by Vicki Essex
Something small and dark was inching across his throat. Fiona screamed and jerked out of his hold. “S-spider! Spider!”
Dom reached up, brushing the little creature away.
“Kill it, kill it, kill it!” Fiona cried, shrinking back. She cringed, her skin crawling.
“It’s gone.” Dom flicked on the light switch. The harsh bluish glare of the compact fluorescent blinded her momentarily. “Arachnophobia?”
“No. Well, yes. Let’s get out of here.” She pounded up the steps, careful not to touch anything.
When they reached the kitchen, Fiona kept shaking her hair.
“How about some tea?” Dom offered slowly, watching her nervous twitching with concern. “I’ve got this great jasmine green tea. It’s very good for soothing nerves.”
She gave her head one last shake before folding her hands and nodding resolutely.
“Sorry I screamed in your face,” she said, once they’d settled down with their little clay cups of tea. “I hate spiders.”
“I figured.”
“No, I mean, I really hate them.”
“That’s okay. Fear’s a good thing. It lets us know we’re alive.” He said softly, “Don’t tell anyone, but…I’m afraid of mice.”
“Mice?” She raised an eyebrow. “What’s so scary about them?”
“I just can’t stand all those squeaking noises, and their little pink tails…. And don’t get me started on rats!” He shuddered.
“I’d brave a vat of mice and rats over a tank of spiders any day.”
“Let’s make a deal then. I’ll get rid of all the spiders in your house if you get rid of any mice that show up in mine.” They laughed together.
Hearing about each other’s quirky phobias opened a door that Fiona forced herself to step through.
“I want to apologize,” she blurted, before pride could stop her, “for the way I’ve been treating you. Not just today, but from the moment we met. It’s just that…seeing Sean come home all roughed up…” She spread her hands helplessly. “I just blew up, and you were unfortunate enough to be in my line of fire. It wasn’t the best way to be welcomed into the neighborhood. Not at all.” Her apology loosened the knot in her gut.
Dom leaned forward. “Listen…it’s not my place to tell you how to raise your son. But I was bullied a lot as a kid, too, so I know what he’s going through.”
“You were bullied?” She had a hard time imagining anyone picking on him.
“You don’t have to be small or weak to be a victim. Just different.”
Sadly, Sean was all those things. “Try to understand. I don’t want Sean fighting. I don’t want him to think fists will solve all his problems. His father…” She hesitated. “My ex-husband wasn’t very tolerant or patient. He brought a lot of anger and violence into the house.”
In an instant, Dom’s expression turned dark and fierce. Fiona nearly inched away from him. “Did he hurt you? Did he hurt Sean?” His voice was low, dangerous, almost a growl. The hairs on her neck rose.
“No, no, Mitch wasn’t like that. I guess you could say it was verbal and emotional abuse.” But she refrained from admitting she had always been afraid he would snap one day and take his threats further.
“Sean’s had enough of that kind of fear in his life,” she went on. “I know the situation with those bullies is bad, but…” She trailed off. It was frustrating feeling so powerless, so inadequate, so incapable of protecting her son, the one person who mattered to her most.
“Let me teach Sean,” Dom said.
“What?”
“You said he’s been kicked out of Saturday fun camp. Sensei Miwa has a youth beginners’ class at nine in the morning on Saturdays. Bring him to the class, and I’ll keep an eye on him for the rest of the day while you work.”
“Absolutely not,” Fiona said, alarmed by the suggestion. “I barely know you.”
“You live across the street from me. And you work across the street from the dojo. Sensei Miwa will be on-site at all times. Sean’s perfectly safe.”
“I thought I made it clear I don’t want him learning how to fight.”
“He’d be learning self-defense,” Dom countered in his calm, resonant voice. “I can show him techniques to disable his opponents long enough that he could get away. It would be good for his self-confidence.”
“Look, I appreciate your offer, but Sean is my—”
“Do you think you can protect him when he hits thirteen? Fourteen? Seventeen? Twenty?”
Fiona breathed deeply, counting to ten and letting the tension drain from her. “I know you have ideas of what might benefit Sean, but this is something I need to work out on my own.”
Dom’s concerned expression told her he wasn’t going to push it, even if he also seemed to be sizing up an opponent.
“Promise me you’ll talk to him about it, at least. And that you’ll think about my offer,” he said.
As if. How could she possibly trust Dom with her son if she couldn’t trust herself with the man?
CHAPTER FOUR
A WEEK AND A HALF AFTER Dom’s arrival in town, mixed martial arts suddenly became the latest craze and Salmon River’s favorite sport. Fiona hadn’t realized just how well-known Dominic “The Dominator” Payette was until she started hearing his name on the lips of every customer at the bookstore.
From them she learned about his upcoming championship title match, and about the three exhibition matches he’d lost in the past few months. It was more than she really wanted or needed to know about her neighbor, but the details trickled in as steadily as the boys—and girls—who came in, wanting to learn more about the mixed martial arts hero.
“I guess I’d better stock up. I’m nearly out of books about MMA,” her boss, Marion Leeds, said as yet another parent and child walked out with a book about mixed martial arts. She flipped through a volume, grinning at the pictures of shirtless men grappling together. “That’s one heck of a sport.” She fanned herself.
“I’d hardly call punching and kicking someone until they bleed a sport,” Fiona said. To her, fighting was fighting, and self-defense was just another form of it. Sean should be learning to avoid violence. Besides, the last thing she wanted was for him to think he could actually take someone on and win. He was sure to get hurt.
Still, she knew Dom was at least partially right about her son’s self-confidence. Earlier in the week, she’d gone to pick him up from school, and found Rene Kirkpatrick’s gang taunting him from the other side of the fence. “Baby boy, baby boy, mama’s little baby boy!” they’d cried.
Sean’s face had gone nearly purple with suppressed rage. Fiona’s praise for his keeping it together was met by the most scathing backlash yet.
“Well, someone calls it a sport,” Marion countered. “And if it gets people reading and buying, it’s all good to me. I’m going to see what I can order in for a fast turnaround.” She headed to the back room, tucking the book filled with semiclad men under her arm.
Sean had a doctor’s appointment on Main Street after school. Fiona picked him up and parked back at the bookstore. As they passed the dojo, Sean was drawn to the huge windows.
“Hey, Mom, look, it’s Dom!”
She balked, but followed him to the window. Dom was wearing a gi—the traditional white karate uniform—his chest bare beneath the loose-fitting top, intense concentration carved into his face. He was taking his frustrations out on a punching bag braced by Mako Miwa.
Sean rapped on the glass and yelled, “Dom! Hi, Dom!”
“Sean, that’s rude.” Fiona wanted to hustle her son away before she was forced to meet Dom’s gaze. “He’s training. He doesn’t need to be bothered.”
But Dom turned and said something to his teacher, who nodded and went to the door.
Mako Miwa was Salmon River’s only Japanese resident, so Fiona knew him on sight. He was a compact man, half a head shorter than Dom, neither fat nor thin, with slick black hair and near-black eyes. His air of dignity and serenity told Fi
ona he’d seen the greater part of his life.
She remembered him once waving at her and Sean after a particularly nasty fistfight between Sean and some kids from school. Everyone else in town had steered clear of them, but Mako Miwa had seemed unaware of their plight, and had simply smiled.
The karate master grinned at them now, hands clasped together. “Dom would like to see you,” he said after he’d introduced himself. “Please, come in.”
“We really shouldn’t. Sean has a doctor’s appointment in about fifteen minutes….”
“Just a quick visit?” Mako suggested.
“Please, Mom? Can we?”
She stared down at her son and gave in.
Stepping past the threshold, Sean removed his shoes. “You have to do that, Mom,” he insisted. “It’s not polite to wear your shoes inside.”
“Well, that, and it gets the mats muddy,” Mako said. “You know something about dojos, then?”
“Just what I read in manga and on the net.”
Mako chuckled. “I never thought I’d see the day when Japanese comics would be a big thing with kids in America, especially in a town as small as this.”
Fiona was impressed by what her son had learned. It shouldn’t have surprised her, though; he was a gifted child. She just hoped he wasn’t getting any crazy ideas that he could do any of the things the characters in the comic books could. Like helicopter-kicking a bad guy, or upper-cutting them into the sky.
Don’t be ridiculous. Sean was smarter than that. Fiona had grown up with the likes of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, and she’d turned out fine…. Though admittedly, dropping an anvil on her ex-husband’s head would have a certain appeal.
Dom slung a towel over his shoulders as he approached. “Hi, Sean, Fiona. How are you two doing?”
Fiona felt a tingle all the way to her toes. When had a man’s sweat become an aphrodisiac?
“Great,” Sean chirped. “What were you doing just then? Was that a kata?”
“Just a training exercise to focus my coordination.”
“It looked really cool. What else can you do?”
“Well…”
“Can you do spinning roundhouse kicks? Or flips? I’ve been looking stuff up on the internet that I want to learn.”
Dom glanced at Fiona. “Oh, so you told him?”
Uh-oh.
“Told me what?” Sean looked from one adult to the other.
Before Fiona could find the right words, Dom said, “I talked to your mom about you coming to the dojo on Saturdays while she’s at work. I’ve already cleared it with Sensei Miwa.”
Sean’s mouth dropped open.
“Not that I consider myself a babysitter of any kind.” Mako crossed his arms over his chest. “The dojo is a place of serious business and study. I would require your son to participate in lessons and chores, as all the other students do. He’d have to help keep the dojo clean and raise funds for its upkeep. Most important, he’d have to learn to respect his elders and his fellow students, and uphold the teachings of karate-do and martial arts.”
The gravity of his words settled over Fiona’s shoulders like a mantle. She felt trapped, caught between two adults and her son, who seemed to like the prospect of doing chores in some smelly gym. She grasped for her only real excuse. “I don’t think I can afford it right now—”
“You can take it out of the college fund Grandma and Grandpa set up for me,” Sean volunteered eagerly. “That’s what it’s for, right? Learning? I could learn stuff here!”
Fiona closed her eyes. She wished Sean hadn’t mentioned his well-padded trust fund. The money would have gone a long way to helping her make ends meet, but she’d refused to rely on her parents for anything. They’d sided with Mitch when he’d been hauled off to jail, and had berated her for not standing up for her husband, despite everything he’d put his family through.
She hadn’t seen her parents since she and Sean had moved from New Hampshire, and they hadn’t tried to contact her, either, not even to talk to their grandson. The only things still connecting them was that big chunk of money. It would be used when Sean did eventually go to college, but until then, Fiona was adamant about supporting him on her own.
“I really can’t talk about this right now,” she said, glancing at her watch pointedly. “Sean’s doctor’s appointment…”
“Of course.” Dom nodded. “Just promise me you’ll talk things over with Sean before you make any decisions.”
She shot him a look. What kind of person did he think she was?
In the waiting room at the doctor’s, Sean pleaded with her to let him take karate lessons. It quickly degraded into an argument that pingponged between petulant cries of “Please, Mom,” and her deadpanned “I’ll think about it.”
The battle continued on the drive home. But when he couldn’t get her to say yes, Sean stomped up to his room.
She was trying hard to see Dom’s side of things, she really was. Sean could use every ounce of self-esteem he could get. But what if he learned the wrong lessons from these martial arts classes? She thought about Dom driving those powerful fists into the leather punching bag, his furious concentration—and all she could think of was Mitch punching yet another hole in the drywall, or smashing another plate on the floor and muttering how one day it would be her face.
Fiona shuddered. If she allowed Sean, whose temper sometimes flared like his father’s, to learn these deadly skills… What if he used his karate moves on someone and that person got hurt?
There was another reason she didn’t want Sean going to the dojo. Dominic Payette was very much the kind of man Fiona used to have a thing for, the charming bad boy who could have her at his feet with a mere smile and a crook of his finger. Just as Mitch had done.
She couldn’t deny the fighter’s magnetic attraction. Leaving her son in Dom’s care would force her to be in regular contact with him. And she could already feel her defenses lowering around him.
Fundamentally, she simply could not accept Dom as an appropriate role model for Sean. He beat people up for a living. There was nothing about that she could respect.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud thumping noise followed by a crash. She pounded up the stairs.
“Sean, are you okay?” She burst into his room and stared at the carnage.
A shelf she’d put up above the bed hung loosely from one bracket. Books and knickknacks were scattered everywhere, and the ceramic Winnie the Pooh reading lamp Sean had owned since he was a baby had been smashed to bits. Her son stood wide-eyed on the bed.
“I didn’t do it!”
Then Fiona saw the video clip playing on Sean’s computer. In it, a man in a gi performed a high kick, breaking a wood board with his shin. The title of the video: How To Do a Roundhouse Kick.
Sean was smart. He had the internet, and even if she cut that off, she knew he’d just go to the library. He would learn whatever he wanted in whatever way he could, and there was no way to stop him short of tying him to the bed.
So she had a choice: he could learn martial arts from a master in a controlled environment, or he could teach himself until he broke something else. Like his neck.
Fiona sagged in defeat.
Dom had won this round.
CHAPTER FIVE
“DON’T DO ANYTHING you’re not comfortable doing,” Fiona told her eager son as she walked him to the dojo the following Saturday. She’d had about three dozen misgivings since she’d informed Dom she would take him up on his offer. But she couldn’t change her mind now. No one was available to babysit. Sean had nowhere else to go. “And don’t be surprised if you don’t get things right away. Karate’s hard.”
“I know that, Mom.” He rolled his eyes.
“Be respectful toward Mr. Miwa, you hear? He’s allowing you to go to these classes and stay at the dojo all day for next to nothing, so if he asks you to help clean up or tells you to sit and be quiet, you do it.” She amended quickly, “But don’t do anything that feels wrong.�
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Sean stared at her, confused. “How do I know if something feels wrong?”
“You just do.” She wished she had a more concrete answer.
When they walked in, Dom was warming up, doing push-ups on his knuckles. Mako looked on. The dojo owner had changed into a gi, as well, presumably for the class he was about to teach.
“Good morning, Fiona, Sean,” Dom called as he finished his reps.
Sean toed his shoes off and quickly knelt at the edge of a mat. “Good morning, Sensei Miwa. Good morning, Sensei Payette.” He prostrated himself, and Fiona felt a strange mixture of pride and protectiveness. Was he supposed to act so humbly? What kind of self-confidence was kowtowing to people supposed to inspire?
Mako made a little chuckling noise. “And I didn’t even have to show him. He’s good.”
“He’s got internet access,” Fiona said wryly, and briefly told the two men about the incident with the shelf.
“Already looking to do advanced lessons, I see.” Dom clapped Sean’s shoulder. “But as Sensei is fond of saying, the tree cannot grow until its roots are set.”
Sean blinked up at him. “Huh?”
“It means you can’t advance your knowledge until you have the basics down.”
“Oh.” Sean’s forehead furrowed in thought. “I’m ready to learn.”
“Here.” Mako handed him a white gi. “Get changed, and then I’ll walk you through the dojo etiquette.” He pointed to the change room in the back. The boy leaped to his feet.
The karate master turned to Fiona. “Your son is in good hands here, Ms. MacAvery. Dominic is an excellent teacher, and I’m not too bad myself.”
Fiona glanced uneasily between the men. It felt like the first day of school all over again, giving up her son to strangers. But Sean was ten now, not four. She had to trust he would be all right. “I’m right across the street if you need me. If he gets hurt, please let me know right away.”
“He’ll be fine, Fiona,” Dom said. “Trust me.”
SEAN PROVED TO BE an eager student and an adept learner. He knew exactly where to sit in the dojo when the beginner class came, greeted all the students with somewhat timid deference, but treated them with curiosity and respect. Dom was impressed.