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 brother’s way until Jake faced the whole of it, drawing it from him effortlessly and shaping it into something harmless, something almost beautiful in its purity of intent. Fifteen minutes later, when they were both breathing hard and dripping sweat, Luke finally felt his tension start to ease.
Twenty minutes in, conspicuously on the losing end of this bout and grinning like a loon, Luke took the match to the floor and karate-with-intent turned to curse-and-laugh-filled wrestling. One last almighty elbow jab to Luke’s solar plexus and Jake had him licked.
‘You’d better be feeling better,’ said Jake, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he staggered to his feet. ‘Because I’m sure as hell feeling worse.’
Luke tried to sit up, groaned in pain, and thought the better of it. Flat on his back on the floor was just fine. Nice view of the ceiling from here. Jake’s conquering grin came into view first, then his hand. Luke batted it away. ‘Go away. I’m meditating.’
‘You? Meditate?’ Luke had never really mastered the finer points of meditation, and Jake knew it. ‘On what?’
‘Cobwebs. There’s one in your light fitting.’ Jake swore blue that meditation was simply a variation on the absolute focus Luke brought to the dismantling of bombs. Trouble was, Luke couldn’t bring that kind of focus to anything but unexploded weaponry. He certainly couldn’t wish it into being while contemplating his navel, even if his navel was a metaphor for life, the universe, and everything.
‘Cobweb meditation is good,’ murmured Jake. ‘Cobwebs can draw you to the centre of things and reveal hidden truths. Mind you, it’d help if you closed your eyes and stopped trying to incinerate your retinas while you’re at it.’
‘Always the perfectionist,’ muttered Luke, but he closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
‘What do you see?’ asked Jake.
‘The back of my eyelids.’
Jake sighed. ‘Focus.’
‘I know. I know. I’m on it,’ said Luke. ‘I’m moving my mind out into the flow.’
‘Good. What do you see?’
The face of a woman, bright against the darkness. Shoulder-length honey-blonde hair styled straight with a full fringe. Moss-green eyes flecked with brown and framed by sable lashes. A wide mobile mouth made for laughter and kissing. She would kiss very well; he knew it instinctively. She could make a man believe there was good in the world.
Madeline Delacourte.
Luke snapped his eyes open and sat up fast, never mind the pain coursing through his side or the thorn of desire lodged deep in whatever passed these days for his soul.
‘Anything?’ asked Jake.
Luke shook his head. ‘Nothing you want to know.’
CHAPTER TWO
MADELINE made a habit of following up on her rehomed street kids the day after she’d dropped them off at their new abode. Nimble-fingered Po had many survival strategies and scams in place, most of which would be calling for his attention right about now. If Jake could manage to keep Po around the dojo for the next forty-eight hours or so … if Jake could offer the boy something to work towards,