Donovans 02 - Jade Island

Johnny only wanted her to meet Kyle, not to seduce or be seduced for the sake of Tang family business. She also told herself that it was impatience rather than fear she had seen in her father’s eyes that morning.
    “Lianne?”
    She swallowed the bracing tea and realized that her mother had asked a question. Quickly Lianne replayed the past few moments in her mind.
    “No,” she said. “I won’t be staying for the ball. Why would I?”
    “You might meet some nice young man and—”
    “I have work piled up,” Lianne interrupted. “I’ve spent too much time on Tang business already.”
    “I wish I wasn’t going to the South Seas tomorrow at dawn. I’d come to the exhibit.”
    “No need.” Lianne smiled and pretended she didn’t know that her mother never went anywhere that she was likely to meet her paramour’s family. Just as she pretended that she was an adult who no longer needed her mother’s presence to mark important passages in life. “The hotel will be a zoo.”
    “Johnny appreciates all the hard work you’ve done with the jade. He’s so proud of you.”
    Lianne drank tea and said nothing at all. Disturbing her mother’s comfortable fantasy would only lead to the kind of argument that everybody lost.
    “Thanks for the tea, Mom. I’d better get going. Parking will be impossible.”
    “Didn’t Johnny give you one of the Jade Trader parking passes?”
    “No.”
    “He must have forgotten,” Anna said, frowning. “He’s been worried about something a lot lately, but he won’t tell me what.”
    Lianne made a sound that could have been sympathy and headed for the door. “If I don’t see you before you leave for Tahiti or wherever, have a great time.”
    “Thanks. Maybe you could join us there for your birthday.”
    Why? Lianne thought acidly. Did they need an audience while they screwed their way through a South Seas paradise?
    “You need a break after all your hard work,” Anna said. “I’ll have Johnny get a ticket for—”
    “No,” Lianne said curtly. Then she forced her voice to gentle. “Thanks, Mom, but not this time. I have a ton of work to catch up on.”
    Careful not to slam the door hard behind her, she headed out into the gusty night. As she walked to her car, she glanced around uneasily. Earlier that evening, when she had left her apartment, she had felt a chill, pricklycertainty that she was being watched. She felt the same now.
    Telling herself that she was just nervous about the cost of the Tang jewelry she wore, Lianne hurried around the side of the building, grateful for the motion-sensing walkway lights that flared to life at her presence and died away thirty seconds after she had passed the sensors. Her little red Toyota was right where she had left it. She got in and locked all the doors before she turned the key in the ignition.
     
    The benefit ball for Pacific Rim Asian Charities was one of the big social events of the season in Seattle. Invitations were reserved for the rich, the powerful, the famous, and the merely gorgeous. Normally Kyle and Archer wouldn’t have bothered attending this kind of show-and-tell in the name of charity and social climbing, but not much had been normal since Archer had received a call from the government. That was why they were pushing through the crowd just outside the hotel lobby.
    “At least the tux fits,” Kyle muttered. Except for the loose area just under the left arm, which had been tailored to fit seamlessly over a gun holster.
    “I told you we were the same size, runt.”
    Kyle didn’t say anything. He was still surprised that he fit into Archer’s long-legged, wide-shouldered clothes. No matter how old Kyle got, part of him was still the youngest of the four Donovan brothers, the butt of too many brotherly jokes, the runt of the litter, always fighting to prove that he was as good as his bigger brothers in everything from fishing to gutter fighting to exploring the face of the earth for gems.
    “You see her?” Kyle asked, looking past the herd of limousines to the glittery crowd filing into Empire Towers, Seattle’s newest hotel. Dick Farmer’s hotel, as a matter of fact.
    “Not yet,” Archer said.
    “Not ever. I didn’t know this many people owned tuxes.Not to mention stones.” He whistled softly as a matron walked by, wearing a diamond necklace whose central feature was a pendant the size and color of a canary. “Did you see that rock? It should be in a museum.”
    Archer flicked a glance at