“You keep trying to butter me up and I’m going to get fat,” Kyle said, diving into a plate heaped with cottage fries and a Spanish omelet.
“Just stay alive and I won’t complain.”
Kyle’s fork hesitated. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Who said anything about liking?”
Archer went through his breakfast like a man who knew it could be a long time before he had another decent meal. When he was finished, he poured himself the last of the coffee and started talking. He focused on Kyle as though force of will alone would make his brother understand that getting emotionally involved with Lianne Blakely was a mistake of potentially lethal proportions.
“The so-called mugger is a lieutenant in the Red Phoenix triad,” Archer said. “He’s part of an informal cultural-exchange program. Uncle Sam locks up or deports one triad man and they send two to take his place.”
Kyle dripped honey onto the last piece of toast and listened, knowing he wasn’t going to like what he heard.
“The particular snake you tangled with is a triad terminator,” Archer said. “Need someone killed? When the next flight out of China or Hong Kong or Singapore lands in Seattle, off comes the bad-luck man. He kills the target and is on a plane out of the city before anyone knows what happened.”
“Not this time.”
“You were pig-lucky,” Archer said flatly. “Qiang Qin—your bad-luck man—isn’t a virgin. He’s been dropping bodies for the Red Phoenix triad all over the Pacific Rim countries. Six in Hong Kong alone, and that was a slow year.”
“Busy boy,” Kyle said casually. But even with honey, the toast suddenly tasted like sawdust. The thought of Lianne alone in that hallway with a triad hit man made Kyle sick. “How did you find out about him?”
“How do you think?”
“Either you took off our tail’s face or Uncle decided to be friendly.”
“Friendly it is.”
“Shit. Better you had taken off the guy’s face. When Uncle gets friendly, I get nervous. What does our dear government want from us now?”
“Same thing it did before—inside the Tang family.”
“So why are you complaining that I brought Lianne home?”
“Because,” Lianne said from just beyond the doorway, “Archer wishes Qiang Qin had done his job and killed me.”
Archer and Kyle spun toward the door with identical looks of surprise and anger on their faces. Lianne would have laughed, but she was too hurt and much too angry. She had been so pathetically grateful when Kyle helped her out.
Now she knew why he had. The knowledge stuck in her throat like a jagged piece of ice.
She had been so easy.
So stupid.
She had believed that a man like Kyle Donovan might be interested in a woman with no family, no money, no connections, nothing but a knack for jade and the stubbornness to pursue it no matter what life threw at her.
“That’s not true,” Archer said calmly. “I don’t want you dead.”
“Yet,” Lianne shot back, her voice as even as his. “Not until I act as a Judas goat and lead my family off to slaughter.”
“Your family?” Archer asked, his eyes narrow. “Funny, when the chips were down, it was the Donovan family that came to your rescue. The Tangs were hot on your heels, baying like hounds closing in for the kill.”
Lianne’s chin came up subtly. She didn’t like hearing the truth, especially from a man who disliked her, but she wouldn’t deny it. She was a survivor. Survivors accepted the truth even when it came at them like a sword.
“Back off,” Kyle told Archer. “Lianne doesn’t owe us anything.”
“The hell she doesn’t. Without our money she’d still be in handcuffs or behind bars.”
Kyle surged to his feet. “It was my money, not the family’s.”
“Sit down.”
Kyle leaned forward and spread his big hands flat on the table. “Back off, Archer, or Lianne and I are out the door.”
“Just like that? You go to bed with a woman for one night, and then you go to war against your family for her?”
“Why are you being such a prick?” Kyle snarled.
“Because it pisses me off to watch a piece of ass lead my brother around by his dick.”
With startling speed, Kyle reached for Archer. With equal speed, Archer knocked his brother’s hands aside and leaped to his feet.
“Stop it,” Lianne said, shoving between them. “There’s no need to tear up the kitchen just to put on an act for me.”
Kyle stared at her.
Archer stared, too, but there was speculation rather than surprise in his eyes.
It was Archer’s look Lianne met, Archer she spoke to, Archer she tried to convince. She didn’t want to look at Kyle and remember her foolish abandon, her eager mouth and hands, her abandoned response to his expertise.
“I have something you want,” Lianne said, her voice as flat as the line of her mouth. “You have something I want. I’m sure we can reach an understanding.”
“You’re in no position to be making a deal,” Archer said impatiently.
“Wrong. If you didn’t need me, you’d have left me in jail.”
“It’s not too late for a return trip. Or do you think your father will come running back and make everything right with his family? His family, Lianne, not yours. A child born out of wedlock doesn’t have a family.”
“That’s it,” Kyle said coldly, reaching for Lianne. “We’re gone.”
“No.” With a lightning motion Lianne wrenched free of Kyle’s hand. Her eyes never left Archer’s. She smiled without a trace of warmth. “Baiting me won’t work, Archer. I don’t lose my temper and do stupid things. Not since third grade, when I knocked a boy on his ass for calling me a slant-eyed bastard and my mother a Chinaman’s whore.”
“I’m not baiting you,” Archer said, his voice even. “I’m telling you the truth. No one from your so-called family will help you out of this one.”
“I know that better than you do.”
“Lianne,” Kyle began. But he couldn’t think of anything more to say, and she wouldn’t look at him. Slowly he lifted his hands to her shoulders. He began kneading muscles tight with the rage and pain she didn’t reveal in any other way.
“Don’t,” Lianne said, shrugging off his hands and moving aside, away from both men. “You pretended you cared about me before. Now I know why. No need to go on with the farce.”
“Talk about farce.” Archer stepped in front of Kyle before he could reach for Lianne again. “You followed Kyle for two weeks before he walked up to you at the auction. So let’s cut the crap about who did what to whom and see if we can find a common ground. Coffee?”
Lianne’s eyes widened. It was the last thing she would have expected from Archer. “Please,” she replied automatically.
He smiled. “There, I knew we could get things back on a civilized basis. Sit down, brother.”
“I’d rather hit you.”
Archer’s steel-gray glance flicked over Kyle, who bared his teeth in a smile that was more like a curse.
“But see how civilized I am?” Kyle asked through his teeth. “I’m smiling.”
“Good,” Archer said gently. “That way you have a fallback position.”
“I sure as hell do.” Kyle looked at Lianne. She was watching both of them the way she would watch poisonous snakes. “Want some food with your coffee?”
“No,” she said.
“You sure? Archer makes a mean omelet.”
“I’d be astonished if he made a friendly one.”
Archer laughed, drawing another surprised glance from Lianne. His laughter was as genuine as his anger had been. And, like anger, laughter transformed him.
For an instant she wished they could have been friends rather than enemies. Then she looked into the clear, cold depths of his eyes and knew she might as well wish that Kyle had been drawn to her as a woman rather than as a back-door connection to the famil
y of Tang. Both wishes were equally painful, equally pointless.
“Cream, sugar?” Archer asked.
“Black,” Lianne said in a low voice. “Very, very black.”
With false calm she sat down, pushed up the sleeves of her red satin bathrobe, and waited to see what kind of deal the steel-eyed devil would offer her.
Chapter 20
Kyle sat down next to Lianne in the breakfast nook, hemming her in against the cedar wall. She gave him a cold sideways look, the kind she would give a stranger who took up too much of the bus seat next to her.
She didn’t know what else to do. How did you treat a man who was a demon lover one night and a comforting teddy bear the next? The contrast, like so much about Kyle, kept her off-balance. So she simply ignored him and went back to eating the omelet Archer had prepared.
“That was good,” she said, finishing the last bite.
Archer sat down across from her. “You sound surprised that a man can cook.”
“Not at all. I’d be surprised if you could find a woman to cook for you.”
Archer looked at Kyle. “I should have been giving you combat pay.”
“Don’t bother. I was putty for him,” Lianne said before Kyle could speak.
“More like fire,” Kyle muttered.
“I was referring to my brain,” she said, watching Archer. “This would go faster without your brother.”
“My name is Kyle, sweetheart, and I’m not going anywhere you don’t go.”
Lianne didn’t answer, but Archer saw the subtle flinching of her eyelids, the slant of her body away from Kyle, and the bone white of her fingers clenching the coffee mug. For a bright woman—and Archer had no doubt that Lianne was very bright—she was real slow to follow up on the advantage she had by being Kyle’s lover. She gave every impression of not wanting to touch him with anything softer than a knife, as though she really had been outraged to discover that he had had an ulterior motive for getting to know her.
Archer began to reassess his opinion of Lianne Blakely. Even as he did, he hoped it wasn’t necessary. Life would be so much easier if she was a simple crook who could give Uncle Sam a nice, easy solution to the diplomatic hot potato of the jade burial shroud. If Lianne wasn’t a crook, any solution that came down the road wouldn’t be simple.
“Why were you following me around?” Kyle asked her after a moment. “And please, no stud-muffin routine. You aren’t the type to pick up men.”
“Type?”
“Brash, casual, party-loving, ready to have sex with any male who catches your eye,” he said, reaching for the coffeepot.
She smiled thinly at him. After a few days, he knew her better than her father did after a lifetime. “Johnny asked me to pick you up and bring you home to the Tangs.”
“Johnny? You mean your father?” Archer asked.
“After a fashion,” she agreed sardonically.
“What did Johnny want with me?” Kyle asked.
“I don’t know.”
Archer didn’t bother to conceal his impatience or his disbelief. “What did Johnny usually want when he sent you out to fetch a man?”
“This was the first time.”
“Yeah. Right.”
Lianne looked directly at Archer. Her face was calm. Her hands were aching from holding onto the coffee mug.
“Believe what you want to,” she said evenly. “I’m telling you the truth.”
“Do you have any idea why your father wanted to talk to me?” Kyle asked.
She frowned, trying to remember exactly what Johnny had said. “When I asked him, he said it was important, very important. And it was family business. That’s all.”
“Were you aware that Donovan International was approached by the Tang Consortium with an idea toward some kind of business alliance?” Archer asked.
Lianne shook her head.
“When?” Kyle asked his brother.
“Last year. We declined.”
“Why?” Lianne asked. “Wasn’t it a good match?”
Archer hesitated, then decided that the truth was more useful than any lie he could think of. “Same reason we turned down SunCo. Triads.”
“What?” Kyle and Lianne said together.
“Both families—Sun and Tang—are heavily involved with Chinese gangs.”
She frowned. “Many triads aren’t gangs in the sense that you mean in America. Criminal. And in any case, China isn’t a society of law in the same way America is. In China the state, whether Confucian, Communist, or capitalist, transcends the law. In America the law transcends the state.”
“Even allowing for cultural differences,” Archer said, “we found the triad connection with the Tangs—and especially the Suns—to be too close for our comfort.”
“Is Johnny the Tang Consortium liaison with the gangs?” Kyle asked.
“No. His brother Harry is. Harry’s number one mistress is the sister of a Red Phoenix overlord.”
Lianne remembered the composed, intelligent woman who had acted as unofficial hostess for the Tang post-auction party. “No wonder he could afford that bracelet for her.”
“You noticed that, too?” Kyle asked dryly. “That central ruby must have been twenty carats.” He turned back to Archer. “Red Phoenix again, huh? Those boys sure do get around.”
“In the U.S. they do. They’re Uncle’s number one Asian headache.”
Lianne set aside her coffee mug and focused on Archer. “So you believe that Johnny wanted me to pick up Kyle in order for the Tang family—and thus the Red Phoenix—to find a way into Donovan International?”
“You have a better idea?” Archer asked calmly.
“Not at the moment. But why would it be so urgent? Johnny was almost frightened the night of the auction. He said I had to meet Kyle before he and my mother went to Tahiti.”
“Ask Johnny when he gets back,” Archer suggested.
“What makes you think he’ll be speaking to me?”
“He’s your father,” Kyle said, surprised.
“He’s my mother’s paramour,” Lianne said coolly. “There’s a difference. A big one. In any case, Johnny is a Tang. First, last, always.”
“Why—” Archer began.
“I believe it’s my turn,” Lianne interrupted. “The government wanted Kyle to infiltrate the Tang family. Why?”
Kyle started to answer, then fell silent. He could always start talking if Archer didn’t tell enough of the truth. Until then, Lianne seemed to do better with Archer.
That didn’t make Kyle happy, but there wasn’t much he could do about it until he got Lianne alone again. First he would get her naked and wrapped around him. Then he would try reason. If reason didn’t work, he could always go back to a more hands-on approach.
“The U.S. government believes that the Tang family brokered the sale of the Jade Emperor’s Tomb,” Archer said.
Lianne opened her mouth, found nothing to say, and closed her mouth.
“No comment?” Archer asked.
“I’m…stunned,” she said simply. “How would the Tangs get their hands on such a treasure trove? They haven’t been powerful in mainland China for almost seventy years.”
“The triads are,” Archer said bluntly. “Red Phoenix, for example. Ever since China decided to try a semi-Socialist version of capitalism, Red Phoenix has gotten very, very wealthy on extortion, gambling, sex, and drugs. SunCo has made several billion dollars on money laundering alone. The Tang Consortium hasn’t done as well. Wen isn’t into gambling and has a moral aversion to drugs. He prefers straight import-export deals, influence peddling, immigrant smuggling, brand-name pirating for the folks back at home, and extortion.”
Lianne let out a long breath. “If what you say is true, you know more about the Tang Consortium than I do.”
“How do you see the consortium?” Kyle asked.
“All I know is that the Tangs have international business deals ranging from realty to trade goods to banks. Jade is more a passion for the consor
tium than a profit center.”
“Are you saying that you’ve heard nothing about the Jade Emperor from the Tangs?” Archer demanded.
“Yes.”
Archer muttered something under his breath and looked out at the awakening land. It was that magic time when the sky was new, radiant, and lights glittered like gemstones against the black satin body of the city.
“Whether or not you believe me, it’s true,” Lianne said. “I’ve heard speculation about the Jade Emperor, but not from the Tangs.”
“Odd, isn’t it?” Kyle asked. “Wen should have been fascinated by the idea.”
“When the rumor mill started heating up a few months ago, I talked to Wen about it.”
“What did he say?”
“That he was too old to believe in fairy tales. When I tried to pursue it, he was impatient. He said I had much to learn, he didn’t have much time left to give me, and we should spend it on jades we could touch instead of setting snares for a phoenix.”
“What about Johnny?” Archer asked. “What did he think about the Jade Emperor?”
“He knows less about jade than you do. Finance is his passion. Numbers and deals, buildings and banks. The only Tang who is interested in jade is Daniel.”
“Your half brother?” Kyle asked.
“Johnny’s son.” Lianne’s voice was clipped. “He has become Wen’s apprentice.”
“Shoving you out?” Archer asked.
“No shoving required. I left.”
“Has Daniel mentioned the Jade Emperor?” Kyle asked quickly.
“I never spoke to Daniel until the day after the auction. He all but called me a thief and tried to keep me from seeing Wen.”
“What did he accuse you of stealing?” Archer asked.
“Nothing directly.” Lianne took a breath and said what she really didn’t want to say. “I think…it’s possible…” Her voice fragmented.
Archer waited.
Beneath the table, Kyle put his hand on her leg in a gesture that was comforting rather than provocative. Her flesh flinched but she didn’t move away. She couldn’t. There was nowhere left for her to go.
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