LITMIR.BIZ

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turned on her heel and let herself out.

      ‘So what’s the deal with you and Madeline Delacourte?’ Luke asked his brother as they resumed their battle with the Shaolin sticks some fifteen minutes later, this time with a watchful pickpocket for an audience. ‘You into her?’

      ‘Why the interest?’ asked Jake and followed through with a glancing blow to Luke’s side.

      Luke stopped talking and started concentrating on his defence. But the image of Madeline Delacourte—she of the knowing smile, honey-blonde hair, and long shapely legs—just wouldn’t go away. ‘Why do you think? I’m not asking for a kidney here. All I want is a straight yes or no answer from one of you.’ He really didn’t think it was too much to ask.

      ‘No,’ said Jake, blocking Luke’s next blow. ‘She’s just a friend.’

      ‘Is she married?’

      ‘Not any more.’

      ‘Engaged?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Attached?’

      ‘No.’ Jake’s stick caught him on the knuckles and damn near took his fingers off. ‘Madeline’s choosy. She can afford to be.’

      ‘She’s wealthy?’

      ‘Very. Her late husband’s family were British spice traders, back when the East opened up. They made a fortune and sank most of it into real estate. Maddy’s husband owned a string of shopping centres and hotels along Orchid Road and half the residential skyscrapers in south-east Singapore. Maddy owns them now.’

      ‘Her husband died young?’

      ‘Her husband died a happy old man.’

      Luke winced. He didn’t like the picture Jake was painting. ‘Any kids?’

      ‘No.’ More blows reached him. ‘You’re not concentrating,’ said Jake.

      ‘I’m still coming to grips with the trophy-wife thing.’

      ‘Maybe she loved him.’

      ‘How much older was he?’

      ‘Thirty years,’ said Jake. ‘Give or take.’

      Luke scowled and came in hard, peppering his brother with blows, his growing disillusion with Madeline Delacourte giving him a ferocious edge. The fighting ceased being a sparring exercise and became instead an outlet for emotion of the explosive kind as he went for Jake’s hands, the better to rid them of the long stick. Not a berserker, not quite, but a creature of instinct nonetheless and one Jake would have no peaceable defence against.

      Cursing his lack of control, Luke grounded his staff and stepped back abruptly, breathing hard as he bowed to formalise the end of the session. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, and headed for the stack of towels piled on a low wooden bench over by the wall.

      Jake had walked towards Po and was speaking to him in the calm quiet way that Luke had always loved about his brother. The kid nodded once, warily, and hightailed it out of the dojo door. Jake turned his attention back to Luke after that. Luke looked away and towelled his face, not wanting to meet Jake’s condemning gaze, or, worse, his understanding one. Once a younger brother, always a younger brother, though he was not the youngest of the four boys in the family. Tristan carried that dubious honour.

      By the time he’d finished roughing the towel over his shoulders and stomach, Jake stood beside him.

      ‘You want to tell me what that was all about?’ asked Jake quietly.

      Ten rigorous years of living life in the explosive lane? Never settling down, never staying in one place for more than a few months? One too many dices with death? A volcanic recklessness that had been building and building and needed an outlet before it blew him apart? ‘I changed the rules on you halfway through the match and I shouldn’t have. I stopped. No one got hurt. What’s to tell?’

      ‘You let anger take hold,’ said Jake. ‘You lost your centre.’

      He didn’t have a centre. He wasn’t even sure he had a soul any more after standing witness to so much death and destruction. And the thought that Madeline Delacourte, saviour of street urchins, had sold her soul for wealth ate at him like acid. Just once he’d wanted an angel of mercy to grace his life rather than the spectre of death.

      ‘How long since you last took a job?’ Jake asked next.

      ‘A few weeks back, give or take.’ Not that he minded. Better for everyone when he wasn’t working.

      ‘You right for money?’

      ‘Money’s fine.’ Luke’s line of work had paid remarkably well over the years. He wasn’t in Madeline Delacourte’s stratosphere by any means, but he had no monetary need to ever work again.

      Jake opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking. His face took on a pained expression. ‘Blame your brothers,’ he murmured.

      ‘For what?’

      ‘This. You’re not in love, are you?’

      Luke stared at him in astonishment. ‘What?’

      ‘No uncontrollable yearning to phone, visit, or possess one particular woman above all others?’ Jake asked warily.

      ‘No.’ Not unless he counted wanting to possess the sister of mercy who’d just sashayed out of Jake’s dojo without a backward glance. Which he didn’t.

      ‘This is a good thing,’ said Jake. And with his next breath, ‘So what the hell’s your problem?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ Something about this brother demanded honesty and always had. Luke gave it to him straight. ‘It’s just…walk in the shadow of violence long enough and it begins to claim you. I looked at Madeline Delacourte and saw beauty, not just of form but in deed as well. When your words painted her otherwise I saw red.’

      Jake frowned as he towelled himself down. ‘There’s goodness in Maddy—ask any kid she’s dragged from the gutter. There’s beauty in the way she walks this city’s dark side without fear. As for marrying to secure a better life—maybe she did, maybe she didn’t—it’s none of my business. And it doesn’t make her a whore.’

      Luke scowled. ‘It doesn’t exactly make her pure as the driven snow either.’

      ‘What do you care? An angelic woman would drive you insane within a week.’

      ‘Yes, but it’d be nice to know they exist.’

      ‘When I find one I’ll give you a call,’ said Jake dryly. ‘Meanwhile, I suggest you respect Madeline Delacourte for what she is. A smart and generous woman who doesn’t give a damn if she has more enemies amongst the upper echelons of society than friends. She does what they don’t. She pours truckloads of money into programmes designed to help the poor and displaced. She gets her hands dirty. And she doesn’t judge people according to past actions and find them wanting, the way you’ve just done.’

      Luke scowled afresh. ‘Point taken.’ If Jake was willing to defend her, then she must be all right. Not an angel, just a mere mortal like everyone else. Angels were for fairy tales. He tossed his towel down on the bench. ‘I might stay on the floor a while.’ Work the forms, push his body hard and maybe, just maybe, bury his recklessness and his wrongful snap judgements beneath exhaustion.

      Jake slid him a sideways glance, cool and assessing. ‘Fight me again,’ he offered. ‘Street rules, this time. No long sticks. No holding back. Just you and me.’

      ‘What if I hurt you?’ asked Luke gruffly, even as the beast within him roared its approval at Jake’s offer.

      ‘You won’t.’ Jake smiled gently. ‘But feel free to try.’

      Jake had given Luke unspoken permission to work off his anger and during the fighting that followed he did, sending more and more his

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