by Diana Palmer
“We’re different people,” he said, pointedly. “If I’m not, why would I have left the Company?”
She frowned. “I hadn’t thought about that. Why did you leave it? Even when you were younger, all you talked about was becoming an agent.”
“I got my priorities straight,” he returned.
“Did you really?” Her eyes narrowed. “How did you know that Lancaster, Inc., needed a new security chief?”
“A friend told me,” he said. He wasn’t going to tell her who the friend was. Not yet. She’d never liked Lorna, and the reverse was also true. Lorna didn’t have any romantic designs on him, but he didn’t want Kirry to know. Not yet.
His dark eyes slid over her face, down to her slender body and back up again. He wanted so badly to ask if there was a man in her life, but that was too much too soon. Besides, he had to be sure about his own feelings before he started trying to coax hers. He couldn’t bear to hurt her again.
“I don’t know if I’d be any good at martial arts,” she began slowly.
She was going to give in. He knew it instinctively, and it delighted him. He smiled at her without mockery or malice. “Let’s find out,” he suggested.
Her breath sighed out. “All right. I’ll have to fit it in with work, though. When?”
“Two nights a week, two hours a night,” he said. “And you’ll have to practice at home, too.”
“This sounds like a lot of work,” she mumbled.
“It is. But it’s worth it. It could save your life.”
“You’re really concerned about Erikson, aren’t you?” she asked. If Lang was worried, there was a cause for concern.
“Let’s say that I’m staying on the right side of caution,” he corrected. His big shoulders lifted and fell carelessly, and he smiled at her. “Humor me. For old times’ sake.”
She frowned and chewed on a fingernail while she pondered the anguish of being so close to Lang when she’d spent years trying to forget him.
“Or am I overlooking the obvious?” he asked suddenly, and his face changed, hardened. “Is there a man in the picture, someone who expects your company in the evenings?”
She wished with all her heart that she could answer him in the affirmative. Ridiculous, to pine for a man all that time, and after he’d treated her so shabbily. But he did look different. He wasn’t the same hard-nosed, arrogant man who’d left Floresville to join the Company several years ago. He’d mellowed. The threat was still there, the ruthlessness, but there was a new tenderness, too.
“No, Lang,” she said. “There’s no one.”
His eyelids flickered, but his face gave away nothing. “All right, then. Suppose we go shopping tomorrow when you get off work, and we’ll begin tomorrow night?”
She frowned. “Shopping? For what?”
He chuckled. “Wait and see.”
3
Kirry groaned as she looked at herself in the mirror. “Lang, it looks like pajamas,” she moaned. Lang opened the door to her bedroom and leaned against the doorjamb, his arms folded, to study her. She was wearing what they’d bought that afternoon; it was a white gi, the traditional karate uniform of white pants and a white top with one side folded over the other. For a beginner, the first gi was secured by a white belt. Colored belts had to be earned with new skills at each level of accomplishment, the highest of which was black.
Kirry looked fragile in the outfit, slender and not at all threatening. Her head was bent, her shoulders slumped, baring her nape where her hair was short in back.
“Let me explain something to you,” he said disapprovingly, jerking away from the doorframe to stand just behind her. “The first rule of self-defense is to never look vulnerable. In the wild, an animal will never show illness, right up to the point of death, to prevent being attacked. It isn’t much different with people. A potential attacker can spot an easy victim.”
“How?” she asked, peering into his eyes in the mirror.
“You carry yourself as if you’ve already been beaten, didn’t you know?” he asked gently. “Your shoulders are thrown forward. You keep your eyes and head down when you walk. You clutch your bag close—not a bad idea, but the way you do it is a dead giveaway.”
“What should I do, walk down the street aiming karate chops at every tree I pass?” she asked.
He grinned. “Not a bad idea, if you can learn how to knock one down that way. Otherwise, pass on it. Listen, you have to walk as if you own the world and know full well that you can break every bone in an attacker’s body. Sometimes just your posture is enough to ward off trouble. Stand up straight.”
She did, giving her slender body an added elegance.
“Now hold your head up. Don’t make long eye contact—a man might construe that as an invitation—but don’t keep your eyes down as if you’re afraid to look at people.”
“I am, sometimes,” she confessed with a faint smile. “People intimidate me.”
“Right. That’s why you’re in a public relations job.”
“I can bluff enough to do my job. It’s after work that gives me problems,” she said with a sigh, glancing critically at herself in the mirror. “I don’t mix well.”
“You always were shy, except with people you knew,” he recalled. His eyes dropped to her soft mouth, pink with lipstick, and he remembered it clinging hotly to him, pleading for more than any honorable man could give her. He hadn’t wanted to get married, and Kirry was not the sort of girl he felt comfortable seducing outside of marriage. He’d talked about marrying her, and he knew that it was what she wanted, but things hadn’t worked out. It had been a sad situation altogether, and he still wasn’t proud of his solution. Instead of just telling her he didn’t want to get married, he’d made a run for it. And his best friend had unwittingly given him the escape he needed. Kirry had been the one who’d suffered the most.
“Would you mind not looking at me like that?” she asked, lifting her green eyes to his dark ones in the mirror. “This is nice of you, to teach me how to take care of myself, but I’d rather if it wasn’t…uncomfortable.”
“Sorry,” he said abruptly. “Back to what I was telling you,” he said, changing the subject. “Walk with a purpose when you go out, as if you know exactly where you’re going—even if you’re lost. Keep your chin up, look at people, but just enough to let them know you see them. When you’re going to your car, always have your keys in your hand, not in your purse. Look in the back seat and all around before you open the door and get in, and then lock it. Don’t ever go into a dark parking lot alone at night, or to an automated bank teller. Women have risked that and turned up dead.”
She shivered. “You’re frightening me.”
“I want to,” he said. His dark eyes didn’t blink. “I want you to understand how drastic the consequences can be.”
“Women should be able to go wherever they like….”
“Don’t hand me that,” he said shortly. “So should men and kids, but they must abide by the same rules. It’s that sort of world. Nobody is safe in a city alone after dark—man, woman or child. Men get attacked, too, you know, even if it isn’t usually for the same reasons that women do.”
“Our culture is sick,” she remarked philosophically.
“Whatever. We deal with it as best we can. What I’m going to teach you will keep you alive, at least. Come on. Get your coat.”
“But I thought we were going to practice here….” she began.
“Do you really like the idea of being thrown flat on your back on a wood floor?” he asked pleasantly.
She glowered at him. “What do you mean, thrown on my back?”
“Didn’t I mention it? In karate, the first thing they teach you is how to fall correctly. You’re going to be falling a lot, flat on your back and every other way.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Think so?” He handed her the lightweight car coat she wore on cool spring nights.
She put it on with a resigned breath. She hope
d she could work with broken bones.
Lang had a friend who ran a gym. The man was middle-aged, but very muscular and fit, and he and Lang seemed to know each other from way back.
“Karate, huh?” the man, Tony, mused, studying Kirry. “Is she tough enough?”
Kirry drew herself to her full height and glared at him. “She sure is,” she said with a jerk of her head.
He chuckled. “Good. If Lang teaches you, you’ll need to be. Most of his students quit after the first night when he was on the police force, teaching it in his spare time.”
Tony ambled away and Kirry followed Lang over to a long, thick mat on the floor of the gym near the wall. “I didn’t know you taught karate,” she remarked.
“You didn’t know a lot of things that I did,” he replied carelessly. “You know how to stretch, don’t you?”
“Yes. I do that every morning.”
“Do some stretches while I get into my gi.”
He walked away with his black duffel bag, and Kirry settled onto the mat.
While the minutes ticked away, she became slowly aware of curious glances from some of the other occupants of the gym. Most of them were working out on machines. Two young women were lifting weights. Another was doing isometric exercises.
Loud noises from the other end of the gym drew her attention. She noticed several men gathered around a punching bag near where Lang had gone. Someone was doing kicks and spins with incredible speed and grace, which made Kirry dizzy. She paused in her own stretching just to watch him. He went up with a high jump kick and the gym vibrated as his foot connected with the hanging bag. He landed and turned, laughing, and she suddenly recognized him. It was Lang!
She stared at him as he spoke to the men and walked toward her. The gi fit him very nicely, loose though it was, giving an impression of great strength. Her eyes fell to his belt and she wasn’t surprised to see that it was black, the hallmark of the highest ranks of skill in the sport.
“We’d better stop right now,” she told him breathlessly, “because I’m never going to be able to do what you just did.”
He grinned. “Not today, anyway. Limbered up, are we?”
She grimaced. “I guess.” She eyed him warily. “Did you mean it, about making me fall?”
He nodded. “Don’t worry. There’s a right way to do it. You won’t get hurt.”
That was what he thought. Just being close to him made all her senses stir.
“Ready to get started?” he asked. His eyes fell to her watch. “Take that off,” he said. “Never wear jewelry on the mat, it’s dangerous.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She stripped it off and slipped it into the pocket of her coat. There were no rings to worry about. She hadn’t worn a ring since Lang had given her a small emerald one for her birthday. She still had it, safe in a drawer, but she never put it on.
She went back to the mat. He taught her how to approach the mat, because there was ritual and reverence even in that. Then he taught her the bow to an opponent. Afterward, he taught her the rigorous disciplined stretches that preceded all karate lessons. She was worn-out from them before he took her back to the mat and showed her how to do left and right side break falls and back break falls. She spent the next hour falling down. Once she missed the mat and landed on her hip on the hard gym floor.
“You said it wouldn’t hurt,” she muttered, rubbing her behind.
“It doesn’t, if you land where you’re supposed to,” he returned. “Watch where you’re going.”
“Yes, sir,” she murmured with a mischievous glance.
“Fall down.”
She groaned. “Which way?”
“Your choice.”
“My choice would be a nice hot bath and bed,” she told him.
He smiled. “Tired?”
She hesitated, then she nodded.
“Okay, tiger, that’s enough for today. Attention.” He called her to the beginning stance. “Bow.”
She bowed. He left her to change back into his street clothes and she leaned against the wall, feeling pummeled.
They drove home in a contented silence.
“What kind of karate is it?” she asked. “During that last break one of the men mentioned that there are different kinds.”
“You’re studying tae kwon do,” he told her. “It’s a Korean form of martial art, one which specializes in kicks.”
“Kicks.”
“You’ve got the legs for it, and I don’t mean that in an offensive way,” he added. “You have long legs, and they’re strong ones. Kicks are potentially much more dangerous than hand blows.”
“I felt the gym shake when you did that jump kick, just after you put on your gi,” she murmured demurely.
He chuckled. “I did nothing but practice when I first joined the police force. While the other single guys were out chasing women and drinking beer in their spare time, I was in the gym learning how to do spin kicks.”
“You’re…amazing to watch,” she said, searching for the right word to describe the elegant skill of his movements.
He smiled. “Flattery?”
“Not at all!”
“If you work at it, you can do those same moves,” he said. “Plenty of women are black belts. In fact, I worked on a case with another Company agent who had a higher rank than mine. She taught me some new moves.”
She closed up. “Did she?” she asked, glancing out the window.
He smiled to himself. The woman he’d just mentioned was a retired army officer of sixty. He wouldn’t disillusion Kirry by passing that little bit of information along.
“Want to stop somewhere for a cup of coffee?” he asked.
“I can’t drink it at night,” she said apologetically. “I like to be in bed by ten.”
He scowled. “Woman, what kind of life are you living!”
Not much of one, she could have said. “Oh, I stay up if there’s a good movie on,” she said defensively.
“You’re twenty-two.”
“Twenty-three,” she corrected.
“Twenty-three, then,” he returned. “You’re too young to spend that much time alone.”
“I didn’t say I was always alone,” she said stiffly. “I go out on dates!” And she did. The last one had been a newly divorced man who talked about his ex-wife and cried. The one before that was a bachelor of fifty who wanted her to move in with him. She hadn’t had a lot of luck in her search for companionship, least of all with Lang, whose memory had stood between her and the most innocent involvement with anyone else.
Lang didn’t know the true circumstances, though. He was picturing Kirry in another man’s arms, and he didn’t like it. His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“You used to smoke,” she remarked.
“Only occasionally,” he replied. “It was interfering with my wind when I worked out, so I gave it up.”
“Good for you,” she murmured.
He pulled into the parking lot of her apartment building. A car pulled in behind them. A blue sedan.
Lang saw it and suddenly spun his own car around and headed straight for it. He didn’t look as if he meant to stop, and the one glimpse Kirry got of his face made her cling to the seat for all she was worth.
Apparently the ruthless maneuver got the message across to Erikson in the blue sedan, because he burned rubber getting out of the parking lot and down the street.
“Damn him,” Lang said icily when he’d parked the car. “Maybe I should just beat the hell out of him and put him in the hospital for a few weeks. That might get the idea across.”
Kirry was unnerved. She looked at Lang warily. “No,” she said. “You mustn’t do that. He’d have you put in jail.”
“He’d have a hard time keeping me there,” he returned with a smile. “I have connections.”
She twisted her small clutch bag in her hands. “I thought I was doing the right thing, telling you about him….”
“You did,” he replied. “The days of men like Erikson are
over. It’s just going to take a few lawsuits to convince them of it.”
“Stalkers kill people,” she said, voicing her worst fear.
“Erikson won’t kill you,” he replied. “And after I’ve worked out with you for a few weeks, he’ll regret it if he comes within striking range.”
She smiled. “Think so? What am I going to do, fall on him?”
“You’re pretty good at that,” he said with an instructor’s pride in his student.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll walk you up, just in case.”
He got out of the car, locked it and came around to take her soft hand in his as they went into the building and stood waiting for the elevator.
Kirry should have pulled her hand away, but she couldn’t manage. It brought back memories of their first real date. He’d held her hand then, too, and she could still feel the thrill of it.
“It was your first date, and you were so nervous that you were trembling when I took you home that night,” he recalled, glancing down at her surprised face. “Am I reading your mind again?” he asked, lifting their clasped hands. “You aren’t the only one with memories. They aren’t all bad ones, are they?”
She didn’t answer him. The elevator door opened and they stepped into the deserted conveyance. Lang pushed the button for her floor.
“We could have walked up, it’s just the second floor,” she reminded him.
“Stay out of stairwells,” he replied seriously.
“Oh. Yes, I see.”
“That goes for work as well as home,” he added.
The elevator door opened and he walked her down to the end of the deserted corridor, where her apartment was. He noticed that she had her key in her hand when they got there. No fumbling for it in a purse or pocket. He smiled.
“Kirry?” he asked as she unlocked the door.
She hesitated, with her back to him.
“Do you want the conventional end to the evening?” he asked quietly.
Her hand clenched on the doorknob as she remembered how it felt to kiss him. “It wouldn’t be wise.”
“Probably not.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned his shoulder against the wall next to the door. His dark eyes slid over her profile. “What ever happened to Chad?” he asked.
