Sean and Drew dropped one leg aback, knees bent, so that only their forward raised fists and their sides were exposed to their opponents.

“Begin!”

Sean moved forward quickly with a front round kick to the head, followed by a hand combination, hoping to take her opponent by surprise. Drew countered quickly with a forearm block then swept Sean’s forward leg with her foot, a move designed to break the opponents balance. With someone less physically agile than Sean it could have knocked her to the floor. As it was, Sean had to pivot on one leg to reestablish her footing while avoiding a back fist that came perilously close to her chin. She managed a side kick that forced Drew back in an evasive move, but still Sean had not made contact. As she snapped her kicking leg back to avoid a hand trap that could topple her over, she turned quickly with a back sidekick that nearly caught Drew in the chest as she closed for a strike. Sean followed her kick in, toward her opponent, as she had been taught, attempting a jab hook combination when Drew landed an upset punch to her abdomen. Sean had sensed rather than seen it coming, and she tensed her abdominal muscles to accept the force of the blow. Still, it stung, and she tried not to be distracted by it. Her adrenaline surged in response to the pain, and she swiftly blocked the follow-up punch from Drew with her forearm. She punched a back hand jab immediately and caught Drew squarely on the chin. Drew’s head snapped back from the force of the blow, and for an instant, Sean was paralyzed. She hadn’t intended to hit her so hard one of the sacred rules of free-sparring was to maintain control at all times, to avoid injuring your sparring partner. That second of uncertainty was her undoing. Drew absorbed the blow without a break in the flow of her movements and dropped to the floor on one bent knee. She chambered a sidekick, the most devastating of karate kicks, as she slid forward, and thrust upward with her foot catching Sean squarely in the center of her unguarded chest. At the last second, Drew tempered some of the power of her kick, but it landed with enough force to send Sean to the floor.

Sean lay stunned, more from the surprise of the attack she hadn’t even seen coming than from the actual force of the kick. Drew knelt quickly beside her. There was a tiny cut on Drew’s lip and a trickle of blood streamed down her chin unnoticed.

“Are you all right?” the deep voice questioned, one had pressing lightly against Sean’s abdomen. “Take a deep breath.”

Sean did so and said with a slight quaver in her voice, “I’m okay. Thank you, ma’am.”

“When you have the advantage, Ms. Grey, always use it. You should have dropped me with a head kick after you landed that punch. If this were a real fight, you’d be dead now.”

Sean stared up into the serious face of the woman above her, mesmerized by the eyes that stared into - no - through her.

“Ill remember that, ma’am,” she answered softly.

Drew reached a hand down to help her up. “Good fight, Ms. Grey.”

Sean followed the tall woman’s form with her eyes as she walked to the sink to wash the blood off her face. Her words echoed in Sean’s mind, and the spot where Drew had rested her hand against her stomach seemed to tingle. Her teacher, Master Cho, was a strong and demanding teacher, but never had Sean experienced the sheer force of personality as she had felt with Drew Clark. There was a deadly seriousness about her, the intensity of which took Sean’s breath away. She jumped at the sound of her teachers voice.

“Face front!”

Sean stood at attention once more, facing the test board.

Drew had returned, a small Band-Aid on her lip.

Master Cho stepped forward, saying, “Congratulations, Sean, you did well. I am proud to promote you to black stripe.”

She attached three black stripes to the tail of Sean’s red belt the highest level to which she could be promoted before she received her black belt. To receive three stripes after only one test was unusual, and an honor.

Sean bowed deeply and then shook her teachers hand.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Master Cho dismissed the class, and the students swarmed Sean to pound her on the back and shake her hand. She barely heard the words of congratulations as she looked past the group to the austere blond woman who stood alone, watching her contemplatively.

CHAPTER TWO

“How is your lip?” Janet Cho asked as she pulled her Jeep Cherokee into the early evening traffic. She glanced over her shoulder at the rangy form of her former student, who was leaning forward in the back seat, her arms folded on the back of the front passenger seat.

Drew grinned slightly, her blue eyes laughing. “Its nothing. She caught me by surprise. A very nice follow-up to that long kick of hers. I should never underestimate a student of yours, Master Cho.”

Cho smiled inwardly, recalling a night many years ago when she had had to use every trick her twenty years in the martial arts had taught her to fend off a young black belt testee in a free-sparring match. That woman sat behind her, her finest student, equaled only by a younger student who sat beside her now her lover, Chris Roma.

“Perhaps I should have warned you about her legs. She was a professional dancer when she was younger, and she has the best kicks I have ever seen.”

“Except for yours, Master Cho,” Chris said from her seat beside her.

Janet laughed and reached fondly for the hand of her young lover. “You flatter me, and I love it. I’m too short for really good offensive kicks. I’ve had to learn to use my feet in defense, unlike you tall Americans.”

“She is very good,” Drew commented, remembering the total concentration on Sean’s face as she met each challenge that evening. She remembered too the firm muscles beneath her hand and the unguarded eyes that had met her own as she knelt above Sean. There had been a trust in the gaze that Drew was used to seeing in the eyes of her students, but, for some reason it had moved her more deeply than it usually did. It reminded her once again of the great responsibility she had in teaching these young women to defend themselves in a world that so often claimed them as victims. She pushed those thoughts away, as she had for the last eight years, refusing to allow the anger to surface and claim her mind once more.

“I kicked her too hard,” Drew continued, “I’m sorry.”

Janet Cho shook her head. “No. It was not too hard. She must learn to accept the pain for on the street, she must fight despite the pain if she is to survive.”

A quick gasp from Drew silenced Master Cho, who glanced quickly to her old friend.

“Ah I am so sorry, Drew. I did not think. Please forgive me.”

Drew shook her head, fighting off the memories. “No, you are right. Sometimes I forget that they still have much to learn.”

“And now I will have you both to help teach them. Yes?”

Janet Cho had offered Drew a position at her school as a teacher as soon as she heard that Drew was leaving the Army and returning to civilian life in Philadelphia. She had not yet heard Drew’s answer. Drew herself had been uncertain. At forty she had retired from the Army, and she wasn’t sure what she wanted from the rest of her life. She loved the martial arts. There had been years when only the demands of her training and teaching had provided any comfort in her life. Teaching women to survive, whether they were soldiers or students, had been her only purpose for many years. The demands and responsibilities of that task were enormous, and she was weary. Weary with caring, weary with the fear that she might not be giving enough. She thought again of the trust in those green eyes and made her decision.

“If you and Sabum Roma will have me.”

Chris Roma, fifteen years younger, outgoing and eager, clapped her hands in delight. “All right!”

Drew leaned back in the seat, relieved. She didn’t know Chris Roma very well she had been a young white belt when Drew left Philadelphia. Chris had started training after meeting Janet Cho at a self-defense course Master Cho had taught for graduate students at the city college. Against Janet’s better judgment she had accepted her lover as a student. They had been involved romantically for a year when Chris enrolled at the school, and Janet hadn’t been sure they could separate their personal issues for the necessary distance between student and teacher. It was only because of Chris’s deep respect for her lovers skill, dedication, and commitment to teaching that they had been successful. Within the walls of the Golden Tiger Kwan, Janet Cho was her teacher and nothing else.

Drew had been concerned that Chris might not welcome another teacher, especially one who outranked her. She had been wrong to worry Chris was mature beyond her thirty years and accepted that each person progressed at her own speed, in her own time, each according to her abilities. She welcomed Drew, and the chance to advance her own skills through working with her.

“Here we are!” Janet announced as she pulled in front of a neat stone row house in a quiet section of the city, known as Society Hill. Here were some of the small historic homes for which Philadelphia was known, their carefully preserved facades echoing the gentility of the city’s heritage.

“You know you can stay with us as long as you like, Drew.”

“I appreciate it both of you. I’m anxious to get settled though. Ill go apartment hunting soon.”

The women quickly unloaded their gear and headed for the brownstone, eager to talk and get reacquainted.

Ten miles away, Sean pulled into the long drive that led to her family home in Gladwynea stately wooded enclave of wealthy old families not so affectionately termed the “Main Line”. She shared the house that had been her childhood home with her twin sister, Susan.