Hot Secrets (2 page)

Nope. Out like a light.

He slid out of bed and stretched tall, King of the Mountain, then dropped for a fast fifty push-ups. Which was nothing, considering in the Rangers they’d done a hundred and fifty before breakfast and another hundred before lunch. He knew he’d give himself a good workout at his gym today; this was just to get the blood moving. Not that he needed it—his blood was flowing just fine.

A quick shower and he was by the bedside, watching Caroline sleep.

He clapped his hands, which usually worked to wake her instantly. This time she didn’t even open her eyes, just flapped one hand as she snuggled deeper into the pillow.

“Go away,” she mumbled.

Nope.

Jack shook her shoulder gently. “We have to train. There are a few new moves I want to show you, honey.”

When he’d almost lost her to violence a year ago, he’d vowed to teach her self-defense, and he had. She didn’t take the lessons too seriously but by sheer dint of repetition, she had some moves in her. He wanted to deepen that knowledge, drill it into her muscle memory so that when she needed it, if she was ever in trouble, it would come automatically.

As a soldier, Jack had trained endlessly and it had saved his life countless times. Sweat in training saves blood in battle. That had been drummed into him incessantly, and it was true.

Trouble could come from anywhere, at any time. Caroline had been born wealthy into a loving family, so her formative years had been spent far from trouble. Jack had been born into trouble. His entire life had been spent at risk and he reacted accordingly.

If this were a kind world, a just world, trouble would never find Caroline again. She’d had her fill, paid her dues—that side of the slate was in balance. But of course, life wasn’t like that. Violence and danger were everywhere and didn’t discriminate.

Twice Caroline had been in danger and had had no tools at all in her head or in her body to help herself. All the beauty and kindness and smarts in the world don’t help when you’re dealing with scum, and the world was full of scumbags.

It drove Jack a little crazy to think of trouble finding Caroline again. Because much as he tried to protect her—their home had been so revamped from a security point of view it could have been featured in
Beautiful Secure Homes & Fortress Gardens
—he couldn’t be there 24/7. So the only way he could keep sane was to try to drill her in self-defense.

He was a little OCD about it, that was true. And Caroline wasn’t too motivated. That was true, too. But it was the only thing he absolutely insisted on in their marriage. Everything else was her call. The house was decorated the way she wanted it, and they ate what she cooked, they travelled where she wanted to go, they saw the movies she wanted to see. Jack was fine with it all, as long as he was indulged in this.

“Come on, honey,” he said when she didn’t move.

“It’s Christmas Eve, Jack.” There was a little whine in there, which made him grin.

“Yeah? Training stops for no man.”

“How about for women?”

“For no woman, either.”

As an answer she burrowed deeper into the nest of blankets.

Stalemate.

Nothing left to do but use the atom bomb.

“I’ll let you throw me,” Jack said slyly.

Both eyes opened, focused on him.

“Yeah?” she said, interested.

He knew enough not to smile. “Yeah.”

It was fairly painful, throwing himself to the mat, but he did it for her from time to time so she could have the feel of it in her hands and muscles.

“Twice.” She made it a statement.

He frowned.

“Twice. You’ll let me throw you twice.”

Ouch. “Okay,” he said on a sigh. “Twice.”

She gave a sunny smile and threw the blankets back.

First Page Bookstore

Late afternoon, Christmas Eve

 
“And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days, let it be said that of all who give gifts, these two were the wisest.”

Caroline closed the book and smiled at her audience—twenty kids who lived in homeless shelters and foster homes in Summerville and Mona, ten miles away.

She’d deliberately chosen
The Gift of The Magi
.

An old-fashioned tale of old-fashioned feelings—love, tenderness, sacrifice.

Feelings utterly foreign to the kids gathered in front of her. Their lives were dark and dangerous. Many of them had been betrayed by the very people who were supposed to protect them.

At first, they’d squirmed as they started to understand that the story wouldn’t be slam-bang fast like video games and the few TV shows they watched on ancient donated sets in the shelters. There were words they clearly didn’t understand and which she carefully explained.
Pier glass, fob, meretricious
.

She skirted around O. Henry’s meaning of “chorus girls,” painfully aware that several of the kids had moms who gave blow jobs in back seats for twenty five bucks apiece. The language was archaic and slow and foreign to them. The emotions, too.

But they got there. Because, although the type of love that existed in the story wasn’t one they’d seen firsthand, it was something every human aspired to. Something everyone instinctively understood.

They were baffled at first, looking around at each other, rolling their eyes as the story unfolded. But, as she suspected they would be, they were slowly drawn in, helplessly attracted by the kind of experiences they’d likely never encountered. Generosity and true love.

Her husband, Jack, had grown up as they had.

Worse, even. Some of these kids, like little Manuel sitting quietly at the outer edges of the group, had mothers who loved them. His stepfather was a drug addict who was so violent there was a restraining order against him. But Manuel’s mother cared for Manuel. Caroline sometimes did readings in his shelter and he always nestled at her side like a small brown bird. Clothes old but carefully mended and clean.

Jack had never had a mother’s love. He had never known his mother. All he’d known was shelter after shelter in the grip of a violent drunk for a father.

Utterly unlike her own early experience of life in the embrace of a solid, loving family. She’d lost her family to tragedy at twenty, but nothing could ever erase two decades of love.

Jack had turned into the finest man she knew, thanks to his rock-solid character and a few lucky breaks. These kids, too—born and raised in degradation—could turn their lives around. All they needed was to know that it was possible.

If you believed something was possible, you could make it come true. Caroline believed that from the bottom of her heart.

At the end, there was utter silence in the room, so different from the squirming and punching and shouting at the beginning. It had started to snow and in the silence you could hear the odd needle of sleet embedded in the snow as it hit the windows. Though the kids suffered in the cold, with frayed clothes and inadequate shoes, the few heads that turned to the window smiled at the snow falling like clouds, making the lit store windows along State Street glow with an unearthly light.

Caroline was glad that a sense of beauty hadn’t been beaten out of them yet.

“So, kids.” She put the book away carefully and leaned forward, looking each child in the eye. Unconsciously they leaned forward, too, watching her. Realizing that she
saw
them. Was listening to them.

I was invisible
, her husband had said of his early life in shelters.
Nobody saw me except you.

“What happened? How did Jim show his love for his wife?”

It had been a suggestion of her father, to volunteer at the shelter—she who had grown up with so much. Her eyes had been opened and she’d discovered an entire new layer of reality. Including befriending a tall, gangly boy who’d been hungrier for learning than he’d been for food. She’d brought him books he devoured until she realized he was also literally hungry, and started bringing sandwiches together with books.

He’d disappeared one Christmas and she hadn’t seen him again until he showed up twelve years later—a man so completely changed she hadn’t recognized him.

These kids felt as invisible as Jack had felt. There were more and more of them in this recession—women and children falling through the cracks. Unseen, unwanted, unloved.

Small arms were waving, like branches in the wind in a tiny forest. “Me, me, me!” they cried.

Caroline smiled. She was determined to let every kid speak, be heard. Then they would troop across the street to Sylvie’s tea shop, where hot chocolate and muffins and a gift book for every child awaited.
The Hunger Games.
Because Jim and Della were the ideal, but Katniss . . . Katniss showed that you could grow up in terrible circumstances and you could still fight back—and prevail.

“Okay, Jamal.” She pointed to a kid in the front row, whose eyes had grown larger and larger as the story progressed. She knew each kid’s story—she’d insisted on it. She wanted to know who they were, what their lives were about. Jamal had no father and five half-siblings, all from different men. “How did Jim show his love for Della?”

“He sold his watch so he could buy a comb for her.”

Yes, indeed. She’d read
The Gift of the Magi
a million times but it still made her smile.

“That’s right. And why did he have to sell the watch?”

Silence. The reason was so very close to their lives. “Because he was poor,” one girl whispered finally. “They were both poor.” Shawna, who was twelve but so thin she looked eight.

“He could have stolen the comb and kept his watch,” Caroline gently suggested. Twenty small heads nodded. Yes indeed, he could have. “Why didn’t he?”

Silence once more. Why Jim hadn’t stolen the comb was not very clear to them. In their world, a lot of people stole. It was just a question of not getting caught.

“Because . . .” a shy voice said, a slight lisp on the
s
. He couldn’t be seen because he was behind Mack, who was huge for his age, but Caroline knew who it was. Manuel. Manuel, whose mother had been put in the hospital five times in the past year by his stepfather and was in the hospital right now.

“Because?” Caroline said.

“Because it showed how much he loved her.”

“That’s right, Manuel. Not stealing the comb—but rather, sacrificing something he cared about to buy something for her—showed how much he loved his wife. And she made a sacrifice too, didn’t she? Who can tell me what she sacrificed?” Another forest of small arms. “Lucy?”

“Her hair. She sold her hair for him,” Lucy sighed. Her mother was an addict who sold herself to buy drugs. Lucy’d been a ward of the state several times while her mother went to rehab. True love wasn’t a big part of her world.

“That’s right. So, kids, if you could buy anything at all for your mom or your dad or a sister or brother—what would it be?”

“Anything at all?” Jamal asked, scrunching his face up in puzzlement.

“Go wild,” Caroline smiled. “Anything at all.”

“PlayStation 4, for my mom,” Jamal said decisively, and the room erupted in laughter.

It was an interesting exercise. It was probably the first time they’d ever thought about being able to get anything themselves without stealing it. And, for many, the first time they’d thought of sharing. Their lives were impoverished in every way there was. The gift ideas were all over the place—a house, a job, a dad out of prison, a trip to Disneyland, a pair of red shoes, a new car. Everyone spoke but Manuel.

Caroline watched him, sitting small and quiet. Trying very hard not to be noticed.

Jack had told her about his early childhood, when he’d been small and weak. Perfecting the art of sliding by without attracting attention because attention was, more often than not, painful. Hiding in the shadows, never speaking, because anything could set his father off. And even when not speaking, his father could fill himself with rage all by himself.

Then Jack had grown big and strong and no one bothered him after the age of fourteen.

But before then, before filling out, he’d been prey. He’d taken care of that by joining the army and then the super elite soldiers, the Rangers. Jack was definitely not prey any more. And Jack had made it his life’s work to teach the weak to defend themselves.

He was a security consultant, a very successful one. If you were a bank or a corporation and you wanted his expert help, he was happy to give it, at a premium price. He also ran a dojo school and fitness center, and if you were a lawyer or an executive hoping to firm up your abs and glutes, why, Jack was your man—at two hundred dollars an hour, when you could get him.

But if you were young and poor—and above all, if you were female—you got the best help in the world and the bill was torn up.

While the kids proposed wild presents, she glanced out the window at the Cup of Tea. Across the street her friend Sylvie waved. A big table with a red tablecloth, plastic cups and a huge thermos, and festive red plates had been set out in the center of the tea shop. Along the counter were enough muffins to feed a brigade of soldiers—just waiting for the kids. Time to wrap this up.