Single Girl Abroad (Mills & Boon M&B) (Mills & Boon Special Releases) (17 page)

‘Po and Luke have been making a study desk for Po’s room. The polish was for that. Which means no bowls left, just mismatched plates. It’s not what you’re used to.’

‘Am I complaining?’

‘You hardly ever do,’ he muttered. ‘Makes it hard for people to know what you’re thinking. What you want.’

‘I’d like the plate with the blue border,’ she said in that
quiet way of hers that made it impossible to tell if she was teasing, serious, or something in between. ‘And I’d like us to sit down and eat.’

That worked for a little while, but eventually conversation had to be made. Politeness demanded it and Jacob tried hard to begin it, never mind that small talk had never been his forte. ‘Why Singapore?’ he asked.

‘My aunt and uncle are here,’ said Jianne with a careful glance in his direction. ‘Some of my clients are here. And I knew you were here and that it wouldn’t hurt for Zhi Fu to think that I might want to see you again.’

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘My cousins told me,’ she said. ‘They’ve always known where you were and what you were doing.’

‘How?’

‘They Google you.’

‘Oh.’ Scratch the dastardly private-eye theory. ‘Right.’

‘World titles attract attention,’ she continued with the hint of a smile. ‘Did you know you have a fan site? Pictures and all.’

‘Can we
not
talk about this?’ he murmured. ‘Ever?’

Jianne’s smile widened at this and she speared a prawn with her chopsticks. ‘I never really knew what you wanted to do with your life. Apart from win martial arts tournaments, that is. But teaching suits you, I think.’

‘I never really planned to teach,’ he told her readily enough. ‘I came to this dojo after winning my first world title. I was battle weary and looking for the old sensei to improve my technique. I stayed a week. Three months later I was back. This time I wanted more balance. Whenever I could get away I’d come here and I’d return home …
rested. When the old sensei decided to sell up and return to Thailand I decided that this was the life I wanted. The timing was good, my brothers and Hallie weren’t kids any more, so I made him an offer.’

‘Do you ever miss Australia?’

‘No.’

‘Do you miss your family?’

‘Luke’s Singapore based too. The rest of them call in often enough.’

‘And your father? Does he call in?’

‘Not often, no.’

‘Did he ever get over your mother’s death?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever forgiven him for not standing by you when you needed him?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. That’s why I asked.’ She eyed him solemnly. ‘Have you ever forgiven me?’

‘Jian—’ Jake didn’t even know where to start when it came to answering that one. ‘I didn’t realise what I was asking when I asked you to become part of the Bennett household back then. We didn’t give you much support.
I
didn’t give you much support. I never blamed you for leaving when you did.’

Much.

Jianne spooned a small serving of greens onto her plate to accompany her equally small portion of prawns. Jake eyed the remaining food on the table.

‘You should eat more,’ he muttered.

‘Why did you agree to help me?’ she asked.

‘Because you needed it.’

‘Any other reason?’

‘Maybe I just like to fight.’

‘That’s not news.’

‘Sorry.’ Jake managed a half-smile at her not-quite-hidden disgruntlement. Jianne had hated the fighting lifestyle he’d once lived. She’d resented the mental and physical demands it had placed on him and she’d been horrified by his thirst for more. Gentle, nurturing Jianne had never really understood the anger that had raged in him back then or his ferocious need to tame it before it spilled over onto the people he loved. He hadn’t had the words to explain it. He didn’t have them now. ‘Maybe I figured that helping you out would provide me with a new challenge. A different kind of fight from the ones I’m used to. And maybe the general consensus is that I owe you and that it wouldn’t have mattered what you asked of me, I’d have done it.’

Jianne’s eyes widened at this. She opened her mouth as if to speak but no words came out. She closed her mouth, blinked, and tried again. ‘You mean I’ve had an honour-bound slave at my disposal all these years and nobody thought to mention it?’ She looked bemused. ‘It’s not a scenario I’ve ever imagined. Certainly not in reference to my relationship with you.’ A whisper of a smile tilted her lips. ‘Then again, it does have a certain basic appeal.’

‘Easy on the enslavement, Empress Wu,’ he warned. ‘Nothing good ever comes of it.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. You could be naked but for a loincloth,’ she murmured. ‘There could be oil involved.’

‘Not in this lifetime.’

‘This slavery thing,’ she continued serenely. ‘You’re
the one
obeying
the orders, right? As opposed to giving them?’

Jake speared her with his most intimidating stare and kept right on eating.

‘Just checking,’ she said. ‘I’d hate to get it wrong.’

Jacob wouldn’t let Jianne help wash the dinner dishes, though he didn’t object to her tidying the table and putting the leftovers in the fridge. His minimalist kitchen meant minimal clean-up afterwards. Jianne could see the appeal. But the tense silence in which he washed those few dishes didn’t hold much appeal at all. She’d thought they’d made some progress towards feeling at ease with one another over dinner. Clearly she’d thought wrong. ‘Can there be music?’ she said.

‘There can if you go upstairs. There’s a sound system up there.’ Not exactly subtle in his attempt to get her to go somewhere he wasn’t. ‘I’ve some paperwork to do in my office,’ he said next. ‘I’ll turn in for the night after that.’

‘Is there anything you need from upstairs?’ she asked politely. ‘Clothes? Toiletries?’

‘Not tonight. I’ll get the rest of the things I need tomorrow while you’re at work. You
are
going to work at your office tomorrow. Right?’

‘I am.’

The man looked downright relieved to hear it. ‘And when’s this house-warming party you want me to take you to?’

‘Friday.’ Five nights away.

‘We should go out together before then,’ he said with obvious reluctance. ‘Somewhere public. See what happens.’

‘Okay.’ The idea was a sound one. The reality was likely to bite. ‘So … goodnight?’

‘Yeah.’ He nodded and turned away.

Jianne climbed the stairs and closed the door behind her. She looked at Jacob’s bed and groaned aloud. Instead of the bed she headed for the bathroom, and brushed her teeth and plaited her hair the better to avoid tangles in it come morning. She approached the bed and changed into her sleepwear. She circled the bed without touching it, trying to choose a side.

Not a soft bed, she thought when she’d finally gathered the courage to slip between the sheets. Jacob’s bed, and there was a sensuousness that came of being in it. Stolen pleasure, fierce and forbidden, and she closed her eyes and caught her lip between her teeth and allowed herself to remember a time when the pursuit of ecstasy had ruled her.

She’d been too meek for him everywhere else. Too unsure of her role within Jacob’s unruly family. Too unfamiliar with her new way of life to navigate it confidently. Only in the abandon with which they’d surrendered to passion had they proven equal.

In every way.

Sleep would not come. One a.m. Two a.m., and still sleep eluded her and her body’s desire for sexual satisfaction grew stronger. She tossed the covers aside and paced the room, bare feet making no sound on the battered wooden floor. Jacob’s tapestries were made of silk and the impulse to touch them was one she could indulge. She allowed herself that small pleasure, and that of sitting in Jacob’s reading chair, her legs tucked beneath her and her
thighs pressed firmly together as she studied the spines of his books.

His scent tantalised her. The need for touch tugged at her. She closed her eyes and rested her head back against Jacob’s chair and begged sleep to come and take her away.

She almost managed it. Three a.m. and back in bed, with her breathing slow and easy and her mind shut down tight against the memories of her time in Jacob’s arms, she’d almost reached gentle oblivion. Until a faint sound came to her from below, a dull, irregular thudding.

Not noisy pipes. Not the pounding of someone at the door. Something else.

The door did not groan as she opened it. The stairs did not creak beneath her weight. Jianne crept halfway down them the way dusk settled over the day. Silently, stealthily, until finally she could sit on a step and lean forward and peer down into the training hall below.

The light was the same as in the room above. Bands of striped moonlight and neon sneaking in through slatted windows. A man stood with his back to her in the shadowy corner of that room, naked to the waist, loose black trousers riding low on his hips. Desolation and desperation in his rhythmic pounding of flesh against a boxing bag that hung from a ceiling beam. Muscles rippling across his back as his patterns grew more complex and power ripped through him.

Jacob’s balance didn’t falter. His intention didn’t waver. Oblivion through exhaustion. Peace in the wake of destruction. Jianne watched him for long minutes before finally retreating back to the room he’d put her in. She
crawled between the bedcovers and closed her eyes as the muffled pounding continued.

But she did not sleep.

T
HE
dojo day had well and truly started when Jianne came downstairs at around eight the following morning. Unfortunately the stairs fed down into the training hall below—there was no other way down. Discretion was not an option, but at least she was dressed for the day and not still in her sleepwear.

She wore her usual work attire of grey tailored trousers, high heels, and a sleeveless shirt. Today’s shirt was hot pink and she wore her hair in a French roll, the better to present a professional image. It was an image that had no place inside dojo walls and she knew it. So too did Jacob’s students, who fell ominously silent, one by one, as she descended the stairs.

Jacob hadn’t seen her yet, he was rifling through an equipment trunk with two of his students, and she didn’t know whether to interrupt him or not. All she had to do was catch his eye, give him a nod, and walk out of the door. It should have been easy enough to do, but given the
way her stay here was progressing even that small interaction had the potential for disaster.

She started across the training-room floor only to halt when Jacob looked up, caught her gaze, and headed towards her. For a man who’d spent half the night pounding on a boxing bag he looked remarkably well rested.

Jianne, on the other hand, had resorted to artifice in order to disguise her sleepless night.

‘You’re heading off to work?’ he asked when he reached her, his voice low and gruff, just one more swipe at a woman’s composure. From the loose-limbed way he walked to the broad expanse of his T-shirt-clad shoulders,
everything
about Jacob had been designed to render women sleepless, and right now she resented every bit of it.

Jianne nodded, her throat the tiniest bit dry for words. Nothing a cup of tea wouldn’t fix. Not that she had one handy.

‘How?’

‘I’ve called a taxi.’ Croaky words, but audible nonetheless. Maybe there were flaws in his chest musculature after all. She let her gaze drift downwards and swallowed hard.

Unlikely.

‘How are you getting home?’

‘The same,’ she croaked.

‘I can collect you from your workplace on a motorbike, if you don’t mind the ride.’

‘I don’t mind the ride.’

‘Five-thirty suit?’

Jianne nodded again and gave him the address. Jake’s
teaching uniform involved loose black karate pants, the remarkably well-fitting T-shirt, and no black belt whatsoever. His students were a ragged crew, mostly young men, and apart from their black trousers there was no uniformity there either. They wore any kind of T-shirt that pleased them or indeed none at all. No women, she noted. Not in this class at any rate.

‘My advanced class,’ he offered, noting her curiosity. ‘Most of them have been coming here for years.’

They were all staring at her, every last one of them. ‘Anyone would think they’d never seen a woman walk down those stairs before,’ she said nervously.

‘They haven’t.’

‘Oh.’ Jianne reeled at the implication. Jacob was an extremely physical man. A man who enjoyed women. Surely he’d had women in his bed during these past twelve years? Even if he had been too discreet to telegraph the fact. ‘So … what do you want me to do? About the pretending to be together. Do I kiss you good morning in front of them?’

‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ he muttered. ‘Just smile and walk away, Jianne. I’ll take care of the rest.’ He took his own advice and headed back towards his students. Jianne made her way across the rear of the training hall towards the door, her shoes tapping out a rapid staccato that sounded wrong somehow, here within this gathering of warriors.

She turned when she reached the door. Turned to look her fill of the husband she’d run away from all those years ago. He looked her way, almost as if he’d felt her watching him, and she caught her breath at the intensity of that brilliant blue gaze. He was right about not needing a kiss,
she thought with a catch in her breath. Because this was a vow—a reckless, untempered pledging of raw desire, dark needs and passion enough to incinerate them both.

Jianne raised her chin and held Jacob’s gaze a great deal longer than she should have before finally making her exit.

At five twenty-five that afternoon, Jianne shut down her computer, leaned back in her office chair and stretched out the kinks. Her latest client was a Hong-Kong-based hotel group who’d just acquired hotel chains in Australia and New Zealand. They had in-house designers for all their Asian brand work but they’d called her in as a consultant when it came to their South Pacific acquisitions. Designing a new-yet-familiar look with so much background branding already in place sounded easy.

It wasn’t.

The phone rang and she picked it up automatically. ‘JB Graphics.’

‘What does the B stand for?’ asked Jacob.

‘Bennett,’ she said quietly, and there was silence after that, a silence that would not fill. ‘I’m just finishing up,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Where are you?’

‘Waiting out front of the building.’

‘I’ll see you there.’ She hung up, and collected her shoulder bag and turned off the lights and shut the door. Minutes later she stepped out of the lift and headed for the massive glass doors that would take her outside and into the heat and bustle of the day.

This was the commercial heart of Singapore—orderly yet crowded. Expensive suits dominated the dress code.
Elegant window displays added to the general air of affluence. The broad-shouldered angel-faced warrior waiting for her beside a mighty black road bike looked as out of place as she’d looked in his dojo this morning.

Not that Jake Bennett looked as if he cared.

He followed her progress through the crowd. Two helmets sat on the bike seat beside him. She stopped when she reached him. He didn’t smile.

‘I thought you’d be trading under your own family name,’ he said finally.

‘You thought wrong.’ They stared at one another while Jianne fought the urge to lower her head beneath the weight of Jacob’s fathomless gaze. ‘My family have always helped me, of course. They give me access to office space and boardrooms, and a million miles of contacts. I don’t go wanting. But I don’t use their name.’ She took a deep breath. ‘My clients know me as Jianne Xang-Bennett. It’s the name on my passport. The name on my driver’s licence. Is that a problem for you?’

‘No.’ He ran his hand through his already untidy hair. ‘I—no. No problem.’ He shot her a searching glance. ‘You’re going to have to take your hair down to get the bike helmet on. Do you mind?’

‘Is this a can’t-miss metaphor to show—for the benefit of anyone who might be watching—that I’m a wild and wanton letting-my-hair-down kind of girl?’

‘No, it’s a safety requirement,’ he said dryly, but his eyes warmed a fraction and that was all the encouragement Jianne needed. Reaching up, she started pulling out pins.

‘Turn around,’ said Jake, and moments later he was
pulling out pins too. He knew where to find them; he’d taken her hair down often enough during their marriage. He’d taken intense pleasure in it. By the time Jianne’s hair tumbled down her back her nerve ends were awash with sensation and visions of moments past were well and truly haunting her.

‘You could tie it in a low knot,’ he murmured huskily as he ran his hands beneath her hair and lifted it slightly before letting it fall. ‘Or plait it.’

‘And spoil the metaphor?’ She turned and somehow his hands ended up on her bare upper arms and she ended up far closer to his big lean body than she’d anticipated. ‘I don’t think so.’ She studied his face, seeing shades of the man he’d once been in the contours of it. A mouth made for smiling, though he seemed to smile so rarely now. Eyes given to lightening whenever he was amused and deepening to darkest sapphire when he was aroused. His fingertips were rough, the pads of his thumbs tracing slow circles over her bare shoulders.

Jacob knew his own strength and he wasn’t using any of it and still he held her motionless beneath his touch.

Jianne moved forward a fraction as need coursed through her. Such a shameless pulsing need she had for more of this man. She lifted her hands to Jacob’s chest—for balance, she told herself—and caught her breath when his lashes came down to cover his eyes.

‘Is he here?’ Jacob muttered huskily. ‘Is he watching?’

‘I don’t know.’ She didn’t care. ‘Maybe he is, maybe he’s not. Either way we seem to have acquired an audience.’ They always had; her and Jacob together. Perhaps
because of the mixing of races. Perhaps because he was simply so damn beautiful. ‘Should we play to it?’

‘Oh, I think so. Audiences exist to keep a man civilised. Did you know that?’ he murmured as his lips moved slowly closer to hers.

‘I thought that’s what leashes were for,’ she murmured.

‘Leashes break.’

‘Even yours?’

‘Especially mine,’ he muttered. ‘If you want to kiss me and make people think we’re together again, now’s the time.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No, but do it anyway.’

Sometimes, it simply suited a woman to do as she was told.

The touch of a tongue, the remembrance of a taste once savoured and never forgotten. One stunningly erotic kiss to fill the need inside her. One steamy open-mouthed caress to make all those years of loneliness fade away. She wanted that from him.

She took it.

Jake thought he could control this. Here on the pavement in front of strangers Jake figured he could curtail his response to the woman who’d once held his heart. But he hadn’t counted on Jianne’s absolute surrender to the moment. The way she fed the passion that flared between them. Savoured it. Savoured
him
, with lips and with tongue and a single-mindedness that left no room for holding back. The deeper he fell, the hungrier he got and the more she gave, until finally he broke the kiss, and
rested his forehead against hers, his heart thundering and his senses reeling from her taste.

He closed his eyes and kept them closed. Kept one of his senses firmly closed to her as he struggled to regain his mind and some small measure of control. ‘Put your helmet on,’ he whispered. ‘We’re leaving.’

She did as she was told, and he donned his own helmet and got on the bike and waited for her to settle in behind him. She found the passenger foot pegs easily enough. Her hands settled lightly at his hips.

‘Ready?’ he murmured as the engine purred to life beneath them, and when she said yes he pulled smoothly out into the traffic. He couldn’t go home. Not yet, with the taste of her still coursing through his veins. The leash had held but only just, and Jianne’s hands on his hips and her warmth at his back gave rise to needs too long ignored.

He wasn’t a chaste man. He wasn’t even a particularly honourable man. But initiating a sexual relationship with Jianne seemed wrong for all sorts of reasons and some of them even made sense. She’d broken his heart already, for one, and Jacob had no desire to repeat the experience. She’d asked for his protection and the
appearance
of a relationship, nothing more. And she hadn’t even wanted to do that, he reminded himself grimly. She’d only come to him after Zhi Fu had forced her hand.

No, the
only
good thing to come of any of this was that Jianne Xang-Bennett trusted him to keep her safe.

From harm.

Jake gritted his teeth and gunned the bike beneath them. Surely, that much he could do.

There would be no bedding her. Extremely limited kissing.
Maybe then he’d have a halfway decent shot at retaining his mind.

There was a homeware outlet coming up on their left. He geared down and rolled into a parking space on a whim. He couldn’t risk taking Jianne home yet. His need to touch her was still too strong. He needed a distraction, any distraction, and the shopping he usually went out of his way to avoid suddenly seemed like the perfect cold-shower substitute.

‘I
need bowls,’ he muttered as he shed his helmet and tried to ignore the feel of Jianne’s legs folded behind his own, and the way she’d tucked in behind him on the seat. Rock hard and about to buy crockery. Maybe insanity had
already
taken hold.

He could feel his plan working as they stepped into the shop and entered the realm of rows and rows of kitchen items that ordinary people couldn’t possibly need. A salesman approached tentatively as if unsure what to make of them. Jianne drew people towards her and always had, whereas he … didn’t.

‘May I help you?’ the salesman asked.

‘We need bowls,’ said Jake. ‘Plastic ones in a few different sizes.’

‘You mean for mixing?’ asked the salesman.

‘He means for serving,’ said Jianne.

‘Oh. Table sets,’ said the salesman. ‘Western or Asian?’

Jake shrugged, care factor zero. Yes, this shopping business could kill passion stone dead. Something to remember.

‘We’ll look at both,’ said Jianne, so the salesman
walked them across two rows and down a ways before stopping again.

‘We don’t carry a lot of plastic ware,’ he said. ‘Most of our bowls are chinaware.’

‘What do you have that doesn’t break?’ said Jake.

‘Some of the chinaware is really quite robust,’ said the man earnestly. ‘Looks can be deceptive.’

‘This one’s nice,’ said Jianne, picking up an oyster-coloured rice bowl so finely spun you could almost see through it.

‘Ah,’ said the salesman. ‘Yes. Quite so, although not exactly what I had in mind for you.’

‘Is it fragile?’ asked Jake, picking up on the man’s discomfort.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Expensive?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the salesman. ‘Blame it on the Japanese.’

‘I’m from Shanghai,’ murmured Jianne. ‘We often do.’

The salesman smiled suddenly. ‘Think of the satisfaction you’ll feel if you
do
happen to break one. You can blame it on all sorts of things. Japanese impracticality. Imperfect Japanese design. Inferior Japanese materials. The list goes on and
on
.’

‘There is that,’ said Jianne and turned to Jake, her eyes bright. ‘I’ll pay for them, of course, and naturally I’ll replace all breakages—with plastic ones if you insist—but these bowls are really starting to speak to me.’