Donovans 02 - Jade Island

us anything.”
    “The hell she doesn’t. Without our money she’d still be in handcuffs or behind bars.”
    Kyle surged to his feet. “It was my money, not the family’s.”
    “Sit down.”
    Kyle leaned forward and spread his big hands flat on the table. “Back off, Archer, or Lianne and I are out the door.”
    “Just like that? You go to bed with a woman for one night, and then you go to war against your family for her?”
    “Why are you being such a prick?” Kyle snarled.
    “Because it pisses me off to watch a piece of ass lead my brother around by his dick.”
    With startling speed, Kyle reached for Archer. With equal speed, Archer knocked his brother’s hands aside and leaped to his feet.
    “Stop it,” Lianne said, shoving between them. “There’s no need to tear up the kitchen just to put on an act for me.”
    Kyle stared at her.
    Archer stared, too, but there was speculation rather than surprise in his eyes.
    It was Archer’s look Lianne met, Archer she spoke to, Archer she tried to convince. She didn’t want to look at Kyle and remember her foolish abandon, her eager mouth and hands, her abandoned response to his expertise.
    “I have something you want,” Lianne said, her voice as flat as the line of her mouth. “You have something I want. I’m sure we can reach an understanding.”
    “You’re in no position to be making a deal,” Archer said impatiently.
    “Wrong. If you didn’t need me, you’d have left me in jail.”
    “It’s not too late for a return trip. Or do you think your father will come running back and make everything right with his family? His family, Lianne, not yours. A child born out of wedlock doesn’t have a family.”
    “That’s it,” Kyle said coldly, reaching for Lianne. “We’re gone.”
    “No.” With a lightning motion Lianne wrenched free of Kyle’s hand. Her eyes never left Archer’s. She smiled without a trace of warmth. “Baiting me won’t work, Archer. I don’t lose my temper and do stupid things. Not since third grade, when I knocked a boy on his ass for calling me a slant-eyed bastard and my mother a Chinaman’s whore.”
    “I’m not baiting you,” Archer said, his voice even. “I’m telling you the truth. No one from your so-called family will help you out of this one.”
    “I know that better than you do.”
    “Lianne,” Kyle began. But he couldn’t think of anything more to say, and she wouldn’t look at him. Slowly he lifted his hands to her shoulders. He began kneading muscles tight with the rage and pain she didn’t reveal in any other way.
    “Don’t,” Lianne said, shrugging off his hands and moving aside, away from both men. “You pretended you cared about me before. Now I know why. No need to go on with the farce.”
    “Talk about farce.” Archer stepped in front of Kyle before he could reach for Lianne again. “You followed Kyle for two weeks before he walked up to you at the auction. So let’s cut the crap about who did what to whom and see if we can find a common ground. Coffee?”
    Lianne’s eyes widened. It was the last thing she would have expected from Archer. “Please,” she replied automatically.
    He smiled. “There, I knew we could get things back on a civilized basis. Sit down, brother.”
    “I’d rather hit you.”
    Archer’s steel-gray glance flicked over Kyle, who bared his teeth in a smile that was more like a curse.
    “But see how civilized I am?” Kyle asked through his teeth. “I’m smiling.”
    “Good,” Archer said gently. “That way you have a fallback position.”
    “I sure as hell do.” Kyle looked at Lianne. She was watching both of them the way she would watch poisonous snakes. “Want some food with your coffee?”
    “No,” she said.
    “You sure? Archer makes a mean omelet.”
    “I’d be astonished if he made a friendly one.”
    Archer laughed, drawing another surprised glance from Lianne. His laughter was as genuine as his anger had been. And, like anger, laughter transformed him.
    For an instant she wished they could have been friends rather than enemies. Then she looked into the clear, colddepths of his eyes and knew she might as well wish that Kyle had been drawn to her as a woman rather than as a back-door connection to the family of Tang. Both wishes were equally painful, equally pointless.
    “Cream, sugar?” Archer asked.
    “Black,” Lianne said in a low voice. “Very, very black.”
    With false calm she sat down, pushed up the sleeves of her red