Burn by Crystal Hubbard

stairs to get ahead of Cinder.
    “I think I already know the answer to the question I’m about to ask you, but I have to ask anyway,” he started. “Would you have lunch with me sometime? I’d really like to get to know you better.”
    With the fiery pink and orange sunset and the warm breeze filtering through his goldenrod curls, Chip looked like a figure from a Renoir painting. It had been so long since she’d gotten a date invitation, and Chip was someone she might eventually like as more than a friend. The last thing she wanted to do was give him reason to expect more than she could give, so she phrased her answer very specifically.
    “That would be nice,” she said. “Maybe we could invite Zae along with us. She really likes you and she rarely goes out because of her teaching schedule.”
    Aiming a dejected smile at his feet, Chip sighed. “I was thinking just the two of us could go out.”
    “I’m flattered, but I wouldn’t be very good company.” She took her bag from him and dug out her house keys. They climbed the three wide wooden stairs to the asym metrical porch of the maroon and black house.
    Chip followed her. “You were great company tonight.”
    She dared not tell him that their walk was the first social interaction she’d had with someone other than Zae in the fifteen months since she had moved to Webster Groves. That Chip thought her great company was a much-appreciated compliment.
    “C’mon, it’s just lunch,” Chip said, his voice playfully seductive. “If you hate me afterward, we can pretend it never happened.”
    Her back to the door, Cinder fiddled with her keys. “I find it hard to believe that anyone could hate you.” “So is that a yes to lunch?”
    “I can’t, Chip. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
    His smile never wavered. “I had a feeling, but I had to try.”
    “Why were you so sure that I’d say no?”
    He backed toward the stairs. “Because just about every question you asked me tonight was about Gian Piasanti.”
    * * *
     
    Gian tugged at his tie, which seemed to be slowly strangling him. He sat opposite Pritchard Hok and his partner, a long-legged brunette with grasshopper green eyes. The mellow notes of a viola accompanied the pleasant murmur of conversations about the dining room. Isis was one of Gian’s favorite restaurants because of its eclectic cuisine and décor, which was just chic enough to pass for upscale when he entertained people like Hok. But for the first time ever, he had no taste for t he chef’s special menu, no ear for the live viola, and no eye for Hok’s stunning partner.
    Kuriko Lavenich was the reason Gian was in talks with Pritchard Hok, founder and CEO of an eponymous health, fitness, and sports conglomerate based in Korea. One of Gian’s former students had demonstrated the Sheng Li technique at a fitness expo in Hong Kong and had impressed Kuriko, who had flown all the way to Missouri to meet “the man behind the mastery.”
    A second meeting in New York City a month later had further convinced Kuriko to seek a deal between Sheng Li and Pritchard Hok Industries. Although he could never be sure if it had been his acumen in the boardroom or in the bedroom that had inspired Kuriko to sell the Sheng Li technique to Hok, Gian was glad to be given a chance to join a company that could make Sheng Li a worldwide brand. If the movement of Kuriko’s toe along his inseam was any indication, all they had left to do was put the deal to bed.
    “It took a great deal of convincing to get the sponsors to agree to hold the International Martial Arts tourna ment in St. Louis,” Pritchard said, running his fingers through his long, silver hair. “This will be the first time we’ve ventured into foreign territory.”
    His measured tone and boarding-school-bred English accent belied the gravity of his words. Gian understood corporate speak, and he translated “convincing” to mean money, “foreign territory” to mean anyplace other than New