Protector Panther (Protection, Inc 3)

She shook her head. “My family couldn’t afford lessons when I was young, and I never got around to it later.”

He tilted his head, regarding her with those cool predator’s eyes. “But you’ve fought. I can tell. What was it, street fighting?”

“Sort of. I was just a teenager.”

“I enlisted when I was eighteen,” Shane pointed out. “It counts. Who’d you fight?”

“Racists who made fun of my mom’s accent. Rich snobs who looked down on me because my clothes came from a thrift store. Bullies who thought I was an easy target because I was small.”

Shane smiled. “Did you win?”

“If I didn’t have three or four of them ganging up on me.”

“Do you remember how you won? What were thinking of right before the fight started?”

Shane always asked questions she’d never been asked before. She liked that about him. Talking to him was never boring. “I guess I just focused on hitting them as hard as I could. I didn’t care if I got hurt, so long as I got to them. But they cared. So I won.”

“And you’ve never fought as an adult?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never had to. A couple times creepy guys have tried to follow me at night, but I looked them in the eyes and yelled at them to get the fuck away from me. And they ran.”

Shane nodded as if that made perfect sense. “You were in warrior mode. They could see you’d do whatever it took to win. They weren’t willing to do the same, so they ran away.”

“I wish you could explain that to my mom,” Catalina said. “To everyone who keeps telling me to be more afraid. People always say I didn’t defend myself, I was just lucky. They say that if those men had chosen to attack me, there wouldn’t have been anything I could have done about it.”

“They had chosen to attack you,” Shane remarked, his expression cool and dispassionate. “Why else would they have stalked you? And you did do something about it. You won the fight without ever having to strike a blow.”

He went on, “It reminds me a story I learned when I was studying karate. The two greatest swordfighters in Japan decided to duel, to see who was the best. A huge crowd gathered to watch. Everyone was sure it would be spectacular. The swordfighters walked up, squared off, and looked into each other’s eyes. Then they bowed to each other and walked away. They didn’t need to fight— that one look was the duel. There was no point even unsheathing their swords, because they already knew they were equals.”

Catalina’s eyes stung, just as they had when he’d told her she’d gone above and beyond the call. She already knew he thought she was brave. But everyone who knew her or saw her in action thought that. What was different about Shane was that he didn’t think she was wrong or stupid or reckless to take risks. And he didn’t assume that sooner or later, she’d bite off more than she could chew and pay for it with her life.

When she told him she could do something, he believed her, whether it was fighting or defending herself or carrying him. He never said, “Women can’t do that” or “You’re too small” or “You’ll get hurt.” He protected her, but like soldiers protected each other, not like a strong person protected a weak person.

Ellie treated her like that, but few other women did. And Shane was the only man she’d ever met who’d put that kind of faith in her. He probably had no idea how rare and precious that was.

She had to get him talking about something else, or she’d cry for real.

“You must love karate,” she said. He’d told the story about the swordfighters with unexpected passion.

“I do. I’ve studied other martial arts, but that’s my favorite.” With a diffidence she’d never seen before, he said, “I could show you some. If you like.”

“You bet!” Catalina settled in, all threat of tears evaporating in her delight at the chance to watch Shane in motion.

He moved to the middle of the floor. “Karate has some set exercises called kata. The idea is that you’re fighting off imaginary opponents. I’ll show you Tomari Bassai. It means ‘Storming the Fortress.’”

His clear blue eyes narrowed in concentration. Then he began to move. At times he slowly stalked an unseen foe, and at times he struck too fast for the eye to follow. He turned and spun, kicking and punching and blocking, as if he was fighting off a horde of enemies that had surrounded him. He moved with the grace of a dancer and the ferocity of a warrior, every strike and turn alive with power and passion.

Finally, he came to a stop. Catalina gave a sigh of sheer pleasure.

“That was gorgeous. I wish I could do that.” She stood and stretched out her leg, trying to recall one of his movements.

“Bend your other leg, too.” Shane bent one leg and extended the other in front of him, with his back foot flat and only the ball of his front foot touching the floor. “It’s called cat stance.”

“No wonder you’re good at it.” She copied his stance, but could tell she wasn’t getting it quite right. “What am I doing wrong?”

He stepped in close to her. She could feel the heat of his body, smell the clean scent of his sweat.

“Too much weight on your front foot. Put more on the back.” His voice was husky. He was breathing harder than she’d have expected; the kata had been athletic but brief. A strand of her hair stirred with his breath.