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“You are not talking about a man, Miranda,” he said quietly. “You must know this. A creature who would do such things is the worst kind of coward. My uncle was the very same sort.”
“But you fought him.” Her voice was bitter. A slap of pain, of self-recrimination. “You stood up to him.”
“I was six feet by the time I was twelve. What do you imagine you could have done? What use would fighting have been to you when he could break your bones? Where was your brother?”
She shook her head, her eyes a misery, and again, it hurt him not to reach for her, not to try to soothe her with his hands—as if that would help.
“At my college graduation, I was ready for them,” she said after a moment. She swiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I’d been accepted into my graduate program. I had housing, a stipend. A job to help pay the bills. So I finally stood up to him.” Her eyes swam with tears. “I told him he was an abusive bully who’d made all our lives hell and I wanted nothing more to do with him. I thought my mother and my brother would applaud.”
Ivan sighed, knowing where this was going. “Miranda...”
“My father walked out of the restaurant,” she said very precisely, as if careful enunciation might keep her from crying. “I thought my mother would choose me but instead she told me I was dead to her, and I haven’t spoken to either of them since.” She let out a sound too hollow to be a laugh, and a tear traced a sluggish path down her cheek. “My brother thinks I’m delusional. He sends me hateful emails when he sees me on television. He thinks I need a strong hand to keep me in my place. I got a few messages from him when I was in New York and guess what? He thinks you can do the job nicely.”
Ivan sat forward slightly, and waited until her eyes met his.
“Come here,” he said. Very quietly.
She shivered, and not entirely in fear, he thought. But then she shook her head, tears swimming in her eyes again.
“I can’t. I just can’t. You make me...” She dragged a hand through her hair, scraping her hair back from her face. “You make me forget myself again, and I can’t, Ivan. I can’t.”
“You can.” He opened up his hands and laid them, palms up, on his knees. “Just as soon as it occurs to you that you have already said far nastier things to me and about me than you have ever said to a man like your father, and I have yet to harm you in any way. Just as soon as that marvelous brain of yours analyzes what that means. What it suggests about how safe you are here. With me.”
“Ivan—”
“I have very strong hands,” he said in the same tone, flipping them over on his knees, then back, inviting her to study them. “I’ve spent my entire life studying fighting. I have black belts in three martial arts systems. I’ve won every MMA championship I ever entered. You think that makes me more violent, more dangerous, than the average man?”
“Of course it does. It would have to.”
“You’re wrong.”
She didn’t like that, clearly, but she shifted position against the white couch, dropping her knees to the side and no longer hugging herself in that way, as if she was protecting herself from a blow. Her eyes moved over his hands, then back to his face.
“The more I train, the more I learn, the less I fight,” he said quietly. “The less I have to fight.”
He watched her take that in, start to think about it. He felt a trickle of relief when he saw that frown of hers again, carving that familiar line between her brows. This was the Miranda he knew. This was his Professor.
He told himself that was only relief he felt. Nothing more. Nothing deeper, more dangerous.
“Come here,” he said again, softer this time.
“I don’t think I want to.”
“I think you do.”
He still didn’t move, and after a very long time, when the sun began to sink into vibrant golds and reds across the wide horizon and the house lights came on around them, low and warm, she exhaled a long and shuddering breath. And then, very slowly, very carefully, she moved back toward him across the polished wood floor. She stopped when she was directly in front of him, and knelt there, frightened eyes big in her delicate face.
