Page 18 of Lethal Game

“You can minimize contact with an attacker?”

“Yep, ’cause there’s one rule and one rule only that’s king in hand-to-hand.”

“What’s that?”

“The only person you can control without question is yourself. If you know yourself, your strengths, limitations, reactions, and responses, you win the fight.”

“Is that Confucius?”

He couldn’t stop the smile. Did she have any idea how freaking cute she was when she got all serious? “Nope. That’s Connor Button. It means I’m going to teach you how to cheat. I’m going to teach you how to fight with whatever is in the room, no matter where you find yourself.”

“Cool.” She hummed a little. “Okay, your turn. What was General Stone so worried about when it comes to you?”

How much should he tell her? “I had to fight to earn my return to duty. Getting blown up and requiring months of physical therapy doesn’t look good on a soldier’s record.”

“And?”

“And if this assignment hadn’t come along when it did, the best duty I could have gotten was full-time instructor back in the States.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, except my job here isn’t done.” It wouldn’t be done until he’d avenged his dead. He sure as hell couldn’t do that as an instructor.

“Tell me about your injuries.”

Her question was a shot to the gut. The last thing he wanted to remember was the days spent lying on a hospital bed, unable to get up and walk to the can by himself. “You don’t ask for much, do you?”

“I know what it’s like to feel powerless.” Shit, she wasn’t backing down an inch. “To be inside a body that won’t do what it’s supposed to do. I understand pain and I understand how hard it is to rebuild strength in muscles weakened by lack of use. It’s frustrating. It makes you angry. You feel a fear that’s bone deep.”

He might have gotten angry with her attempt to identify with him, except the expression on her face wasn’t pity, it was understanding and acceptance. “I was in a hospital for a month. A bed for three weeks, a wheelchair for one and in therapy for six months,” he said. “How about you?”

“I was in and out for a year. Sometimes for a day or two, sometimes for a couple of weeks at a time. Chemotherapy was hard. Painful, and I couldn’t keep any food down. That all changed when I went into remission.”

“How old were you?”

“Eleven when I was diagnosed with leukemia. Almost fourteen when they confirmed remission. But I’d been doing school on my own and once I started to feel better, nothing could keep me from devouring knowledge and information like it was candy.”

“Shit,” he drawled. “You never had a chance to grow up normal.”

She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Nope.”

Touchy subject. Well, he knew how to get around that. “Neither did I.”

“Oh?” she asked with a disbelieving snort.

“I have four older sisters.”

Her jaw dropped open. “Four?” She burst out laughing. “I almost feel sorry for you.”

He grinned and shrugged. Yup, they were just two odd peas in a pod. Max thought she was high maintenance, but she wasn’t. What she was, was defensive. All that snark was her way of protecting herself. She used her words and blunt honesty to keep men at bay because she didn’t know how to flirt or make chitchat. She never had time for the bullshit as a kid and she probably thought she didn’t have time for it now.

“Tell me about your schedule,” he said to her, getting down to business. She scrolled through a couple of pages on the tablet sitting on her desk before stopping and staring at the screen.

“Okay, I’m free after dinner tonight, unless there’s an emergency where I’m needed.”

He liked her professionalism. “Good. You’ll get your first Tai Chi lesson then.”

She nodded and went back to her microscope, humming under her breath. She looked...happy.

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