‘Everything.’
She seemed to have nothing to say to that but her eyes didn’t leave his. They merely narrowed slightly, as if she were pondering some enormous conundrum, which for some reason made him feel as if he were sitting on knives.
‘What?’ he asked, irritated by the way his body was instinctively reacting to her scrutiny.
‘I was just wondering how on earth you and my brother were ever friends.’
He froze, her words cutting right through his discomfort, obliterating the heat and filling him with icy numbness. ‘We weren’t. We were acquaintances.’
‘Oh? I got the impression you were friends. But I guess acquaintances makes more sense.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, you’re not at all alike. I mean, Mike was ambitious, sure, but you’re on another level entirely. He lacked your killer instinct. He had lines. How on earth did you meet?’
‘At the boxing club.’
She flashed him a sudden triumphant smile and for a moment he forgot how to breathe. ‘Aha! So you do have a hobby.’
‘I wouldn’t call it a hobby,’ he said, willing his thundering pulse to slow. ‘More a means of keeping in shape.’
‘Are you good at it?’
‘Yes.’ He’d had plenty of practice.
Her smile turned rueful. ‘Mike wasn’t.’
‘No.’
‘Did you box each other?’
‘Only once.’
‘Who won?’
‘No one.’
‘How come?’
‘I collapsed.’
Her eyes widened. ‘What happened?’
‘I’d taken a blow to the ribs the week before. I hadn’t given it any more thought but then when I was in the ring with Mike, my spleen ruptured. He got me to hospital. He saved my life.’ Hence the debt that he should not have taken so long to pay back.
‘I had no idea.’
‘It wasn’t something I wanted publicised.’ The incident had rendered him weak, vulnerable, and had his competitors got wind of it they would have pounced within minutes.
‘Are you all right now?’
‘Yes.’ Physically, at least.
‘So what happened then?’
‘Once I’d recovered we went for a drink. It became a regular thing.’
She nodded as if in understanding. ‘An escape.’