Kelly Hunter - Untameable Rogue

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.

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