Single Girl Abroad (Mills & Boon M&B) (Mills & Boon Special Releases) (9 page)

L
UKE’S
phone rang in the middle of the night. Not the temporary everyday phone he’d purchased on his way into Singapore. The other phone, the one that rarely rang but when it did he answered the call.

He rolled over, eyes still half closed as he picked up and spoke his name. Voice-recognition software on their end would take care of the rest.

‘You know what time it is in Singapore?’ he grumbled.

‘Yeah, time to rise and shine, princess,’ said a smoothly amused voice on the other end of the phone.

Duty called. Luke answered. By the time Luke had all the information he needed he was on his feet, fully alert and reaching for clothes.

He filled his duffel with the tools of his trade and his toiletries and clothes. He checked his toolkits over thoroughly, just in case Po had relocated some of the contents, but everything was in place. The rest of the gear he’d requested would be waiting for him on site.

He needed coffee, he thought as he stripped the bed, replaced the coverlet, and left the sheets in a heap at the end of it. He left his recently purchased dinner suit in the cupboard. He wouldn’t be needing it for a while. While he made coffee he wrote Jake a note and called for a taxi to take him to the airport.

A commercial flight would get him to Pakistan. Military transport would take care of the rest.

Luke’s mind turned to Madeline. Generous, sensual Madeline who’d given so freely of herself earlier that day. Should he call her? And if he did, what would he say? ‘Hey, Maddy. I’m heading out.’ And then she’d ask him where, only he had no inclination to tell her. Nowhere pleasant. And then she’d ask for how long, only he couldn’t answer that question with any certainty either. One week, maybe two.

He set his duffel by the kitchen doorway and poured the freshly brewed coffee into a mug.

Maybe he could call Maddy’s work number and leave a message on her answering machine. He wouldn’t have to wake her up at—he glanced at his watch—two thirteen a.m.

Courteous of him.

He wouldn’t have to answer any questions.

Smart move.

He wouldn’t even have to say goodbye. None of those pregnant pulsing silences that he hated. None of that torturous
be careful
business. As if he planned on being anything else.

Oh, yeah. He liked this plan. He liked it a lot.

Movement in his peripheral vision signalled the presence
of another. A small boy who woke at the softest footfall and had yet to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time.

‘You’re leaving,’ said the boy.

‘Yeah. And you should be in bed.’

‘Is there a bomb?’

‘Something like that.’

‘When a bomb explodes when you’re trying to dismantle it, you die, right?’ said Po.

‘Right,’ murmured Luke. ‘If you don’t, chances are you’ll wish you had.’

‘So you die trying to save people you don’t even know?’

‘I die with honour.’

Po looked away, but not before the darkness of dissent flashed in his eyes. ‘Yeah, but you’re still dead.’

Luke fiddled with his cell phone on the way to Changi airport. Vinyl seats and the strong scent of antiseptic assaulted him from within the taxi, the lights of the city skyscrapers bombarded him from outside the car’s cocoon. He still hadn’t called Maddy. Still hadn’t decided on the best tack.

The rational part of his brain was telling him that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to put a little distance between him and Maddy and an affair that burned just that little bit too hot for comfort. Maybe with distance would come perspective.

The lust-struck part of him simply wanted to hear her voice before he left, but calling her now smacked of a neediness he wasn’t ready to admit. Besides, why wake
her? The early hours of the morning were never a good time for phone calls. Everyone knew that.

Maybe he’d wait a while before he called her. Tomorrow, her time, so that she’d be alert and awake. That way neither of them would be prone to rash statements made beneath the cover of darkness and with the memory of their recent lovemaking still fresh in their minds. His mind, at any rate.

The abandon with which she’d given herself over to their lovemaking … The way she studied him sometimes, as if she could see straight through him … The way she conducted herself with honour and grit as she moved through a world of high finance and big business; a world as foreign to him as his world was to her. That they’d met and connected at all was a mystery to him, but connect they had and brutal honesty compelled him to admit that if he had his way they’d connect again.

He wasn’t done here yet.

He’d call her from Lahore.

Madeline resisted picking up the phone and dialling Luke’s number on Monday morning. Casual meant casual. Casual meant that if she hadn’t heard from Luke by Wednesday night that she might,
might
, think about giving him a call.

She kept her Monday lunch appointment with Po, though. Nothing else she could do. It was important, this time where Po could speak freely of his new life and raise concerns if he had any. With no disrespect intended towards the many overworked and underpaid social workers who had flitted through Maddy’s upbringing, responsibility
didn’t end with placement. If Po wasn’t settling, Maddy wanted to know about it.

But Po had settled beautifully, or so it seemed. It was there in his eyes, and the way he spoke of the sensei. Plenty of hero worship there.

Po’s relationship with Luke was far harder to pin down. More complex, and without the structure of sensei and student that Jake had put in place. More turbulent too, judging by the way Po’s face darkened when Madeline asked him if he and Luke still trained at night.

‘Luke’s gone,’ said Po abruptly.

Desolation spread through Madeline like a sickness and she clamped down hard on it only to discover that when desolation had been defeated, fear took its place. ‘Gone where?’

‘Don’t know.’ Po’s bleakness echoed her own. ‘He got a phone call last night and left on a job.’

She’d known this would happen. He’d
warned
her, over and over, that this was how it was with his work.

She wanted to quiz the boy. To ask him if he knew any details of the job and whether Luke had said anything about when he’d be back, but it wasn’t her place to ask or Po’s place to tell her such things so she kept her questions to herself and imagined the worst.

When it came to bombs and the uses people had for them, the worst imaginable could look very bad indeed.

‘Luke knows what he’s doing,’ she said faintly, not sure she could sell this line of reasoning convincingly. Whether Luke knew what he was doing or not, the element of risk was huge. ‘He’ll be fine.’

She, on the other hand, was fast turning into a wreck.
Taking a deep breath, Madeline pictured white clouds wisping across a clear blue sky. The delicate scent of an orange tree in bloom. The faint, fleeting memory of a mother’s warm hug all those many years ago. Calmly, Madeline picked up her fork and prepared to eat.

‘Do you think he’ll come back here?’ said Po. ‘To Singapore?’

Madeline paused, with a forkful of noodles halfway to her mouth, as calm fled once more, and the roller-coaster ride of emotions began all over again. Hope. Fear. Such a deep and abiding fear of welcoming Luke into her life only to have to live through his death. ‘I don’t know,’ she said raggedly and reached for some more of that elusive inner calm.

Clear skies. Warm water. A lover’s gentle—or not so gentle—touch. Thinking calm thoughts really wasn’t working for her. ‘I guess we’ll have to wait and see.’

Luke Bennett returned to Singapore six days later, strung out and dead tired. He’d headed for Singapore instinctively, rather than returning to Darwin, and he figured it for a mistake the minute he walked doggedly into Jake’s dojo around seven in the evening—held upright only by the desperate desire to get where he was going before he collapsed.

He’d almost headed for Maddy’s—and wouldn’t that have gone down a treat? Turning up three days short of a shave and trembling with exhaustion, still reeling from the job and the toll it had taken. Fortunately, a last-minute attack of common sense had prevailed and he’d given the taxi driver Jake’s address instead.

He leaned into the doorway, figuring the support would help keep him on his feet a few minutes longer. He looked up and found himself on the receiving end of a shocked and ominous silence.

‘What’d I miss?’ he asked warily.

Jake looked him over, narrow-eyed and grim. ‘What happened to you?’

He should have gone back to Darwin and holed up for a while, the way he usually did. There were too many eyes to deal with here, watching everything he said and did. His gaze slid to the Scotch bottle on the shelf above the kitchen sink.

Wordlessly Jake reached for it, and a glass to go with it, and set them on the table.

Luke slid his duffel to the floor and the room tilted alarmingly.

‘Take a seat,’ said Jake. It seemed like good advice.

‘He’s hurt,’ said Po.

‘I see it,’ said Jake. ‘What happened to your shoulder?’

‘Caught some metal in it.’

‘How much metal?’ said Jake.

‘Nothing a field medic, a pair of tweezers, and a bandage couldn’t fix,’ rasped Luke, and at his brother’s fierce and worried glare, ‘It’s nothing. A flesh wound. I’m just tired.’

‘Po, you want to take his bag to his room?’ said Jake.

‘There’s a duty-free bottle of Scotch in it somewhere,’ muttered Luke. ‘You might want to leave that with me.’

Po found the Scotch and set it on the table. Still surreptitiously eyeballing Luke, he shouldered the heavy duffel and headed from the room.

Jake waited until the boy had disappeared before continuing with his questions. ‘Where’d you go?’

‘Afghanistan.’

‘Bad?’

‘Bad enough. A section of road just full of surprises. Snipers in the hills.’

Jake’s gaze cut to Luke’s shoulder again.

Luke reached for the Scotch with his good arm and poured a generous measure.

‘Any fatalities?’

‘No.’ The Scotch hit the back of his throat with a satisfying burn. Not this time.

Po skidded back into the kitchen and came to a halt just out of range. Old habits died hard and all that, but it hurt to think that the kid was still so watchful in his presence. Luke didn’t know what he expected or wanted from the boy but wary concern wasn’t it.

‘I put a sheet on the bed,’ said Po. ‘And a case on the pillow.’

‘Thanks, kid.’ Luke couldn’t be sure if the looking-after of linen was a task Jake had set Po to do or not. He had the sneaking suspicion that, in a way new to formerly homeless street waifs, the boy was trying to mother him. Heaven help him, he didn’t want that either.

‘You hungry?’ said the boy. ‘I can read the takeaway menu now.’

‘In Chinese and English,’ murmured Jake. ‘Po’s got a brain.’

‘There goes the karate,’ said Luke, and laughed weakly at Jake’s glare. ‘Don’t order food in on my account, I ate
on the plane. And, Po …’ He caught the boy’s gaze. ‘I’m impressed.’

Po beamed and inched a little closer, his gaze following Luke’s every move.

More Scotch seemed in order, the fire in it settling ragged nerves and easing the throbbing pain in his shoulder. He’d crash soon. On the narrow little bed with the sheet and the case for the pillow. Not a lot else a man needed. A shower maybe, though he didn’t like his chances of staying upright in it. A shower when he woke, then. And then Maddy.

His need to connect again with Maddy hadn’t dissipated during his time away. If anything his need for her had grown stronger.

‘How’s the angel of mercy tracking?’ he rasped.

‘Maddy’s well,’ said Jake dryly. ‘She dropped by yesterday. I told her we hadn’t heard from you. Told her this was normal.’

‘It is normal.’

Jake smiled wryly. ‘Maybe for you. Her apartment build is going ahead, by the way.’

‘Bruce Yi the partner?’

Jake nodded. ‘Maddy wanted to let me know that there was no
guanxi
involved. Of course, that didn’t stop her from telling me she thought Jianne was heading for a heap of trouble and that I was in the best-placed position to get her out of it.’

‘Chances are she’s right.’ Luke shrugged and his vision blurred as piercing pain shot through his shoulder.

‘Anything I should know about that shoulder wound?’ said Jake.

‘It’s clean, I’ve enough penicillin in me to ward off infection, and I’ll need to front at the hospital tomorrow to get the dressing changed. I’m also pretty sure the painkillers are wearing off. There’s not a lot else to know.’ The wound would heal given time. The bullet had savaged tissue, not bone. ‘I gotta sleep.’

Standing took effort. Walking took more. Fully clothed seemed as good a way to sleep as any. And the bed was just as Po had promised.

Jake watched in silence as Po headed for the doorway and leaned with his back to the frame, presumably watching Luke’s progress down the hallway before turning worried eyes to Jake. ‘I can stay up tonight,’ said the boy. ‘I can watch out for him.’

‘We both will,’ said Jake.

Luke slept hard and dreamless and woke late the following morning. He showered and shaved and instantly felt a million times better. Po and Jake were nowhere about so he headed out the back door and across the road to the noodle bar for breakfast—a huge serve of stir-fried beef that satisfied his hunger, and a scalding-hot coffee laced with condensed milk to temper his thirst. By the time he strode back through the front door of the dojo, he felt almost human.

A class was in progress—Jake heading it and Po a student in it. The kid saw him come in; the kid saw everything. Luke shot him a quick smile and indicated with his head that Po should turn his attention back to the sensei. It was close to ten a.m. Plenty of time for Madeline to have made it to work and settled into the rhythm of her day.

He’d tried calling her from Lahore but he hadn’t got through. After that he hadn’t been able to call her at all.

The phone call he’d never made and should have made had taken on gigantic proportions. The phone call he was about to make weighed no less heavily on his mind but it was past time he made it.