‘Well I’m gonna hit the shower. Catch ya’s later,’ said Tick as he walked off. The words JUSTICE were etched in black across his shoulders.
Jaz also turned and, headed towards the office, Ryan followed. ‘Well, you’re full of surprises.’
Jaz took a drink from her water bottle; she felt a bead of sweat run down her neck, over her collarbone and down to her fitted, black sports top.
‘Anything else you can do that I don’t know about?’ Ryan asked as he hooked his thumb into his jeans pocket.
Jaz laughed. ‘Well, I can handle a toilet brush and you’ve seen me scrub the mats.’
Ryan scratched his chin as he replied, and tried to hide his smile. ‘Yes, you’re talent really has no end,’ he teased. They gazed at each other for a moment. ‘So…where did you learn to fight like that? Obviously not from a cereal box. Did Tick teach you?’
Jaz sat down on a computer chair as Ryan leaned against the doorframe. Her black shorts rose further up her lean legs as she crossed them. A bruise was starting to show on her upper thigh.
‘Sort of. It was originally my mum, but the guys at the gym kinda finished the job.’ Jaz reached over to the desk and picked up a photo in a wooden frame to show Ryan. The picture was taken in the gym and her mum was helping Jaz to stand on one of the blue mats. Her mum had short, spiky blonde hair at that stage.
‘You look so much like your mum. How old were you?’
‘I was one. Really? You can see a resemblance? I’ve got my dad’s darker skin while the rest of my family is lily white.’
‘You’ve got her high cheekbones and blue eyes,’ said Ryan glancing at her. ‘Your mum’s pretty.’
Jaz nodded as she gazed into space trying to fight the heated flush she could feel building. She felt as if he’d just called her pretty too.
‘She brought me to the gym before I could walk. Mum and Pax go way back, so she was always coming here and she taught me all she knew about karate from day dot. You spend every day in a gym and you soon start to pick up bits. The other guys help too. Bags taught me boxing and Tick’s shown me the street fighting stuff.’
‘So you have a mix of all sorts.’
‘Yep, I love it all, it’s a great way to clear the mind and forget about crap that pisses you off.’
‘Hmm, remind me not to come across you in a dark alley.’
‘Ha, try telling my mum that. She still worries about me walking home! When I was a kid she was so overprotective, I couldn’t play in the park without her worrying I’d gone missing or been stolen when she’d lost sight of me for two seconds.’
Ryan took a last glance at the photo and put the frame back on Pax’s desk. ‘So you really have known Pax longer than me.’
‘Pax is family. I know everything about him…and yet sometimes I feel I know nothing.’ Jaz glanced to the wall where heaps of certificates were displayed in simple black frames. Ryan coughed and cleared his throat.
‘So…are you going to tell me about last night? What was all that about?’ Jaz chewed her lip, watching Ryan. She found him fascinating, and after last night was dying with curiosity.
‘Well,’ he said moving into the office and shutting the door. ‘You know when I told you I did “other stuff” other than being a bouncer? Yeah, well that was the “other stuff”.’
‘So, what are you, like a qualified stalker?’ she asked.
Ryan ran his hand over his chin. It was shadowed with stubble, making him look rugged and a little sexy. Jaz found it hard to be cautious around Ryan. She should be, she didn’t know him but something about him just didn’t seem cruel or dangerous. Not towards her at least.
‘I guess you could call it that. I get paid to keep scumbags off the streets. But I’m a good guy and you can trust me, Jaz.’
‘We’ll see.’
He laughed. ‘I’m sorry to put you into that position last night, but I really couldn’t afford to miss who the guy in the white suit was meeting. You have no idea how important those photos you took were, and even better were the fingerprints we lifted off that plastic bag.’
‘Wow, really?’
‘Yeah, not that it helped much as he’s not on our data base but it’s a start.’
‘So are you, like, an undercover cop?’
‘Something like that.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s as much as I can tell you, but just know that I work for the good guys.’
When he smiled like that, Jaz found it hard to think of him as harmful.
‘So I suppose you’re the it thing at school after winning the comp?’ he asked, subtly changing the subject.