Burn (Indigo)

by Hubbard, Crystal

  “There’s no room for pretty in karate?”

  Gian almost cupped her face to tip it toward the skylight to better gaze upon the prettiest thing he’d ever seen in karate. “Yes, but we have different words for it. Like power. Dignity. Respect. Dedication. Confidence. Courage. Determination. Loyalty. Survival. Those words define pretty at Sheng Li.”

  “How do you define karate?”

  “Karate comes from the Japanese words ‘kara,’ which means empty, and ‘te,’ which means hand. Karate is a form of Japanese self defense where the hands and feet are used to strike—” He shot a fist past her and drew it back so fast, she didn’t see it, only felt it move the air. “And block.” He executed a rapid series of precise arm movements designed to keep blows from his head and upper torso. In his sleeveless jacket, the muscles of his shoulders and arms bunched and lengthened with power and grace. “At Sheng Li we teach a modified form of karate that combines several styles of martial arts.”

  He loosely rested his hands on his trim hips. “The Sheng Li technique borrows heavily from Thailand’s muy thai, eskrima from the Phillippines, Japanese ninjutsu, Korean taekwondo, Malaysian silat and Russian sambo. We’ll take it slow,” he assured her in response to her hor rified expression. “But by the time we’re done, you’ll be a lethal weapon. There will be very few situations in which you can’t handle yourself.”

  Her head bobbed slightly, uncertainly.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, sensai.”

  He smiled a little. “Very good.”

  “I heard Zae call her teacher that.”

  “It’s good to know she uses the proper terms of respect, even if she doesn’t mean them.”

  * * *

  Forty minutes into the lesson, Gian picked her up from the mat for the third time in a row. “You’re not focused,” he said firmly. “Get your head in this or one of us is going to get hurt.” He showed her the fighting stance again, getting her back into proper starting position. “Keep your knees slightly bent, your right foot forward, and evenly distribute your weight. Good solid footing makes it harder for an opponent to knock you over, and you’ll get more power behind your blows.”

  She nodded, giving herself a chance to catch her breath and wipe sweat from her forehead before she copied his movements.

  “I know this is a lot to put together all at once, so just watch me while I talk you through the low block again,” he said. “Your blocking arm will slice down in front while you bend your front leg and straighten your back leg. Snap your hips,” he said, his actions following his words, “to get the most power from the block. You’re going to use your opponent’s energy against him. Make him tire himself out trying to make contact while you use his momentum to deflect his blows.” Gian shook his head, throwing sweat across the mat. “You ready?”

  She raised her fists in a fighting stance.

  Gian threw a punch. It wasn’t hard, but it had enough force to send her back a step when she failed to block it and caught it in her shoulder.

  “What’s the matter?” Gian relaxed his position. “I think my timing is off.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He went to a corner cupboard and opened it to retrieve two white hand towels. Mopping his face with one, he tossed the other to his sweaty student.

  “I know what you meant.” She blotted the back of her neck and the shadowy crevice between her breasts. “Can we try that block again?”

  “Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

  “It’s nothing.” She tossed her towel to the base of the mirror lining one wall, where it landed next to Gian’s. She assumed the fighting stance, her brow creased, her jaw clenched. She held his gaze.

  The language of her big brown eyes and her body communicated a message with which Gian was all too familiar. Wounded warrior, he thought, naming it. But what he said was, “Then it won’t hurt to tell me about nothing.”

  Her fists clenched tighter, but then she dropped them at her sides and brought her feet together. “They have a pool. About me.”

  Looking at the floor, Gian gripped his biceps and bounced on the balls of his feet.

  Cinder touched his forearm, drawing his attention back to her. “You know about it,” she stated simply.

  His eyebrows arched toward his hairline. A half smile softened his features.

  Cinder placed her hands on her hips. “How much?” He shrugged. “Ten bucks.”

  A fine, feminine eyebrow lifted.

  Gian stared at his feet. “Ten on New Beginning. Twenty on Fugitive.”

  “Fugi—!” She choked back the rest of the word, turned, and started for the exit.

  “C’mon, don’t go.” Gian trotted after her. He circled in front of her to bar her getaway. “Nobody meant to hurt you.”

  “It takes more than speculations to hurt me.”

  It took Gian a moment to correctly read the slight flare of her nostrils and the heat brightening her eyes. That more than speculations had hurt her was a given. Even so, no one liked being talked about unkindly. “None of us meant to disrespect you. People want to know you. That’s all.”

  “They want to know about me,” she said, a tremble in her voice. “Not one person in this town has expressed an interest in getting to know me.”

  “From what I’ve heard, you haven’t made it easy.” She flinched. “Just because people don’t have anything better to do than talk about other people—”

  “Karl says that your apartment is like a fortress, and—” he cut in.

  She gritted her teeth. “I need to feel safe.”

  “From what?” He stepped closer to her, perhaps unconsciously moving to protect her.

  “From my—” She stopped herself. “It’s none of your business. It’s no one’s business but mine why I came here, or who I socialize with. I don’t owe you or anyone else any explanations.” Once more, she turned to go. “Why don’t you ask Zae if you want to know every little thing about me? She’s the only friend I have here.”

  “I don’t do that.” He caught her arm and reeled her back. “If I want to know something about you, I’ll ask you myself.” He freed her arm and admonished her. “You came here so I could teach you how to stand up for yourself. Here’s lesson one: don’t run out on me if I get close to a nerve. Stand or surrender. Those are your choices. When you’re in my dojo, running is not an option.”

  Her voice quivered. “Has it ever occurred to you that sometimes running is the only thing you can do to stay alive? Or to keep from killing someone else?”

  “Lady, I spent ten years in Special Ops. I’ve been in situations you couldn’t imagine in your worst nightmares, and not once did it occur to me to run. You’re gonna learn that about me.”

  “Don’t you need to learn things about me?” she challenged. “You never even asked my name!”

  Her accusation might have stung if not for the revelation he was about to share with her. “I don’t need to know your name. I know you.”

  Her breathing deepened, her skin turning to goose flesh. His earnest declaration started her heart pumping in ways exercise couldn’t. If any other man had said that to her, chances were good that she would have been packed and on her way out of Webster Groves within hours. But Gian’s certainty gave her a sense of relief and comfort she hadn’t experienced in a very long time.

  “It’s Cinder,” she told him. “Cinder White.”

  He thrust forward a hand. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

  Slipping her hand into his intensified the goose bumps rising along her limbs. His big hand swallowed hers, thrilling it with its warmth and roughness. He gave her hand a quick pump before briefly coddling it in both of his. Cinder believed that you could learn a lot about a person from a handshake, and Gian’s told her that he was someone she could trust. Eventually.

  “Who are you?” He still held her hand.

  “I didn’t run away. I relocated. It’s not the same thing.”

  He tried a different questio
n. “Why did you come to Webster Groves?”

  “I wanted to live someplace quiet and clean. . . . .” She took a deep breath. “And my best friend lives here.” “Zae Richardson?”

  She nodded.

  “Zae’s a pain in my whole ass when it comes to class, but she’s a real good friend to have.”

  Curiosity brought her eyebrows a bit closer together, but before she could ask the question perched on her tongue, a knock on the bamboo door frame interrupted her.

  “Excuse me,” Chip said, leaning into the studio. “It’s six-thirty, Gian. Pritchard Hok’s people just called. Says he’s running late but that he’ll be here in about thirty minutes.”

  “Which means he’ll be here in twenty,” Gian sighed. “He’s Japanese, and punctuality is very important to him.” He turned to Cinder. “I need to finish some paperwork, shower, and get pretty for a meeting, but I also need you to fill out some forms.”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  “Chip, there’s a receipt and a stack of enrollment forms on my desk,” Gian said. “Would you give them to Miss White on her way out and lock up for me?”

  “Sure thing,” Chip responded before disappearing into the office.

  “Lesson one is in the bag,” Gian smiled as he bowed to Cinder. “You did good.”

  “Thank you, sensai,” Cinder replied, returning his bow. They left the studio, bowing to the mat as they did so.

  “Five-thirty Monday?” Gian directed to Cinder before taking a seat at his desk.

  “I’ll be here.”

  When she turned, Chip met her with a stack of papers. “Here’s your receipt and your enrollment forms, Miss . . . ?”

  Cinder glanced back at Gian. “White. Cinder White.”

  “Pretty name.” Chip’s dimples teased in and out of his smile. “It’s sure better than Chip.”

  “Chip isn’t a nickname?” Cinder chuckled.

  Gian’s head snapped up from the document he had been reading. Cinder’s hesitant laugh had drawn his attention, but her smile kept it. The smile vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared, but its afterimage burned in Gian’s mind. He sat back heavily in his chair, totally confused.

  Cinder was beautiful, unquestionably. Her somber brown eyes looked black everywhere other than in the bright light of the private studio. The warmth of her dark skin contrasted beautifully with her chilly demeanor. Her full lips constantly drew his eye, whether pursed in concentration or shaping her words, but when she pulled them into that brief smile, Gian had suddenly wanted to fly across the room and grab her by the shoulders. Not because she had smiled, but because the smile had been spent on Chip.

  Typically not prone to jealousy, Gian didn’t know what to do about the scene unfolding before him.

  “My daddy’s name is Charles Avery Kish Jr.,” Chip started, “so when I was born, my parents named me Charles Avery, too. Only I wasn’t number two, I was the third, so they called me Trip, for triple. My big sister, who was three at the time, couldn’t say Trip. She called me Chip, and it stuck. I’ve been Chip ever since.”

  “That’s an interesting story,” Cinder said politely. She caught Gian looking at her. “I’ll drop these forms off tomorrow morning,” she told him. “Goodnight.” She gave Chip another brief smile and headed for the locker room.

  “Miss White, I’m done for the day,” Chip said, following. “Do you need a ride home?”

  Gian bolted upright in his chair.

  “No, I’m within walking distance,” she said.

  “It’s a nice night,” Chip said. “Let me change out of these pajamas and I’ll walk with you. That is, if you wouldn’t mind the company.”

  Gian watched, every bit as vested in her answer as Chip seemed to be.

  Cinder’s right hand worried over her left a few times before she cleared her throat. “I, uh . . .” She cut a glance at Gian.

  He forced his eyes back to the Pritchard Hok Industries documents on his desk, but not before he noticed the way her blush deepened her complexion to a shade of beauty that put him in the mind of slow, deep kisses and sweaty bodies grasping in the dark.

  “You know what, maybe next time,” Chip said amiably—to Gian’s relief—just as Cinder replied, “Give me five minutes?”

  Chip’s dimples deepened.

  Gian’s face fell.

  “See you out front, then,” Chip said, and then trotted off to the men’s locker room.

  At the door, Cinder looked over her shoulder at Gian. “Have a good weekend, sensai.”

  Even though his document was upside down, Gian continued to study it. He grunted his acknowledgement of her parting words, looking up only after he heard the soft slap of her bare feet departing toward the locker rooms.

  Chapter 3

  “Zae speaks so highly of you and Mr. Piasanti,” Cinder said quietly. “She mentioned that you were in the Marines.”

  “Yeah, Gian and I served in Yemen, the Gulf, Mogadishu. He was my commanding officer.” He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his baggy cargo shorts. “Saved my life a couple of times.”

  Cinder slowed her pace and glanced at Chip. “Really?”

  “Oh, hell yeah. I wouldn’t be talking to you right now if Gian hadn’t carried my ass through two miles of rebel fire in Mogadishu.”

  They stopped at the corner of Lockwood and Gore to wait for a car to pass before crossing the street. “How long were you in the service together?”

  “Five years.” Chip slipped Cinder’s gym bag from her shoulder and slung it over his own, and he continued his story before she could protest. “I’d been in the service for two years before I was reassigned to Gian’s Force Recon company. Gian had worked his way up to Special Ops by the time he was twenty-five. He enlisted right after high school.”

  “What are ‘ops’?”

  “Operations. Our missions were highly classified.”

  “And highly dangerous?”

  “And how.” Chip chuckled somberly.

  Chip took Cinder’s hand and started across Lockwood, waving a hand in gratitude when a considerate driver allowed them to cross. As soon as they hit the opposite curb, Cinder slipped her hand from his. “Is Gian from Missouri?”

  “Yeah, he grew up in South St. Louis, on The Hill.” “Which hill?”

  “The Hill,” Chip said. “A lot of Italian immigrants settled between South Kingshighway and Hampton Avenue. It used to be called Dego Hill, now it’s just The Hill, thank goodness. Gian’s people have lived there since the Piasantis came to the States from Italy. Gian’s mom makes the best meatballs, I swear, they—”

  “Chip,” Cinder started softly, “if you don’t want to tell me about the time you and Gian spent in the service, you don’t have to.”

  “No, no, it’s fine. I don’t mind talking about it. I’m glad to talk about it with you.” A flash of his blue eyes and friendly dimples assured Cinder that he was telling the truth. “Our mission in Mogadishu was our last. Gian decided not to re-up when he left Special Ops, and I was discharged to go home to—”

  “Why didn’t Gian want to re-up?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. He never said. The USMC wasn’t too eager to let a good commander like Gian go, so they offered him a position with their training school in the Ozarks. He helped beat grunts into shape for a few years, then decided to open a school of his own to teach the fighting techniques he’d learned over the years. That’s how Sheng Li was born.”

  “Why did he pick Webster Groves?” Cinder stepped aside to allow a group of noisy, pierced, and tattooed teenagers dressed in black and purple to pass between her and Chip on the narrow sidewalk. “Does he have family here, or a girlfriend?”

  “I don’t know why he settled in Webster Groves,” Chip said. “He’s the reason I came here, though.”

  They were passing the Webster Groves town hall when a woman in a sharp business ensemble stopped opening her car door to stare at Chip. Cinder glanced back after they had passed her to see that the woman
’s line of sight arrowed directly at the seat of Chip’s shorts.

  Chip continued to talk about his experiences in the service, but Cinder watched him more than listened to him. An orange Tennessee Volunteers T-shirt hung off his broad shoulders, the worn fabric nicely showing off the carved muscles of his upper arms and back. Cinder’s gaze, and that of a couple of female pedestrians, followed the movement of Chip’s hand when he mindlessly raised his T-shirt to scratch his belly, casually exposing the stacked muscles of his runway-ready abs and the trail of golden hair adorning them.

  Cinder examined him from head to toe as one would take in the details of a museum exhibit. From his big feet in their plastic and foam flip flops to the chaos of thick curls atop his head, Chip was a beautiful man. He was a nice one too, who was walking her home, carrying her gym bag, and who’d held her hand to cross the street.

  “I was in Nashville recuperating,” Chip was saying by the time Cinder transferred her attention from his looks to his words.

  “Recuperating from what?” she asked.

  “Somebody always comes out on the bad end in a fight. In our last one, it was us.”

  “What happened?”

  “Our last mission was . . . challenging.” He sighed. “I got shot in the leg and nearly bled out in the field, and by field I mean a grass hut village surrounded by wasteland and enemy troops for ten miles in every direction.”

  She looked at him. He stared at his feet as they walked, his mind clearly in a time and place that etched fine lines around his youthful eyes.

  “We lost four men before we could get a signal strong enough to radio for an extraction,” he went on. “The hardest part was getting to the extraction point two miles away.”

  “Gian carried you?”

  He raised his head and stared forward. “The whole two miles. He didn’t break stride or stumble once. He led his men through gunfire and mortar rounds, and he did it with my dead weight over his shoulder. Most people can’t even imagine what that must have been like.”