Star Bright (35 page)

Only marginally. Her backside was pressed against him, and that unnerved her. His body felt like a steel wall, with all of her soft, round places giving way to his hardness. How was she supposed to think clearly while he held her like this?

“Okay,” he said again. Then, after a brief silence, “Where were we?”

The fact that he couldn’t remember told her that he was as aware of her body as she was of his. “You’re Peter, and I’m supposed to get away from you.”

“Right.” She heard him swallow—a hollow
plunk
near her right ear. “I’ve come up behind you, caught you by surprise. Reaction time is very important in situations like this. He’s stronger than you are. He’s taller. He outweighs you. If you give him time to maximize his hold on you or allow him to anticipate your countermove, your ass will be grass. So we’re gonna work on automatic responses to attack, practicin’ the moves over and over so you can do ’em without thinkin’. Understand?”

What Rainie understood was that
Parker
was stronger than she was, taller than she was, and outweighed her by a good margin. Did he really believe that he could teach her how to get away when he had such a huge physical advantage?

“What do you do to break his hold?” he asked again.

Rainie grabbed his wrist and tried to pull his arm from her throat. He braced against her, and all she accomplished was to tremble with the strain. His arm didn’t budge.

“First lesson. Your strength is no match for his. You’re not gonna outmuscle the guy. You have to think mean.”

“I should stomp on his toes?” she tried.

“Nope.”

“Elbow him in the ribs?”

“Nope.”

“Kick him in the shin?”

“Shin kicks seldom work when you’re backed up against your assailant. If you’re wearin’ hard-soled shoes, and you get lucky, you might get away by barkin’ his shin with the heel, but chances are it’ll only sting and piss him off.”

“What, then?”

“Dip your head forward.”

She did as instructed.

“Now snap it back as hard as you can.”

Rainie flung her head back, but at the last second, she was afraid of hurting him and lost her momentum.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m expectin’ it. I’ll turn my head. When I take the blow on my jaw and you can make me see stars, you’ll be hittin’ with enough force to make any man turn loose of you if he takes the blow on his mouth and nose.”

Rainie repeated the motion. The back of her head thumped his jaw. “Ow!”

“You okay?”

“That
hurt.
Do you have a steel plate in there or something?”

He huffed with laughter. “When your adrenaline is up, you won’t even feel it, honey. The skull is thick. You can knock his teeth loose with a good, solid head butt, and chances are, you won’t be hurt at all. That’s our aim, to get you to a point that you can do it that hard the instant he grabs you.”

Rainie tried to picture Peter with bloody lips and loosened teeth, but the image wouldn’t take shape in her mind. “That’d only make him mad. What’ll I do then, run?”

“If the opportunity presents itself, hell, yes, run for all you’re worth. But chances are, head-butting him in the mouth and nose will only make him turn loose of you for a couple of seconds. I’ll teach you what to do next, but first we need to get this move down pat.”

Rainie practiced butting his jaw until she had a slight headache. She was just starting to get the hang of it when Zach entered through the personnel door of the arena, distracting Parker with, “Hey, bro, have you seen Dad?”

Parker turned to reply to his brother just as Rainie snapped her head back. Instead of butting his jaw, she nailed him right in the face. He grunted and dropped his arms from around her. Horrified, she whirled around. He was bent over at the waist, hands cupped over his nose and mouth.

“Parker?” she cried. To her horror, she saw blood dripping through his clenched fingers. “Oh, my
God
, are you all right?”

His muffled response was unintelligible. Rainie grasped his wrist, hoping to draw his hands down so she might assess the damage. He braced against her.

“Well, well, well,” Zach drawled as he strode across the arena toward them. “It looks to me like Rainie is getting a crash course in how to kick ass and take names from a teacher with an attention deficit disorder.”

Over the top of his bloody fingers, Parker sent his younger brother a smoldering glare. Tears ran from the corners of his eyes to trickle in silvery trails down his lean cheeks. “Nosebleed, no big deal.”

“Oh, Parker, I’m sorry,” Rainie cried. “I never meant to hurt you.” She knew it was terrible of her, but despite her regret about causing him pain, she also felt a thrill of excitement. Head-butting actually
worked.
“You said you’d turn your head.”

Zach snorted with laughter. “Be a little more careful with him next time, Rainie. He’s delicate.”

Chapter Thirteen

O
ver the next two weeks, communication between the Harrigans and law enforcement agencies began. Working in tandem with Frank Harrigan’s high-priced attorney, Loni made all the initial contacts. According to her, the law enforcement officials she’d spoken with believed Rainie’s story and were now delving into Peter Danning’s background, hoping to corroborate Loni’s claim that Danning’s first two wives had died mysteriously and that Danning had benefited financially from their deaths.

Eventually Rainie knew she would have to be interrogated, perhaps more than once. The thought unnerved her. Even with Parker, she found it extremely difficult to talk about her life with Peter. How much worse would it be when she had to answer the questions of total strangers who might put her in jail if they didn’t like her responses? Because she found that possibility so upsetting, she chose not to cross that bridge until she came to it. Parker maintained that worrying accomplished nothing, and she was inclined to agree with him. Better to take each day as it came.

And the days brought many events for Rainie to be glad about. Thomas settled in at the ranch and was soon roaming the property to hunt for mice and ground squirrels, as relaxed in his new surroundings as if he’d lived there all his life. Mojo grew like a weed, seeming to get taller, plumper, and ornerier on a daily basis. Teething, as all babies did, he developed an insatiable need to chew, which could no longer be controlled with toys. After calling Tucker’s brother, Isaiah Coulter, who owned rottweilers and had raised a couple of litters, Parker went to a butcher shop for a supply of beef knucklebones, cut into quarters. Each morning when Rainie and the puppy got to the office, Mojo received a frozen bone to chew on. While working, Rainie grew accustomed to a vibrant grating sound that seldom ceased—Mojo, gnawing away on his bone.

During this lull before the storm, Parker endeavored to keep Rainie busy. Her days began with a huge breakfast, which she helped cook, and after kitchen cleanup, they went to the arena for a training session. Once Rainie was physically spent, she went back to the house for a shower and then to the office, where she attempted to keep up with her regular workload, even though she now had less time to devote to it.

“It doesn’t matter,” Parker insisted when she told him that she was falling behind. “The world didn’t end before you came to work for me, and it won’t end now just because you can’t get everything done. It’s far more important for you to train every mornin’. I never want you to be at a physical disadvantage with that bastard again.”

In order to maximize Rainie’s progress in the shortest time possible, Parker consulted with Quincy about her diet, his aim being to help her build muscle mass quickly. The second day of training, Rainie found herself drinking protein shakes in between the three sizable meals a day that Parker insisted she eat.

“I’m going to get fat!” she protested.

“No, you won’t,” he assured her. “Muscle burns calories, and you, sweet lady, are fixin’ to build one hell of a lot of muscle.”

That first week, Rainie was so stiff from the unaccustomed activity that she groaned as she got out of bed each morning, but by the second week, the aches and pains diminished, and she started to feel wonderful. There was a spring in her step, her energy level went up, and she could actually feel the muscles in her arms and legs growing strong.

“I’m becoming Iron Woman,” she told Parker proudly, tightening her biceps for his perusal. “Just look!”

He felt her arms, smiled, and promptly increased the intensity of her training. Rainie complained loudly, but secretly she was excited about the progress she was making, a feeling that only increased when Parker suspended a huge training bag from a rafter in the tack room so she could learn how to kick and punch.

“Pretend it’s Peter,” he said. “Every time you connect with that bag, I want you to imagine that you’re connecting with some part of his body.”

At first, Rainie felt silly, but after a few sessions, the pretense became therapeutic in a weird way. Parker taught her different ways to throw punches and kicks. Her favorites were how to use the heel of her hand in an upward thrust to break Peter’s nose, how to pivot on one foot, lean sideways, and deliver a power kick to one of his knees, and how to strike a blow to his testicles that would leave him curled in a fetal position on the floor for several minutes.

Rainie had never considered herself to be a violent person, and it bothered her at first that she liked the thought of hurting Peter. When she shared her concerns with Parker, he put her mind at ease.

“You’re not violent, sweetheart. You’re just finally feelin’ the
rage.
All the time you were with him, fear consumed your thoughts. There wasn’t much room for anger. Well, news flash: That isn’t
normal.
He demeaned you. He toyed with you. He hurt you. In order to heal, you have to work up a good head of steam and release it. If you slug that damned bag, doin’ your best to shove his nose gristle into his brain, where’s the harm? Remember one of the worst times with him and imagine it happenin’ different this time. Get good and mad, fight back, and kick the shit out of him. Even if you never get the chance to do it for real, pretendin’ that you are may do you a world of good.”

With each passing day, Rainie’s enthusiasm mounted. She wasn’t a killing machine yet, but the few tricks that Parker had taught her so far had bolstered her confidence immensely. When he continued to increase the intensity of her workouts, her resolve intensified in equal measure.
I can.
It became her mantra again, and sometimes when she trembled from exhaustion after a workout, sweat streaming down her body, she actually felt like her old self again, no longer Lorraina Danning, Peter’s cowardly wife, but Rainie Hall, her father’s daughter.

As much as Rainie came to enjoy her training sessions with Parker, her favorite time of every day was in the evening. They worked in tandem in his kitchen to fix supper, agreeing that each of them got to pick the main dish every other night. She learned that Parker truly did love high-fat foods and simple carbohydrates. When given a choice, he wanted red meat, potatoes, gravy, corn, and bread with plenty of butter. On her nights, he had to eat chicken, fish, squash, green vegetables, and salad, sans bread or gravy. At first he grumped about that, but then he began to appreciate the different tastes. Rainie just had to make sure there was enough food to satisfy his huge appetite.

After the meal, they cleaned up and then adjourned to the living room, the porch swing, or outdoors for a walk or horseback ride. True to his word, Parker never pressed her to take their relationship to a deeper level. He seemed content with friendship. Sometimes they just talked—about anything and everything. Other times, they made popcorn and watched a movie. She especially loved the times that they each settled down with a book, she with a romance or mystery, he with a police procedural or a private detective novel.

One night they decided to have a movie fest and watched the original Pink Panther series, featuring the incomparable Peter Sellers. Rainie laughed until she almost cried. Midway through one of the films, Parker suddenly froze the screen with the remote control and said, “That’s
it
, the perfect way to teach you how to react if he catches you off guard.”

“I’m sorry?” Rainie said, not following his train of thought.

“Surprise attacks. The houseboy keeps attacking Clouseau, tryin’ to teach him martial arts. Why can’t I attack you to teach you how to react automatically?”

“Oh, no.” Rainie shivered and shook her head. “It’s one thing when I’m halfway expecting it, Parker. I can handle that. But I’m not ready for you to jump me when I’m not. Peter used to do that.” She shivered again. “It’s all too fresh in my mind.”

“I’d never hurt you,” he assured her. “It’ll be fun, and it’s a great way to sharpen your reflexes.”

Rainie wasn’t so sure about that, but she’d come to trust this man as she’d never thought possible. “Okay, but if you get to attack me, I get to attack you.”

“Deal.”

A few minutes later in the kitchen, Parker hooked an arm around her neck and soon had her in a headlock. Doubled over at the waist and helpless to break his hold, Rainie nailed him in the groin with her elbow, taking care to aim off to the left so she hit his thigh and didn’t actually hurt him.