{"id":9211,"date":"2017-01-23T19:17:07","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T01:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?page_id=9211"},"modified":"2026-02-22T18:46:46","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T23:46:46","slug":"remington-steele","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/extras\/vignettes-outtakes\/dirty-little-secrets\/remington-steele\/","title":{"rendered":"Remington Steele"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

SEPTEMBER 1990<\/p>\n

Giselle: 20<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cHEY, GISELLE, CAN you come home with me tonight and give me a private? My belt test is Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giselle sighed without letting Andrew see. He wasn\u2019t paying her enough for all the tutoring he needed. Talented, he was not. She was about to say she had stuff to do, but hesitated.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay. But you have to take me home after.\u201d<\/p>\n

That made him<\/em> hesitate. He didn\u2019t like taking her home from the dojo because she wouldn\u2019t let him in her apartment, where he very<\/em> much wanted to be, but Giselle\u2019s roommates did not<\/em> want him to be. He didn\u2019t like taking her home from the house he shared with Knox because he thought Knox should be the one taking her home. He had no reason to take her home except basic courtesy and that wasn\u2019t his forte.<\/p>\n

It made her mad.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, Andrew,\u201d she burst out. \u201cYou don\u2019t pay me enough\u2014\u201d Sebastian would be pissed<\/em> at how little she charged, especially when Andrew was so desperate and no one else would tutor him. \u201c\u2014we can\u2019t stay here\u2014\u201d The dojo closed up at 9:30 and she didn\u2019t have a key. \u201c\u2014and<\/em> you won\u2019t give me a ride home. There is nothing<\/em> in this for me, so give me a ride home or I\u2019m doubling my fee.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFine,\u201d he muttered, capitulating because he had no choice if he wanted to pass his test. He drove her to his house, but they rode in silence. They didn\u2019t really like each other, but he did<\/em> pay her and she was the only person in the dojo who could tolerate him that long.<\/p>\n

Thus, when they went inside, it wasn\u2019t hard to put him on his knees immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey!\u201d he barked. \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to ambush me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giselle sighed, closed her eyes, and rubbed the bridge of her nose between her fingers. \u201cThe whole point<\/em> of martial arts is to be prepared for an ambush.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knox, sitting at the dining room table, snickered.<\/p>\n

Andrew resentfully stood and held his arm out for Giselle to demonstrate this once again<\/em>. He was almost as intelligent as he was talented, and she couldn\u2019t fathom how he\u2019d gotten into law school.<\/p>\n

She had him on his knees again before he could sort himself out, his wrist bent back to its limit, keeping him there while she lectured him\u2014again<\/em>\u2014on how to correctly execute the technique.<\/p>\n

Her untied canvas gi jacket floated over her tee shirt and around her hips. Her sleeves snapped the air properly when she moved quickly enough. Knox sat staring through them as he waited for his study group to arrive. She took Andrew\u2019s other hand to emphasize the importance of the ability to do a technique left- or right-handed.<\/p>\n

Again she made him bark in surprise and the tiniest amount of pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cSee, Andrew, that\u2019s why she has the brown belt and you have the blue one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, ha ha ha. Screw you, Hilliard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to get a green one if you don\u2019t figure out how to do this before Friday,\u201d Giselle muttered.<\/p>\n

The front door opened to admit the first of the law students Knox expected. Giselle\u2019s attention was distracted for a second\u2014and her breath caught in her throat.<\/p>\n

At least six feet, four inches, and two hundred-plus pounds of solid muscle poured into tight worn jeans, a black tee shirt, brown leather bomber jacket and black cowboy boots. Black hair cut excruciatingly short. Angular face, olive-tinged skin almost as fair as Sebastian\u2019s. Small black-rimmed eyeglasses.<\/p>\n

She continued to talk to Andrew, to explain the finer points, had him recreate the technique on her so she could demonstrate where he needed to change his execution. He did well enough to put her on her knees, but, since he wasn\u2019t enough of an asshole to want to hurt her, he was reluctant to keep her on her knees She stood, still talking, still teaching \u2026 She risked another quick glance.<\/p>\n

The romance novel hero standing in the doorway staring at her with an expression she recognized immediately, for all she\u2019d never seen a man look at her<\/em> that way before: Lust.<\/p>\n

Blatant, unadulterated, hot.<\/p>\n

She decided to cut Andrew\u2019s lesson short to make certain she had an opportunity to let the beautiful stranger know she reciprocated his lust fully, but out of habit, she checked his left hand.<\/p>\n

Sixty seconds. It\u2019d taken her sixty seconds, a glance, to fall head over for a married man.<\/p>\n

Turning her attention back to Andrew fully then, she tried to breathe normally, to put aside that stabbing pain behind her sternum, to ignore the sick feeling in her belly. She smoothly maneuvered Andrew so that her back was to the door and she could no longer see him.<\/p>\n

How could it be\u2014and at BYU yet? Married men didn\u2019t look at women other than their wives that way, or at least, if they did, they successfully kept it to themselves.<\/p>\n

More to the point, men didn\u2019t look at Giselle<\/em> that way at all.<\/p>\n

She left as soon as the time came for Andrew to join the study group. She told Andrew not to worry about a ride home\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I am raising my rates.\u201d<\/p>\n

He snarled at her.<\/p>\n

\u2014but refused Knox\u2019s offer with a wave. With her heavy duffle slung over her back, she ran the mile from his house on Tenth East to her apartment on First East, hoping to kill some of the pain.<\/p>\n

She curled up on her bed, still in her gi, still sweaty. She shoved her fingers through her coarse, frizzy curls with a vicious yank as if the pain would distract her, and let the tears drip silently into her pillow as she confronted the truth of the matter.<\/p>\n

Her hand drifted to her pudgy belly, then over her wide hips to explore\u2014not for the first time\u2014the broad expanse of butt that her gi couldn\u2019t hide. Strong, athletic, graceful. And fat. She couldn\u2019t diet it away; she was already starving. She\u2019d even tried making herself throw up, but that was nasty and worked even less effectively than starving. Sebastian would have a fit if he knew and it didn\u2019t matter he lived half a world away. She didn\u2019t dare let Knox find out because he\u2019d feed her himself. She couldn\u2019t exercise it away; she got stronger, more muscular, but no leaner.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t matter with Knox; Knox needed her constant presence to mitigate his growing frustration that no LDS girl would go out with him once she found out he hadn\u2019t gone on a mission\u2014and he didn\u2019t want to taint any possible relationships with the details of his inheritance. Giselle needed his constant presence to make her feel as if she weren\u2019t, as Aunt Trudy had told her more than once, \u201cthe most hideous girl I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without Knox, she would have no male companionship at all; with Knox, she had an excuse. It had been enough until that man looked at her like that<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was more than she could bear, that wedding band on his finger. The only man, a gorgeous one to boot, to look at her as if she had some sexual worth\u2014and he was married.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow could you?\u201d she whispered, her faith shaken. \u201cI\u2019ve done everything you asked me to do. How could you do that to me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Heartbroken, she touched herself \u2026 there<\/em> \u2026 and, for the first time, did what she knew she should never<\/em> do.<\/p>\n

Nobody else would.<\/p>\n

★<\/p>\n

20260222<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SEPTEMBER 1990 Giselle: 20 \u201cHEY, GISELLE, CAN you come home with me tonight and give me a private? My belt test is Friday.\u201d Giselle sighed without letting Andrew see. He wasn\u2019t paying her enough for all the tutoring he needed. Talented, he was not. She was about to say she had stuff to do, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":39,"menu_order":4114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9211","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9211"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23470,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9211\/revisions\/23470"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}