Love's Tender Warriors Page 3

  “Suse? You home?” Sean called as she pulled the heavy walnut front door closed. The high chandelier dimly lighted the foyer and central staircase, but the living room and dining room, on opposite sides of the wide hallway, were dark. So was the kitchen at the far end of the hallway in the rear of the house.

  “In my office,” came the muffled reply.

  Sean dropped her gym bag by the foot of the stairs, walked through to the kitchen, and pulled a lager from the refrigerator. Twisting the top off the bottle as she crossed through the dining room, she then poked her head around the corner of her sister’s open office door. The dark wood-paneled room with its large stone fireplace and bookcase-lined walls had once been their father’s study.

  “Hey,” she said, leaning against the doorjamb and surveying the disaster that was her twin’s work space. Papers had spewed from the printer and fax onto the floor, haphazardly stacked portfolios lay open on the long oak work-table, and the buttons on a multi-line phone console blinked erratically. The face that looked up at her was smudged with ink.

  “Hey, yourself. Hold on just a sec—I’ve got two calls going here.”

  Susan spoke rapidly for a minute, switching between lines with barely a break and picking up the different conversations without a dropped syllable. Then she hung up and hurried around the desk toward Sean.

  “How was it? Did you do okay?”

  As always, Sean thought that she would never quite get used to looking into her own face—the same deep-green eyes, the same full lips, the same sweep of dark hair always tumbling over the forehead. Despite the physical likeness, Susan was not truly a reflection of herself, but very nearly her polar opposite. Where she was reserved and introspective, her twin was excitable and extroverted. Where she craved order and frequent solitude, Susan thrived on stress, stimulation, and adventure. They were like two halves of the same coin—individual, and yet eternally joined.

  “I got my stripes—three of them.” Sean grinned, pleased. In the privacy of her own home, in the company of her best friend, she could admit to her pleasure.

  “Oh—way to go!” Susan hugged her. “Was it tough?”

  “Well,” Sean replied thoughtfully, “I didn’t really think about it while it was happening. I just wanted to get through it. But I’d say it was about like I expected—demanding, but fair.”

  “Three stripes. That’s good, right?”

  Sean laughed. “Yeah, that’s good.”

  “I knew the old battle-ax would have to recognize your incredible talent.”

  “Suse. She’s not like that,” Sean responded in mock exasperation. They’d had this conversation before, and Sean knew that her sister, who loathed authority in any form, couldn’t understand how Sean could subject herself—willingly—to what Susan termed irrational abuse.

  “Anyone who makes grown women do push-ups because they forget to say Yes, Ma’am is a sadist,” Susan said half-seriously. She held up a hand to stop Sean’s protests, then wrapped an affectionate arm around her sister’s waist. As the two of them walked down the hall toward the living room, she added, “I know, I know—you love it, you love her, you love Tae Kwon Do. You’re seeking your higher power; heaven forbid I should complain about anyone’s higher power. Still, you’re a masochist. You proved that by marrying Michael Montrose.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me how much you disliked him before I took the fatal plunge?” Sean complained, not for the first time.

  “Because,” Susan replied with exaggerated emphasis, “I tried, and you wouldn’t listen. I thought maybe the fact that he talked you into giving up dancing and moving to Chicago for his job might have been a clue there was a problem.”

  “I was twenty,” Sean said in self-defense. “And if I hadn’t married him, I probably wouldn’t have ended up in psychology. That was a positive.”

  “You could have stayed here and done that.”

  “All right, all right,” Sean admitted. “It was a momentary lapse in judgment—but I am not a masochist.”

  Susan raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I forgot. Psychologists can’t have neuroses—you’re all normal and healthy.”

  “You should know,” Sean riposted. “You’re married to one.”

  Susan’s expression quickly became somber.

  “Ellen and I are not married. We’re...we’re seriously involved.”

  Sean flopped on the leather sofa in the living room, drained her beer, and regarded her sister dubiously. “Is that what you call a six-year monogamous relationship? When are you going to give in and live with her?”

  “I don’t know,” Susan replied, pacing uneasily, avoiding Sean’s sharp eyes. “She keeps asking, but I just can’t do it. Marriage—it’s a minefield. Look at Mom and Dad. That was ugly.”

  Sean knew that their parents’ divorce had been harder on her sister than it had been on her. Susan always tended to be the emotionally volatile one, the one easily hurt—the one who carried the sorrow for the whole family.

  “It was hard,” Sean agreed, “but it happens sometimes when two people can’t find a way to talk. You can’t—”

  “Talk?” Susan laughed harshly. “How? They just froze each other out. It was a relief by the time they split up—anything to end the horrible tension we lived with all the time.” She shivered visibly as if still feeling the chill that had seemed to permeate the very air in the house when they were children.

  “You and Ellen aren’t like them—”

  “And you, for crying out loud,” Susan continued as if Sean hadn’t spoken. “You lasted what—eight years? How many of them were happy?”

  Not many. Sean refused to get drawn into yet another defense of her decision to marry a man she hadn’t really loved, but whom she’d thought she should have. Michael had been good-looking, bright, and successful. They’d met in college and had a lot in common socially. They should have had the basis for a good marriage, but she had never really connected with him emotionally. Despite the fact that they’d shared the same home—the same bed—for eight years, they’d never been partners. Finally, she had been just too lonely to stay.

  She had no regrets about her divorce. Even though she had not been romantically involved with anyone since returning home to live with her sister four years previously, she felt no great need for another relationship, casual or otherwise. She didn’t miss the sex, though sometimes she longed for intimacy—the touch of another’s hand in the night. But mostly, she was content; she had her friends, her sister, and her work to occupy her. If occasionally she missed someone with whom to share her quiet moments, she could manage. She was far less lonely now than she had been with Michael, but she hated to think that her own failed marriage was adding to Susan’s uncertainties.

  “My relationship with Michael was nothing like yours is with Ellen. You love her, don’t you?”

  “Of course, I do. We’re not talking about love,” Susan insisted vehemently. “God—you see enough couples in therapy, don’t you? Marriage equals death for a relationship. At least Ellen and I still have good sex.”

  Sean bit back a retort. She shared a psychotherapy practice with Susan’s lover, Ellen Tyler, and the two of them had an office in the renovated carriage house that adjoined the main residence where she and Susan lived. However, she and Ellen were more than just professional colleagues; they were close friends. Even though she tried not to get in the middle of her sister’s relationship, she knew how much Ellen wanted Susan to make a serious commitment. And that, to Ellen, meant co-habiting. Sean knew, too, how much Susan’s steadfast refusal hurt Ellen.

  “Suse,” Sean said, catching her sister’s hand and tugging her down onto the couch beside her. “Stop pacing. I understand your reluctance. I was there, too, when Mom and Dad split. And you’ll notice that I haven’t exactly rushed out to find someone else either. But you and Ellen are different—you’re good together. Maybe the two of you should see a therapist and talk about it?”

  “Oh, please.” Susan shot her sister a ho
rrified look. “Isn’t AA enough? I can’t face any more processing in my life.”

  Sean heard the plea for support behind the joking tone. Her own solution to childhood losses and adult disappointments had been to become more and more self-reliant, until eventually she forsook intimate relationships—except with her family and friends. Her sister’s solution had been more self-destructive.

  Beginning as a teenager and lasting for a decade, Susan had dulled her pain with alcohol until finally she’d nearly died after a weeklong binge. Coming-to in the hospital had apparently been her wake-up call. She got sober; she met Ellen; she turned her life around.

  “Okay—I give.” Sean laughed and squeezed her twin’s hand. “No more serious stuff tonight. Are you done working?”

  “Just about,” Susan replied, her eyes sparkling at the reprieve. “Tokyo is going crazy, and I’m trying to keep all my boats afloat. I need to make a few more calls—make sure all my clients’ millions don’t turn into confetti—then I’ll be done. Want to watch a movie in an hour or so?”

  “Sounds great.” Sean stood, realizing for the first time how sore she felt. “I’m beat. Let me shower, and you pick the film.”

  When they met later in the library, Susan waved a videotape at Sean. “You’ll like this one. It’s about a lesbian psychiatrist and a bunch of women on this writers’ retreat.”

  “What’s it called?” Sean settled on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn.

  “Claire of the Moon.” Susan curled up next to her twin and put her hand in the bowl.

  “Have you seen it already?”

  “Mmm,” Susan replied around a mouthful of popcorn. “Only four or five times.”

  Sean laughed. “Sounds good. Let’s roll it.”

  Munching popcorn, Sean happily let her body dissolve into the soft cushions as the story of two women learning to love each other unfolded. She liked the way the two main characters looked and behaved. They were attractive, and there was an appealing physical tension between them. The dark-haired psychiatrist was pretty uptight—typecasting, she thought with a smile—but then, the woman had been hurt by love. The other one, a wild blond, was straight, except all that meant was that she slept with men. Emotionally, the men she had sex with didn’t seem to touch her. But for some reason, something about the reclusive, prickly shrink captured the young writer’s heart.

  Relaxing, Sean smiled at the movie depiction of the irrationality of love. Psychologists had tried to explain the basis of attraction for a hundred years or more, and no one had yet. Falling in love, apparently, happened exactly like it seemed in the movies—just because. After a while, Sean stopped thinking and got pulled firmly into the story as the women danced together and apart throughout much of the movie—drawn closer by need and desire, pulled apart by fear.

  At one point, Susan exclaimed, “If they don’t get together soon, I’ll die. I can’t stand any more of this foreplay.”

  “Shh—I thought you’d seen this?”

  “So? The anticipation is still killing me.”

  “Don’t you know that’s most of the fun?” Sean laughed. “Once the tension breaks, it’s only sex.”

  “Excuse me?” Susan looked at her aghast. “Only sex? No wonder you can stand being celibate.”

  Mildly embarrassed because it was true, Sean shrugged. “It’s not so bad.”

  Susan clicked the remote to pause. “Don’t you miss it?” she asked, uncharacteristically serious.

  “Not really.” Sean pondered the question. It wasn’t something she gave much thought to ordinarily, and maybe that was what was odd. “What I miss, I guess, is something I never had. I don’t miss the act; it wasn’t all that much fun. And what I wanted from it was closeness—intimacy—and that just wasn’t there.”

  “Maybe it was Michael?”

  “I don’t think so, Suse. He isn’t the only man I ever slept with, and some of them were damn nice guys. It just didn’t happen to me.”

  “Do you ever think about women?”

  Sean whacked her with a pillow. “With you and Ellen, not to mention these movies, around, how could I not think about them? Jesus, I’m not stone.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. These two are beautiful to look at, and they’re beautiful together. So are you and Ellen.” Sean shrugged again. “You and I share the same genes—I know that.”

  “So you might find women attractive?”

  Sean sighed in exasperation, but to her surprise, the image of Drew Clark flickered across her mind. But that hadn’t been physical attraction, had it? That moment of intense connection when all she’d been aware of was the incredible depths of those blue eyes? Sean cleared her throat, which suddenly felt dry.

  “I suppose anything is possible.”

  “So, should I fix you up with someone?” Susan prodded, only half-joking now. Despite her sister’s protestations that she wasn’t lonely, Susan had seen the sadness in Sean’s eyes when she thought no one was looking.

  “Oh, God, no.” Sean laughed and shook her head. “I’m just not ready for anyone. Maybe I never will be.”

  “If you say so.” Susan clicked the movie back on. She didn’t believe her sister for a minute.

  Chapter Three

  The next night, Drew watched quietly from the corner of the dojang as the students warmed up. Some chatted as they stretched, others worked out with the heavy hanging bag, and a few practiced their forms—stylized fighting sequences similar to katas, as they were commonly called in the Japanese style of karate.

  The initiation into her new position as an instructor at the Golden Tiger Kwan had occurred quite precipitously, with no time to really question her decision. Chris Roma had been in a car accident that afternoon. Fortunately, the young woman was not badly injured, but she’d sustained a painful neck and shoulder sprain when a SEPTA bus had pulled unexpectedly into traffic on Walnut Street, and the driver of a car in the adjacent lane had accelerated to pass it. In the process, the speeding car ran a red light and broadsided Chris’s Saab in the middle of the intersection. Although her seatbelt and airbag saved her from more serious damage, she wouldn’t be training for a few weeks.

  Janet had stayed home to care for her despite Chris’s insistence that she was fine. That left Drew as the only person available to teach.

  “As I said,” Janet had remarked with a soft smile as she walked Drew to the door an hour earlier, “it is good that you have come.”

  Good, Drew mused. I guess we’ll know soon.

  She’d noticed a few of the women casting uneasy glances her way as it became apparent that she was to be their only teacher tonight. She knew from experience that students formed loyalties quickly and were naturally apprehensive about someone new, especially someone whose methods might differ from those of their more familiar instructors. Janet Cho had trained her, but that had been almost fifteen years ago. A great deal had changed in her life since she had arrived as a wary, angry youth.

  Sean, she noticed, was completely absorbed in performing her forms, moving smoothly from one choreographed position to the next, her face a study in composed concentration. If she gave Drew’s presence any thought, it was not apparent. Drew found her gaze returning again and again to the dark-haired woman whose natural attractiveness was accentuated by the graceful purpose in her movements. She must have been a beautiful dancer.

  More than Sean’s beauty, however, it was her sense of quiet strength that had captured Drew’s attention the night before and intrigued her still. Her own strength sprang from fury, and although now she controlled her anger—controlled all her feelings with rigid determination—the order in her life had come at a price.

  When she realized that she was staring, Drew flushed and looked away. What in hell is wrong with me?

  Across the room, Sean was aware of Drew’s scrutiny, although she was almost able to relegate it to the back of her mind as she worked through her forms. She assumed that the instructor was evaluating her performance and tri
ed to ignore the slight fluttering in her stomach that the intense blue-eyed gaze invoked. When she’d first walked into the dojang, she’d been surprised to see that Drew was there alone, in uniform, warming up. She’d also been pleased to see her again for no reason that she could clearly identify. That was a fact that she definitely needed to ignore if she hoped to be able to concentrate on the upcoming class.

  Precisely at 8:00 p.m., Drew strode to the front of the room and called the class to order. Sean, as the highest-ranking student, led them in the traditional opening pledges, then Drew began the first portion of the session with a series of offensive and defensive floor movements. When she judged that they’d settled into the familiar routine and had forgotten her presence as they struggled to get each position just right, she progressed to something more challenging.

  “Line up for one-steps,” she called, referring to the patterned drills where two women alternated attacks and defenses. “Gail—you’re with Sean. The rest of you pair off by rank.”

  Sean faced Gail Driscoll, the blue belt who had challenged her so successfully during the sparring match the night before. Gail was a handsome young woman, muscles buffed from years of playing rugby, which apparently rivaled her passion for Tae Kwon Do. Her collar-length hair was slightly shaggy, her smile almost a smirk, and her confident stride nearly a swagger—all of which lent her a roguish air. She had a natural talent for the martial arts and probably would have been further along if she had applied herself a little more seriously.

  Although they weren’t all that far apart in age, Sean liked her in an older sister kind of way, and she occasionally envied her youthful optimism. Gail seemed to approach everything as if it were some new adventure and all the world was hers to conquer. Sean didn’t think she had ever felt that kind of joy.

  Drew’s voice cut through Sean’s musings, and she fixed her eyes steadily on Gail’s.

  “I want ten one-steps, one after the other. I expect to see advanced techniques from the senior students,” Drew instructed. “Face each other. Bow. Begin.”