Donovans 02 - Jade Island

middle of the night, when memories were especially cruel.
    “Should I take the smile personally,” Kyle asked, “or were you just trying to piss Lee off?”
    “I wasn’t trying to make anyone mad. I was just glad to be here and now instead of there and then.”
    “Would it help if I asked what you were talking about?”
    “Nope.”
    “Just checking.”
    “No problem.” Lianne tucked her arm through Kyle’s and grinned up at him. “Has anyone ever told you what a fine, handsome, really world-class stuffed elephant you make?”
    “Trust me, you’re the first.”
    “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
    He grinned. “Only the ones who might believe me.”
    The elevator stopped with stomach-curdling speed. Lee punched the Door Open button and held it down.
    “To your right,” he said in Chinese. As Lianne walked by him, his left hand shot out and wrapped around her free arm, stopping her. “Better that you be my cherished concubine than a foreign devil’s whore.”
    “I am neither concubine nor whore. Let go of me. Johnny won’t be pleased if his honored guest, Kyle Donovan, is late.”
    “Johnny is only Number Three Son.”
    “Far better than zero,” she said coolly. “That is your number, Lee. Zero. You married a distant, undistinguished cousin of Uncle Wen’s and changed your name to Tang. You are no man’s son.”
    “Do not speak so to me, female spawn of a foreign whore!”
    “It would be my pleasure not to speak to you at all.”
    Lee’s smile was as cold as his eyes. “May your fondest wish come true.”
    It was an old Chinese curse. Lianne’s eyes narrowed and her chin went up. She looked at Lee’s hand on her arm and thought of the pepper spray in her purse.
    The elevator beeped, announcing that it had been held open too long.
    “Put a hustle on, sweetheart,” Kyle said blandly. “That snack we ate at the auction just wore off.”
    “Sorry, I—” Lianne’s breath caught when she looked up at Kyle. His voice had been so neutral that the cold anger in his eyes was totally unexpected.
    “Why don’t you tell this elevator jockey to take his thumb off the button?” Kyle asked in the same calm tone. “Or should I just pick him up and carry him along for you like a pet?”
    The beeping became a buzzer.
    Kyle glanced at Lee. Slowly Lee released Lianne’s arm.
    The elevator kept buzzing while Lianne and Kyle walked toward the penthouse suite. He felt Lee’s black eyes measuring him for a shroud every step of the way. Not a jade shroud, either. The good old-fashioned linen kind.
    Laughter, a woman’s voice wailing a Chinese song, and cigarette smoke flowed out of the Tang suite into the hallway. Lianne’s steps slowed. The noise surprised her. In the past, whenever she had been with a member of the Tang family, the atmosphere had been calm, almost silent, little but the whisper of Wen’s soft slippers against wood or the dry rustle of his words as he described jade pieces that had been carved five thousand years before the birth of Christ.
    “Second thoughts?” Kyle asked.
    Lianne winced as a man’s off-key voice joined the woman’s in dreadful harmony. “I’m wondering if Wen’s hearing has failed along with his eyes.”
    “Don’t worry. Family gatherings are always noisy.”
    “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to one.”
    Surprised, Kyle looked down at her. She was visibly composing herself, pulling what Americans would call her “game face” into place, her emotions retreating behind a coolly polite facade. For her, a family gathering was obviously more a battlefield than a place of safety and relaxation.
    Lianne stepped into the smoky room and scanned itquickly for familiar faces. Two things registered immediately. The first was that only Tang men had been included in the party. The second was the nature of the women who had been invited to serve the men. All were young, striking, and for hire.
    At that moment Lianne was intensely grateful her mother hadn’t been included in the roster of female attendants. The humiliation would have been intense. And intentional.
    “Looks like a lively family,” Kyle said, glancing at the fifteen or so men of all ages and the handful of young women who were scattered around the penthouse’s large living room. “Where do we start? Or is it just a free-for-all?”
    Lianne wanted to start by turning around and heading back to the elevator, but it was too late. Johnny was already walking across the foyer. His