White Tiger

happy to have his company as long as he was there to give it to me. I didn’t need anything more. I was profoundly privileged to have what I did.
    I just wished that damned ache inside me would go away.
    The next day, in the afternoon, I dropped Simone into the music room for her Chinese lesson and headed up the hallway.
    They were in the training room, and I heard them shouting from two doors away.
    ‘Just ask her!’ Leo shouted. ‘She wouldn’t mind at all!’
    ‘No,’ Mr Chen said. ‘And that is final.’
    ‘She wouldn’t care, my Lord, she’d probably enjoy it.’ Leo snorted with exasperation. ‘I don’t know why I bother, sometimes. Just ask her!’ He threw the door open and banged it into the wall, nearly knocking it off its hinges.
    He saw me. ‘Here she is. Ask her.’
    ‘Ask me what?’
    Leo pointed. ‘Go in there, and don’t let him get away with not asking you. It’s not like it’s a suicide mission.’ ‘A suicide mission?’
    He took my arm and pushed me into the training room. ‘Just ask him!’
    I went further into the training room. Mr Chen stood to one side, scowling, one hand on his hip and the other holding the sword from the entry, point down.
    ‘What’s all this about?’ I said.
    He didn’t say anything, just looked irritated.
    ‘Okay,’ I said, and turned to leave the room.
    ‘For God’s sake, ask her!’ Leo roared from down the hallway.
    I couldn’t help it; I had to laugh.
    Mr Chen chuckled as well, and rubbed his hand over his face. ‘All right, come with me and I’ll show you.’
    Leo grumbled loudly down the hallway, then the door to his room banged.
    Mr Chen put his sword back into its scabbard and replaced it on the rack. ‘Come with me.’
    I followed him into his office. It was even worse than usual. The pile of papers on his desk was in serious danger of toppling onto the floor, adding to the stacks of documents already there.
    He sat behind his desk and tied his hair back. Then he shuffled through the papers on his desk.
    ‘You should do some filing in here. Or get someone to do it for you,’ I said. ‘How do you find anything?’
    He looked at me sharply, then returned to shuffling through the papers. ‘You want to sort this lot out for me?’
    ‘You bet. I could probably have it all fixed up in a day.’ I peered over his desk. ‘Even that pile of rubbish on the floor over there.’
    ‘“That pile of rubbish”,’ he huffed, ‘is a set of priceless ancient scrolls handwritten by Wu Cheng’en himself.’
    I nearly fell off my chair. ‘Not Journey to the West ?’ He glanced sharply at me. ‘And it’s on the floor ?’
    He ignored me and continued to shuffle through the papers. Some of them fell off the desk and he caught them, then added them to the top of the pile.
    ‘Tomorrow morning,’ I said, ‘you are going to tell me how you want this disaster area organised, and then you are going to take your daughter out for the day.’
    He stopped and glared at me. ‘Who are you giving orders to here?’
    I leaned over the papers and glared back. ‘You.’
    ‘Oh, all right.’ He sat back. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t have them on the floor like that.’ He grunted as he found what he was looking for and pulled out a large embossed card. ‘Look.’
    I turned it over. It was an invitation to a classical concert, a charity fundraiser organised by Kitty Kwok. Mr Chen went to these things all the time; sometimes he appeared in the social pages of the newspaper with gorgeous young socialites draped all over him. ‘ Mr John Chen Wu donated a large amount of dollars and was thanked by the hostess .’
    I looked up at him. ‘So?’
    ‘It’s more than two years now since I lost Michelle.’ He grimaced. ‘The vultures are starting to circle. These… women are chasing me.’
    ‘Lucky you.’
    ‘You’re joking, right? You know what these people are like?’
    ‘I know very well what they’re like, I used to teach their children. Some of them are lovely, generous souls.’
    ‘Not the ones that are after me,’ he said acidly. ‘You saw Claudia at the Jockey Club.’
    ‘Claudia is completely beautiful and would look fantastic on your arm,’ I said. ‘Even though you are a Chinese boy.’
    He snorted with amusement. ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’
    I tried to control my face. ‘It can’t be that bad.’
    ‘You have no idea. I get rid of one, another one’s right after her, chasing me. They won’t take no for an answer.