скачать книгу бесплатно
‘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 allnight 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.
CHAPTER FOUR
MADELINE 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.
