Single Girl Abroad (Mills & Boon M&B) (Mills & Boon Special Releases) (13 page)

‘You don’t have to explain.’

‘I know,’ she said doggedly. ‘But I wanted you to know that it’s not as much as they said. That it’s not all designer shoes and handbags for me. I don’t stint when it comes to my comfort, I’m the first to admit that, but I don’t spend frivolously either. There’s a line between what’s mine and what’s Delacourte’s and it’s hard to explain, but it’s there.’

‘You don’t have to explain,’ he said tightly and she lapsed into silence.

The silence lasted all the way to Luke’s apartment. Madeline slid into a no-parking zone. She did not stop the car.

‘If it’s not the money comment that bothered you there’s only one other thing it can be.’ She stared straight ahead as she spoke, her hands clenched around the steering wheel. ‘You want to ask me about that street corner in Jakarta, Luke?’

‘No.’

‘Because you don’t believe I could ever do such a thing?’ She looked at him then. ‘Or because you’re afraid to?’

‘Maybe I just don’t like the way those poisonous women talked about you. Have you factored that into your calculations?’

‘No, but I will,’ she said grimly. ‘I told you from the start what a lot of people think of me. Their opinions don’t change—it doesn’t matter what I do. So I do what I want and I do my best to ignore what people say about
me behind my back. I’d suggest you do the same but I can see that’s not going to work for you.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Maddy. What they said hurt you. Don’t try and tell me it didn’t.’

‘It didn’t. I’m used to it. You’re not. Jake and Po and even Yun have protected you from what other people think of me. I tried to tell you. I warned you, over and over, but you wouldn’t listen, and now you’re finally seeing the whole picture and it’s not what you want. The trophy wife. The Delacourte whore. The wealthy widow with more enemies than friends. Putting out for you in a lift, oh, you liked that. And now you’re wondering what kind of woman would do such a thing with a man she barely knew if not a whore.’

‘No.’

‘Ask me if I ever whored on a street corner in Jakarta.’

‘No.’ His voice had taken on a clipped and dangerous edge.

‘But you want to know. You think it’s possible. I can see it in your eyes.’

‘I don’t give a damn what you think you see in my eyes, Madeline. You’re wrong. I have no intention of asking you what you were doing on some street corner in Jakarta. I’m not the one harping on some throwaway comment made by a spiteful stranger. You are. So tell me whatever the hell it is you have to tell me and maybe then we can move on.’

She stared at him through dry and burning eyes, her hands not leaving the wheel. She looked as if she wanted to flee, as if she’d rather be anywhere but here with him right now. Hell of a homecoming, he thought grimly. But
demons were demons and Madeline’s had well and truly come out to play.

‘I never sold myself on any street corner,’ she said fiercely. ‘But Remy did. That’s where I found him. That’s the life he lived and through him I knew it too. The sickness and the desperation. The crack and the hits and the marks. Does that help you to understand me any better, Luke? Or is it just one more piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit your neat and honourable little world?’

‘Maybe if you stopped putting words in my mouth you’d find out,’ he said grimly and opened the car door. ‘Maybe if you believed in me the way you’d have me believe in you, you wouldn’t be so quick to tear down the relationship we’ve built. Or is it simply that you’ve decided that you’ve slummed enough and want out, is that it? You’d rather hide behind all that Delacourte money and your unsavoury reputation than take a chance on falling in love—really in love—with someone like me?’

‘Get out,’ she muttered and released the boot where his luggage was. ‘Get out of my car.’

He got out and left the car door open while he got his gear and shut the boot. He dropped his duffel on the pavement and reached for the car door again. ‘You know, for all you’ve been through … The way you made something of yourself, your fearlessness in business, the hands-on work you do with children like Po, and the fine example your late husband set for you when it came to loving wholeheartedly no matter what other people thought … I thought you’d have more guts.’

He slammed the door.

She drove away and Luke’s heart and his hopes went with her.

A single-word expletive, whorish and dirty, seemed about right.

For good measure, he said it twice.

O
KAY, so
maybe she had overreacted, Madeline thought heatedly as she headed for her office. Maybe Luke hadn’t taken those comments to heart as much as she’d thought. But where the hell did he get
off
telling her she didn’t have the guts to love him? Accusing her of sabotaging their relationship because she was afraid of where it might lead.

‘The hell with you,’ she muttered as she drove down into the Delacourte underground car park and headed for the lift. ‘How dare you get all righteous with me? Can’t even drive a damn car!’

Madeline was still fuming when she reached her office. Positively incensed at how slow her preparations for Shanghai were taking. Her fault for stopping every five minutes to remind herself that she wasn’t weak or stupid for forcing a reckoning with him over her less than stellar reputation. What it was like to carry it. How it would tarnish him too. A man as honourable as Luke Bennett would object to that.

Wouldn’t he?

He’d been furious about those comments. He
had
. His ego wounded by the money and the power she wielded. His judgement questioned. It hadn’t simply been protectiveness and rage on her behalf.

Had it?

Madeline sat at her desk and closed her eyes, and thought back over their conversation. Luke’s fierce refusal to ask her the question. The molten fury in his eyes upon hearing those women’s words. She could have given him some credit for wanting to protect her and realising he could not. A little leeway when it came to his first encounter with high-society gossip and malice. Stab you and smile and the only recourse was never to bleed out in front of them. Never show weakness. Never let on that you cared.

She could have given Luke at least some time to get his head around such a subtle form of warfare. A man used to far fiercer struggles would have had to temper his reaction. Shut it down fast rather than overreact and cause untold damage.

And he had shut down. By the time they’d reached the car he’d been as remote as a chill Antarctic wind.

Madeline swore and slumped into her desk chair and closed her eyes as she worked her way back through the conversation again, revisualising it, all of it, only this time putting a different spin on Luke’s responses.

Not his fault that those women had chosen to spread their spite.

His refusal to question her about Jakarta. Not interested, not listening. La la la.

What if he really had dismissed it as not right and as far as he was concerned that was that?

What if she’d misjudged him? What if it hadn’t been him pulling back and holding out this time, but her?

Madeline swore again.

Could she put the Shanghai trip on hold?

Not without horrendous ramifications for the Delacourte apartment build.

Was there time before the flight to fix things with Luke?

There was only one way to find out.

She picked up the phone and dialled his number before she lost her nerve. The phone rang out and went to voicemail. She didn’t know his other number, the one for his work phone, the one he never switched off.

She’d have to find him in person, so it was down in the lift and the car and back to his apartment, praying that he would be there.

He wasn’t.

Luke showered and shaved, donned a clean set of clothes and left for Jake’s. He couldn’t stay in the apartment without chewing on his argument with Madeline. He couldn’t think on that without starting to steam. First at the hurtful way in which the women had spoken of Madeline, and secondly at Madeline’s assumption that he would believe what they’d said.

So what if momentarily he had felt intimidated by all that wealth? So what if she’d pegged his response a little too accurately in that regard? He was working through all
that. William and the money, and all that came with it. He was almost there.

No, it was her ready assumption that he would believe her a whore that ate at him most. As if she thought he couldn’t see exactly what she was and wasn’t. As if no one but her beloved William could see her and love her no matter what.

Jake’s training floor stood empty. He found them in the kitchen, eating noodles. Po smiled quick and wide. Jake looked Luke over closely before he finally summoned a greeting. ‘Madeline find you at the airport?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why are you here?’

‘Because I love you, bro. I love you so much I’m not even going to beat the happy out of you. Any more questions?’

‘None that I plan to
ask
,’ muttered Jake.

‘I mean, I’m a reasonable human being,’ said Luke, pulling up a chair. ‘It’s not as if my judgement’s completely skewed when it comes to Madeline. I know who she is and the baggage she brings. And I sure as hell know what she’s not!’

Jake kept right on eating. Po had stopped and was watching him warily.

‘All right, so maybe calling her a coward wasn’t the brightest thing I’ve ever done. Thinking I believed them when they called her a whore wasn’t exactly a smart move on her part either.’

‘Someone called Madeline a whore?’ asked Jake, his eyes narrowing. ‘Who?’

‘See?’ said Luke. ‘You want vengeance. So did I.
What’s so wrong about that? It’s a perfectly normal reaction.’

‘Of course it is,’ said Jake. ‘What did you do?’

Far less than he’d wanted to do. ‘They were just a pair of gossiping hags. I stared at them and then we left.’

‘Reasonable,’ offered Jake. ‘Very civilised.’

Not altogether satisfying, brooded Luke. ‘What else can you do?’

‘I dare say Madeline could find plenty of ways to make their lives difficult if she wanted to, but she doesn’t,’ said Jake. ‘She ignores them and goes her own way. There are a lot of people out there who admire her for it too—the fact that she doesn’t feel the need to explain herself to anyone.’

She’d explained herself to Luke though. More than once and at his request. He remembered how he’d harped on about her relationship with William. Trying to understand it, trying to make it fit, just the way she’d accused. Maybe she did have some
slight
cause to be a little unsure of him when it came to her past and how he might interpret the things he’d overheard. Luke rubbed his palms down his face. Maybe he’d had it coming.

‘They said that William Delacourte had scraped her off a street corner in Jakarta,’ he muttered. ‘She thought I believed them. She thought I was going to give her the third degree about it.’

No comment from the stalls.

‘All right, so it took me a while to get past her marrying Delacourte, but I’m over it. That was then, this is now, dammit. Why the hell can’t she trust me to see her clearly?’

‘I need a holiday,’ said Jake.

‘Because she loves you and she’s scared of what you’ll think of her when people say those things that are half true and half not,’ said Po. ‘She’s scared you’ll hurt her worse than all the other times she’s been hurt and that this time she won’t be able to get back up.’

Jake stared at the kid. So did Luke.

‘Huh,’ said Jake.

‘He wants to be a human rights lawyer,’ said Luke.

‘So I heard.’ Jake eyed Luke steadily. ‘He made you a gift. He’s been fiddling with it for two weeks.’ Jake looked to Po. ‘You want to go get it?’

Po nodded and sped off. Jake eyed Luke steadily. ‘You planning on being in the right frame of mind to receive it?’

‘Yes,’ said Luke curtly, and attempted to park his love-life woes outside the dojo door for a time.

The kid hurried back in carrying a newspaper-wrapped parcel about an inch deep, a foot or so wide, and roughly twice as tall. Po handed it to him and stepped back, just out of range. Instinctive and absolute, the physical distance Po kept from the people around him.

‘Yun helped me oil and wax it,’ said the boy.

Luke set the parcel on the table and ripped away the newspaper to reveal a wooden display case with brass hinges and a glass front.

‘You made this?’ said Luke.

Po nodded.

‘Well done.’ He slid his hand over the beautifully crafted edges. ‘Really well done.’

‘Jake said you had this medal for bravery. More than
one,’ said Po. ‘So Maddy suggested you might like a case for them, and you could put your medals in the case and fix it to a wall somewhere it’d remind us how much other people need you too.’

‘Thanks, kid.’ Luke’s throat felt thick and his eyes felt raw. Not tears, heaven forbid, but he didn’t look up from the box for a very long time. Madeline again, smoothing his way. Making things right.

‘Yun said that if you asked her nicely in Mandarin she’d come over to your place and show you where to hang it for best feng shui and she won’t even charge you a consultant’s fee,’ said Po. ‘She said you’d better have something strong to balance it, and, knowing tigers, you wouldn’t.’

‘It’s already balanced,’ said Luke quietly. ‘I know it was made for me by you.’ Luke looked down at the case again and ran his fingers along the oiled and waxed wood grain. ‘This the kind of finish you want for the desk?’

Po nodded.

‘We should make a start on that soon.’

Po nodded again, jerkily this time, and suddenly Luke’s arms were full of boy. Somewhere deep inside him Luke felt one of the pieces of his life slide silently back into place as he gathered the boy in his arms and hugged him close. He looked at Jake over the small boy’s head. ‘I argued with Maddy. I need to find her before she leaves for Shanghai. I need to go shopping.’

‘Are these statements in any way related?’ asked Jake as Luke released Po and began to pace the room.

But Luke was on a roll, thinking of ways to fix what needed fixing, connecting the dots. It would start with a declaration of love, he thought. Dear heaven, he was putting
his heart on the line, unconditionally and for ever, and it was so much more terrifying than merely putting up his life for the taking. Adrenalin to
burn
. Paralysing fear. ‘Jewellery shopping.’

‘Some little … trinket?’ said Jake hopefully.

‘No. Some whopping great ring. But not just any ring. It has to be perfect. Where the hell am I going to find perfect at …’ he glanced at his dive watch ‘… four-thirty on a Sunday afternoon in Singapore?’ He knew nothing of shopping for rings. ‘There’s no time!’ Not if he wanted to find Maddy before take-off. Which he did. ‘The airport! They have jewellery stores at the airport! All right. Good. We have a location. No need to panic! Now all I need is a … a shopping companion. Preferably a female one.’

‘Thank you, God,’ muttered Jake.

Preferably a female with insanely romantic tendencies and a passing awareness of his increasingly fragile psyche. ‘Yun! No. Not Yun. Do either of you know a gentle rabbit with a penchant for opera and who also knows t’ai chi?’

Jake blinked. Po stared.

‘This is what happens when you lose your mind,’ Jake told Po.

‘Hallie! I could phone Hallie. She’d know what women want when it comes to engagement rings. I could describe stuff to her over the phone.’ It wouldn’t be ideal but it was better than nothing.

‘Tris!’ he said suddenly, while Jake looked on as if reluctantly fascinated by Luke’s meltdown. Tris could buy Kimberley diamonds straight from the mines, and what was more Tris’s wife, Erin, was a sweetheart, a romantic, and a jeweller.

He could call Erin and describe the airport rings on offer: a diamond, maybe—heaven knew, Madeline already had enough sapphires. A brilliant white diamond, set in platinum, and flowing around it a river of sapphires, just in case sapphires really were Madeline’s thing. Hell, if he couldn’t find what he wanted today, maybe he could commission Erin to make him something wonderful. Maybe he should be thinking along those lines
anyway
. It wasn’t as if he absolutely had to have a ring for Maddy today. Given the time constraints, maybe just the words would do. With any luck Luke wouldn’t have to go ring shopping at
all
.

He stopped. He beamed. He let the contentment that came of problem-solving flow over him. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said.

‘Of course you have,’ said Jake, eyeing him as if he were a particularly unstable slab of C4.

‘I’ll sort the ring stuff tomorrow.’

The dojo phone rang. Jake took the call with what Luke considered unseemly haste.

‘Yes, he’s here,’ muttered Jake. ‘Where are you?’

‘Is that Maddy?’ said Luke. ‘Give me the phone.’

‘No! Get your own phone,’ muttered Jake into the phone as he fended off Luke’s attempts to acquire the phone. ‘No, I wasn’t talking to you, Maddy. You stay right where you are! There are children here. People trying to eat. Once upon a time it was even peaceful here. Besides, he was just leaving.’ Luke jammed his elbow into Jake’s solar plexus but his brother did not relinquish the phone. The pair of them slammed into the wall instead, Jake grinning widely now while Po cleared the bowls from the table,
with a street kid’s eye for impending doom. ‘Maddy’s at your apartment,’ Jake told him, and then returned his attention to the phone. ‘Yep, he’ll be there in five.’

But Luke was already halfway down the hall.

‘Possibly less,’ said Jake, and hung up.

He found her waiting on the small landing at the top of the stairs, his door and another the only options available to her. He blocked the stairs. Madeline was going nowhere until he’d had his say.

She looked cool and unapproachable. Determined, but so was he.

‘I don’t care what those women think,’ she said, and to hell with pleasantries. ‘I care a great deal for what you think, so if you still want to pursue a relationship and see where it leads, I’m in. I have guts. I have plenty of guts.’

‘I know.’

Challenge had always shaped Luke. It shaped him now as he opened his door and stepped back to let her inside.

‘And self-esteem, I have that too, most of the time, only today I didn’t,’ she said doggedly. ‘I’m sorry I overreacted and took my insecurities out on you. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you enough to blow off the comments those women made.’

‘Trust has to be earned,’ he said gruffly. ‘I grilled you about William enough times you’d probably come to expect that I’d automatically think the worst.’