His Wicked Ways. Joanne Rock

so she could haul her butt back to Manhattan and leave the Bronx—along with her old hopes and dreams—firmly in the past.

      ALEC MESSINA STARED into his uncle Sergio’s face and knocked the older guy clear into last year with an uppercut.

      Okay, so it wasn’t really Uncle Sergio but a heavy bag in the rec center gym. Alec seemed to throw his best punches when he envisioned the family wiseguy’s mug tattooed across the red leather.

      Alec’s Thursday afternoon self-defense students seemed appropriately impressed with the swing as they whistled and cheered until some punk in the back gave a loud snort.

      “C’mon, Perez.” The local kid shouted to Alec using the assumed name he’d adopted during his weeks at the center. A cynical teen with an attention span almost as short as his fuse, the youth was one of many troublemakers Alec had roped into the class. “What good does it do to throw a punch when every kid on the block is armed? Shit, even my grandma packs heat.”

      Alec willed away the memory of Uncle Sergio trying to wheedle kickbacks out of his own flesh and blood and concentrated on the task at hand. Alec might not be fielding the big business deals that gave him an adrenaline high lately since he’d been keeping a low profile, but he could damn well teach a bunch of hard-living kids how to throw a punch. Growing up in Bensonhurst had taught Alec to hold his head high. The faster you looked like a force to be reckoned with, the quicker you earned respect.

      And if there was one message universally understood in rough neighborhoods, it was Don’t Mess with Me.

      “Yeah? Too bad grandma will never have time to draw her weapon if she’s facing an opponent with quicker reflexes.” Alec was only too happy to mix it up with the punk in the back. If he could win over the biggest cynic in the crowd, he’d have the whole gymnasium eating out of his hand. “How about a volunteer to help me demonstrate?”

      Purposely making eye contact with the guy—a short-tempered wing nut whose friends called him Easy— Alec willed the kid to step up to plate. He wasn’t real happy when a throaty feminine voice piped up instead.

      “I’m game.”

      Knowing there were only five women signed up for a class with nearly twenty guys, Alec couldn’t imagine which one of the females made the offer. The two toughest ladies in the group were rumored to have already been recruited by the neighborhood’s most deadly gang, but neither of them had the same tonal inflection as the soft-spoken voice from the back.

      A pathway cleared through his students as they stood aside to give him a clear view of the speaker.

      Tall, lean and dressed head to toe in black, the woman was new to the class. New to Alec’s eyes. And holy hell, what a visual treat she made. Long, dark hair twined into a neat braid that trailed over her shoulder in a silky-looking rope. A total lack of makeup gave her an all-business air while emphasizing the smooth perfection of her creamy skin. Utterly straight posture and a kind of catlike grace in her bearing made Alec think some sort of comic-book superheroine had swooped into his rec center to test his skills.

      “By all means.” He gestured to the mat alongside him, curious what she could want with his workshop. “Thanks for offering, Ms.—”

      “Torres. Vanessa Torres.” She walked toward him with smooth efficiency and none of the rump-shaking strut some women employed to distract men. “My pleasure.”

      Something was off. She looked entirely too sure of herself to be enrolled in a self-defense course. Even his advanced students didn’t have this much confidence. Oh, they talked a good game, but there was a difference between women who said they could kick ass and women who could actually follow through. Alec suspected Ms. Torres fell into the latter category.

      And although the idea of her as a comic-book superheroine might appeal to latent teenage fantasies, chances were good she wasn’t some Lara Croft knockoff sent here just to make him drool. That made him a hell of a lot more worried about her purpose.

      “I’m sure the pleasure is mutual.” He eyed her across the two feet of distance she left between them. Even close up, she looked too damn sure of herself. He tried to catch her scent and failed, which only made him want to get closer. Much closer. “Care to tell me what you’re doing in this class?”

      He couldn’t afford to let one of Uncle Sergio’s underlings discover him here in the heart of the Bronx, doling out free lessons in a rec center he’d cobbled together on a shoestring budget. Not only did it serve a purpose in the community, it gave renegade enemies of the mob a great place to hide.

      “Just trying to fill some gaps in my knowledge.” She smiled as she rolled up her sleeves. “That okay with you, Mr.—?”

      “Perez.” The name barely stuck in his throat after six months of living anonymously. Damn, but he wanted to reclaim his life. He had a thriving real-estate business to oversee. Clients with big projects and deep pockets who would pay well for his brand of expertise. And beyond that, he’d like to spend a little time indulging more personal wants.

      A very particular hunger sprang to mind as he stared at Ms. Torres and her cool-as-you-please dark gaze.

      A snort of laughter from Easy made Alec realize he’d probably stared too long. Damn it. Time to get back to work and hope this newcomer wasn’t on his uncle’s payroll. He had enough on his plate here without dealing with mob types bent on revenge.

      “Why don’t we make like you’re going for your gun to take me out,” he explained, lining himself up with Vanessa. “And we’ll demonstrate how quick reflexes can even the odds.”

      Nodding, Vanessa swept her long braid behind her back and reached into her jacket as if pulling a weapon from inside.

      Alec gripped the arm in motion, stabilizing the hand an attacker might have used to draw a weapon. Unfortunately, that left her other hand free, which she promptly used to jab him in the gut.

      What the hell?

      Morphing out of exhibition mode and into street mindset, Alec refused to let this woman—a hard-hitting new breed of Mafia princess?—get the drop on him. Lowering his shoulder, he used sheer brute force to lift her off her feet and plow her to the mat.

      His next view of her was looking down at her flat on her back. A damn fine position for her, if he did say so himself.

      Too bad he couldn’t enjoy it nearly long enough. Before he could talk through the finer points of his victory to his class, Vanessa kicked his legs out from underneath him, toppling him to the mat.

      “Shit.” His curses ran to the far more colorful in his head, but he was pretty sure that was the only one that managed to escape his mouth. If he hadn’t possessed lightning quick reflexes, Ms. Torres probably would have ended up with his shoulder planted painfully between her breasts when he fell.

      Lucky for her, he got his hands out just in time to keep him from smashing into her. Bracketing her arms with his palms to the mat, Alec held his weight off her as he stared down into assessing brown eyes.

      “Lesson number one, don’t expect your opponent to fight fair.” Vanessa huffed the words into the mixture of panting breaths between them, but Alec had no doubt the whole class heard.

      He’d bet his personal jet that the demonstrations had never been this interesting before.

      He held himself there, taking in the soft wash of color on Vanessa’s cheeks, the lone strand of displaced dark hair twining over her neck. At last he caught her scent—a classic, simple tea rose completely unsuited for a woman who probably ate purse snatchers for lunch.

      Clearing his throat, he lowered his voice. “And lesson number two, self-defense is more fun than it looks.”

      The comment hadn’t really been intended for the rest of the class. But somehow, stretched out over top of her, it was easy to forget they had an audience.

      “Oh, it’s looking pretty fun,” some wiseass bystander felt compelled to remark.

      Low