by Kat Colmer
Almost.
“If you’ve got any crane-kick Karate Kid moves up your sleeve, I’d be pulling them out now.” Beth’s voice came from somewhere behind me on the deck. I’d managed to duck any questions from her the last few days, but every now and again she looked at me with that unnerving I’m-your-twin-and-I-know-you-better-than-anyone look.
Leo sat beside her, his legs propped up on the deck’s railing. “She’s wiping the floor with you, dude. It ain’t pretty.”
“Shut up, or I’ll add fresh bruises to your collection.” Or rather new bruises, since the ones from Wednesday night had somehow already faded. Benefit of his mixed-parent heritage, Leo claimed. Talk about gene envy; I’d never seen anyone’s beat-up face—Italian, African-American, or otherwise—heal that quickly. I resisted the impulse to turn around and give him the finger. Instead, I kept my feet moving, eyes on Cora.
“Will you come at me already!” The longer we danced around each other, the more pissed off she became.
I flexed my fingers. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
That did it. Her face turned venomous. “You think the Groth Maar will extend me that courtesy?”
She was right. Protecting her here wasn’t helping her any. I should be pushing her to the limit, making sure she was equipped to deal with any situation. But here we were, her doing the pushing and me rubbing my sore ass.
I inhaled, steadied my breathing. Then spun, aimed a hook kick at her torso. She blocked, winced as she took the full brunt of my heel on her forearm. I came at her again, low kick this time. She sidestepped, blocked. For a moment or two I had the advantage, forcing her back. A second later my ribs screamed as her foot connected so hard my spleen rattled. Before I had time to counter, she’d swiped both feet out from under me, and I lay squinting up into the sun’s glare, my ass flat on the grass. Again. Somewhere in the distance a kookaburra laughed.
Leo leaned over the deck railing, shaking his head at me. “Dude, this is getting embarrassing.”
I closed my eyes against the pressing blue of the sky, lifted my hand, and flipped him off. In my head, I counted to ten, breathed in the earthy smell of grass and dry dirt, waiting for the dull ache in my rib cage to subside.
She was good. She’d always been good. But never so good she could flatten me. Impressive what one extra year of sustained training could do. My wounded ego warred with a sense of pride in her ability.
“Get up, Jonas.” Cora shoved at my leg with her foot. “That was an improvement, but you can do better.”
“Give me a second.” Pushing my wounded ego aside, I heaved off the ground. On the deck, Leo and Beth both smirked. Idiots. “Don’t you two have something better to do?”
“Nah.” Beth grinned, that unnerving I’m-your-twin look in place. “This is much more entertaining.” I scowled at her, then returned my attention to Cora. She stood on the other side of the lawn. Legs shoulder width apart, arms up at the ready, weight even over her centerline, she was primed for another round.
I needed to break that iron focus of hers, unbalance her somehow. I grabbed the hem of my T-shirt and hiked up the cotton to wipe the sting of sweat from my eyes. Think dammit, where is the chink in her dobok? There’s got to be— I stopped mid thought; Cora’s gaze had strayed to my exposed stomach.
Hello, advantage!
Dirty pool, I know. But desperate times called for…more exposure. With Beavis and Butthead laughing at me from the deck, I’d take my upper hand any which way at the moment. I had enough grass stains tarnishing my reputation.
One swift move and my T-shirt was off. Cora’s eyes widened. I tried to keep the smug smile from my face—really, I did—but I’d had so little to smile about all morning. I stopped smiling the moment her eyes collapsed into thin slits. When her hands reached for the black belt holding her dobok together, I questioned the wisdom of my strategy.
Immobile, I stared as Cora untied the knot at her waist, shrugged out of her uniform, and…oh shit! White pants low on lean hips, stomach muscles corded below the hem of a workout crop top that showed just enough cleavage to make my mouth dry up, and a look on her face that said “bring it on.”
I was a dead man.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cora
I was going to kill him. He knew! It was mortifying enough he’d worked out I wasn’t completely unaffected by him, but how dare he use that realization against me? He left me no choice; serious pain was coming his way.
My eyes found Beth sitting on the deck. She watched the scene with wry amusement. If I found out she’d said something to Jonas about my admission the other morning, there would be hell to pay.
My gaze travelled back to the cause of my irritation. Bringing my adrenalin in check so I could focus, I started circling him again. “You’re out of shape, Jonas.” Except he so wasn’t. I couldn’t decide which I liked better: Jonas bare-chested drenched in moonlight or Jonas bare-chested soaked in midday sun? Pathetic, Cora. I could almost hear Madame Curie slap her hand against her forehead in disgust.
Eyes locked on mine, Jonas mirrored my movements. “Nothing some serious one-on-one can’t fix.”
Say what?
But his expression was deadpan. I had no time to analyze his words for a double meaning because he lunged.
Too late to sidestep, I grabbed his arm, rammed my hip into his stomach, and threw him over my shoulder. A grunt. Then, without missing a beat, he rolled and jumped to his feet, dry blades of grass an unwelcome distraction on his sweat-streaked torso.
“For some that’s not enough,” I said, shaken by the change in his demeanor. What on earth were we even talking about? Annoyed, I aimed a roundhouse kick at his nose. Lightning fast, he blocked, grabbed my heel, then—
Slam. My back hit rock hard earth. I gasped for air.
Focus, darn it!
Not easy with all that blasted skin. I jumped up and found him eyeing me while he wiped his forehead and neck with his discarded T-shirt. Despite the heat, the predatory look in his eyes sent a shiver racing down my back.
He tossed the T-shirt back on the grass. Before I had time to blink, he came at me again. Sidekick. I dodged, spun, drove an elbow between his shoulder blades. He folded, stumbled but took my ankles out from under me on the way down.
I tasted dirt. Blood rushed my eardrums.
He was on his feet and coming at me with renewed aggression. Crap, crap, crap! I’d asked for this, but I’d underestimated Jonas at full throttle.
His hook kick swiped my shoulder just as I jumped out of the way. I leaped at him with a double kick, my feet punishing his forearms as he blocked. But he’d found his rhythm, returning each strike and punch blow for blow until my muscles ached and every breath burned. It struck me we were perfectly matched in this arena.
Time to end this. I launched at him with a Tiger Claw to the neck, but he grabbed my good wrist, twisted my arm into a submission hold, and slammed me up against him. Hard.
Everything fell away.
Except for the burn where our skin touched.
The frantic rasp of our breathing.
In, out. In, out. So close I tasted sweat, dirt.
Jonas.
His heart hammered against his rib cage as though trying to crawl inside mine. I swallowed, licked dry lips.
His gaze zeroed in on the movement. “I’ll make you a deal.” Warm breath mixed with my own. “I won’t hold out if you don’t.”
His closeness fogged my brain, but one thing was clear—we weren’t talking about sparring.
A chair scraped the deck. Jonas loosened his hold. I slipped out of it and rushed for the back door, into the house. Away from him.
In the bathroom I splashed cold water on my face, a futile attempt to cool the heat that had taken over my entire body. When I looked up, Beth’s reflection stared at me from the vanity mirror.
“I thought you said you could handle this?” I couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or trying to smother a smirk.
I drank in gulps straight from the faucet, water sluicing down my face and the side of my neck. I took my time. When I was ready, I turned the tap off and wiped my mouth with the back of a shaky hand.
“I can,” I said, but my voice held more stubborn determination than actual conviction.
Tuesday night was Beth’s turn to cook. So after dinner, while she and Leo watched reruns of Seinfeld, Jonas and I found ourselves on cleanup duty. Jonas had the good sense not to mention the awkward ending to our training session. His silence helped, but I could have used some distance to accompany it. Instead, he hovered like an irritating insect, buzzing on the periphery of my awareness. He seemed to be everywhere, invading my space while we cleared the table, brushing up against me while we stacked the dishwasher.
By the time we’d washed and dried the pots and pans, I was ready to slam him up against the kitchen wall and tell him I’d take him up on his deal. I didn’t want to hold out anymore. I wanted him to get it over with and kiss me into oblivion.
So not handling this, Cora.
When Dad called I almost cried, I was so grateful for the distraction.
“Hey you.” He sounded tired and too far away.
“Hey. How’re things in Katherine?” I sagged against the kitchen counter.
“Hot and wet, as expected,” he said. “And you? Keeping out of trouble?”
Yep, right. I glanced across the room to the kitchen table where Jonas had hunkered down with the Bradbury collection I’d given him for his birthday. This house was huge. Couldn’t he find another darn room to read in? Annoyed, I strode past him and down the hallway toward the front door.
Warm evening air palmed the heated skin on my face when I slid outside. “Just spending time with Beth. We have a whole year to catch up on, remember?” I hated lying, but I couldn’t see a way around it.
“Hmm.” A pause. “Any visits from Markus?”
I rolled my eyes and sat down on the veranda steps. “No, no visits from Markus.”
“Oh.” Another pause. “I didn’t mean to scare him off.”
I almost laughed at the equal parts sincerity and triumph in his voice. “Don’t flatter yourself, Dad. Besides, we’re just friends.”
“Friends is good. And if it turns into more, slow is good, Cora. Trust me, slow works.” He sighed. “I wish I’d done slow.”
Did he mean Mom? I’d heard snippets of the story. He’d fallen hard and fast. They’d only known each other a month before Mom became pregnant with me.
“Was it a mistake, Dad? You and Mom?”
Silence again. A dog barked in the distance. Down the road someone butchered Für Elise on the piano. I waited. It was a long way from Sydney to the Northern Territory. Three and a half thousand kilometers, a huge distance for a question to travel. Especially one as heavy as this.
Just when I thought he wouldn’t answer, he did. “That’s hard to say. All I know is we made mistakes, some of them so big they became insurmountable.”
“And you think going slower would have helped?”
“It couldn’t have hurt. Maybe if we’d gone slower we would have tested our expectations of each other, seen if they were realistic.”
This was the most he’d ever spoken to me about his relationship with Mom. I didn’t want him to stop.
“What kind of expectations?”
On his end, the fridge door banged closed. Next, the pour of liquid into a glass. “Can we talk about this when I get home?”
I pressed the phone tighter to my ear. My free hand gripped the edge of the sandstone step I sat on. “I just want to know, Dad. How do you know if someone is right for you?” How much potential did you need to make things work?
He swallowed, beer maybe, or just a cold glass of water. “I can’t give you a litmus test for love, Cora. But when you strip everything else away, there has to be friendship and respect, and a resolve to act in the other’s best interest, even if that means sacrificing something of yourself.” He exhaled, long and loud. “It’s more about keeping promises than acting on feelings. That’s where your Mom and I fell short.”
This time I provided the silence. There really weren’t any winners when a marriage fractured, just painful splinters left under everyone’s skin. Was Jonas right? Was love not worth this kind of pain?
“Cora, sweetheart? You still there?”
I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Dad, I need to know, was it worth it? You and Mom?”
A long intake and release of breath floated down the line. “Yes, Cora. There are things I’d change, but I’d never wish them away. We did love each other, your mother and I. That love produced you, so it was more than worth it.”
Dad’s words soothed my uncertainty. It was worth it. Despite pain and loss, love was worth it. Still, there was no harm in being careful who you decided to get serious with.
“Enough about this. What have you and Beth been up to? Have you managed to drag her along to any more classes?”
“Ah, no. She’s not interested.”
“What about Jonas? Is he interested?”
Wasn’t that the million-dollar question? “I think I might be able to bring him around.” I paused, bracing myself for what I had to say next. “Listen, Dad, just so you know, I’m staying at the Leanders’ while you’re away.” I held my breath, waiting for the inevitable question.
“Why? I thought Beth was staying at our place? Is everything all right?”
I chewed on my lip, weighing up how much I could tell him without having him freak out. “Everything’s okay, Dad. There was just an incident after one of my classes. Some weirdo had a go at me, but I’m okay.”
“Had a go at you? What do you mean, had a go at you?”
I cringed at the worry in his voice. “Well…a guy tried to grab me, but we called the police and reported it, so there’s nothing to worry about, and I’m staying with Beth now, Helena insisted, and I’m okay, really.” My words spilled out into the warm night air.
“I’m coming home.”
“No!” God, he couldn’t come home! It was hard enough keeping Helena in the dark about the Groth Maar. “Cutting your trip short isn’t going to achieve anything. I’m safe, Dad. In fact, I have my own bodyguard. Jonas.” I pulled a face. “Helena’s orders. She was going to call you, but I begged her not to because I knew you’d freak out.”
“You were attacked! I’m your father.” His breath came down the phone line in choppy waves. “I think I’m entitled to freak out.”
I shifted, the sandstone suddenly uncomfortable. “Dad, listen. There is nothing you can do. Really. And isn’t this why you sent me along to the tae kwon do classes in the first place? So I could handle myself in exactly this type of situation?”
When his breath stopped crashing against the mouthpiece, I knew my reasoning was turning the tide.
“So Jonas is with you?”
“Yep.”
“All the time?”
“Yep.” All. The. Bloody. Time.
Another swallow from his glass and a shaky sigh. “All right, but promise me you’ll keep away from anything remotely dangerous.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, glad he couldn’t see my face, because he would have spotted the lie before I spoke it. “I promise.”
“All right, but you call the clinic if anything happens.”
“I will.”
I ended the call after that. The growing ball of guilt in my throat made further conversation difficult. I was lying to my father and was trapped in my best friends’ home. This has to end. Restless defiance pushed me up and off the stair and heading for next door. For my house.
“Cora, wait!”
I ignored Jonas and kept walking toward my letter b
ox. “Just checking the mail.” And making a point. Like I’d told him earlier, I would not be dictated to by demon scum.
The black BMW screeched out of the shadows. It climbed the curb the moment I stepped onto my nature strip. I turned in time to catch my panicked reflection in the tinted windows, then strong arms grabbed me and yanked me back against a solid body. We landed on the Leanders’ front lawn with an uncomfortable oomph.
“You okay?” Jonas’s ragged breath brushed my ear as his arms tightened around me.
“Yep.” Although my hands shook and my mouth had dried up.
I rolled off him and onto the grass just as the BMW’s taillights disappeared down the street. “You?”
Jonas nodded. “But don’t do that. Don’t scare me like that again.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry.” Stupid move.
He brushed my arm with the back of his hand, his eyes darker than usual in the faint streetlight. “I’ve got your back.”
I gave him a tight smile. “It’s time to do some baiting.”
His jaw clenched, but he knew I was right; I’d felt the burn of curium-colored eyes through those tinted windows.
We decided on Wednesday night. Helena was at a Law Society fundraiser till after midnight. With her safely out of the way, we had the perfect opportunity for some demon baiting.
The library parking lot was Beth’s idea. Deserted after nine, when the place closed, it was surrounded by dense bushland and well away from the main road. The perfect spot for mugging old ladies as they returned their Agatha Christies. Or kidnapping a Loose Thread stupid enough to leave the safety of her Guardian’s house in a bid to avoid an overdue fine.
We assumed, like that first time, the Groth Maar would come by car. This was crucial to our plan, because Leo and Beth waited hidden in a side street in Leo’s Corolla, ready to follow the demons to their hideout. If the hellhounds didn’t bring wheels, our plan would fizzle. It also meant they had a way of transporting me that defied the laws of physics—something I refused to think about.