Donovans 02 - Jade Island

wrists, along with a Rolex set with enough diamonds to glow in the dark. On her right hand was a diamond-and-ruby ring worth more than half a million dollars. Except for her height and glorious blond hair, she was the picture of a prosperous, semi-traditional Hong Kong wife.
    But Lianne’s mother was neither prosperous nor Chinese nor a wife. She had built her life around being the mistress of a married man for whom family, legitimate family, was the most important thing in life; a man whose Chinese family referred to Anna only as Johnny’s round-eye concubine, a nonentity who didn’t even know the names of her parents, much less her ancestors.
    Yet no matter how often Anna came in at the bottom of her lover’s list of family obligations, she didn’t complain. Watching her mother’s quiet elegance as she poured tea, Lianne loved Anna but didn’t understand the choices she had made. And still made.
    Bitterness stirred, a bitterness that was as old as Lianne’s realization that she would never be forgiven for not being one hundred percent Chinese. She was too much an American to understand why any circumstance of birth, blood, or sex should make her inferior. It had taken her years to believe that she would never be accepted, much less loved, by her father’s family.
    But she had vowed she would be respected by them. Someday Wen Zhi Tang would look past her wide, whiskey-colored eyes and thin nose and see a granddaughter, rather than the unfortunate result of his son’s enduring lust for an Anglo concubine.
    “Is Johnny coming by later tonight?” Lianne asked.
    She never called her mother’s lover by anything other than his given name. Certainly not “Father” or “Dad” or “Daddy” or “Pop.” Not even that all-American favorite for a mother’s dates: “Uncle.”
    “Probably not,” Anna said, sitting down. “Apparently there’s a family get-together after the charity ball.”
    Lianne went still. A family get-together. And she, who had spent three months of her free time preparing the Tang Consortium’s display, wasn’t even invited.
    It shouldn’t have hurt. She should be used to it by now.
    Yet it did hurt and she would never be used to it. She longed to be part of a family: brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, family memories and celebrations stretching back through the decades.
    The Tangs were her family. Except for Anna, they were her only family.
    But Lianne wasn’t theirs.
    Without realizing what she was doing, Lianne ran her fingers over the jade bangle she wore on her left wrist. Emerald-green, translucent, of the finest Burmese jade, the bracelet was worth three hundred thousand dollars. The long, single-strand necklace of fine Burmese jade beads around her neck was worth twice that.
    She owned neither piece of jewelry. Tonight she was merely an animated display case for the Tang family’s Jade Trader goods. As a sales tactic, it was effective. Resting against the white silk of her simple dress and the pale gold of her skin, the jewelry glowed with a mysterious inner light that would act like a beacon to jade lovers, connoisseurs, and collectors.
    The jewelry Lianne owned was less costly, though no less fine to someone knowledgeable about jade. She choseher personal pieces with an eye toward her own desire rather than their worth at auction. The trio of hairpicks that kept her dark hair in a swirl on top of her head were slender shafts of imperial jade carved in a style four thousand years old. When she wore them, she felt connected to the Chinese part of her heritage, the part she had spent her whole lifetime trying to be accepted by.
    Distantly Lianne wondered if she would have been invited to the party if Kyle Donovan was her date. Johnny, Number Three Son in the Tang dynasty, seemed hell-bent on getting an entree into Donovan International. He certainly had gotten tired of waiting for her to screw up her nerve. Come on. 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.
    The memory of her father’s words went down Lianne’s spine like cold water. She couldn’t help wondering if Johnny figured that what was good enough for the mother was good enough for the daughter—a life of guaranteed second best in a man’s affections.
    A mistress.
    As Lianne drank tea from ancient, unimaginably fine china, she told herself that