by Leigh Tudor
“Hello there, Farmer Ted.”
His neck turned red at the voice that grated on his nerves at the same time made his body seize up with sexual tension.
The she-devil wore her blond hair in a messy bun, so messy that she looked as if she’d just been thoroughly fucked. She wore an oversized tee not quite long enough to hide the tempting fringe from her much too-short cutoffs. Cutoffs that only served to showcase muscled thighs and highly toned calves. She sported a pair of beat-up Converse with the laces untied, as if she had too much unspent energy to stop and tie them.
He grimaced, lowering the baseball cap on his forehead, hands in his pockets and a leg bent as he leaned against the concrete wall behind him. He couldn’t seem to escape the little witch. During the workday, his treacherous mind had bent her over the slats of the horse stall and ruthlessly taken her from behind, cornered her in the tack room, and tied her down with anything resembling a leather strap and used her body in as many filthy ways as his conscience would allow.
He cleared his throat and adjusted his stance. “Miss Loren.”
And then watched Officer Tuckus do a piss-poor job of showing how a woman could escape an assailant who grabbed her by the hair in a dark alley.
Yeah, that move would work if your assailant was a ninety-pound woman or a pansy-ass man.
He glanced to the side. Today, she looked adorable, but at the same time lethal. Like one of the feral kittens that roamed his barn searching for prey.
Fluffy and cute.
When you reached out to stroke them, their claws came out of nowhere like a female wolverine, scratching the living shit out of you and then haughtily licking their paws while watching you with unabashed insolence.
Then the porn star of his dirty dreams spoke up, saying with a snort, “Well, that would never work.”
His eyes shifted toward her once again, and she was now twisting one of the loose strands of hair with her finger while she openly scoffed at what the officer was failing miserably to demonstrate.
“You an expert on self-defense, Miss Ingalls?”
Her finger ceased teasing the strand of hair as if she had to think about the question. “No, I’m no expert, per se,” she relented, and then as if she couldn’t hold it in any longer, “but come on. Do you really think a woman who’s being dragged around by her hair is going to grab her assailant by the neck, pull him down to the ground, and execute an Arm Bar?”
And then Officer Tuckus noticed his observers.
“Hey, Alec,” he called out, jovially waving from the sparring mat.
Alec turned his head toward the class and dipped his baseball cap. “Officer Tuckus.”
“Could you help us with this move?” The officer turned to his class. “Alec is a Special Ops Marine. I’m sure he can assist with what we’re trying to demonstrate here.”
“Former Marine,” Alec corrected, but wasn’t sure he should intervene, given he also thought the move was for shit. But then he noticed the fluffy kitten’s eyes on him and seized on the opportunity. “Happy to help. I’m sure Miss Ingalls would love to help, too.”
Her head jerked back, gratuitously large brown eyes now full-on black storms. And then those black storms glanced toward the attendees, and Alec saw that she was looking at her sister, Cara, with indecision. Cara’s eyes widened as if telling her older sister to stand down.
“Thanks, I’m just observing,” she said, as if chewing rusty nails.
“Ah, Miss Ingalls,” Officer Tuckus cajoled her, “please join us. You’re new to the community and this will give us all a chance to get to know one another.”
Officer Tuckus was an affable fellow, which made him a weak officer. But then, Alec knew there wasn’t much to fear here in Wilder, Texas.
He watched her chew on those saucy pink-tinged lips, her eyes silently communicating with her sister, and then finally moved toward the mats.
Fish bowl. Those were the only two words that came to mind as the women of Wilder skeptically watched Loren make her way toward the mat. To her left, Maggie Perkins was whispering to Sue Macy, who openly smirked. Mrs. Roberts had introduced them to Loren after church last week and they didn’t appear any more eager to see her now than they did then. To her right, Mrs. Waterman, who had just ignored her and Mercy in the school parking lot, also looked none-too-pleased to see her again.
Regardless of the fine weather they were having.
Ally’s words kept hitting her. Competition. Jealousy. In her mind, they were bizarre concepts for the women of Wilder to hold against her when they had lives she’d only dreamed of while growing up in the Center.
Her heart ached at being so summarily shunned, fully aware of her lack of social skills to remedy the situation. And completely at a loss as to how to go about getting other women to like her and her sisters.
She glanced back at Cara after reaching the mat, who looked at her beseechingly. Loren toed the mat with one of her Converse shoes. She knew what Cara was thinking. Don’t hurt anybody. Just do what you’re told and don’t humiliate me. Eyes, outside of Ally and her sister’s, seemed ready to pounce on any little misstep.
Loren stretched her neck back and forth as a way to ignore all the undivided attention. She flicked her hands with nervous energy, feeling uncommonly vulnerable and unsure how to navigate the situation. Here she was, on a sparring mat similar to the one where she had trained on for years . . . with ruthless intensity.
Taught to fight dirty, with no holds barred.
She uncrossed her arms and dug her fingernails into her palms, refraining from moving into combat position. Reminding herself that she was nothing more than a casual participant who knew nothing about self-defense. Someone who willingly agreed to allow this mountain of a man to touch her as if he were going to attack.
“Don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt him,” she whispered to herself.
Oh my God, this was so outside her comfort zone.
The officer’s voice pulled her out of her head. “So, Alec, if you could please hold Loren by the hair . . . don’t be messing it up now.” He laughed to help lighten the mood.
Alec latched onto her, and it was all Loren could do not to turn and light him up with everything she had. Instead, she followed the ludicrous instructions, putting her arms around Alec’s neck and then waiting while Officer Tuckus made some comments on stance and some other shit she couldn’t quite follow.
It appeared to be uncommonly warm in the gymnasium and she wondered if it was too expensive to bump up the air conditioning in such an expansive space. Heat moved downward from the curve of her neck, at the same time upward from her unsteady legs to converge in her nether regions.
A strand of hair fell across her face, and touched her lips. She blew at it in a desperate attempt to avoid any unnecessary stimuli.
Loren wondered if the other women in the room could feel the sexual tension as Alec held her by the hair while her arms were wrapped around his neck, the oblivious officer droning on about things that had no real bearing on a situation of this type.
Doing her best to avoid Alec’s challenging gaze, her traitorous sense of smell kicked in. She glanced up at the ceiling and inhaled some sort of manly soap alongside what must have been his own personal scent, a unique mixture of freshly turned earth and high levels of testosterone.
She was supposed to be holding him off when all she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and lodge herself into the crook of his neck where she could spend the rest of her days inhaling him.
Jesus, that wasn’t at all weird.
Her mantra changed. “Don’t dry hump him. Don’t dry hump him.”
“Did you just smell my neck?”
She pulled back, meeting his accusatory glare. “No. What?”
He grinned. “You did. You were smelling me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed under her breath. “And if I were, it’s because you smell like goat cheese. Like you just came from the barn after milking the goats and doing whatever e
lse you do that would make you smell like cheese.”
Loren grimaced. Nice comeback, you dolt.
He was openly smirking at her now, and she forced her focus back to Tuckus, who was instructing the women on what to do when grabbed by their scalp. It was utter bullshit and she should know. She’d been dragged around by her hair a number of times by a particularly soulless Israeli instructor, who finally taught her that, in most situations, the best thing to do when you sense danger was to fucking run.
She was a mere five foot, two inches, weighing in at a buck ten. But once upon a time, she had been so stubborn. After several fruitless rounds, she’d learned that when you came up against a man twice your weight and the size of a tree, you didn’t stop to look for weaknesses in his stance— you ran.
Refusing to meet Alec’s eyes, which were like crystal-blue lasers boring into her, she glanced at the gymnasium windows and then at the double doors she’d walked through earlier. She then hazarded a look at Cara—who had her hands over her mouth just waiting for Loren to unleash some unholy terror on the man who had snubbed her and her sisters.
“And now pull him toward you as you fall back to the ground,” Tuckus instructed.
She followed along, saying in a low voice that only Alec could hear, “And now I’m right where the fucker wants me. Flat on my back.”
Tuckus continued, “And then, Loren, you swing your left leg over his right shoulder and pull him into an Arm Bar.”
Loren chuckled with disgust. “And now my legs are spread for him, how convenient.”
For the next forty-five minutes, Loren and Alec slowly demonstrated moves while the women took turns practicing them on one another.
At the end of the hour, Loren was exhausted, more from the amount of restraint she’d had to exercise than demonstrating what was a completely unrealistic reaction to an attacker.
As everyone began to disburse, Mrs. Roberts thanked Loren and Alec for helping and left to take the petty cash box to the office. Loren turned toward Cara and asked her to fetch Mercy so they could be on their way.
Suddenly, it was only Alec and Loren in the gymnasium, the mats pushed to the side for basketball intramurals that were to begin soon.
“Show me,” Alec said, turning his head and wiping his bottom lip with his thumb.
“What?” she asked with a naughty grin. “You wanna play a game of ‘Show Me Yours and I’ll Show You Mine’?’”
Ignoring her flirtatious banter, he clarified, “Show me how you would do it.” He moved his head toward the last remaining mat.
Her eyes narrowed, and then her legs felt weak when she looked into his stark blue eyes and then to his full mouth grinning at her with an “I dare you” smirk.
Scoping the gym for witnesses, she looked back at him. “On one condition.”
He lifted an eyebrow.
“You hold nothing back.”
And with that, he came at her with more speed than she’d anticipated, grabbing a fistful of her hair with ten times the force during class. Her head jerked back as he dragged her along the mat. She moved with instincts that she could no longer deny, turning into him, following the pull of her hair and then just as quickly she went into attack mode, punching every vulnerable point on his body, ending the attack by striking his nose with the palm of her hand.
They both heaved as he touched his nose, his eyes watering.
There now, she had his attention.
Assuming he was distracted by her counter assault, she fought to catch her breath. She was really out of shape and needed to find a way to spar with Mercy to build up her stamina.
Out of nowhere, her arms flew in the air as he undercut her at the legs and before she could react, he had her turned and pinned to the mat with both arms pulled behind her, his knee centered on her back and his body weight bearing down on her.
He bent down, his lips inches from her ear, “Why do you misjudge me?”
Just as he began to pull away, before taking his next breath, he was gasping for it and buckled over in pain. She’d actually head-butted him. In a flash, he saw her face and then that starry black hole one sees when they close their eyes super tight. He rolled off her, holding his nose and forehead as she picked herself up off the mat, graciously extending her arm as a gesture of truce, which he duly ignored, pulling up to one knee and then finally the rest of the way up.
“Why do you continue to underestimate me?” she asked, while batting her lashes.
He shook his head with a telling grin that lightened her heart. “Guess I need to stop that,” he said, the back of his hand daubing some blood at his nose.
“Oh, my gosh, Alec, what happened?”
It was Ally, rushing to her wounded brother while Loren froze at the expressions on Mercy and Cara’s faces. Mercy, with a knowing smile, and Cara with aghast disappointment.
“It’s nothing,” Alec said, appeasing his sister. “I managed to slip on the mat and hit the bleacher on the way down.”
“Are you sure?” Mercy asked with a smug expression, “Sure looks like you got cold-cocked to me.”
Loren laughed a little too loud. “Please, like I could do any damage to a Marine.” She caught his glance. “Former Marine.”
Cara’s eyebrows drew together, still highly skeptical and then Loren added, “Besides, would Alec have agreed to dinner at our house if I’d busted his nose?”
Ally’s face lit up as did Cara’s, while Alec stared at her, his expression revealing nothing.
“Isn’t that right, Alec? Tomorrow at six o’clock,” she said, looking at him with her hands tucked in her back pockets, daring him to refuse yet another kind invitation.
“That’s right.” He barely smiled, still staring at her, and she knew that if he could, he would so punish her right now.
Her heart beat wildly in her chest as he swiped up his baseball hat that fell off during their grappling, and repositioned it on his head. “Loren claims to be a gourmet cook. Said she’s going to personally make us a real fancy meal. Guess we’re in for a treat, Ally.”
Loren’s face fell while Mercy burst out laughing. “Gourmet cook? Seriously?”
Doing her best to regroup, Loren said, “Let’s go, girls, it’s getting late. Looks like we have some dinner guests to prepare for.”
As they walked toward the gymnasium doors, Loren could feel his eyes boring into her back telepathically saying, “Checkmate.”
Chapter Nine
“I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.”
—G.H. Hardy
English mathematician,
known for his achievements
in number theory and mathematical analysis
* * *
“I’m supposed to be a genius, and I can’t even make a decent meal.” Loren held her head in her hands as Mercy poked at the disaster on the kitchen table.
In the background, Cara was playing the piano, which had pretty much become a constant during the evenings and weekends.
Mercy picked up Loren’s iPad. “Well, hell, Loren, the first time you try cooking a gourmet meal, you may want to start with something a little easier than beef Wellington.” She read through the recipe. “What’s foy grass?”
Loren lifted her head. “Foie gras. Goose liver paste.”
“You were able to find that at the Merchant’s Grocery in town?”
“No, I substituted ground chicken livers. They also didn’t have prosciutto, so I picked up bacon, instead.”
Mercy jabbed the carcass with a serving fork. “Why is the crust so tough?”
Loren lifted her arms in the air. “I don’t know, Mercy, I’m a math genius, not a chemistry genius. Apparently, one doesn’t guarantee the other.”
“Please, you have an IQ of over one-seventy-five. There’s nothing you can’t master. How about that time you took out that one-eyed Russian?”
“I think the key-word there is ‘one-eyed.’”
“Okay, how about when you scaled that skyscraper in Du
bai to take photos of the Chagall?”
“That was easy. That’s all about the potential fall factor, or the ratio of distance you would fall divided by the length of rope available to absorb the fall. The factor determines—”
“Okay, all I’m hearing right now is blah blah blah. My point is that you don’t fail, ever.”
“Well, Mercy, beef Wellington appears to be my first fail, and as you can see, I managed to do that epic-ally.”
Loren lifted her head to check the clock on the stove. It was one o’clock, plenty of time to execute plan B. Problem was, there was no plan B. She was just as shocked to discover her inability to cook a meal as Mercy.
They had done just fine subsisting on frozen foods requiring a short time in the oven or nuked in the microwave. But cooking with pots, pans, and utensils? That was impossible.
Loren leaned on the table and held her face in her hands. “It’s our first official dinner party and we have nothing to serve except Hot Pockets and pizza rolls.”
How humiliating. After all the ball-busting it took to get Alec to show up, she’d have to serve a frozen pizza from the grocery store.
“Did you make dessert?”
“Baked Alaska.”
“How did that turn out?”
“I made the mistake of attempting the French version of the meringue. The eggs didn’t fully cook. I thought giving our guests salmonella poisoning might not make a positive first impression.”
“Where is it?”
“In the backyard. I shot put the bastard out the back door in a moment of frustration.”
“We could always cancel.”
“I can’t disappoint Cara. You saw how excited she was when she heard they were coming.” Besides, there was no way she was going to miss the chance of seeing Alec again, despite her imminent humiliation.
“Well, then, let’s go back to the grocery and pick up something fast and easy.”
Less than ten minutes later, Mercy pushed a shopping cart, following an indecisive Loren as she combed through the frozen food aisle.
