Donovans 02 - Jade Island

pouring herself into her work instead of her private life didn’t please Johnny.
    “Why are you living in this dump?” he asked.
    “The rent is cheap.”
    “I give—” Johnny stopped abruptly. “Anna has enough money to see that you live in a better place.”
    “What she has is hers.” Given to her by Johnny Tang. But that was something Lianne wouldn’t say aloud. “I’m more than old enough to support myself.” In fact, she would be thirty soon. She would be celebrating that landmark alone; Anna and Johnny were going to Hong Kong or Tahiti or somewhere on the other side of the Pacific to celebrate the thirty-first anniversary of their relationship.
    “Anna says your business is doing well,” Johnny said. “Why don’t you do better for yourself than this?”
    “The building belongs to your family. If you think it’sa dump, complain to your oldest brother, Joe Tang. He’s the landlord of record.”
    For a time there was silence. It wasn’t a comfortable one, but Lianne made no attempt to break it. She didn’t trust herself to. She might say something she shouldn’t, something like Why this concern for me all of a sudden? The question wouldn’t be entirely fair. Johnny had done better by his illegitimate daughter than many men did by their legal offspring. It wasn’t his fault if Lianne hungered for the love of a family that didn’t want her in any way except as a jade expert.
    Old history, Lianne reminded herself. All of it. She couldn’t change the past, but she could work for the future. And she was. Though the Tang family’s patronage for her jade business was important, it wasn’t the only reason she had beaten the odds and established her own business. A lot of the reason for her success was her own expertise and willingness to work ninety-hour weeks.
    “Have you talked to Kyle Donovan yet?” Johnny asked.
    “Is that why you came here for the first time, to find out if I’ve ‘accidentally’ managed to meet Mr. Donovan?”
    “Why else would I come?”
    Because I’m your daughter. Biting her tongue against the bitter words, Lianne reached for two mugs. The coffee wasn’t quite ready, but she was more than ready for an excuse to do something with her hands.
    “Coffee,” Lianne said, handing Johnny a mug.
    He took it and watched her, waiting. “Well?”
    “No,” she said, answering his question about Kyle Donovan.
    “Why not?”
    Lianne poured herself coffee and took a sip of the weak brown stuff.
    “Are you involved with someone else?” Johnny pressed.
    “No. And why would it matter? You asked me to meet Donovan, not to seduce him.”
    “Then meet him!”
    “How?” she demanded. “Stick out my foot and trip him?”
    “Come on,” Johnny said impatiently. “Don’t go all modest and fake Chinese on me. You’re as American as your mother. Just do what the other girls do. Go up and introduce yourself. That’s how I met Anna.”
    And look where it got her. Again Lianne bit back the bitter words. Her mind knew that it took two to make the master-mistress duo; her mother was a very willing participant in her second-class status. Lianne didn’t understand it, but she was beginning to accept it. Finally. The cost of fighting it was just too high.
    “He’ll be at the auction tonight,” Johnny said. “Do it tonight.”
    “But—”
    “Promise me.”
    Lianne saw the emotion in her father’s eyes, anger or impatience or something she couldn’t name. Yet she knew it was real, as real as her fear of acting like what she had been called all her life—the daughter of a whore.
    “Why?” Lianne asked, something she hadn’t done before.
    “Anna and I are going to Tahiti after the show. If you don’t do it tonight, it will be too late.”
    “Too late for what? Why are you so eager for me to meet Kyle Donovan?”
    “It’s important. Very important.”
    “Why?”
    Johnny hesitated. “Family business. That’s all I can tell you.”
    Family again. Always.
    But not hers.
    “All right,” Lianne said thinly. “I’ll do it tonight.”
     
    “Let me summarize,” Kyle Donovan said, staring in disbelief at his oldest brother. “You want me to seduce the illegitimate American daughter of a Hong Kong trading family in order to discover whether she’s involved in the sale of cultural treasures stolen from China?”
    Archer tilted his head as though thinking it over, studied the cold salt water beyond his brother’s cabin in the San Juan Islands, and finally