

  “Do you remember Mr. Gregory’s class?” he said, gazing at her.

  She smiled, slightly. “Junior English,” she said. “Yeah, I remember. He was a good teacher.”

  He took a deep breath. “I found it tough,” he said. “English wasn’t my best subject. But I know you liked it. Especially when we studied To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  Her smile broadened. “That is one of my all-time favourite books,” she said. “I still have my copy from high school, somewhere.”

  “I remember one class,” he said. “Where Mr. Gregory wrote a quote on the board and asked anyone if they knew what it meant. You did. I still remember the quote, and what you said.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really? What did I say?”

  Shay smiled at the memory. “The quote was ‘The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.’” He paused. “You said that it meant that people have to always know right from wrong, even if they are being pressured by public opinion, and act on it. It always stayed with me.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Funny,” she whispered. “I don’t remember that.”

  “I do,” he said, slowly, turning towards her. “That’s when I knew who you truly were. Underneath it all. Underneath all the roles we play at high school to win popularity points, or fit in. I understood you.”

  She smiled, a little bitterly. “Well, that was a long time ago,” she said. “Things change. Life changes you.”

  “Does it?” he whispered. He picked up her hand, lying on the seat.

  He heard her inhale swiftly. They hadn’t ever touched each other before. Not really. This was the first time he had taken her hand. He studied it, marvelling at the pale beauty of it. Long fingers with painted pink nails. An artist’s hand. He brought it slowly to his lips and kissed it. Then he turned it over, so that her palm was exposed, and kissed it again, lingeringly.