Burn (Indigo) Read online

  “Gian gave his new student a bloody nose last night,” Chip explained.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Gian sighed.

  “What’d she do?” Karl chuckled. “Back talk you?” Gian sat back in his chair and eyed Karl, who grew increasingly uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

  Karl’s impish grin faltered. “Dude, what . . . ?”

  Until yesterday, Gian had thought little of Karl’s frat boy mentality. But after spending time with his new student, Gian no longer viewed Karl’s coarse remarks as harmless. “I’d like to build up my female client base, and I won’t be able to do that if you don’t ease up on the caveman crap,” Gian said.

  Karl opened his mouth to protest, but Gian cut him off.

  “I don’t want to hear you referring to women as ‘hot-ties,’ ‘babes,’ ‘hoes,’ ‘shorties,’ or any other expression you’ve picked up from MTV.”

  “So if a female with a really tight ass and big tits comes in—” Karl started.

  Gian cut him off. “Female is an adjective, not a noun.”

  “Okay, Mr. Dictionary, what should I call people who are not guys?”

  “Women,” Chip volunteered. “Or girls. Calling them by their names has always worked out good for me.” “Who asked you, Squirt?” Karl grumbled.

  At six feet, Chip was only a couple of inches shorter than Karl. A former college football standout, Chip was younger than Karl and outmatched him in speed and agility, if not size. Chip’s hiring had brought out Karl’s competitiveness, making him a better instructor. The younger man’s laid-back nature and confidence made him an easy target for Karl’s petty nicknaming, but Gian had no doubt that anytime he wanted to, Chip could easily put an end to Karl’s insulting nicknames.

  “Chip is as much a part of the management team of Sheng Li as you are, Karl,” Gian reminded him. “His contributions are just as valuable as yours.”

  “So who was that ba—” Karl caught himself , rolled his eyes. “Who was that woman who came in late yesterday?”

  “I don’t know.” Gian went back to his schedule to hide his embarrassment. “I didn’t get her name. You needed next Saturday off for your cousin’s wedding, right Chip? I think I can get Aja to cover your taekwondo class. She owes me a couple hours.”

  “Go on, change the subject, boss,” Karl said. “Your mystery pupil should be here real soon. I’ll find out her name, her number, and, when she wakes up next to me in the morning, I’ll find out how she likes her eggs.”

  “Isn’t your five o’clock Strength and Conditioning class about to start?” Gian directed at Karl.

  “No, Squirt’s taking it for me. I’m goin’ to the casino tonight with some of my state trooper pals.”

  “Clear it with me the next time you want to make changes in the schedule,” Gian grumbled.

  “I meant to.” Karl grinned. “I just forgot.”

  “Maybe I’ll forget to sign your paycheck this week,” Gian proposed.

  Karl snapped his bare heels together and offered a mock salute. “Yessir, boss man, sir. I’m out.”

  “I apologize, Gian,” Chip said once Karl had departed. “Karl told me that he got the okay for the switch from you.”

  “He’s getting a little too big for his britches around here lately,” Gian said. “He acts like it’s his name on the door.”

  “You could always fire him,” Chip suggested hopefully. “Insubordination is one of the no-nos in our employment contracts.”

  “So’s that shaggy mane of yours, Goldilocks,” Gian quipped.

  Chip gave his long blond curls a good shake. “I’ll get it trimmed this weekend. Wouldn’t want to risk pissing off the boss.”

  Gian leaned to the left to get a better look into the main studio and the lobby beyond it. “Your students are here. You’re on, cowboy.”

  “Later, hoss.” With that, Chip exited the office, bowed at the entrance to the main studio, and called his students to take their places.

  Gian wished that Chip had closed the office door. The fight cries and sounds of bodies hitting the mat were a distraction he didn’t need in the face of the mountain of paperwork before him.

  Unfortunately, there was no door to close out his biggest distraction.

  The woman in black.

  Gian glanced up at the red and gold dragon clock mounted above his bookcase on the opposite wall. His new student wasn’t due for another twenty-five minutes. He’d assigned his four and five o’clock taekwondo classes to other instructors, giving him a two-hour break. His intention had been to create files for his new students, check the references for a couple of potential hires, find a new housekeeping service for the dojo, and to speak with Chip and Karl about a tournament in which he wanted Sheng Li to participate.

  None of his tasks had successfully drawn his thoughts away from the one thing occupying his mind. The one person, rather.

  “For cryin’ out loud,” Gian muttered, rubbing his palms over the scrub covering his dome.

  It’s not like he hadn’t seen a pretty girl before. Webster University, which was only a few blocks from Sheng Li, fed him a steady stream of fetching young coeds. Enrollment always shot up in the winter after the university’s seminars on personal safety.

  Karl never hesitated to hit on the female students, and although he was forbidden to do so at Sheng Li, he managed to get a number here and there from women who cared more about dating someone with good looks than good behavior. But Gian made it a rule to never get personally involved with his students. It just wasn’t wise to teach a potential romantic interest how to maim or kill with one blow.

  The woman in black was the first real test of his resolve. Gian sat back in his chair, baffled. The woman’s boyishly short black hair made her face that much more noticeable. She had the kind of big brown eyes that reminded him of the somber children living in some of the villages he had been stationed in during his tours of duty in the Marines. Just as those children had worked their way into his heart, so had his new student. Only her presence had also moved into his head, keeping him from properly tending his business.

  He tapped the end of his ballpoint pen on the new student enrollment form he planned to give her. Of all the blanks on the form, the one he most wanted filled was the first, the one that came after NAME.

  “Angela,” he said aloud softly, trying to shape his memory of her to the name. No, he thought. Angela’s too soft. “Harriet,” he muttered. Chuckling, he deemed the name too old-fashioned for her. “Kyla, Halle, Jada,” he recited, wondering if she shared a name with one of the actresses he liked. “Rumpelstiltskin,” he sighed, abandoning his little game.

  * * *

  She sat in the lobby and watched the five o’clock Strength and Conditioning class. The instructor’s wild blond curls and dimpled smile seemed to make it easier for his students to follow his commands, which directed them to do things that looked more like torture than exercise. One of his students, a statuesque African-American woman with a long black ponytail, chatted at her neighbors, mindless of the fact that they pointedly ignored her or answered her with red-faced grimaces.

  “Zae!” the instructor called sharply, interrupting his own count of the punches his students executed. “Cut the jibber-jabber!”

  “Yes, sensai,” Zae responded with a clean thrust of her right fist, her punches still in rhythm with those of her classmates. Seemingly aware of the eyes on her, Zae peeped over her shoulder and found their owner in the lobby. “Hey, sweetie!” she cried over the fight cries of Chip’s students. “You made it!”

  “Drop and give me twenty Marine squats, Zae,” Chip ordered. “I must not be working you hard enough if you’ve got the energy to socialize this late in my class.”

  With a roll of her eyes and a saucy flip of her ponytail, Zae moved to one of the bamboo walls and stood with her back to it. Her hands on her waist, she lowered herself on her left leg, her right extended before her, until her backside nearly rested on her left heel. Biting her lower lip, she r
aised herself and then switched legs, lowering herself with her right leg. The exercise took incredible strength and balance, and Zae performed the reps without touching the wall. She completed her punishment just as Chip dismissed the class.

  “Not bad for an old broad,” Chip told her as the other students bowed to him before filing out of the studio.

  “You’re not my sensai once we hit the parking lot,” Zae warned, a wicked twinkle in her black eyes. “I’ll show you what an old broad can do, kid.”

  “I’d hate to be the attacker who ever tried to take you on.” Chip chuckled. “He wouldn’t know what hit him.”

  “A hundred and forty pounds of pure African-American wildcat,” Zae stated. “A hundred and thirty-nine if I take off my earrings.”

  Clutching at her lower back with one hand, Zae bowed to Chip and then limped into the lobby.

  “So you signed up,” Zae said, greeting Sheng Li’s newest student with a brief hug. “Good. You’ll like it here. Let me show you where the locker room is.”

  Zae led the way, still limping.

  “Are you okay?”

  Zae cast a sly glance toward the studio before dropping the limp. “I’m fine. I just wanted Chip to feel bad for giving me the squats, the little punk.”

  “You weren’t supposed to be talking in class.”

  “Who are you?” Zae asked, pitching her voice higher. “The dojo monitor? Honey, please.” She smirked and swung open the locker room door.

  “Are the lockers assigned, or—”

  “Shh!” Zae hissed sharply, stopping before they rounded a tall stand of black lockers. She crouched slightly, leaning forward to get her left ear as close as possible to the voices coming from the other side.

  “I’ve got spaces open at Witness Protection, Fugitive, and CI,” said the first voice, a low soprano with a nasal quality.

  “What’s ‘CI’? . . .econd, deeper female voice asked. “Confidential informant,” another voice provided. “What would a confidential informant be doing in Webster Groves?” asked someone else.

  “Gian used to be in the Marines,” the first voice said quietly. “He was Special Forces. Who knows what kind of people he’s connected to. Maybe the new girl was sent here by the government to spy on him.”

  “Gian was awarded a Purple Heart,” someone said. “You make it sound like he’s G. Gordon Liddy.”

  “He could be, we don’t know. Same as we don’t know anything about his new student.”

  “I’ll put five bucks on Witness Protection. She seems like the type.”

  “How so?” asked a new voice.

  “She comes into the library every week and checks out a dozen books. She reads everything—mysteries, self-help, essays, the classics—but she seems to like romance best. And she always returns her books on time.”

  “So that makes her a criminal in hiding?”

  “No. It’s just that she seems to make a point not to be noticed. She’s seen me every week since she moved here last year, but she never says more than hi and thank you.”

  “It’s her name that gets me,” said a new voice. “When she came into the bank to open an account, I was like, ‘What kind of name is Cinder White?’ It sounds totally made up.”

  The women laughed, and Zae moved into view from her listening post. But before she could speak, Cinder herself quieted the women. “When I was born, my eyes were so dark that my mother thought they looked like cinders. That’s where my name comes from. Is there anything else you’d like to know about me?”

  Most of the women guiltily looked anywhere other than at Cinder as they collected their belongings and scattered, but one of them opened her mouth to speak. A scathing look from Zae made her close it.

  “I’d better get home,” the soprano, a tall, thin woman who resembled a stork in her blindingly white gi, said uncomfortably. She curled a sheet of paper in her hand. “Gotta make dinner for the kids.”

  “Yeah, us, too,” another woman said, slinging her gym bag over her shoulder.

  “Y’all oughta be ashamed of yourselves, betting on somebody like that,” Zae chastised.

  The stork halted in her tracks and slowly turned. “I got your text message before class, Zae. I put you down for East Coast escapee, just like you wanted.”

  “Uh, thanks, Carole.” A blush rose in Zae’s cheeks, deepening her warm brown complexion. “See you at carpool tomorrow morning.”

  Alone in the locker room, Cinder crossed her arms over her chest. She glared at Zae.

  “We showed them,” Zae said proudly, clapping Cinder on the shoulder. “Let’s get your stuff put away. You don’t want to be late for your first lesson.”

  * * *

  “Can I get that for you, Mrs. Gale?” Gian tugged open the front door. With a hand at Adelaide Gale’s back, he tried to speed her exit from Sheng Li. “Is your husband here?”

  “Oh, Louie went across the street for a cup of coffee while I was in class,” the elderly woman said. “He’s trying to conserve gas. He didn’t want to drive me here, drive home, come to pick me up again, and then drive home again. He’s so sensible, my Lou—”

  “Well, as long as he’s here for you,” Gian interrupted. “I’ll see you next Tuesday, Mrs. Gale.”

  Before Gian could close the door behind her, she turned. “I won’t be in class next week, Gianni,” she started, touching a craggy index finger to her chin.

  “We’re having a potluck at the church to celebrate Reverend Mason’s retirement. I’m going to make banana split cake, the one I brought for Chip’s birthday, you remember? Everyone likes it so much that—”

  “Mrs. Gale,” Gian snapped louder than he meant to, startling her. “I’ve got a lesson now. I don’t mean to be rude, but . . .”

  “I understand,” she sighed. “I sometimes forget what it feels like to be young and in a hurry.”

  A pang of guilt stabbed at Gian, but he ignored it. At eighty-nine, Mrs. Dale was his oldest student. She had been one of the first to sign up for his taekwondo class eight years ago, when he’d first opened Sheng Li. Mrs. Gale had progressed no further than a yellow belt, but she always showed up on time and ready to work, which Gian respected. But right now he was so anxious to start his private lesson that he was ready to grab the old lady and toss her like a javelin across the street.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. G.,” Gian said, forcing himself to mean it. “I hope you have a good time at your potluck, and I’ll tell Chip that you’ll be absent next week.”

  “Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Gale smiled. “Have a good lesson.”

  Gian closed the door and, after a cursory bow to the main studio, he trotted across it, down the corridor, and into his office. He paused a second to straighten his gi before he opened the door of the private studio.

  He bowed, his eyes never leaving his new student. She had been sitting cross-legged in the center of the mat, but she stood when he approached her. She bowed to him exactly as he’d shown her the day before. She straight ened, giving Gian a full view of her in her bright new gi.

  The stark white cotton contrasted beautifully with the dark richness of her skin. The fit was perfect, and she wore it correctly—the Sheng Li emblem was sewn on the left side, the left side of the jacket overlapped the right, and the drawstrings assuring that the garment would stay closed had been tightly tied. Her belt, the obi, was the only problem.

  She had followed the other rules of the dojo, which were posted in the locker room, so she wore no jewelry, cosmetics or polish on her fingers or toes. She had come to him unadorned, and so lovely that—

  He cleared his throat, stroking his chin to make sure that he wasn’t drooling. It was heavy lifting, but he forced himself to remember that she hadn’t come to him, not in the way he’d been thinking. She’d come to learn, to work, and it was best he never lose sight of that.

  Standing in front of her, Gian saw that she was more apprehensive than she had appeared the day before. The pulse at the base of her throat fluttered, and her rat
e of breathing seemed too rapid. “Are you okay?”

  “Just a little nervous.” She wiped her palms on the sides of her gi. “I saw part of the five o’clock class. Karate looks a little tougher than I thought it would be.”

  “Do you know what karate is?”

  “Is that a trick question?”

  He shook his head. “I just want to know what your idea of karate is.”

  “It’s a style of fighting.”

  He reached for the loop in her white obi. Light and quick as a forest creature, she moved out of reach. “I’m sorry,” she said, dropping her eyes for a second. “I didn’t mean to do that. I didn’t want to do that.”

  “It’s okay, forget about it.” But it wasn’t okay, not for him. Her reaction tugged at something inside him, something that wanted to close her in his arms and press her to his heart. He took a step toward her and went for the loop again. “Who taught you how to tie your obi?”

  “Azalea Richardson.” She held her arms slightly up and out of the way while Gian unknotted her belt and unwound it from her waist.

  Gian’s eyebrows shot toward the skylight. “Zae Richardson’s fighting skills are excellent, but she isn’t exactly a model student. I want you to come to me looking like a warrior prepared to fight, not a present ready to be unwrapped.”

  “She’s the one who recommended you to me.”

  He stooped a little to wrap the belt around her waist, starting at the front. His cheek was so close to her face, he felt the radiant warmth of her skin on his. “I’ll have to figure out some sort of finder’s fee for her then. Maybe I’ll overlook it the next time she starts doing chorus line kicks when I’m running the class through ax kicks.”

  She pursed her lips but failed to completely suppress a grin.

  Gian’s hands worked at her back, folding one end of the belt under the other. He repeated the wrapping in the front, feeding the tails over and under themselves and pulling them tight in a neat, flat knot that left the tails hanging mid thigh. “The obi has to be tied correctly for your safety. If an opponent grabs you,” he said, demonstrating by tugging her closer by the belt, “it won’t get tighter and cut off your circulation. Zae knows how to tie an obi the right way, but she loops it anyhow. She says it’s ‘pretty.’ ”