Single Girl Abroad (Mills & Boon M&B) (Mills & Boon Special Releases) (3 page)

L
UKE
didn’t try to argue against her second statement, and Maddy gave him points for honesty. She gave him more points for staying right where he was as he fought to bring the rawness of their encounter back into line with what was civilised and polite and socially acceptable.

‘Here’s the thing, Luke Bennett,’ she said softly. ‘You think you know what I am. Well, I know what you are, too. An adrenalin junkie; a man who’s come to terms with an early death in the service of others because what else is there? It’s in your eyes, in the way you move. You don’t care for life and you know nothing of love. It’s never claimed you. You ask for a kiss but you’d take a heart and never even notice what you’d done. So don’t you judge me, Luke Bennett, and I won’t judge you.’

That was twice now in as many days that Luke had been called to task for errors in judgement. He was trying to give Madeline the benefit of the doubt, heaven help him he
was
trying, but every time he thought he had a handle on her she showed him otherwise.

The information on Madeline Delacourte wasn’t all bad, certainly. There was his attraction to her—surely that had to count for something, for he wasn’t usually prone to wanting hard-hearted women. Easy-going and light on commitment, yes. Heartless, no. That Jake valued Madeline’s friendship counted for more. And then there was this huge gaping hole in Madeline’s conscience when it came to marrying for wealth, and
that
was the bit he couldn’t stomach.

‘Are we interrupting?’ said a voice from the doorway, and, with serious effort required on his part, Luke broke free of Maddy’s shuttered gaze and looked towards his brother. Jake stood there scowling at him and he wasn’t alone. Po stood beside Jake, his scowl equally well presented. ‘Because we can come back later,’ said Jake, heavy on the sarcasm.

‘We should stay,’ said Po to Jake in rapid Mandarin that Luke could only just follow. ‘If we go they’ll probably kill each other or something.’

‘I get that feeling too,’ said Jake.

‘Nice to see the two of you bonding so fast,’ said Madeline. ‘And just for the record, I wouldn’t have killed him.’

‘I probably wouldn’t have killed her either,’ muttered Luke.

‘The week is still young,’ said Jake dryly. ‘I recommend distance and denial, but since when has anyone ever listened to me? As for Po here, we’ve yet to decide if his staying on is an arrangement that will suit us. Come back tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow’s not good for me,’ said Madeline with a careless shrug. ‘It’s a distance and denial thing.’

‘Don’t mind me,’ said Luke. If Madeline could pull back from the earth-shattering kiss they’d just shared and put the carnage that had followed behind her, then so could he. ‘I won’t be around. Things to do.’

‘So that’s settled, then?’ Jacob’s gaze cut to Maddy. ‘Come by around midday and we’ll feed you.’

For some obscure reason that Luke really didn’t want to think about, tomorrow’s happy-family scenario didn’t sit well with him. He didn’t look at Madeline and he sure as hell didn’t look at Jake as he shouldered roughly past him and stepped out into the corridor. It wasn’t until Luke hit the street that he realised he had company. Po skipped alongside him, keeping up but only just. Minding his distance, but only so much. Luke stopped. So did Po, hanging back. Not afraid of him—at least Luke hoped he wasn’t—just cautious in the way of all half-wild things.

‘Did Jake get you to follow me?’

Po shot Luke a wary glance. ‘No.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘I wanted out too. Needed to walk. Go get some stuff.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

‘My stuff.’ ‘Stolen?’

Po just looked at him.

Time to rephrase. ‘Stuff that’ll get you jailed if you’re caught with it?’

‘No. Some clothes, some Sing.’ Sing being Singapore dollars. ‘I won’t bring anything else.’

Luke really didn’t want to know what else the kid had that he wouldn’t be bringing. ‘Where do you have to go?’

‘Bugis Street.’

In years gone by, Old Bugis Street had been the traditional home of every vice known to man and then some. Redevelopment had sanitised the area but, like rats in a city sewer, you could never silence sin. ‘Maddy said you worked Orchid Road.’

‘Yeah, but I live on Bugis Street.’

Live. Not lived. Luke didn’t like the present-tense inference. ‘You know, kid? Po? If you’re even half serious about making a fresh start, going back to Bugis Street won’t help.’

Po just looked at him. Dark eyes in a pinched face and a body that was decades too small for the soul that resided within.

Luke didn’t want to get involved—he was only in Singapore for the week. But, ‘You need some company?’ was what he said.

‘Do you?’ said the boy, and fell into step beside him.

A couple of blocks went by in silence. Po clearly didn’t see the need for conversation. ‘How did you meet Madeline?’ Luke finally asked the kid.

‘She looked rich,’ said Po. ‘Her handbag was Prada and her shoes were Chanel—the real deal. So I marked her.’

‘You
stole
from her?’

‘Tried to,’ said Po. ‘But she knew all the moves. It was like she could see inside me. She asked me if I was hungry. When I said yes, she took me to a street stall and she knew the owner. She gave him five hundred Sing and told him to feed me for a month. He did.’

‘Did you stop picking pockets after that?’

‘I stopped trying to pick
her
pocket after that,’ said Po
piously. ‘She’d come to the street stall every Monday. I used to sit with her sometimes.’

‘And after your month of free meals was up?’

‘It was never up. Grandfather Cheung said she’d paid for another month and that I could hang around in the shop overnight so long as I helped him get the shopfront ready for business the next morning. He has three grandsons but they don’t move fast. I do.’

‘Sounds like a sweet deal,’ said Luke. For a homeless child thief. ‘What went sour?’

‘Old man Cheung got sick and sold the shop. A couple of weeks later a street boss offered me a job I didn’t want to take. Maddy said it was time for me to move on and that she knew of a place.’

‘You trusted her?’

‘She said there was this sensei who took students and he was like this warrior monk or something. She said we could walk there and that I could leave any time.’

A monk, eh? Luke shook his head. Maybe there were some similarities between Jake’s dedication to martial arts and the celestial path a spiritual man might walk, but Jake a monk? Hardly. ‘So Jake takes you in on Madeline’s say-so, gives you food and a room and you steal his wallet? Where’s the sense in that?’

‘I wasn’t going to
steal
anything from his wallet. I just wanted to know what was in it.’

‘Why?’

‘So I could find out more about the sensei.’

‘How?’

‘From his cards and his receipts. From driver’s licence and the picture he keeps behind it.’

‘Jake keeps a picture behind his driver’s licence?’

‘Of a woman,’ said Po. ‘Could be Singlish. Chinese hair, western eyes.’

‘Ji,’ said Luke curtly. ‘Jake’s ex.’

‘Ex what?’

‘Wife.’

‘Monks have wives?’ said Po.

‘No.’ Jake didn’t deserve the responsibility that went with having a curious child thrust upon him, thought Luke grimly. He really didn’t.

It took them twenty minutes to get to where Po wanted to go, a set of garbage bins in an alleyway beside an all-night noodle bar. There was a drainage grate set into the wall behind the bins, big enough for a hand and elbow, but not a boy. Hell of a moneybox.

‘Can you keep watch?’ asked Po as he slipped behind the bins.

Curiosity over what might lie behind the grate warred with Luke’s need to protect the boy and his doings from the eyes of others. Every kid had a cupboard, he tried to reassure himself. This was Po’s. No need to know what else was in it apart from clothes and the money the boy wanted to retrieve. Trust was a two-way street and had to start somewhere, right?

Madeline had seen something in the boy worth rescuing.

Jake had trusted Madeline’s judgement enough to take Po in.

Judgement.

Madeline.

Po and his cupboard.

Cursing himself for a fool, Luke strode back to where the alleyway met the street and leaned against the wall, a bystander or a player, it didn’t matter. Just another tourist watching the show.

Ahead of him lay five more days in the vicinity of Madeline Delacourte.

Behind him lay a tiny thief with his hand up a drain.

Madeline didn’t linger long in Jacob’s presence after Luke and Po had disappeared. Long enough for a question or two from Jacob that she hadn’t wanted to answer, that was all.

‘You want to talk about what you’re doing to my brother, Maddy?’

‘No.’ Talk was overrated.

‘Do you need me to tell you that if you play him, and hurt him, we may not be able to remain friends?’

‘No.’ She already had that bit figured. She’d had a younger brother too. Once. She picked up her handbag. Jacob stood aside to let her pass. ‘I know the thickness of blood,’ she said quietly. And the fragility of friendship. ‘I wasn’t playing your brother for sport, Jacob. I wasn’t playing him at all.’

She didn’t know why she’d done what she’d done with Luke Bennett.

‘Maddy …’ Jacob’s gruff voice stopped her in the doorway. ‘Even if you’re not playing with him … don’t hurt him.’

Madeline smiled faintly. ‘You care about him a lot, don’t you?’

‘He’s my brother.’ Jacob ran his hand through already
untidy hair. ‘I care for you too. As a friend, you understand. Not as a …’ Jacob appeared to be at a loss for words. ‘You know.’

‘I understand.’

‘Good,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Because I don’t want you getting hurt either.’

‘I understand.’

‘Good,’ he said again. ‘So that’s settled, then?’

‘Definitely.’

‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Can’t wait.’

Madeline stepped out of the dojo, hailed a taxi, and headed for the nearest gin and tonic, silently rueing the day she met her first Bennett brother and thanking her lucky stars there’d been a ten-year interim in which to get used to the breed before she’d met her second.

Jake took one look at his wallet sitting in the toaster and headed for the Scotch.

M
ADELINE
kept her lunch appointment with Jacob and Po the following day, never mind that staying away from the dojo while Luke was in residence seemed by far the better option. She had a burning need to help the runaways of the world find their way home, and if that wasn’t possible then she would find them a place where they could flourish and grow as children should grow. Strange as it seemed, Jacob’s dojo was such a haven.

Half-grown outcasts felt comfortable there.
Madeline
felt comfortable there, never mind that martial arts could be a brutal sport and Jacob had no mind to soften it. The dojo rules were fair and clear and utterly unbreakable.

If Po could abide by such rules, Jacob would see to it that the kid thrived.

Jacob and Po were working behind the counter today, Jacob on the computer with Po standing at his shoulder, watching intently.

‘He can’t read,’ said Jacob when he saw her. ‘He needs to be in school.’

‘No family information that Po’s willing to share with me, a fierce aversion to being logged into the system, no school,’ said Madeline in reply. ‘I figured housing came first and school could come later.’

‘A tutor, then,’ said Jacob.

‘That I can arrange.’ Madeline looked around casually. No Luke.

‘He’s not here,’ said Jacob without looking up from the screen.

‘Did I
ask
?’ said Madeline.

‘No, but you wanted to,’ said Jacob. Boy and man swapped amused glances.

So they were right. Madeline shot them a narrowed glare. That didn’t mean she had to admit they were right. ‘Yesterday, you mentioned lunch,’ she said. ‘I’ve got twenty minutes.’

‘Why so tight?’ asked Jacob. ‘Problems with the empire?’

‘Always.’ She’d inherited a crumbling empire, not a thriving one. Staying one step ahead of the creditors had taken ingenuity and time. Fortunately, she’d had plenty of both. Madeline could play the widowed trophy wife to perfection when it suited her, but anyone doing business with Delacourte knew differently. The Delacourte upstart didn’t leech off Delacourte enterprises, she
ran
them, along with a fair few charity institutions on the side. ‘A meeting with the accountant beckons.’

‘I’ve got leftover
mee goreng
, a microwave, and an apprentice who knows his way around a kitchen,’ said Jacob.

‘You want me to fix the food?’ said Po.

Jacob nodded and the boy slipped away, swift and silent.

‘Has he taken to karate?’ she asked.

Jacob nodded, eyeing her tailored black business suit with a frown. ‘Po moves fast, thinks fast, and he’s so used to living rough that anything I set him to do is a softness. He and Luke started on some karate forms at around midnight last night and finished around two a.m. He was up again at six. The kid’ll nap now in snatches throughout the day and snap awake the moment something moves, ready to either fight or run. Breaks your heart.’

‘He’ll settle, though, won’t he? Eventually?’

‘Maybe.’ Jacob ran a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t know. Luke’s got a better handle on him than I do. Maybe you should talk to Luke.’

Not quite what she had in mind. ‘Why? What does he say?’

‘He says he’ll stay another week unless a job comes up. And that he’ll keep an eye on Po while he’s here.’

‘And your brother can just do that? Change his plans on a whim?’

‘The man’s a free agent, Maddy. Would you think more of him if he
couldn’t
stay and help out for a while?’

‘I’m trying not to think of him at all,’ she muttered.

‘Is it working?’ said a silken voice from behind her. Madeline knew it was Luke, even before she turned to face him. Her body’s response to his nearness was very thorough.

He wore a faded grey T-shirt, loose-fitting jeans, and a look in his eye that told her that if she had any sense she’d
turn and run and keep right on running. ‘Where’s Po?’ he said.

‘Kitchen,’ replied Jacob.

With a curt nod in Madeline’s direction, Luke left. Madeline made a concerted effort not to watch him go.

Jacob just looked at her and sighed.

‘What?’ she said defiantly.

‘Nothing,’ said Jacob. ‘Nothing I want to talk about at any rate.’

Amen.

Luke made himself conspicuously absent during lunch. Po showed Madeline the room Jake had given him afterwards—bare walls, bare bulb, a chest of drawers, a bed, white sheets and a thin grey coverlet. Jacob was a minimalist when it came to possessions but Po seemed overwhelmed by the space and the fixtures that had suddenly been deemed his. Madeline asked Po if he felt like staying on as Jacob’s apprentice. If she’d done the right thing in bringing him here.

Po nodded jerkily. Yes.

She’d seen a noodle bar across the street from the dojo that she thought she might try out next Monday lunchtime. She could use some company if Po felt inclined to stop by …

Another nod. System sorted.

Madeline left the dojo with five minutes to spare before the start of her next meeting. It would take her another ten minutes to get to the accounting firm’s offices so she was already running late, even before she spotted Luke Bennett leaning against a shopfront wall not two doors down from the dojo, idly seeming to watch the world go by.

While waiting for her to leave.

She walked towards him slowly, stopped in front of him. Neither of them spoke. But he looked at her and in that fierce heated glance lay a dialogue as old as time.

‘I wanted you to look this way and walk the other,’ he said finally. Had she been listening to his words alone she might have kept on walking, but those eyes and the tension in that hard, lean body of his told a different story.

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I dreamed of you last night,’ he said next. Not the sweet murmurings of a soon-to-be lover, but cold, hard accusation.

‘Snap.’ She’d dreamed of him too, her sleeping time shattered by a golden-eyed warrior whose righteousness cut at her even as his kisses seduced. ‘Jacob said you and Po trained for half the night.’

‘We did.’ No need to guess
why
he’d chosen physical exertion over dreaming. He hadn’t wanted to dream of her. He couldn’t have said it any plainer. ‘I still think walking away from you is the smart option,’ he murmured.

‘Then do it.’

He glanced away, looked down the street as if planning where he would walk, but his body stayed right where it was. When he looked back at her the reckless challenge in his eyes burned a path through every defence she had in place. ‘No.’

Oh, boy.

‘Come out with me tonight,’ he said next.

‘Where?’ Was asking about a venue a tacit agreement? She thought it might be.

‘Anywhere,’ he muttered. ‘Do I look like I care?’

A shudder ripped through Madeline, two parts desire and one part dread for the wanton images that played out in her mind every time she looked at this man.

Luke’s eyes darkened. ‘You choose,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ll care.’ Somewhere with people, if she had any sense at all. Somewhere crowded and casual. There were plenty such places in Singapore. She could easily suggest she meet him at one of them.

She didn’t.

Instead, she gave him her home address. ‘I’ll try and book us a table somewhere. I’ll be home by six. Ready to head out again by seven.’

He nodded, shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned his head back against the wall, everything about him casual except for his eyes. There was nothing casual about them at all. ‘You should go now,’ he said.

Madeline nodded and forced a step back before she did something monumentally stupid like setting her hands to his chest and her lips to his throat and to hell with empires and accountants. ‘Jacob knows my mobile number.’ Luke’s eyes narrowed, as if he either didn’t like that notion or he didn’t know where she was heading with this. ‘Call me if you decide to cancel.’

‘Do you really think I will?’

‘No.’ She offered up a tiny smile of farewell. ‘But I’m fairly certain you should.’

Madeline made it home just on six-thirty but instead of the fatigue that usually accompanied an afternoon spent wading through financial statements, nervous anticipation ruled her now. She didn’t make a habit of handing over
her home address to men she’d just met. Even if Luke was Jake’s brother there’d been no call for that. But she had, and she’d wear it. Wear something. What on earth was she going to wear this evening?

A wizened old woman appeared in the foyer, her face leathered and lined but her old eyes clear and smiling. Yun had been William’s housekeeper for at least thirty years, maybe longer. Now she was Madeline’s and more grandmother than housekeeper if truth were told.

‘We’ve company coming at seven,’ said Madeline as she shed her light coat and slid a wall panel aside to reveal a cleverly concealed wardrobe. ‘Can we do some kind of canapés?’

‘What kind of company?’ asked Yun.

‘Male.’

‘How many?’

‘One.’

‘Nationality?’

‘Australian.’

‘Age?’ Yun could put foreign embassy officials to shame when it came to tailoring hospitality to fit circumstance.

‘My age.’

Yun’s immaculately pencilled eyebrows rose. ‘A business associate?’

‘No. Jacob Bennett’s brother. He’s taking me out to dinner.’

‘Where?’

Good question, for she’d yet to make a reservation. ‘I thought maybe somewhere touristy, down by the water.’ If they went to the wharves they wouldn’t even have to
book in advance. They could just choose a place as they wandered along.

Yun’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Does he not know how to properly honour a woman of your social standing?’

Madeline stifled a grin. ‘You’d rather he took me somewhere intimate and expensive?’

‘Just expensive,’ said Yun.

‘I don’t think he’s the kind of man who cares much for the trappings of wealth or for impressing a woman with fine food and wine.’

‘Really?’ Yun seemed unimpressed. ‘What kind of man is he?’

‘Well …’ Apart from the kind who could make a woman abandon every ounce of common sense she’d ever had? ‘I don’t rightly know.’

‘When was he born? What’s his animal?’

‘I don’t know.’ Yun was old school. She practised feng shui, observed the Chinese zodiac, and honoured her ancestor spirits. ‘I’m going to go with Tiger.’

‘Tiger is unpredictable,’ murmured Yun. ‘And dangerous. Tiger and Snake not good together. Each can destroy the other if allowed to get too close.’

‘Thanks, Yun. I feel so much better now.’ Madeline had been born in the year of the snake. Nice to know in advance how incompatible she and Luke truly were.

‘Monkey is better fit for you. Even Ox. Find out his birth year.’

‘Will do. So can you do up a tray of something?’

‘Of course,’ said Yun. ‘Something for harmony and relaxation.’

‘Perfect.’ Madeline could use some harmony and relaxation,
what with her incompatible love life and all. She started across the high-gloss white marble floor, only to whirl back around with a new question. ‘What should I wear?’

‘A dress shaped for beauty, a smile for serenity, and your antique jade hairpin,’ said Yun. ‘For luck.’

Luke Bennett was a punctual man, discovered Madeline as the state-of-the-art security cameras showed him summoning the private lift to the apartment block’s foyer area at five minutes to seven that evening. Madeline had taken Yun’s advice and wore a fitted deep-green dress that emphasised her assets and the green flecks in her eyes. Yun had helped wind her hair up into an elegant roll, secured with many hidden pins. The jade hairpin came last—with its five silver threads studded with tiny oyster pearls.

‘Stop fidgeting,’ said Yun, and prepared to open the door. ‘He’s just a man.’

‘Right.’ Just a man.

A man who wore dark grey dress trousers and a crisp white shirt with an ease she’d never expected of him. A man whose elegant clothes served only to emphasise the raw power and masculinity of the body beneath. His dark hair was tousled and his face could have launched a thousand fantasies and probably had. It was the eyes that did it—those magnificent tawny eyes.

‘You’re no Monkey,’ said Yun accusingly. ‘And you definitely no Ox.’

Luke Bennett stared down at the tiny woman whose head barely topped his elbow. ‘No,’ he said as his bemused and oddly helpless gaze cut to Madeline. ‘I’m not.’

A helpless Luke Bennett settled Madeline’s butterflies considerably. ‘Yun, this is Luke Bennett. Luke, meet Yun, my housekeeper.’

‘Could be Dragon but not so likely.’ Yun sighed sorrowfully. ‘I’ll bring out the antelope.’

Not a lot a man could say to a statement like that. Luke said nothing, just watched Yun disappear through a wide archway as she headed for the kitchen. Madeline summoned a hostess’s smile as Luke returned his gaze to her, seemingly oblivious to the wall full of museum-quality silk tapestries and the occasional priceless vase.

‘How’s Po?’ she asked.

‘Busy, I hope. Because when he’s not he’s prodigiously good at finding trouble.’

‘And your brother?’

‘Also busy.’

And that was the extent of Madeline’s small talk. Common ground extinguished. Dangerous new territory stretching out before them. She wondered if Luke knew what he was doing in pursuing the lightning attraction that sparked between them. Madeline certainly didn’t.

She’d always preferred
not
to play with lightning.

‘Would you like a drink?’ Madeline moved towards a high-topped bench in the corner. The bar was behind it, cleverly concealed by panelling that slid aside to reveal the drinks selection on hand. Hospitality was important in this part of the world and the subtleties of what was offered and how were endless. William had taught her that. Pity he hadn’t taught her what to offer a golden-eyed warrior who didn’t necessarily like her but who wanted
her with an intensity that left her breathless. ‘Yun’s just gone to get a tray of nibbles for us.’

‘You didn’t have to go to any trouble,’ he murmured.

‘It wasn’t any trouble. Yun enjoys putting her culinary talents to use.’ Madeline offered up what she hoped was a serene smile. ‘She’s done every cooking course known to man, and she’ll scold me if I haven’t poured you a glass of something before she gets back.’