That husky softness in her tone, that exquisite concern, was almost too much for him. He grasped her slender hands in his and held them tightly. “I’m better off than you seem to be,” he said heavily. “What a hell of a price we paid for that night, Jess.”
She felt the hot sting of tears. “It was very high,” she had to admit. She reached out hesitantly to find his face. Her fingers traced it gently, finding the new scars, the new hardness of its elegant lines. “Stevie looks like you,” she said softly, her unseeing eyes so full of emotion that he couldn’t bear to look into them.
“Yes.”
She searched her darkness with anguish for a face she would never see again. “Don’t be bitter,” she pleaded. “Please don’t hate me.”
He pulled her hand away as if it scalded him. “I’ve done little else for the past five years,” he said flatly. “But maybe you’re right. All the rage in the world won’t change the past.” He let go of her hand. “We have to pick up the pieces and go on.”
She hesitated. “Can we at least be friends?”
He laughed coldly. “Is that what you want?”
She nodded. “Eb says you’ve given up overseas assignments and that you’re working for him. I want you to get to know Stevie,” she added quietly. “Just in case…”
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop it!” he exploded, rising awkwardly from the chair with the help of the cane. “Lopez won’t get you. We aren’t going to let anything happen to you.”
She leaned back in her chair without replying. They both knew that Lopez had contacts everywhere and that he never gave up. If he wanted her dead, he could get her. She didn’t want her child left alone in the world.
“I’m going to make some coffee,” Dallas said tautly, refusing to think about the possibility of a world without her in it. “What do you take in yours?”
“I don’t care,” she said indifferently.
He didn’t say another word. He went into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee while Jessica sat stiffly in her own living room and contemplated the direction her life had taken.
“YOU HAVE GOT…TO BE KIDDING!” Sally choked as she dragged herself up from the mat for the twentieth time. “You mean I’m going to spend two hours falling down? I thought you were going to teach me self-defense!”
“I am,” Eb replied easily. He, too, was wearing sweats now, and he’d been teaching her side breakfalls, first left and then right. “First you learn how to fall properly, so you don’t hurt yourself landing. Then we move on to stances, hand positions and kicks. One step at a time.”
She swept her arm past her hip and threw herself down on her side, falling with a loud thud but landing neatly. Beside her, Stevie was going at it with a vengeance and laughing gleefully.
“Am I doing it right?” she puffed, already perspiring. She was very much out of condition, despite the work she did around the house.
He nodded. “Very nice. Be careful about falling too close to the edge of the mat, though. The floor’s hard.”
She moved further onto the mat and did it again.
“If you think these are fun,” he mused, “wait until we do forward breakfalls.”
She gaped at him. “You mean I’m going to have to fall deliberately on my face? I’ll break my nose!”
“No, you won’t,” he said, moving her aside. “Watch.”
He executed the movement to perfection, catching his weight neatly on his hands and forearms. He jumped up again. “See? Simple.”
“For you,” she agreed, her eyes on the muscular body that was as fit as that of a man half his age. “Do you train all the time?”
“I have to,” he said. “If I let myself get out of shape, I won’t be of any use to my students. Great job, Stevie,” he called to the boy, who beamed at him.
“Of course he’s doing a great job,” she muttered. “He’s so close to the ground already that he doesn’t have far to fall!”
“Poor old lady,” he chided gently.
She glared in his direction as she swept her arm forward and threw herself down again. “I’m not old. I’m just out of condition.”
He looked at her, sprawled there on the mat, and his lips pursed as he sketched every inch of her. “Funny, I’d have said you were in prime condition. And not just for karate.”
She cleared her throat and got to her feet again. “When did you start learning this stuff?”
“When I was in grammar school,” he said. “My father taught me.”
“No wonder it looks so easy when you do it.”
“I train hard. It’s saved my life a few times.”
She studied his scarred face with curiosity. She could see the years in it, and the hardships. She knew very little about military operations, except for what she’d seen in movies and on television. And as Jess had told her, it wasn’t like that in real life. She tried to imagine an armed adversary coming at her and she stiffened.
“Something wrong?” he asked gently.
“I was trying to imagine being attacked,” she said. “It makes me nervous.”
“It won’t, when you gain a little confidence. Stand up straight,” he said. “Never walk with your head down in a slumped posture. Always look as if you know where you’re going, even if you don’t. And always, always, run if you can. Never stand and fight unless you’re trapped and your life is in danger.”
“Run? You’re kidding, of course?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll give you an example. A man of any size and weight on drugs is more than a match for any three other men. What I’m going to teach you might work on an untrained adversary who’s sober. But a man who’s been drinking, or especially a man who’s using drugs can kill you outright, regardless of what I can teach you. Don’t you ever forget that. Overconfidence kills.”
“I’ll bet you don’t teach your men to run,” she said accusingly.
His eyes were quiet and full of bad memories. “Sally, a recruit in one of my groups emptied the magazine of his rifle into an enemy soldier on drugs at point-blank range. The enemy kept right on coming. He killed the recruit before he finally fell dead himself.”
Her lower jaw fell.
“That was my reaction, too,” he informed her. “Absolute disbelief. But it’s true. If anyone high on drugs comes at you, don’t try to reason with him…you can’t. And don’t try to fight him. Run like hell. If a full automatic clip won’t bring a man down, you certainly can’t. Neither can even a combat-hardened man, alone. In that sort of situation, it’s just basic common sense to get out of the way as quickly as possible if there’s any chance of escape, and pride be damned.”
“I’ll remember,” she said, all her confidence vanishing. She could see in Eb’s eyes that he’d watched that recruit die, and had to live with the memory forever in his mind. Probably it was one of many nightmarish episodes he’d like to forget.
“Sometimes retreat really is the better part of valor,” he said, smiling.
“You’re educational.”
He smiled slowly. “Am I, now?” he asked, and the way he looked at her didn’t have much to do with teaching her self-defense. “I can think of a few areas where you need…improvement.”
She glanced at Stevie, who