Donovans 02 - Jade Island

“And maybe there’s a different game entirely. That’s up to you to find out. If you want to.”
    “And if I don’t?”
    Archer shrugged. “I’ll put off my trip to the South Seas and take a run at the Tangs myself.”
    “What about Justin? He’s blond. Kind of.”
    “Justin and Lawe are ass-deep in their own alligators, trying to get a line on a new emerald strike in Brazil. Besides, they’re too young.”
    “They’re older than I am,” Kyle pointed out.
    “Not since Kaliningrad.”
    Kyle smiled. It wasn’t an open, sunny kind of smile. It was like Archer’s, more teeth than comfort.
    “I’m in,” Kyle said. “When and where does the game begin?”
    “Tonight. Seattle. Wear a tux.”
    “I don’t have one.”
    “You will.”

Chapter 2
    L ianne sat in her mother’s elegant Kirkland condominium and watched Lake Washington’s gray surface being teased by cat’s-paws of wind. Never quite still, never predictable in its movements, the lake licked slyly at the neat lawns and sidewalks that crowded its urban shores. In balcony planters and along streets, tree branches were just beginning to shimmer with the kind of green that was more hope than an actual announcement of spring’s return. The bravest of the daffodils were already in bloom, lifting their cheerful faces to the cloud-buried sun.
    “Do you want green, jasmine, or oolong?” Anna Blakely called from the open kitchen.
    “Oolong, please, Mom. It’s going to be a marathon tonight. I’ll need all the help I can get.”
    And all the courage, Lianne acknowledged silently. If Kyle Donovan was at the charity auction/ball tonight, she had to pick him up. Or try to. It would have been much easier if she wasn’t attracted to him. But she was. Very. He made every female nerve ending in her body wake up and yowl.
    Since she had never been attracted to a man like that before in her life, especially a big blond Anglo, she was afraid she would be all thumbs and blushes in his presence. That was why she had put off approaching him, and putit off, and put it off. She really didn’t want to embarrass herself.
    Now she had run out of time.
    If she failed to pick him up, then she failed, Lianne told herself briskly. Her father would just have to chalk up one more disappointment from his bastard daughter. She didn’t have the kind of recklessness or innate female confidence to approach a good-looking stranger with the idea of getting acquainted for business purposes, much less for sexual ones.
    But Lianne was definitely the kind to repay a favor or keep a promise. Engineering a meeting with Kyle Donovan did both.
    Her stomach hitched at the thought. She told herself that, despite what her father believed, Kyle wouldn’t be at the ball tonight. He had no patience for that kind of arts-and-culture crush, and no need to siphon money from society’s cream.
    Lucky him.
    Lianne wished there had been time for her to go to the gym and work out her nerves on a mat or with a partner. Nothing settled her mind and body like the intricate demands of karate—part ballet, part meditation, always compelling.
    “Nervous?” her mother asked from the kitchen.
    Lianne barely prevented herself from jumping up and pacing the room. “Of course I’m nervous. I chose every single piece of the Jade Trader display myself. Wen Zhi Tang never gave me that much responsibility before.”
    “Wen’s eyes are going. Besides, the crafty old bastard wanted goods that would appeal to Americans as well as to overseas Chinese.”
    “And his bastard granddaughter is as close as he can come to American taste, is that it?”
    The sound of a teaspoon hitting the polished granite countertop made Lianne wince, but she didn’t apologize for her bluntness. She had spent too many years pretending that she was the daughter of a widow, while knowingfull well that Johnny Tang was her father, Wen was her grandfather, and since Anna had never been married, she could hardly be widowed.
    Lianne was tired of the legitimacy charade, just as she was tired of watching her mother being treated like an unwelcome stranger by the Tang family. As far as Lianne was concerned, bastards were made, not born.
    And the Tang family had made more than its share of them.
    Anna Blakely walked into the room carrying a lacquered tea tray that held a bone china teapot and two elegant, handleless cups. She wore a brocaded peach silk jacket, slim black silk pants, low-heeled sandals. Pearls gleamed at her neck and