“Marinating the salmon,” called a deep voice from the rear of the condo. “I could use a hand chopping herbs.”
“We’re on the way,” Honor said.
“Salmon.” Lianne sighed and licked her lips unconsciously. After a quick, comprehensive look at the wall of landscapes that were calling silently, vividly, to her, she politely followed Honor into the condo’s huge kitchen. Good manners became enthusiasm when she inhaled the scents of fresh food being prepared. “I’m in heaven.”
“Not likely,” Jake said, looking up from the lemons he was squeezing. “Too many Donovans.”
“Only one,” Kyle retorted. “Me.”
“The prosecution rests,” Jake said. He switched his smile to Lianne. “You must be Ms. Blakely. I’m Jake Mallory.”
“Hi. Only it’s Lianne.” She smiled at the big, dark man whose hands made lemons look the size of limes. “Where are the herbs?”
“In the vase,” he said, gesturing with his chin toward a counter.
“Knife?”
“Behind me in the right-hand island drawer.”
“Chopped herbs coming right up.” Lianne opened the drawer and pulled out a wicked chef’s knife.
Honor and Kyle watched in fascination as Lianne smoothly, efficiently reduced the herbs to fragrant green flakes with rapid motions of the knife.
“Whew,” Kyle muttered to Honor. “Remind me not to get between her and something she wants.”
With a deft motion of the knife, Lianne heaped the chopped herbs onto the wide blade and turned to Jake. “Where do you want them?”
“You’re better than a Cuisinart.” Jake smiled and lifted his hands away from the pan of salmon filets. “Here, dump ’em on the fish.”
Lianne bent over the shallow pan that held long red filets that were two inches thick. She inhaled discreetly, then with more force. Nothing came to her nostrils but a vague scent of cold and brine. Exactly what fresh fish should smell like and almost never did.
“Fantastic,” she said reverently. “Where do you get fish this fresh? Even Pike Place Market isn’t this good.”
“Caught it this morning,” Jake said.
She looked up into his blue-gray eyes and saw that he wasn’t joking. “Are you a commercial fisherman?”
“Nope. A stomach fisherman. And Honor was the one who nailed this baby.”
“Where?” Kyle asked instantly.
“Off Fildalgo Head,” Honor said. “All eighteen pounds of him. The fish, not the headland.”
“Blackmouth?” Kyle asked.
Honor nodded. “A real beauty. Fierce and feisty. His teeth raked my finger when I was getting the hook out.” She showed a ragged red line along her right index finger. “But I figure he had a little of my blood coming. After all, we’re eating him. You should have seen it,” she said, her face lighting up with excitement. “He hit the lure like a runaway train and then—”
“My wife hates to fish,” Jake interrupted, deadpan. “Just ask her.”
“I can tell,” Lianne said, hiding her smile. “I caught a salmon once. A little one. But it tasted so good I’ve never forgotten it.”
“This one will be better,” Honor said confidently. “Nobody does salmon like Jake. And I did hate to fish before I met him.”
“I always wondered about that,” Kyle said, turning to his brother-in-law. “How did you convince her that fishing wasn’t slimy, scary, and disgusting?”
“No problem. I let her use my rod.”
There was a beat of silence before Kyle snickered.
Color burned on Honor’s cheekbones. She tried not to laugh, but couldn’t stop herself. She gave Jake a slow-motion cuff on his shoulder that turned into a caress halfway down his arm. He gave her fingers a lingering, lemony squeeze and a smile that transformed his hard features.
Smiling rather wistfully, Lianne scattered fresh herbs over the filets. As she admired the contrast of vivid green herbs and red-orange flesh, she thought of her years with Lee. She had never had that kind of sexy teasing and easy camaraderie with him. Perhaps the difference was cultural. Perhaps it was personal. Whatever, it was real.
The front door of the condo opened.
“Archer?” Kyle called as he started for the door. He was impatient to know if anyone had been following Lianne. And if so, who the tail worked for.
“No,” called a woman’s voice. “It’s Faith and Tony.”
Lianne wondered if Honor and Jake noticed the subtle hardening of Kyle’s features. Lianne certainly did.
“Faith is my twin,” Honor said over her shoulder as she rushed out to the living room, her smile just a bit too big, too welcoming.
Kyle and Jake exchanged a brief, sideways look, but neither said a word.
“Hey, it’s your gorgeous sister,” said a male voice. “Good thing you’re spoken for, babe. I love the way you fill out a sweater.”
Whatever Honor said didn’t reach the kitchen.
“Drizzle some olive oil over that,” Jake told Lianne. “I’d better go see that Faith and Honor don’t get in trouble between the front door and the kitchen.”
“The two of them are like puppies,” Kyle explained. “What mischief one doesn’t think of, the other does.”
Lianne lifted silky black eyebrows. “I suppose you and your brothers never egged each other on into trouble?”
He fixed her with innocent, gold-and-green eyes. “Me? Trouble? I was altar boy of the year.”
“I’d be impressed if I believed you.”
Honor came into the kitchen arm in arm with her sister. Honor had sun-streaked chestnut hair; Faith’s was a golden blond. Honor was an inch taller and more roundly built. Faith was a willow. Honor’s eyes were the same striking color as Kyle’s. Faith’s eyes were the color of fog just before it thins into clear sky—silver with a hint of blue. Both sisters had slanting, pronounced cheekbones, a stubborn chin, a light-up-the-room smile, and a leggy, easy stride.
The man walking next to Jake was a big, brown-eyed blond who looked like he lifted brick outhouses for the hell of it. He was bigger than Kyle, bigger than Jake; Tony had been a nose tackle in college and a third-round draft pick for the pro circuit. Then he brought his foot down the wrong way on Astroturf and fractured every bone in his right ankle. An orthopedic surgeon put it all back together with titanium pins and screws, but Tony’s career was over. It took a second break in the same ankle, more surgery, three months on crutches, and six more on pain pills to convince him, but he finally gave up his dreams of gridiron fame and took a job with his father’s PR firm.
“There’s my man! Kyle, gimme five. How ’bout them Sea Hawks?” Tony asked triumphantly.
Kyle and Jake looked blank. So did everyone but Faith. Football season was long over.
“Whatta play!” Tony said. “Pulled it out in the fourth with the kind of pattern I used to run when I played pro ball.”
“What game?” Kyle asked.
“The one last night on the sports channel. They ran it all with commentary from a Sea Hawks trainer.”
“I didn’t catch the rerun,” Kyle said. “Lianne, this is—”
“You missed it?” Tony asked in disbelief. Then he smiled slightly. “Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting you didn’t play in college, big guy like you. You were in what, golf?”
“Synchronized swimming.”
Honor’s smile faded.
Faith’s became more determined.
Kyle took a better grip on his uncertain temper. Faith was wearing a diamond the size of Wisconsin on her left hand. Or left fist, at the moment. He didn’t give a damn what Tony thought, but he loved his little sister.
“Lianne Blakely,” Kyle said, showing a double row of white teeth, “my sister Faith and her fiancé, Tony Kerrigan.”
Lianne smiled, shifted the chef’s knife to her left hand, and offered her right to Faith. Tony whistled, gripped Lianne’s hand before Faith could, and glanced at Kyle.
“You’ve been holding out on me, buddy,” Tony s
aid. “Where did you pick up this exotic number?”
“Actually,” Lianne said, notching her smile up to full industrial strength, “I picked him up.” She retrieved her hand and held it out to Faith. “Hi, Faith. Glad to meet you.”
“Same here,” Faith said, smiling with a combination of relief and natural warmth as she shook hands. “How did you pick Kyle up?”
“With a crane.”
The anxiety around Faith’s eyes relaxed into laughter. Her left hand relaxed. The motion sent shards of light dancing off the diamond.
Even as Kyle told himself to get over it, that Faith had made her choice, he wondered whose credit had purchased the rock—Faith’s or Tony’s. The only way Tony could have bought it would be if he had gotten pig-lucky betting point spreads.
Honor didn’t need a weather map to know that storm clouds were gathering. With the ease of a sister used to negotiating the unpredictable moods of older brothers, she deftly assigned Jake the job of setting up the barbecue and listening to Tony talk about his football glory days. Kyle was delegated to get charcoal from the storage area in the garage downstairs.
The ringing of the phone barely penetrated the laughter as Susa told about the one time she had coaxed her husband into posing for her and had ended up with more paint on her than on the canvas.
“That’s when Faith and Honor were conceived,” Archer said dryly, reaching for the phone. “It explains their artistic bent.”
The Donovan just smiled, lifted Susa’s hand to his lips, and tickled her palm with his mustache. Or perhaps his tongue. Lianne couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that Susa laughed and looked at her husband with loving hazel eyes.
“She’ll be right down,” Archer said, hanging up the phone. He glanced at Lianne. “Your taxi is here.”
“That was fast.”
“Twenty minutes is fast?” Archer asked.
“Was it that long? Seemed like two or three.” She looked at Kyle, who was sitting next to her, his long legs stretched out in front, his body warm against her hip and thigh. More than warm. Burning. She had never been more physically aware of a man in her life. When he shifted to stand up, she put her hand on his thigh. “Don’t get up. Enjoy your family.”
“They’ll be here when I get back. Since you won’t let me drive you home, the least I can do is see you safely to your taxi.”
His thigh muscle flexed against her palm as he stood up, pulling her after him. Arm around her waist, he waited while she made her good-byes. He was the only one who noticed Archer’s eyes narrow when Honor and Faith gave Lianne the kind of hug that said come again soon.
“You have a great family,” Lianne said as the elevator door closed behind them. “Thanks for sharing them with me.”
“You sure? Most people would have been overwhelmed by all those Donovans at once.”
Lianne’s laughter lit up her clear whiskey eyes. “I wish your parents had twenty kids.”
Kyle smiled and shook his head. “The mind quails.”
He laced his fingers slowly, deeply, with Lianne’s and tried not to notice the heightened beating of the pulse in her throat. Just like he tried not to notice the sway of her breasts beneath her business suit, the inward turn of her waist, the rich promise of her hips, and the elegant shape of her legs.
He might as well have tried to stop his heart from beating.
The elevator stopped and the door whisked open. Just beyond the small, luxurious foyer and beveled glass doors, a taxi waited by the curb.
“I’ll send him away,” Kyle said, “and take you home myself.”
Temptation snaked through Lianne, but she shook her head. She knew if Kyle took her home, she wouldn’t sleep alone that night. No matter how sexy the man, she didn’t do one-night stands. Perhaps it was because of being a bastard, perhaps it was simply pride, perhaps she just didn’t have a high sex drive.
Whatever, she wasn’t going to bed with a man who wanted nothing more from her than any whore could give him.
“Thanks again,” Lianne said, standing up on tiptoe to brush her lips against Kyle’s. “I can’t remember when I enjoyed an evening so much.”
The touch of her lips was too brief. He bent to give her another kiss, a kiss he meant to be as casual as the one she had given him. But something happened along the way. It was the tip of his tongue rather than his lips that met her smile, traced it, caressed it until she made a ragged sound and let him in. His arms locked around her, lifting her, holding her so tightly that neither one of them could breathe. Their tongues mated in a hungry, stabbing dance.
Kyle didn’t know how long the kiss lasted. He knew only that when the impatient honking of the taxi finally got through the red haze of lust that passed for his brain, he was crushing Lianne between the elevator wall and his urgent body, and she was fighting to get even closer to him, making throaty whimpering sounds that begged him to strip her naked and fuck her blind.
“Jesus,” he said, letting her slide slowly down his body, feeling every female inch of her. “Sweet Jesus Christ.”
Her feet hit the elevator floor, her knees buckled. Her eyes were wide, dark, dazed. She made a ragged sound that could have been a laugh or a curse. Then she shook her head, trying to clear the overwhelming thunder of her heartbeat from her ears.
“What happened?” she asked shakily.
Before Kyle could answer, she twisted free of his arms and ran to the taxi.
“Tomorrow,” he called after Lianne. “I’ll pick you up at ten and we’ll drive to Anacortes.”
“No. Honor gave me your Anacortes address. I’ll meet you there. Two o’clock.”
The taxi door slammed. Red taillights surged into the night, blended with other city lights, vanished.
The service elevator chimed softly. The doors opened and Archer stepped out. He didn’t have the look of a happy man.
“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked.
“I was going to ask you the same. Did the elevator jam?”
“What do you think?”
Archer’s steel-gray eyes went from Kyle’s finger-combed hair to his kiss-reddened mouth and then to the blunt bulge in his crotch. “I think you need a cold shower.”
“Why don’t we do a little one-on-one in the downstairs gym instead?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Why not? You’ve been looking for something to thump on since you walked into the condo. And it wasn’t just the rock on Faith’s hand that set you off, was it?”
“Lianne’s shadow was government,” Archer said curtly.
“No surprise there. We knew Uncle was interested.”
“So am I. I had a little chat with the tail. He made a call, gave me a number, and I made a call.”
Kyle’s eyebrows went up. “Why do I feel you’re leaving something out? Like how the guy felt about making the call in the first place.”
“He wanted his face. I wanted a telephone number. How either of us felt about it wasn’t on the table.”
“How long had he been following her?”
“He didn’t say. It doesn’t matter.” Archer lifted his hand, cutting off Kyle’s attempt to speak. “He saw her come and go several times from the city of Vancouver and the Tang family fortress with trunkloads of jade.”
“So what? She handled the Jade Trader exhibit last night. Stands to reason she would be shuttling back and forth with jade in her trunk.”
“Some of what she handled stayed in her trunk. She’s about one step away from being arrested.”
“What does that mean?” Kyle demanded.
“Just what it sounds like,” Archer said flatly. “Uncle has a wire into the Tang family. Some stuff has gone missing from the Vancouver vault.”
“Too bad, how sad, shit happens. Has anyone seen Lianne with the missing stuff? Has anyone bought it from her?”
“Yes to the first. They’re still looking for the second.”
“Pretty thin. What makes them think Lianne is so stupid that she would steal pieces that
were certain to be missed?”
“Not stupid. Very, very shrewd. She’s been creaming old man Wen’s collection, selling it, and substituting inferior goods so that no one noticed the holes.”
“It doesn’t fly. Wen would have noticed.”
“A few years ago, yes. Things change. Wen’s eyes and hands sure did. The substitutions were clever. Good, but not as high a quality, not as rare, not as aesthetic, not as old, whatever. The sort of things only an expert would notice, but they have a hell of an impact on the bottom line.”
Kyle thought of Wen’s gnarled hands and cloudy eyes. Then he thought of Lianne’s clear eyes and sensitive fingertips. “I don’t like it.”
“Did someone ask you to? She never would have been caught if one of her half brothers didn’t have a good eye for jade.”
“Why would Lianne rob Wen?”
Archer gave his brother a look of disbelief. “The usual reason. Greed.”
“Not her style.” Kyle’s voice was certain. His mind and his gut were in complete agreement on this one.
“Greed doesn’t have a style,” Archer retorted. “But if you don’t like that motive, there’s always revenge.”
“They haven’t done anything to Lianne except give her a lot of clients and an entree into the closed corridors of the jade world.”
“Bullshit. Think with your brain instead of your dick. How do you suppose Faith would react if she knew she was as much a Donovan as any of us, and everyone from Dad on down treated her like a bad smell? But, hey, the girl is useful. Real talent. So the Donovans just use Faith like any other employee, except—”
“Lianne—” Kyle interrupted.
“Shut up and listen. Except we always knew she was desperately hungry to belong to the family, and we used that, too, dangling little rewards like candy in front of a starving kid. Someone with Faith’s guts and temperament and hunger would keep trying and trying and trying to prove that she was worth being loved…until she grew up and realized that she was being as thoroughly screwed as her unmarried mama, and the pay wasn’t nearly as good.”
Kyle’s fists and shoulders bunched with tension. He wanted to argue with Archer. His gut kept saying Lianne was innocent.