Burn (12 page)

The light in her eyes dimmed. “I used to. I just . . .
does it matter why?”

“You’re the only woman I’ve ever known who doesn’t
like chocolate.” He decided to let her off the hook, for
now, to fully restore her good mood. “I’m glad I found
out about your aversion to chocolate now instead of later.
I was planning to take you to Bissinger’s after we go out for dinner. They’ve got the best chocolates in town.”

“I invited
you
,” Cinder reminded him. “I’ll choose
the place. And I’m paying.”

“What do you do?”

“Do for what?”

“For a job. For a living.” He shifted, lying on his side to fully face her.

Cinder wallowed in the depths of his eyes. The high
windows allowed enough bright, clean light to illuminate
the flecks of gold and grey muddying the inky blue-green
o
f his gaze. His hair had grown a lot since she first met
him. Just short of being too long for military service, it
was the perfect length to run her fingers through. He
tried to guess her occupation, but Cinder heard few of his
words, not when watching his lips shape them held her
full attention.

A late summer tan darkened his complexion, doing
nothing to conceal the shadow of his beard and mus
tache. His face, so overwhelmingly masculine, was a
thing of beauty that made it hard for Cinder to look away
or think about anything other than touching him.

Even his nose was attractive, and Cinder typically
gave noses little regard. Gian’s was straight, in excellent
proportion to his face, slightly wide at its base, with per
fect nostrils. He had a very shallow cleft at the tip of his
nose, and Cinder wondered what it would feel like
against the tip of her tongue.

“Hey,” Gian said. “You still there?”

She gave herself a mental shake. “I’m sorry. My mind
wandered.”

“Where to?”

“Not far.”

One side of his mouth rose in an amused grin. “I’m
glad you’re back. So what do you do when you’re not
throwing me around Sheng Li?”

She traced the pattern of the sugar granules on top of
her cookie. “You give me too much credit.”

“Not at all. You’ve developed so much faster than I
thought you would. I wish all my students were so
dedicated.”

“
All your classes are full,” Cinder said. “The women
in Zae’s class get there twenty minutes early, just so they can get good spots on the mat.”

“Sure, if the good spots are the ones closest to Chip.
My female students love him, even the little ones in our
grasshopper class.”

“Why did you leave the Marines?”

“Why did you leave the East coast?”

The smile left Gian’s eyes. Cinder’s hand involun
tarily closed around her cookie, breaking it into pieces.
“I—” they began at once.

“It’s complicated,” they said in sync.

They laughed, which broke the momentary tension.

“Maybe we should stick to the light stuff and save the
heavy duty goods for our second date,” Gian suggested.
“Planning ahead?”

“Absolutely.”

“When would you like to have dinner?”

“Tonight.” He held out his hand for her cookie
pieces.

She gave them to him. “We have a lesson tonight.”

“We just gave blood.” He ate the remains of her
cookie in one bite and brushed the crumbs from his shirt.
“We should take it easy for the rest of the day. We can make the class up tomorrow, if you can get off work.”

“I’m a graphic designer. Self-employed. I work from
home. I come and go as I please.”

“A graphic designer, huh? I figured you for the creative type.”

“I don’t know how creative I am, but I do okay.”

“Thank you,” he said earnestly.

“For what?”

“For trusting me.”

She squinted in curiosity. “I don’t—”

“You just told me what you do for a living.”

She replayed the last part of their conversation in her
head. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know. But I’m glad you did.”

“What made you decide to start your own karate
studio?”

“I wanted my own business, so I thought I’d do some
thing that I know. Martial arts.”

Cinder swung her legs over the side of her gurney.
Propping her left elbow on the inclined back, she braced her left hand against her head and crossed her legs. “Did
you learn all those fighting techniques in the Marines?”

“You read the promotional material in my lobby?

“No,” she admitted. “Chip told me that you two were
in the service together. How old is Sheng Li?”

“Eight years.”

“Zae told me that you’ve won a couple of business
awards from city hall, and that
Riverfront Times
voted
Sheng Li Best Workout for the past three years in a row.”

“I couldn’t have done it without Zae and Colin.” He
lay back on the gurney, his fingers laced behind his head,
cradling it. “Colin approved the loan that helped me get
the studio off the ground. He and Zae were the first ones at the grand opening.” He grinned. “They and their kids
were the
only
ones at the grand opening.” Gian rolled onto
his side again to face Cinder, who listened attentively.

“
The place was a ghost town until Zae got involved,”
he said. “She strategized, rallied her troops, and swept
Webster Groves, Maplewood, Kirkwood, Glendale,
Oakland, Richmond Heights, Clayton—she hit every
town between here and the riverfront. I’d never seen any
thing like it. If she’d joined the Marines, the war in Iraq
would have been over in two months.”

“She’s a great general.” Cinder smiled. “She’ll fight to
the death and she’ll never leave a man behind.”

“She called in favors and gave me her connections. I
got spots on local morning news shows, premium booths
at health and fitness expos. She put me in touch with an
insurance agent who gave me great deals. She hooked me
up with the athletic department at her university so I
could hire assistants who worked for college credit
instead of money. That’s how I found Cory. She got sen
iors involved with Sheng Li by encouraging me to create
a low-impact exercise program for the elderly. One of her
most brilliant ideas was for me to get involved with the
after-school enrichment programs in the Webster Groves’
elementary schools. Each of my instructors goes to a
school, and he teaches—”

“Why don’t you have female instructors?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you have any female instructors?”

“I have one, Aja. She’s a part-timer who teaches the
Dangerous Housewives self-defense and strength condi
tioning class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morn
ings, so you haven’t run into her yet. Aja is the only
woman who’s ever applied to work for me,” he said.

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know.” He was genuinely bewildered. “I’m an
equal-opportunity employer.”

“Have you tried recruiting female instructors?”

“Are you conducting an investigation of my hiring
practices?”

“No.” She giggled.

“Then can I finish my story?”

“Please do.”

“The after-school programs opened the floodgates,”
he said. “Overnight I went from twenty percent enroll
ment to one hundred percent. I had to turn students
away. When Zae suggested I develop a self-defense class
for housewives, I didn’t think anyone would be inter
ested. But I ended up having to schedule two more ses
sions to keep up with the demand.”

“Zae is the best friend I’ve ever had,” Cinder said.
“She’s a blessing.”

“When Colin died, I tried to be the kind of friend to
her that she had been to me,” Gian said. “She and the
kids kind of closed ranks. Sheng Li was the last loan
Colin approved before he got sick. When he died, I think
Zae invested in Sheng Li’s success because it was some
thing Colin wanted to see do well. Either that, or she just
wanted free classes for the rest of her life.”

“Is that how you repaid her?”

“She wouldn’t take money, and I had to offer her
something.” He laughed. “About a year after Colin
passed away, I tried to fix her up with a couple of dif
ferent guys I knew in the service. She scared off one of t
hem, and she challenged the other to an arm wrestling
match. He lost, so she wouldn’t go out with him. This
guy was a serious jarhead. I think he bench pressed two-
ten, and she beat him.”

“That’s one of her favorite tricks.” Cinder laughed.
“She’s got long forearms, and she’s freakishly strong. It’s
physics. Chances are good she can beat most guys.”

“You’ve known her a long time?”

“She was taking a few classes at Boston University
when I was there,” Cinder said. “We had modern com
munication together. I didn’t know she was ten years
older than me until I met her kids. The twins were almost
eight then, and C.J. was three. Colin was working at
Fleet Bank. When Fleet was bought out, Colin took a job
with Heartland Bank in St. Louis, and they moved to
Missouri. Zae and I kept in touch. I saw the Richardsons
every time they went back to Massachusetts to visit
Colin’s family.”

“I remember a trip Zae made alone about a year and a
half ago,” Gian said. “She told me she was going to . . .”
He thought a moment. “I think she said Lancaster-on
the-Sea, something like that?”

Cinder dropped her eyes. “Manchester-by-the-Sea,”
she whispered.

“Then about six months later, you moved here. Zae
didn’t say a thing about you, other than that she had a
friend staying at her house.”

Cinder twisted the tiny gold post earring in her left
earlobe. Her gaze never left Gian. “We should go.”

“
Why?” Sure that he’d pressed her one time too many,
Gian wanted to kick himself. “If I’ve said something
inappropriate, or—”

“I think they want us to leave,” she said simply.

Gian finally noticed that the sun had left their side of
the building, and the overhead fluorescents had been
turned on. Every gurney in the canteen was empty, but
for his and Cinder’s, and the volunteers were bagging up
leftover cookies and taking out the trash. The American Red Cross workers and their refrigerated cases of blood
were gone.

“We closed the joint,” Cinder said. “Are you hungry?”

“God, yes.” He patted his belly and hopped off the
gurney. “May I?” He offered his hand to Cinder to help
her down.

In the course of their private lessons, his hands had
been all over her. But slipping her hand in his in response
to his gesture of gentlemanly courtesy opened a new pos
sibility for intimacy, one Gian hoped Cinder wanted to
explore as much as he did.

* * *

“We were in line at Michael’s Arts & Crafts in
Saugus,” Cinder said through her giggles, “and there was
this guy in front of us. He was young, probably about twenty-five or so. Blond hair, blue eyes, kinda muscular.
The frat boy type, but a little older.” She used her chop
sticks to swirl a piece of spider maki roll in a tiny white
dish where Gian had mixed a pinch of wasabi into a small
quantity of soy sauce. “He’s buying this big ol’ poster-
sized frame. Zae looks at it and says, ‘You have a lovely
family.’ The guy eyeballs her like she’s got horns, and he says, ‘This isn’t my family. This picture comes with the frame.’ ” Cinder laughed and tucked her sushi into her
mouth. Shoving it into her cheek, she continued her
story. “Zae waits a second or two, then points to the
woman in the frame and goes, ‘Your wife is beautiful.’ ”