Red-Hot Renegade

‘Come with me,’ he muttered and led her up a narrow staircase to one side of the training floor, and opened the door to his crib.

It was spacious. Space he had in spades, which was something of a luxury in Singapore. A huge expanse of polished wooden floorboard covering an area the same size as the training hall below. A bed made up with white sheets, a navy-coloured coverlet and a couple of pillows graced the far corner. He’d had a shower and toilet plumbed into the opposite corner, with a half-wall and a makeshift screen providing some semblance of privacy. A highset band of slatted warehouse windows ran the length of both longways walls. He’d covered one of those walls with a row of silk tapestries depicting a battle scene, heavy on the death and destruction. A reading chair, a reading lamp, and a not-quite-straight bookshelf crammed with books completed the tableau. Narrow storage space behind the far wall hid his belongings and his clothes.

‘It’s still not much but it’s better than what’s on offer downstairs,’ he said curtly.

‘But…’ Jianne gazed around her in silence and he gritted his teeth at how sparsely furnished his home no doubt looked to her eyes. ‘This is your space.’

‘I’ll clear out. I can stay downstairs.’

‘No! There’s no need to turn you out of your bed. I never meant to do that. Have me stay downstairs. Whatever’s there, it’ll do.’

‘This is what I’m offering, Jianne. It’s the only offer you’ll get from me when it comes to accommodation. You, up here, out of the way.’

She hesitated.

‘Take it or leave it.’ On this he would not bend.

‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath, as if shoring up her resolve. ‘I’ll take it. I’ll pay rent, of course,’ she added hurriedly, and named a weekly rate that would have kept her in six star luxury, not a warehouse bedsit atop a downtown dojo.

‘Keep your money,’ he grated. ‘I don’t want it.’

Jianne recoiled as if he’d struck her.

Jake gritted his teeth and prayed for mercy. ‘Must you flinch every time I look at you?’

‘Must you glare every time I open my mouth?’ she replied in kind. ‘People pay rent when they live in a place that’s not their own. Why is my offering to do so such an insult to you? Is your pride such an enormous thing that there can be no room for mine?’

Money had been a sore point between them from the moment Jianne had revealed exactly how much of the stuff she had. Tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions by now. A tiny detail she’d waited until six months into their marriage to let slip, when she’d offered to pay for a housekeeper to come in each day and help clean the Bennett family house and prepare healthy meals for a hungry family.

She’d been drowning in household chores she had no idea how to cope with and all Jake had seen was the blow to his pride. The housekeeper hadn’t eventuated. Jianne’s drowning had continued.

Not the Bennett family’s finest moment.

‘Fine,’ he amended. ‘Contribute something to the running of the place if it makes you feel better. A cleaner comes in daily—I can have him do up here too, that’s not a problem. But a couple of hundred Sing a week will cover your stay. If you still don’t think that’s enough, I’ll give you an account you can put some money into. It’s one I’ve set up for Po. Put however much you want in there.’

He thought it a fair compromise, the accepting of her money on Po’s behalf. Never let it be said that Jacob Bennett didn’t learn from his mistakes.

She sent him a long, considering look, before nodding slightly. ‘I’ll do that.’

Jake could move fast when he wanted to. Ask any opponent he’d ever faced in a championship match. Hell, ask Jianne—their courtship had lasted all of five minutes before he’d put a ring on her finger. Ever since then he’d tried to slow down some and think when it came to life-altering decisions. ‘Does your uncle know that you want to move in here?’

‘He does.’

‘And he approves?’ Jake had faced Xang family disapproval before. He knew its power. He needed to know on how many fronts he’d have to fight.

‘He does. Whatever you need, you’ll have his full co-operation.’

‘And your father?’

‘My father can’t help me,’ she said flatly.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to think about this some more?’

‘If I think about it I won’t do it.’

‘Doesn’t this tell you something?’ he said in a last-ditch effort to sway her to another—any other—course of action.

‘Yes.’ A faint smile tilted her luscious lips. ‘Don’t think.’

They agreed, over a scalding-hot cup of tea back in the shabby kitchen, that Jianne would move in later that afternoon. Jake figured, in an ‘if I’m going to be damned I may as well burn’ kind of way, that Jianne had better accompany him on his lunch and dinner rounds. No way was he leaving her here on her own while he went out. Not going to happen. Not until her unwanted paramour had learned the meaning of the word no.

‘I need to go get cleaned up,’ he muttered, running a hand over the stubble on his chin for confirmation. ‘I’m heading over to Maddy’s soon for lunch. You may as well come too. Your uncle can have your belongings delivered there.’

‘Who else is going to be at this lunch?’ she asked warily.

‘Luke and Po. Probably everyone else as well.’

‘Everyone, as in all your siblings and their families?’

Jake nodded. ‘It’s not often we have a chance to get together these days. When we do get the opportunity we take it. Hallie’s booked us in somewhere for dinner too. I’ll get her to change the reservation to include you.’

‘Don’t. Please. I really don’t want to intrude on your family meals.’

Jake smiled bitterly. Everyone had their little crosses to bear. His siblings had always been one of Jianne’s. ‘I know what you think of them, Jianne. That they’re too wilful, too bent on trouble, too unrestrained. But that was then and this is now and I’m proud of them, all of them, and you should know something. In asking for my help, you don’t just get me on side, you get them too. Whatever they can do to protect you, whatever needs doing, they’ll do it, and that’s worth something. You could try being grateful.’

‘I am grateful.’ She squared her shoulders and held his gaze, something she would never have done twelve years ago. ‘But you need to know something too. About your brothers and your sister…and me. There are no unconditional ties of love between us, no bonds of trust or acceptance. If they follow your lead I’ll be grateful, but I’ll never make the mistake of thinking that they’re helping me because they want to. They’ll be doing it for you.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘No.’ She sent him a careful smile but the shadows in her eyes spoke of deeper, darker, memories. ‘I’m not. I’ll come to Madeline’s for lunch but I’ll not join you all for dinner. I’ll stay at my uncle’s tonight and sort out a few things I need to sort out like transport and the belongings I want to bring with me. I’ll move in tomorrow. That way you can join your family for dinner without thinking you have to be responsible for me, and everyone will be happy.’

The suggestion was quintessentially Jianne and dredged up memories of her making similar suggestions, over and over again during the course of their ill-fated marriage. Forfeiting her needs in an attempt to accommodate his needs and the needs of his siblings. And they’d let her. Every last one of them, Jake included, had let her do it. ‘No,’ he said grimly. ‘Lunch at Madeline’s if you want to, and only if you want to, and then we’ll go to your uncle’s and get your stuff and then we’ll come back here and get you settled. Dinner with my family doesn’t have to happen.’

‘But—’

‘No, Jianne. Just…no,’ he said, and glared at her for good measure, before stalking out of the room and making his way to the dojo showers. He stripped down and stepped beneath a measly drizzle of lukewarm water. The spray from the next showerhead wasn’t any better. Sighing, he added new showerheads and possibly new plumbing to tomorrow’s work list. He shoved his face beneath the spray and rubbed it hard before looking down at his decidedly aroused anatomy.

‘No.’ The ‘no’s were coming thick and fast today. ‘No way.’ He would not give into his desire for his lovely and ever so vulnerable wife no matter how much his body urged differently. Get clean. Get dressed. Get Jianne’s unwanted suitor off her back and get her out of here. That was his plan. And if he could show her in the process that he knew these days how to respond fairly to the needs of those around him, well, so much the better.

This time round Jianne’s needs would not come last.

He wouldn’t let them.

Chapter Three

MADELINE’S luxury penthouse was about as far removed as a person could get from Jake’s spartan existence. Madeline’s gracious hospitality was legendary and she didn’t disappoint when she opened the door to him and Jianne shortly after midday, blinked once, and swung smoothly into a warm and welcoming hostess routine.

Luke stilled when he saw Jianne at Jake’s side and so did Hallie. Pete shot him a searching glance. Tristan just watched. Not one of his siblings said a word.

‘Jianne’s staying at the dojo for a while,’ he said to no one in particular, and you could have heard a butterfly breathe in the silence.

Thank heaven for partners. Serena, Pete’s wife, swung into action first, smiling and moving and making some kind of small talk that involved Tris’s wife, Erin. A gentle reminder that astonishment was no cause for rudeness and that the Bennett siblings needed to lift their game.

‘She’s nervous,’ he said to Madeline as he watched Jianne interact with the other Bennett wives.

‘Why wouldn’t she be?’ countered Madeline. ‘With the exception of Serena and Erin—to whom I’m eternally grateful—not one of you knows how to relax around her. What’d she do? Torture puppies?’

Jake glowered at her.

‘All right, don’t confide in me,’ she murmured. ‘But if you want my advice on how to make Jianne relax in this company I suggest you look to yourself. If you can relax, the rest of them will. Beer or spirits?’

‘Beer.’

‘Perfect,’ she said with a sunny smile. ‘I’ll go and see if I can tempt Ji to a champagne. And I still think a lilac tie would help a lot.’

‘Never going to happen.’

‘Objection noted.’ Madeline sent him a considering look that Jacob had learned to be wary of. ‘Fortunately I’m a woman of uncommon inventiveness when it comes to bringing out a man’s softer side.’ Moments later an angel-faced baby girl had been deposited in his arms and there was nothing for it but to keep on holding her and let Po hover protectively over them both and suffer Madeline eyeing him with evil glee as she headed towards Jianne.

Jianne had been doing all right during those first few minutes of her arrival at Madeline’s lunch gathering. Right up until the moment someone had seen fit to deposit baby Layla into her uncle Jacob’s arms. Everything started hurting after that.

Watching the husband she’d once loved so fiercely cradle his niece with such gentle authority and fend off all attempts to get him to hand her over scraped at Ji’s heart. She’d wanted children once. Not immediately following her whirlwind marriage, but at some stage in her and Jacob’s future she’d imagined them. Imagined Jake with them.

She accepted the champagne Madeline handed her and smiled and hid the assault on her heart as best she could. If she wanted to continue this charade she’d have to get used to being in Jake’s company again and the company of his siblings. And that meant conversing with them.

Bracing herself, Jianne turned her attention once more to the small knot of people that now included Luke and Tristan as well as Serena and Erin. She summoned a smile and admired the design of the glittering rings on Erin’s fingers, and discovered that Erin was a jeweller and had made the rings herself. Small talk between strangers, the kind that made people relax, and it was working, sort of, until Jake and a sleepy baby joined them, and all conversation ceased.

When the silence grew beyond awkward, Tristan pinned her with his golden gaze and asked her if she’d ever managed to finish her visual design degree.

‘Yes,’ she stammered, startled that he’d even remembered such a thing. ‘Yes, I finished it. I make my living nowadays doing design work for various organisations. International companies in need of multilingual branding, mostly.’

‘Do you need to make a living?’ asked Jake quietly, his blue gaze unreadable. ‘What happened to your trust fund?’

‘It matured, I reinvested it, and now there’s more of it,’ she said calmly. ‘If you’re asking me if I need the money my work brings in the answer’s no. If you’re asking me if I like to work and imagine that what I do is of value to people, the answer’s yes.’

Jacob stared at her through those unreadable eyes, until finally Tristan spoke up again. ‘Will you be able to work from Singapore?’

‘Easily. I’ve clients here as well as in Hong Kong and Shanghai. My travelling schedule should stay about the same.’

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