The Million Dollar Detective (14) squeezed her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. "Oh, don't squeeze, love," she begged. "I need to go to the bathroom." "It's over here," he said, and pointed. "Yes, I remember." She began climbing over him, intentionally making more contact than necessary. His smile broadened and she could feel her own face smiling almost to the breaking point as well. "You're not going to watch me walk naked across the room, are you?" she asked. His smile broadened even more. "Oh, yes, absolutely." "Beast," she said. But her smile did not waver, and she walked more slowly than necessary. At the doorway, she turned and gave him a full frontal pose. She marveled at how hungry he looked. Didn't he ever get enough? It felt nice to be wanted. He was propped up on one arm, with the covers down around his waist. She visually caressed his arms, shoulders, chest, and those six-pack abs. Lust stirred in her again, but a complaint from her overfull bladder reminded her of her primary mission. Smiling, she closed the door, and said to herself, "Lucky, lucky, lucky." When she came out, Bart had put on workout shorts, and was doing one-arm push-ups near the side of the bed. She had heard that even strong men found the one-armed variety very hard. Yet Bart pumped away steadily, though his expression showed the strain, and at every upward motion he made a sound halfway between a grunt and a snarl. Soon enough, he stopped and sat leaning back against the side of the bed. Now, he was panting. "How many of those did you do?" she asked. "Eighty." Breathe. "Sometimes I do a hundred." Breathe, breathe. "The most I've ever done . . . is one-twenty." "Goodness. I thought they were supposed to be hard." "Yeah," he said. "There's a trick to it." Breathe, breathe. "Accepting that every single one will hurt, . . . and not minding." Breathe. "But like anything else, . . . with practice you can accomplish feats that seem like magic." His breathing had recovered significantly already. Now she understood why sex didn't make him run out of breath the way it did her. "All of my karate friends pick an extreme thing to show off at demonstrations, . . . and to impress each other with. Circus stunts, mostly. One guy does a beautiful jumping, spinning back kick. Totally impractical for fighting, but it really impresses the rubes. Lots of guys do breaking--concrete, wood, ice--with hands or feet. One guy breaks boards with his forehead. My thing is one-arm push- ups." "Breaking boards with one's head sounds rather dangerous." "Yeah, sloshing your brain around like that can't be good for it. I keep telling him he might want to use that brain for something else someday. He doesn't seem concerned. Maybe that's a symptom of incipient brain damage right there." Bart's breathing had returned almost to normal, but didn't seem to make any more progress. Meredith attributed this to him staring at her nakedness again. "Bart," she said, "Do you have any workout clothes I could wear? Maybe a loose T-shirt that would fit me?" He made a disappointed noise, but said, "Anything you can find in the closet, feel free. I don't know about sizes. They'll all probably be too big or way too big. I need to use the bathroom now. Could you grab a spare T-shirt for me, too?" "Oh," she said with disappointment. "I rather like seeing you shirtless." Those muscles bulged and rippled so intriguingly when he moved. "What a coincidence," he said. "I rather like seeing you shirtless, too." He ducked into the bathroom quickly after that, fleeing her feigned wrath. Chapter Twenty-two Meredith shamelessly poked through Bart's things, which filled less than a third of his closet. Seven tuxedos, twenty-two dress suits or sport jackets, a larger number of dress slacks and shirts, and an extensive tie collection took up part of one rack. Casual clothes far outnumbered these. Five karate uniforms, three white, two black, hung to one side. A plaque on the wall held a rainbow of karate belts--white, orange, blue, purple, green, and brown. On a peg all by itself hung a sorry looking black belt, worn, faded and frayed, with three stripes of gold embroidered near one end, and the name "MANNING" embroidered in red near the other. She clucked her tongue, mentally scolding Bart for not taking better care of something so important. She couldn't resist running her fingers over it, feeling the tired material, wondering how much abuse it took to reduce it to such a condition. Then she understood. It was a badge of honor to wear a ragged old belt. It bore silent witness to years of effort. His clothes did not completely fill the double rack along one wall of the closet. Underneath rested a beautiful set of matching luggage, neatly arranged from tiny to gigantic. Two other walls had tall single racks, suitable for full-length dresses. Bart had a few robes hanging from one of these. Otherwise, they stood empty. Meredith imagined Bart's mother had once filled them with exquisite ball gowns and evening dresses. She shook her head at Bart's shoes. How did men survive with so few? And half were sneakers of various sorts. She kept nearly as many shoes in her office at work. A University of Michigan T-shirt fit her like a mid-length dress, going down almost to her knees. In the big double dresser in the center of the closet, she found his socks and undies, which were boring but made her smile anyway. She found a pair of plain gray workout shorts with an elastic waistband that stretched enough to go over her hips and snapped back tight enough to stay up. She had to untie a string in the waistband to get them over her hips. Apparently that part of her anatomy was larger than Bart's. She found a few puzzling things as well. The bottom drawers on both sides held boxes and bags of food--crackers, freeze-dried fruit, beef jerky, and MREs. An enormous safe stood in one corner, as large as an armoire. Next to the safe sat three two- and-a-half gallon containers of water. Above them on the wall was a phone. Growing suspicious now, she took a closer look at the closet door. It was massively thick, wood paneling over steel, with industrial strength hinges and locking mechanism. "Oho," she said to herself. She rejoined Bart and asked, "Is your closet set up to double as a panic room?" Bart sort of answered, "It's not paranoia if you really do have enemies." "Have you ever needed it?" Did he, in fact, live such a dangerous life? "As a closet, every day. As a panic room, no, never. Now that you bring it up, that salesman ripped me off, didn't he? Darn it." That answer reassured her somewhat. "You must own a lot of jewelry to need such a large safe." "One, that's not my biggest safe. Two, I own very little jewelry. Three, I keep a few guns in there." "I comprehend your need for guns, since you are a dedicated crime fighter. Do you own many?" "Oh, yes. Down in the basement I have an extensive collection." He smiled his wicked smile. "If you have an interest in guns, I'd be happy to show you the, uh, armory." Then his expression turned worried. "You're not strongly anti-gun, are you?" "I have mixed feeling about guns. I tried skeet shooting a few times in England. I appreciate the allure of firearms. Firing them does feel sexy. And I recognize your need for personal protection. If you have a large collection, though, that goes beyond need. You must like them." "I do like weapons, I guess. I have swords and other things, too. And a cannon." "Yes, and a lovely big cannon it is." She smiled such a naughty smile at him that he blushed. "One more question, Bart. Why is this shirt so loose in the chest? Surely you can't be that much bigger around the chest than I am." Bart nodded and said, "I think I can, sweetie. My chest measurement is fifty-two inches." She did not need this translated to metrics to know it was a huge number. Tradition had once considered 36-24-36 (in inches) the ideal female measurements. A fifty-two inch chest could make one a porn star. "But how can that be?" she asked. "I know you have muscles, but can they really compare to what I have?" "No, I really, really prefer what you have," he said. "In size, though, well, remember I have back muscles, too." He turned around and flexed for her. His large and well-defined latissimus dorsi muscles made a pronounced vee shape. She poked and squeezed them. "Ooh," she said. "You're manly all over the place, aren't you?" "Uh, sure," he said, turning back around. "I think the real difference is in the ribcage, though." "Why would yours be so much larger than mine?" she asked. "I can see it being some larger, but so much?" "I'm twice your weight so I need twice the air." With that he sucked in a great breath. She imagined the walls bowed inward. She took her deepest breath, sipping maybe a liter of air, and held it. Bart, who had taken his breath several seconds before her, continued holding his, smiled and slowly shook his head. He kept on smiling placidly while she turned blue. Finally, she whooshed out her breath and said, "Okay you win the breath holding contest. I should know better than to challenge you physically." He continued smiling, nodded, and motioned her to follow him. They walked down the back stairs and he led her into his "workout room," a goodly sized ballroom converted into a gymnasium. Inside, Bart let out a huge noisy breath. Meredith said, "No, you did not hold your breath all this time. I don't know how, but somehow you cheated." "It's just practice again. I can hold my breath two and a half minutes. If you want to be impressed, have Henderson hold his breath. He can go well over four minutes." "Henderson? Why on earth would a butler be able to hold his breath so long?" "It might have something to do with dirty laundry," Bart quipped. "No, really, it's a holdover from his military days. He was in the SAS." That stopped Meredith cold. The Special Air Service was Great Britain's elite special forces unit. They traced their history back to the commandos of World War II fame. Today they specialized in anti-terrorism. America's Delta Force had been patterned after them. The idea of such a highly trained soldier becoming a butler amazed her. Bart had said Henderson took care of the house security. Now Meredith began to get an inkling of how extreme that security might be. Any home invaders invading this home might have to face a special forces soldier as well as a very large martial arts expert. The invaders should plan on taking severe casualties. The converted ballroom they entered still had a large open expanse of hardwood floor, a very high ceiling (at least four meters), and arched mullioned windows on one of the long walls of the room. At one time the windows may have reached all the way down to the floor, but now a shoulder high padded wall cut them off. Full-length mirrors covered the opposite wall. At the far end of the room sat a treadmill and a multi-station mechanical weightlifting contraption that could have come directly from a professional fitness center. A frame of square steel tubing held one punching bag, and eyebolts to support up to four more. The extra bags and other padded equipment were pushed together into a large pile in the near corner. Various martial arts weapons hung higher up on the near wall. "Bart, these mirrors seem a trifle off somehow, not exactly the sort of reflectance of normal mirrors. Why is that? What are they made of?" "They're polished stainless steel," he explained. "We went through two complete sets of glass mirrors before I realized my martial arts friends would always break them, no matter how careful we tried to be. These steel ones have held up pretty well. You can see a dent on the third panel where one guy got too close doing a thrust with a bo staff." Indeed, there it was, something she never thought to see, a dented mirror. "An ingenious solution," she complimented him. "It wasn't really my idea," he said. "Two guys had just thrown each other into the mirrors and broken two panels at once, when one said, 'Too bad you can't make mirrors out of steel.' We all realized immediately that you could. The real trick was figuring out how to mount the panels flat enough to work properly. The one at the far end isn't quite right and you get a sort of funhouse mirror effect from it." While he spoke, he walked over to a folding table set up between the treadmill and the wall of mirrors. It was by far the cheapest piece of furniture she had seen in the house. A CD player, two shelves of CDs, a pile of magazines, and a medium-sized television sat on the table. She could see the effect he mentioned in the mirror behind this table. It was a bit like looking at the reflection in the back of a spoon. "What kind of music do you have, Bart?" she asked. "Oh, let's see. Beatles, of course, Rolling Stones, The Who, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart--" "Bart," she laughed, "are you that obsessed with all things British? Don't you have any American music?" "What? Oh, sure. AC/DC, Aerosmith, Styx, Simon and Garfunkel, um, The Monkees. I'm not sure how to classify Fleetwood Mac," he said. "Hmm. Three Britons and two Americans, I believe," she said. "An international band. We'll have to work on the music if I'm to use these facilities on a regular basis." "Anything my lady would like. I have a few classical pieces, Beethoven mostly. How about if I cue up the Ninth? German is one of your languages, right?" "Not quite yet," she said. "I'm still learning it." She planned to learn Japanese after that. From what she had seen, translations of contracts left much to be desired. And, of course, she would gain more insight into the nuances of the contract specifications if she could translate the language herself. "So, anyway," Bart said, "I was thinking you could use the treadmill first, while I start on the weight machine and punching bag. When you finish you can go up and take a shower while I do my running. Will you stipulate to that, counselor?" "I will agree to your plan, Bart. You stipulate to facts, not really to plans." She took a magazine, American Police Beat, off the little reading shelf on the treadmill and put it on a small pile of other magazines he had on the table. These included Journal of Forensic Sciences, Law Enforcement News, and Scientific American. The exercise of the previous night and this morning left her in the mood for no more than a slow jogging pace. This soon proved uncomfortable, too, because of soreness in certain over-exercised muscles, and because without a sports bra to wear, the bouncing began to annoy her, though Bart seemed to enjoy it. She caught him looking over at her often. Much as she liked to entertain him, she still slowed the machine down to a walk. This had the advantage also of allowing her to hold the handrails and turn her gaze to enjoy the Bart Manning weightlifting show. Chapter Twenty-three Meredith saw that Bart reduced the weight settings a trifle everywhere. Apparently, their exercise upstairs had left him less energetic than normal, too. She had seen body builders before at the beach or the pool. A few times, they had flexed for her, or done curls. This was the first time she had seen such a fine specimen straining against serious weights, puffing and blowing, grunting, sweating, surging, rippling, and bulging. She discovered that she liked it quite a lot. If the weightlifting impressed her, the bag work alarmed and astonished her. He bowed slightly to the bag first, then smacked it some sort of backhand blow. The boom from the strike made her jump and almost lose her footing. The bag dented and recoiled remarkably from each hit. She knew Bart was big and strong, but even so, the power of these blows was monstrous. Then the kicking began. At the first of those colossal booms, she did stumble, and stopped the treadmill for her own safety. She watched, amazed, as Bart threw roundhouse shin kicks into the side of the bag. It bent nearly into an "L" shape. She could easily imagine the horrific results if he threw that kick at a person. Bones would break, perhaps several at once. When it came to karate, he was the real deal. He went through several types of kicks--front kicks, side kicks, back kicks, and knee kicks, at least ten with each leg. For the knee kicks he lifted his leg up then brought the knee in from the side with surprising power. Bart caught her staring at him and said, "Never seen anyone beat up an inanimate object before?" "In movies, and they never do things like that to them." She had meant the entire group of techniques, but he apparently took her to mean just the last one. He said, "This knee kick comes from Thailand. One of my senseis, Master Robert White, took a vacation there, and came back with a few Muy Thai techniques. He really liked that knee kick. The trick is the body rotation." He lifted his knee and held it suspended for a moment, then whipped his hips and trunk around. The raised knee slammed into the bag a little above his waist height. Bart said, "You want to catch him with his elbow up or out of the way, then smash the floating ribs." "You're quite good at this, aren't you?" "Let's see, twenty-four, almost twenty-five years of study--in a tough school--several trophies won, third degree black belt. Yeah, I'm pretty good at it. I've been stuck at san dan for a number of years now. I probably should be higher in rank, but I can't see the point in learning katas for the old Okinawan weapons. Learning to fight with sticks or a bo staff I can understand because you can find sticks or pipes or broom handles almost everywhere. But who carries around sais, kamas, or swords?" "Bart, I haven't studied Japanese yet. I don't know some of those words." "There's something you don't know?" "Of course. Don't be absurd. A human being can't know everything." "Yes, but are you human? Never mind, I don't want to know." He held up three fingers. "The sais are the ones with three prongs, the middle one longer. Kamas are like a little sickle. They were both farm implements. A bo staff is like a quarterstaff, a wooden pole about six feet long, a walking stick. The ancient Okinawans made weapons out of everyday things. I think the American equivalent would be to fight with baseball bats or claw hammers or umbrellas. Some karate masters regard such thinking as heresy, though." She said, "Karate is a field of knowledge about which I know next to nothing. You seem quite the scholar." "Oh, yeah. The written test for black belt takes hours to do." "There's a written test for black belt?" She pictured bruised and bloody men in gi's sitting uncomfortably at desks scribbling in blue books. "Yeah, history, terminology, and ethics, too. Then there's kata and bunkai testing, that's forms and techniques, and fighting, of course." "The fighting I expected. Sparring with protective gear, I presume?" "Yes. Normally in class we spar with light contact. At testings, we go harder. At black belt testings, it gets pretty rough. The toughest thing is the candidates go for at least thirty minutes without a break, while a fresh opponent comes in every couple of minutes. We start with lower ranked opponents, brown belts and fellow candidates, then move up to third and fourth degree black belts, sometimes even higher, by the end." "That sounds rather mean, pitting the better fighters against you when you're already tired." It sounded like an initiation as much as a test. "It's partly for safety," Bart explained. "Fighting is very high impact aerobics, pardon my pun, and we push the candidates to their absolute limit and beyond. When a candidate gets really gassed, though, he's still dangerous. He can save up the strength to throw a hard shot once in a while, but he may not have control of it. The higher ranks can protect themselves." He shrugged and added, "It might seem mean, but it's really just very, very hard. It's a test of heart, really, to see what you do, how you react when pushed above and
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