White Tiger. Kylie Chan

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СКАЧАТЬ MTR and KCR trains to make it home to Sha Tin. I stopped at the shopping mall under our apartment block to grab some takeout, and when I was home I sat at our tiny four-seater table and pulled the foam box out of the plastic bag. ‘Louise, come and sit down,’ I called. ‘I have news.’ Louise poked her head around the doorway from our minuscule kitchen. ‘Wait till the water boils.’

      ‘Okay.’ I used the plastic cutlery provided by the fast-food place to attack the baked pork chop on its bed of rice.

      Louise came out of the kitchen with a mug of coffee and sat across from me. Her blue eyes sparkled under her short, spiky blonde hair. She was about the same height as me, and Australian like me, but the resemblance ended there. She was thin, blonde, bony and covered in freckles; I was soft and round and not nearly as good-looking. People noticed her and ignored me, and that suited me just fine.

      She gestured towards the takeaway box. ‘Where’s mine?’

      ‘You starve,’ I said. ‘Where’s my tea?’

      ‘You die of thirst,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’

      ‘I’m moving in with Mr Chen,’ I said. ‘I’ll be full-time–’

      I didn’t have a chance to finish because she flew to her feet and yelled with delight. ‘Way to go, Emma!’

      I stared at her.

      ‘That hunky guy on the Peak? The Chinese widower? The really rich one? What a catch!’

      I sighed with exasperation. ‘Full-time, live-in nanny.’

      ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said suggestively. ‘I know what you mean.’

      ‘That’s all it is, Louise. Nanny. That’s all.’

      She sat down again. ‘Geez, Emma, can’t you do better than that? You have a freaking degree, girl. Go out and work for a bank or something.’

      ‘What, like you?’

      ‘Yeah, like me. I meet heaps of guys in the bank. Lots of traders from Europe. Really cute. What about Miss Kwok?’

      ‘I already resigned from the kindergarten.’

      ‘You could do a lot better than being a nanny, Emma. I’m on nearly twenty thousand a month.’

      ‘I’ll be on five thousand US a month. That’s nearly forty thousand Hong Kong.’

      Her mouth dropped open.

      ‘I’ll be moving out tomorrow,’ I went on.

      She shook her head. ‘Okay. Tell me all about it. Will it be just you and him? There is some hope for you, isn’t there?’

      ‘Me, the bodyguard, Monica the domestic helper, and of course Simone, his daughter.’

      ‘Bodyguard? Is he cute?’

      ‘God, Louise, is that all you think about? Leo’s a big black American, lovely guy. But I don’t think he’s into chicks.’

      Her eyebrows creased. ‘Wait a minute. Leo, you said? Big American guy? Black?’

      ‘You know him?’

      ‘Not personally, but I’ve seen him at the Last Hurrah. Really popular. Knows everybody.’

      ‘What the hell were you doing at the Hurrah?’ I demanded. ‘You won’t find a date there, none of them are into chicks.’

      She shrugged. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to have a quiet drink in a place you won’t be hit on. Scenery’s always good, too.’

      ‘That sounds like fun. Let me know next time you’re going.’

      ‘We’ll still go out on the town together, right?’ She was sounding concerned. ‘I mean, we’re going for that Thai meal with April tomorrow night. We can still go out, can’t we?’

      ‘I don’t think Mr Chen will stop me,’ I said. ‘If he tries to he’ll get a piece of my mind.’

      ‘I believe it.’ She leaned back. ‘You’ll need to keep paying your half of the rent until I find a new flatmate. But on your salary that won’t be a problem.’

      ‘I’ll make sure you don’t lose out,’ I said. ‘He said he’ll look after you anyway.’

      ‘He’d better,’ she growled. Then her face lit up. ‘Way to go, Emma. What a catch.’

      ‘Nothing there.’

      ‘Yeah, right. You haven’t stopped talking about this gorgeous man with the long hair since you started working for him.’

      I sighed. ‘Yeah, I know, but he’s the employer. Not going to happen. I’m more professional than that.’

      ‘Geez, you’re cold-blooded.’

      ‘I wish you people would stop saying that.’

      The next morning I sat in the front of the car alongside Leo, who drove me and my stuff up to the Peak in Mr Chen’s monstrous black Mercedes.

      ‘How long have you worked for Mr Chen?’ I said, making conversation.

      ‘About six years,’ Leo said, ‘but I worked for Mrs Chen before that.’

      ‘You always been a bodyguard?’

      He glanced at me, then turned back to the road. ‘Done some other things.’

      ‘Like what?’

      He sighed. Then he obviously decided to tell me. ‘In the Navy for a while. Bouncer for a while, but that was really tough, I didn’t like it. Sorta fell into the bodyguard business by accident.’

      ‘That was nice, what Mr Chen did for Louise. He didn’t need to pay her out for the rest of the year like that.’

      ‘It was the least we could do, hiring you and having you move out so quickly.’

      ‘We? You and Mr Chen?’

      He glanced away from the road to me. Then grinned as he looked back at the road. ‘Absolutely not.’

      I stared incredulously at him and his grin widened.

      ‘ Absolutely not,’ he emphasised, without looking away from the road. ‘Not Mr Chen.’ He glanced at me again, then turned back to the road. ‘Not Mr Chen.’

      ‘Okay, okay.’ All right, not Mr Chen.

      He was still grinning as he shook his head. He deliberately changed the subject. ‘How long have you been an English teacher?’

      ‘About four years. I just sorta fell into it when I arrived in Hong Kong,’ I said, intentionally echoing him. ‘Very lucrative, easy work, hours aren’t very long.’

      He nodded. ‘Seems СКАЧАТЬ