Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

“You don’t have any old injuries, say, from high school? A broken wrist or anything?”

Temple shook out her arms in the long sleeves. “Not yet.”

“You won’t break anything here. That’s why the pads. You said you weren’t athletic in school. What about at home, in your family? Did you have any brothers and sisters to tussle with?”

“Not in the physical way.” Temple let her head wag from side to side in resignation. “You sound like Molina during an interrogation. Yes, Officer, I had brothers, four of them. And, no, we didn’t go at it much, for fun or for fury, because I was—naturally—the youngest. And the littlest. With eight years between me and the next youngest, obviously my siblings were too grown-up to have much to do with me. I did get endless icky clothes handed down from older girl cousins.”

“So you were almost an only child. That’s interesting.”

“To a counselor, maybe. To me, no. You know how they say parents over control the first child and loosen up for the later ones? Well, I was such a tail on the dragon that my parents got neurotic all over again. In fact, my brothers all joined in. Everybody knew what was best for me, except me.”

“Sounds like you were the apple of the whole family’s eye.”

“Yup. My father called me ‘Ladybug’ till I left home. And when I flew away from home and left Minneapolis with Max—they went ballistic.”

“They sound a tad smothering. Try to direct your frustration with your family into what we’re doing here. Redirect the irritation into action. And remember, I’m not going into the ‘Kung Fu’ mystical stuff. These are just some moves you can use to get an attacker off balance.”

“Will I be able to throw you over my shoulder?”

“Eventually,” he promised with a smile.

She sighed, looked around again for witnesses, found none, then grimaced. “Just don’t call me ‘Grasshopper.’ ”

T emple padded barefootinto the Circle Ritz and up to her apartment. She hated to “pad.” It made her feel like a child who’d gotten out of bed to ask for a glass of water, like she had to ask permission of someone for whatever she wanted.

Matt had been right. She was more deeply irritated by her family’s overprotective ways than she knew. When she drew on that ancient annoyance, pretending to be Nancy Ninja didn’t feel so weird. Not that she’d get to the stage of tossing him that quickly.

In her bedroom she fought the fabric knot and won. Round One for the little lady in bare feet. When she shrugged off the—what was it, a uniform, a costume?—gi, the unfurling fabric released the scent of her own sweat, faint and pleasantly pungent rather than reeking.

Temple changed into aqua knit shorts and top, then slid her bare feet into cork-soled wedgies two-and-a-half-inches high at the heel. Did she feel more self-confident—-any more vindicated, or vindictive? Had she made a breakthrough in her slo-mo relationship with her attractive but elusive neighbor? Maybe.

She walked to the bedroom/office at the unit’s other end, detouring through the kitchen to snag a glass of Ruby Red grapefruit juice. Visions of chopping a thug in the bridge of his nose with the hardened edge of one hand, then jamming the heel of the other hand under his nostrils so the presumably broken bridge bone would drive, splintering, into his brain, burned as gory-red in her head as the grapefruit juice in her hand.

Matt wasn’t teaching her that maneuver, but she’d heard of it. Maybe going through the motions now, learning the moves that she hadn’t known when the two men had attacked her, would restore something they had taken. Maybe. At her desk, a pale-pink Post-it note with the group-therapy phone number stuck out from the top of her computer screen like an anemic tongue.

She ripped it off, then lifted the phone receiver and dialed. Maybe just going through the motions of anything—even survival—wasn’t enough.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

www.carolenelsondouglas.com

Carole Nelson Douglasis the award-winning author of 60 novels in the mystery/thriller, science fiction/fantasy and romance/women’s fiction genres. She currently writes the long-running Midnight Louie, feline PI, cozy-noir mystery series ( Cat in an Alphabet Soup, Cat in an Aqua Storm, Pussyfoot , Cat on a Blue Monday etc.) and the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator, noir urban fantasy series ( Dancing with Werewolves ) set in imaginative variations of Las Vegas: contemporary and paranormally post-apocalyptic.

Carole was thefirst author to make a Sherlockian female character, Irene Adler, a series protagonist, with the New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Good Night, Mr. Holmes. She has won Lifetime Achievement Awards from RT Book Reviews for Mystery, Suspense and Versatility, and was named a Pioneer of Publishing. Her Midnight Louie novels and stories also won several Cat Writers’ Association first-place Muse Medallions, including for “Butterfly Kiss” and “The Riches That There Lie.” Carole has e-published the first four Irene Adler novels and some shorter fiction. ( www.wishlist.com )

A daily newspaperreporter, feature writer and editor in St. Paul, she moved to Fort Worth to write fiction fulltime and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.

ALSO BY CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS

“Her fine Sherlockian novels and her Midnight Louie books have turned her into a genuine mystery star. Pick one up and you'll see why.”— Ed Gorman, founder of Mystery Scene magazine

The DELILAH STREET, Paranormal Investigator, series in print and eBook

Dancing with Werewolves... Brimstone Kiss... Vampire Sunrise... Silver Zombie... Virtual Virgin

The New York Times Notable IRENE ADLER Series in print and eBook

Good Night, Mr. Holmes... The Adventuress... A Soul of Steel... Another Scandal in Bohemia... Chapel Noir and Castle Rouge (Jack the Ripper duology)... Femme Fatale... Spider Dance

Novellas in eBook

Alice Holds the Cards

Fruit of the Tomb (ML)

Monster Mash (DS)

Once Upon a Midnight Noir

(in print also) ML & DS

The Private Wife of Sherlock Holmes (IA)

Christmas Stories

The Rakehell’s Christmas Angel

Scrogged: A Cyber Christmas Carol

A Wall Street Christmas Carol

The MIDNIGHT LOUIE Feline PI series*

Cat in an Alphabet Soup... Cat in an Aqua Storm... Cat on a Blue Monday... Cat in a Crimson Haze... Cat in a Diamond Dazzle... Cat with an Emerald Eye... Cat in a Flamingo Fedora... Cat in a Golden Garland... Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt... Cat in an Indigo Mood... Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit... Cat in a Kiwi Con... Cat in a Leopard Spot... Cat in a Midnight Choir... Cat in a Neon Nightmare... Cat in an Orange Twist... Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit... Cat in a Quicksilver Caper... Cat in a Red Hot Rage... Cat in a Topaz Tango... Cat in a Sapphire Slipper... Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme... Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta... Cat in a White Tie and Tails... Cat in an Alien X-Ray... (Forthcoming: Cat in a Yellow Spotlight... Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit...Cat in an Alphabet Endgame)

* in eBook, Fto Kforthcoming in eBook

COPYRIGHT

Cat in an Aqua Storm