by Cathy Quinn
"There are psychos everywhere," Alice dismissed. "Not just online."
That was not reassuring. "You’re nuts. Have you even taken self-defense lessons? Do you know anything at all about protecting yourself if you’re attacked?"
"I can kick and scream with the best of them. Don’t be ridiculous, Gabriel. I can take care of myself!"
Alice suddenly found herself held in place against the wall, Gabriel’s hands tight around her wrists, holding her arms above her head. His body was pushing her against the wall, his leg over hers.
She couldn’t move a limb.
It was rather delicious.
Unfortunately she didn’t think they had the same thing in mind.
"Uh... Gabriel?"
"Show me you can take care of yourself, Alice," he said dangerously. His face was very close, and she stared into his eyes, slowly getting hypnotized. Oh boy. This was giving her hormonal system a nice work-out.
"Care of..." she croaked.
"Imagine I’m an attacker. What would you do if someone held you against a wall like this? How would you break free?"
She was having distinct trouble breathing, and it wasn’t from fear. "I’d... scream..."
Gabriel put one hand over her mouth, easily holding both her wrists with his other hand. "No, you wouldn’t," he said sweetly. "Now, Alice, show me how you can take care of yourself."
To show him, she fought as hard as she could, but she couldn’t move an inch. Not to get a hand loose or even one foot free. She even tried to bite the hand covering her mouth, but it was impossible.
She finally gave up, and hung limply against him.
"Hmmmhmmmm hmmmm," she said into his hand. She was sweaty and exhausted and, damnit, every nerve ending was ablaze from Gabriel’s touch. Wow. They needed to do this more often.
He hadn’t even broken a sweat holding her through all her struggles. He let her go, and she nearly slid down the wall. Fortunately there was a kitchen chair within reach. She sat down, staring up at him. "Wow," she breathed. "You are strong."
"No," Gabriel said patiently. "I’m no Superman. I’m probably pretty average for a relatively fit man my age." He pointed at her. "You, on the other hand, are puny. You don’t stand a chance if someone attacks you." He grimaced. "Now do you see why it isn’t a good idea for you to ‘multidate’ a bunch of strangers?"
"You caught me off-guard!" Alice protested. "It was not a fair fight!"
"Fights rarely are fair, Alice. That’s the point. Give me your purse."
With a puzzled look, Alice handed her purse over, and Gabriel promptly upended it on the counter.
"What are you doing?"
Gabriel rummaged through the pile of stuff. "You have nothing useful here. I can’t believe this. Nothing!"
"Well – I wouldn’t quite call this nothing..."
"No alarm, no pepper spray, no knife, nothing!" He looked her up and down. "And you’re barely five feet, and you weigh no more than a feather. You’re a sitting duck."
"I am five feet, half an inch," she protested. "But thank you for the feather comment. It befits a duck, sitting or not."
"Don’t you have anything on you? An alarm? Or a penknife, even?"
"Knife? You expect me to carry a knife? Why not a gun? Hey, how about a hand grenade?"
Gabriel nodded. "Yeah. A gun would be good. We could get you a license. And I know how to shoot, I could teach your myself."
Visions flew unbidden through her head. Leaning back against Gabriel, his arms alongside hers as he taught her to aim and fire...
She shook her head. Sometimes her wild imagination was a curse. "I was kidding! I’m not buying a gun! Or a knife! I’ll get one of those alarms, okay? I just know it’s going to go off at the wrong moment, but I’ll sacrifice my hearing for your peace of mind. Deal?"
Gabriel held her purse open at the edge of the counter and pushed the mountain of miscellaneous junk back into it. He tossed her the purse and grabbed her arm. "Come on."
"What? Where?"
"We’re going shopping."
Alice resisted. "I’m not going shopping for a gun, Gabriel. I’m serious. No way! I hate guns."
Gabriel grabbed her shoulders and shook her with a certain lack of finesse. "If you’re going through these absurd 21st century dating rituals, you will have to be in a position to defend yourself. It doesn’t have to be a gun, but we are getting you some self-defense equipment. End of discussion."
"I don’t need it! I’m careful."
"Fine. It’s up to you." He scowled. "But if we don’t go shopping right this minute, I’m telling your brother about this whole thing."
"You’d squeal on me?" she asked, outraged.
"You bet I will. You’re not ending up on a Missing poster if I can help it. So, are we going shopping or not?"
They were going shopping. Even recently blackmailed and bullied, Alice just had to grin at Gabriel’s hard profile as he drove towards the inner city. He was so cute when he was being all bossy, his jaw clenched, eyes dark with determination, the dark blonde hair hanging down on the collar of his worn denim jacket.
Embarrassing as that was, she seemed to have a weakness for machismo. She couldn’t help it. It was probably a throwback to the days of the club and the cave. All biology’s fault.
Praise be to biology. She’d have hated to miss all those little thrills.
And he didn’t believe in romance. She sighed. What a waste.
Traffic was heavy, and Gabriel’s fingers tapped an impatient beat on the steering wheel every time he had to slow down and stop. Alice used the time to study him. He looked great, although he made no effort to do so. His hair was always too long and it often seemed like he only bothered to shave every other day. Another man would have looked unkempt. Gabriel looked irresistibly sexy.
His clothes were equally scruffy, ancient jeans, denim jacket and an endless supply of t-shirts in all the colors of the garish side of the rainbow, currently a vile shade of orange. But he still looked gorgeous. It was something about his eyes and his posture.
They stopped at a red light for the fifth time and Gabriel swore impatiently. He hit the steering wheel with his fist and leaned back in his seat. He looked towards her. "Get out your keys, Alice," he said brusquely.
"My keys?"
"Just get them."
She dug in her purse for her keys. "You messed up my system when you emptied my purse," she grumbled. "How am I supposed to find anything now? Well, here they are."
"Pick the longest, sharpest key."
"Hmm. Which one? The longest or the sharpest?"
"Pick one!"
His tone didn’t allow for further discussion. "Okay."
"Hold the keys in the palm of your hand, and place the key you’ve chosen between your middle finger and index finger, so it sticks out."
Alice followed his directions. "I see your point. A ready-made lethal weapon."
The light turned green and they started moving again. "You can use it to slash or strike. Aim for sensitive areas. Eyes are good."
Alice winced. "Are you crazy? I’m not going to gouge anyone’s eyes out!"
"We’re talking a potential life-or-death situation, Alice. You can use a lot of stuff as a weapon. Even your voice, your attitude can be a weapon. A lot of attackers are cowards. If you make noise, they flee. If you show them you’re not intimidated, they flee. If that fails, you can use keys, a pen, a comb, a hairbrush, a rock from the ground to fight them off. If you have nothing, you can use your nails. Scratch and claw. Go for eyes, ears, nose, throat, groin."
Alice squirmed in her seat. "Gabriel, you’re beginning to scare me."
"Good. It’s a scary world."
Chapter 4
And getting scarier.
"Is this place legal?" Alice whispered to Gabriel, looking in astonishment at the display of... things. She was barely inside the store and already she was getting a lesson in ... something. She had no idea what most of those things were, but everything lo
oked lethal.
"Mostly," Gabriel said. He left her to stare at the displays and walked to the counter where he rapped off a list of things to the grandmotherly lady sitting there knitting.
Alice blinked.
No, she wasn’t knitting.
Her mind had conjured up knitting in the woman’s hand, to go with the flower print dress, the silver braids and horn-rimmed glasses hanging around her neck. But she wasn’t knitting. Nope. She was cleaning a gun.
Alice’s head spun a bit and for a moment Gabriel morphed into a cowboy, holsters and all. She blinked, dispersing the image, alluring as it was.
This wasn’t the Wild West. This was a ‘mostly legal’ arms store.
The old lady smiled at Gabriel and labored to her feet, opening cabinets with a key from a large key chain hanging at her hip. A few minutes later, an array of objects obscured the many guns under the glass countertop.
Alice left them to it and turned her attention back to the display cases lining the walls, and tried to decipher the function of the strange objects. In several cases, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
"Come here," Gabriel called to her, as she was still exploring the strange contents of the two cabinets closest to the door. She moved to stand beside him as he examined the objects, reading the packages and occasionally asking questions.
Shaking her head, she moved away again, but Gabriel’s hand encircled her wrist like handcuffs. He’d used that grip on her since they were kids, and she knew from long experience that she didn’t stand a chance of breaking loose until he was ready to let her go, which usually was after a well-deserved lecture.
Or until she squeezed out a crocodile tear or two.
"Alice, look at the stuff I’ve put to the side. Read the instructions."
Alice picked up something that looked like hairspray and her eyes watered just at the description of what it would do. "Ouch."
"You should have one of those in your purse. And also an alarm."
"And when someone attacks me, I say ‘just a minute, sir, I need to get something from my purse.’"?
Gabriel paused. "She has a point," he said to the lady, who nodded sagely.
"Something for her pockets?" the old woman asked Gabriel. "I suggest a pepper spray pen, and a smaller alarm."
"Pepper spray pen?" Alice asked, sputtering. "What the heck is that? ‘Hello, Mr. Psycho, here’s pepper spray in your eyes and by the way, I’d like your autograph?’"
"You’re right. A pen for her jacket pocket and alarm in her jeans. And we’ll take those two sprays also, and an alarm for her purse, and the smallest stun gun. It shouldn’t be too heavy for her."
"Hey!" Alice waved a hand between Gabriel and the old woman. "Hello? Am I invisible here?"
"Good choices." The woman began dividing the objects on the counter into things they were buying and things they were leaving. It was touch and go which pile was bigger. "This stun gun is our lightest model. Very popular with the ladies."
"No guns!"
Gabriel weighted the object in his hand. "Excellent. We’ll take it."
"Gabriel!" She tugged at his jacket, then slapped his upper arm, almost jumping up and down in frustration. "Didn’t you hear me? I said, no guns!"
He glanced at her for a whole millisecond. "It’s not a gun, it’s a stun gun. Big difference. It might save your life, and if it makes you feel better, it’s a lot less brutal than a key to the eye."
There was no reasoning with him. She just stood there, shaking her head and muttering key phrases about overbearing and arrogant males as the two of them stole her purse away from her and filled it with the junk. He was possessed.
And she was intrigued. Very intrigued. Strange as it sounded, there was something very sexy about Gabriel bossing her around like this.
As they walked out of the store, her purse quite a bit heavier, she stared at him, vaguely amused, somewhat annoyed, but mostly astonished. "Boy, will you make your teenage daughter’s dating debuts a living hell. So, I’m safe to go dating now?"
"No. But if I can’t stop you from dating nameless, faceless, potentially homicidal Internet weirdoes, at least I can provide you with the weapons to fight them off with."
Alice climbed into his car and started rummaging through her purse. What a load of junk. "Gosh, Gabriel, you need to get over your Internet phobia."
"I’m signing you up for self-defense lessons," he informed her curtly as he started the car.
She laughed. "Whatever for? You already taught me to perform delicate eye surgery with my house keys. And I’ve got enough weaponry here to invade a small country."
"This is a good course. You’ll learn simple, basic moves that might save your life. You’ll feel a lot safer after you go through this. It’s only three evenings a week for one month."
"Three evenings a week?" Alice sputtered. "Every other evening? I do have a life, thank you very much. How am I supposed to have time for all my dates?"
He grinned, flipped his sunglasses open and put them on as he pulled out of the parking space and onto the street. "Guess you’ll have to scale your plans down a bit."
She crossed her arms on her chest. "I’m not going."
The ride home was silent. Gabriel didn’t speak again, until he had pulled into his driveway and stopped the car, but then he answered her statement from twenty minutes before. "Yes, you are."
"No, I’m not. You promised to help me and not squeal on me to Michael if I got all the self-defense junk. Well, my purse is crammed. I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain. I’m a walking five foot, half inch, featherweight armory. You can’t make me take some silly course on how to kick men in the groin."
Not waiting for him to answer, Alice jumped out of the car and the humid heat of July wrapped around her. She sighed and wiped her forehead, already pearled with moisture. That mankind had survived and evolved for millennia without air conditioning was beyond belief.
She got out her keys and opened the door on her own car, placing her purse in the seat. The inside of the car was blazing hot, and she didn’t look forward to getting inside. Gabriel was standing on the other side, one elbow braced on the roof of her car as he traced patterns in the dust with the other hand.
"I know, I know," she muttered. "I’ll wash it this week. Not that you’re one to talk, I can hardly tell what color that pick-up is under all that dirt." She eyed the hose, lying near the garage, wondering just what he’d been doing with it. Clearly not washing his car, and from the state of the barely alive yellowed grass in the front yard, he hadn’t been watering anything.
"What’s that hose doing there?" she asked. "Were you going to wash the pickup?"
"No. I stick the hose through the basketball hoop and use it as a shower."
Alice laughed in disbelief, even as images she had no business seeing flickered by her mind’s eye. "Are you serious?"
He shrugged. "I don’t have any hot water. This isn’t as chilly as the inside shower, and in this heat it’s great to take a cold shower outdoors anyway."
"It’s a bit public though, isn’t it?"
"Not really. Not much traffic in the street. And the trees obscure a lot. Wouldn’t recommend you doing it though."
Wow.
It was tempting to wash the car right here and now. Cool Gabriel down a bit while she was at it. He was probably going to shower there today anyway. Her fingers were all but itching to grab that hose and turn the water on him. A water fight... Wet t-shirt... Yum....
"You’re taking that course, Alice. And I’m coming with you."
Alice hesitated. "You’re coming with me? What do you mean? Is this a course for both men and women? I’ll get to practice the groin-kicking on you?"
Gabriel grinned at her. "Something like that."
"Hmm.... she mused aloud. "That might be a good place to meet men."
Gabriel’s grin widened. "Why did I suspect you’d say that?"
Alice pondered the situation. Maybe this was a good idea. She might me
et some new guys, and even if she didn’t, learning how to throw Gabriel over her shoulder, not to mention how to release her wrist from that iron-clasp he was so fond of using, would be very useful.
Besides, she might get to sit on top of him, pinning his hands down while she searched him for concealed weapons...
Oooh, this had potential. Guilty thrill potential. Lots of guilty thrills. How could she resist that?
"Okay," she agreed, trying to keep her voice reluctant. "I’ll go. Which days are the class?"
"Tuesday and Thursday evening, Saturday mornings. Starting tomorrow."
"Starting tomorrow? Are you sure we can get in at such short notice?"
"I know the instructor. We’re in."
Alice shook her had. "So I’ll have Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings for dates and Sunday and Monday off. This will be a grueling schedule."
"We’re taking days off?"
"I have to have some time to go over the progress of the week and reevaluate my strategy." She backed up a bit. "Wait a minute. What do you mean ‘we’?"
"You’re not dating Internet strangers without protection. I’ll be your bodyguard."
"What? No. No way!"
"Yes way."
"I’m armed and loaded! And I’ll be taking self-defense lessons. What more do you want?"
"Save your breath. It’s not negotiable. If you’re going on blind dates with some guys you pick up online, you’ll need a bodyguard."
Gabriel’s dark eyes held determination she doubted she could fight. Alice frowned. She left the car door open and circled the car, and watched him wince when she hopped up to sit on the hood.
