But his mind understood the need for revenge all too well. Lianne was both intelligent and proud. A dangerous combination in some circumstances.
“I won’t argue the point,” he said evenly to his brother. “I won’t agree all the way, either. I can’t.”
Archer let out a long breath and a hissing curse at the same time. “What’s the problem—your mind or your dick?”
“My gut.”
“Hell.” Archer crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall. “You have a better idea how to explain the missing jades? And they are missing.”
“Soddi,” Kyle said succinctly.
A sardonic smile deepened the already bleak lines of Archer’s face. “Soddi, huh?”
“Yeah. Some other dude did it.”
“That only works for defense lawyers.”
“It works for me until something better comes along.”
“Parts of Japan are real pretty at this time of year,” Archer said. “The Mikimoto showings are among the most spectacular gem displays on earth. Rooms of pearls, all sizes, all shapes, gleaming like heaven come to earth. And those South Seas black pearls have to be seen to be believed.”
“Enjoy your trip.”
“You enjoy it. I’m staying home.”
“Send Faith. Separate her from Joy Boy upstairs.”
“I’m considering it,” Archer said. “The two of you would have a great—”
“No.”
A year ago, Archer would have argued. A year ago, he would have won.
It wasn’t a year ago.
“I’ll do it your way,” Archer decided. “For now.”
“And then?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Chapter 13
Kyle was still thinking about Archer’s words the next day when he and Lianne set off aboard his boat for Farmer Island.
Whatever it takes.
It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t a promise. It was simply Archer stating a fact. A year ago, Kyle would have been nervous about the whatever. Today, he was simply wondering if he would have been closer to the truth about the Jade Emperor if he had screwed Lianne senseless last night.
It had been a near thing. The screwing, if not the truth. What had started as a casual, polite good-night kiss had burned like a fuse on the way to nuclear meltdown. He had barely stopped himself from ripping off her clothes and taking her in the open elevator with her taxi waiting twenty feet away. When he finally forced himself to let go of Lianne, she was trembling. It wasn’t from fear. She was as hungry as he was.
What happened?
Kyle hadn’t had an answer to Lianne’s question. The realization of how fast and deep she had gotten under his skin was like a bucket of ice water thrown in his face. He shouldn’t want any woman that much. He sure as hell shouldn’t want that woman when he knew Uncle was drawing up an arrest warrant for her.
On the other hand, maybe a few sweaty hours between the sheets would loosen her sexy, hungry tongue. He hadn’t had much luck prying anything useful out of her with questions and answers since she had met him at the little dock that was just below his cabin. When he brought up the jade burial suit, she shut down. Then she changed the subject. When he brought the topic back to jade, she asked about fishing.
So he took the pretty little thief fishing.
Except she just didn’t look like a thief. Especially now, playing tug-of-war with a rockfish and so excited that she was dancing in place on the Tomorrow’s deck. She was wearing one of his fishing jackets over her businesslike suit. The waterproof jacket hung halfway down her legs. She should have looked ridiculous. Instead, she looked edible. She definitely didn’t look like a woman on the verge of being arrested as an international art thief.
Archer was wrong. Or the government was. Or…
What’s the problem—your mind or your dick?
Archer’s sardonic question echoed in Kyle’s memory. He told himself that he was too old and too smart to be led around by his dumb handle again. And he had proved it last night. He had been the one to end the kiss, not Lianne.
Besides, there were good reasons why Lianne could be innocent. The fact that there were good reasons why she could be guilty just made the game more interesting. And that was all it was. A game.
If Kyle didn’t want to play, there was the uncomfortable fact that he owed the government a favor that Archer shouldn’t have to be the one to repay. Let his brother go count pearls in Japan or Australia or Tahiti; Kyle was determined to find out if Lianne was a thief and he was a dick-brained idiot, or if she was mostly innocent and he wasn’t a complete fool.
Laughter and the flash of dark cognac eyes distracted Kyle from his edgy thoughts. He checked the position of the Tomorrow, saw that nothing had changed, and went back to watching Lianne. The twenty-seven-foot powerboat didn’t need much attention at the moment. It was anchored up close to Jade Island, at the foot of a steep cliff.
He had chosen the island’s remote, stony presence for three reasons. The first was its proximity to Farmer Island. The second was the near certainty of snagging a rockfish among the eddies and swirls where the north side of the tiny island rose sheer and stark from the dark green sea. The third reason was that he had almost died here. The severe beauty of fir and rock, wind and sea, would remind him that there were some mistakes a man could get killed repeating.
Thinking with his dick was one of them.
Lianne blew strands of black hair out of her eyes, settled her feet more securely on the gently rolling deck, and shifted her grip on the rod.
“Is it another dogfish?” Kyle asked.
“How would I know? I can’t see it. Maybe it’s a salmon.”
“Doubt it.”
There hadn’t been enough time to make a serious run at trolling for salmon, and the tide was wrong anyway. Fortunately, rockfish were tasty and they weren’t as picky about what and when they ate as salmon were.
“This is great,” Lianne said gleefully, reeling as hard as she could. “When I went out on that cattle boat, it took forever to find any fish at all. I’ve had two so far.”
“They were dogfish. That’s why we shifted fishing spots.”
“In China we would have eaten them.”
“In China you eat anything that doesn’t eat you first. Keep reeling. I’m hungry enough to eat a big rockfish all by myself and look around for more.”
“Aren’t you going to fish?” Lianne asked, frowning as she reeled line in.
“I figure I’ll be kept busy baiting hooks for you.”
And pulling hooks off the bottom, replacing hooks after dogfish swallowed them, untangling snarls, and fixing all the other minor disasters that came while learning how to catch bottom fish.
Lianne laughed in sheer excitement as the rockfish fought against being reeled in. Watching her, Kyle kept trying to convince himself that she was a clever thief bent on revenge, no matter what the cost to family and country. He didn’t make much headway on the project because he was caught in a three-cornered argument with himself: his mind had no problem with guilt, his dick didn’t care either way, and his gut was hanging tough for innocence.
“This fish must be huge!” Lianne said, bracing herself again as the Tomorrow’s deck shifted almost lazily beneath her feet.
“Doubt it. Rockfish hit hard and give up easy.”
“When does the give-up begin?” Lianne asked.
“Real soon.”
“Is that a pun?”
“Bite your tongue.”
The weight of the unhappy fish dragged the top of the rod into an arc. Long and limber, the rod was designed to let the fisherman feel every twist and wriggle of the fish, and to give the fish a fighting chance to throw off the hook. The reel was also designed with sport in mind, which meant that Lianne was having to work for her fish. Most reels were double action—one crank of the handle equaled two turns of line around the reel. Eight inches of line came in at a time. But Kyle used a mooching reel. One t
urn of the handle equaled one turn of the line around the reel, period. Four inches, not eight.
Suddenly the reel turned easily. Lianne made a dismayed sound. “It’s gone.”
“Nope. It just gave up. Keep reeling.”
As Kyle had predicted, the fish came docilely to the boat and wallowed on its side.
“How do you know so much?” she asked.
“Legacy of a misspent youth. See those red spines along the back?”
“Yes.”
“Stay away from them. Now wrap your hand around the line and swing this baby aboard.”
“What about the net?”
“Nets are for salmon.”
He got a pair of pliers and a cosh and waited for Lianne to lever the fish into the stern well of the boat. After a few false tries, she leaned way over the gunwale, wrapped the line around her hand, and yanked the fish aboard.
Kyle wished Lianne had several fish to play with. She looked good bent over the gunwale, her skirt and his jacket riding high enough that he could see that her nylons came only to mid-thigh and were held in place by their own elastic tops. They made a sexy, smoky-gray contrast against her golden skin. He couldn’t help thinking how plain damn good it would feel to slide his hands up nylon to flesh, then to stroke and probe until she was wet and so was he.
What’s the problem—your mind or your dick?
Kyle grasped the rockfish’s lower jaw with the pliers and coshed it on its tiny brain. Though he expected Lianne to flinch, she didn’t. She just watched him as she had when he explained how to handle the mooching reel.
“No screams over killing something?” Kyle asked, removing the hook with a quick twist of the pliers.
Lianne looked at him with wide, dark eyes. A smile teased the corners of her mouth. “Disappointed?”
He laughed, opened the fish box, and threw the rockfish in. “Maybe a little. Honor and Faith used to make the most incredible high noises. It was half the fun of fishing, at first.”
What he didn’t say was that cleaning fish or accidentally threading a hook through a baitfish eyeball had made him queasy the first few times it happened. Same for all of his brothers, but you could have roasted them over a slow fire before they admitted to such weakness in front of their baby sisters.
Before Kyle could thread another limp herring on the hook, Lianne took it and skewered the little bait fish neatly just behind the eyes.
“You sure you weren’t already a fisherman?” he asked.
“Fishersan,” Lianne corrected instantly. “That’s what Honor told me last night. Fishersan is the proper usage, neither male nor female.”
“Honor is as full of stuff as a Christmas goose.”
“I liked your sister. Both your sisters. They’re so close,” Lianne said with unconscious wistfulness. “And your parents were great. Putty in each other’s hands and solid rock in anyone else’s. Best of all,” she added, dropping the baited hook over the side and letting it spiral rapidly down into the green water, “Susa is smaller than I am. I was beginning to feel like a midget.”
“Only because Tony kept towering over you.”
“That’s what I like about you. You’re big, but you don’t loom.”
“How about your mother?” Kyle asked. “Big, little, in between?”
“Same size as I am. Small.”
“Small? You’re just—keep your rod tip up! That’s a salmon!”
“How can you—”
“Watch your knuckles!” he interrupted.
Kyle’s warnings and the wildly spinning handles of the reel connected with Lianne at the same time. She cried out, shook the hand that had stinging knuckles, and hung onto the rod with her left hand.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded and went back to reeling. Or trying to. The fish kept taking off, stripping line from the reel in a long, sustained scream of friction, pulling the handles right out of her grasp.
Kyle whistled. “That’s a nice salmon.”
“Are you sure it’s a salmon?” she asked, struggling to control rod and reel. “It feels like a killer whale.”
“It’s a salmon. Blackmouth. I’ll bet you picked it up just off the bottom.”
“I didn’t pick this boy up. He picked me up. Hard.”
Grinning, Kyle watched Lianne fight to keep the fish from taking off any more line.
“Keep the rod tip up,” he told her. “Let the fish fight the rod, not you.”
“Easy for you to say. This sucker has a mind of its own.”
Slowly she reeled the fish in closer and closer to the boat. “I can see it. Get the net!”
“If you can see the fish, it can see the boat, which means—”
Suddenly line screamed off the reel. Lianne yelped and snatched her knuckles away from the carnivorous handles. The fish headed for Farmer Island, which was a green blur several miles away.
“Which means the fish will bolt,” Kyle finished with satisfaction. “You’ve got a blackmouth, sweetheart. And it’s big enough to keep.”
“How do you know?”
“You can tell a lot about a fish by the way it fights. I’ll bet this one stops taking line real soon, then sits and sulks.”
She blew her hair out of her face. “I hope so. I feel like I’m trying to reel in a Land Rover.”
“Want me to take it?”
“Not on your life,” she said fiercely. “This one is mine.”
“It must be. This is the wrong place for a salmon, the wrong time, wrong tide, and wrong method. Beginner’s luck beats skill every time.”
Lianne was too busy trying to get four inches of line around the reel to listen to Kyle’s complaints.
He judged the tension on the line, the deep arc of the rod, and her tight-lipped determination as she reeled. Or tried to. The salmon was way down deep, sulking over the herring snack that was fighting back.
He looked at the western sky. Soon the sun would be a blazing orange disk dragging day behind it into the ocean’s blue-black night. They might be late getting to the Institute of Asian Communications and Han Seng.
The idea didn’t bother Kyle a bit.
“Remember what I told you about pumping the rod?” he asked.
“No,” she said, panting.
“Like this.”
Kyle stepped up behind Lianne, reached around her left side, and put his left hand above hers on the rod. His right hand came around her and eased the butt of the rod until it was snug against her torso.
“If that hurts,” he said, “brace the rod against your hipbone or the top of your thigh. Honor does it one way and Faith the other.”
“How do you do it?”
“Upper-body strength. You don’t have it.”
“Drop off,” Lianne muttered. “Brawn isn’t everything. Leverage counts more.”
Kyle grinned and almost nuzzled the nape of her neck. She looked like a determined, grumpy cat. “So use leverage,” he said against her ear. “Like this.”
He settled the rod butt in the crease between her torso and her left thigh. “How’s that?”
“Better. Now what?”
“Pull the rod toward you with your left hand. If you can’t do it with your elbow bent, straighten it.”
“Leverage,” she said breathlessly, pulling.
“That’s the idea.”
She pulled harder, braced herself against Kyle, and pulled again. The rod didn’t move much.
Kyle wished he could have said the same for his own rod. Surrounding Lianne like a blanket while her sweet little butt rubbed over his crotch was having a predictable and immediate effect.
“Move your hand up higher,” he said. “More leverage that way.”
More than her hand moved. Her whole body did. He gritted his teeth and thought about anything but the unintentional, fiercely sexual friction that came every time she changed her position even a bit.
And she changed it often.
“Got a good grip on the rod?” he asked.
&n
bsp; “Yes.”
“Straighten your arm, lean back with your whole body, then quickly lean forward and reel like hell at the same time. I’ll steady you until you get the rhythm.”
Lianne rocked back, then forward, and reeled like hell, gaining about a foot of line.
“Again,” Kyle said.
Breathing hard from exertion, she repeated the maneuver again and again. After a few minutes he was breathing deeply, too, but exertion didn’t have anything to do with it. The smell of her flushed, perfumed skin, the heat of it, the feel of her body rubbing against him from chest to thighs, all added up to the kind of sustained sexual torture he hadn’t endured since his heavy petting days in high school.
If he had touched her like this last night, he wouldn’t have had the control to let go of her. The only thing that was helping him now was that she was completely focused on the fish rather than on the man who was wrapped around her.
“I think I’m gaining on it,” she said breathlessly.
“Good,” he said through clenched teeth. “Keep pumping the rod. That’s it.”
“When do you get the net?”
“Soon,” Kyle prayed beneath his breath. “I hope.” Breath hissed between his teeth as her butt rubbed against him like a cat in heat. He bit off a groan.
“What?” Lianne asked.
“Pump!”
She pumped, cranking in a foot of line at a time. She didn’t know she was panting and laughing and panting some more. All she knew was that something powerful and alive was on the other end of the line, something that was going to test her strength and determination before it gave up and became dinner.
It never occurred to her that she would lose.
Lianne wrestled the fish up to the boat again, only to have the salmon turn and race away once more. A hundred feet of line peeled off in a screaming blur. She shifted position like a boxer heading into the final round and began pumping all over again.
Kyle didn’t know whether he was happy or sad. Crazy, yes. He knew about that. So crazy that he was hoping the salmon had at least one more good run in it.
The third time Lianne got the fish near the boat, it made a halfhearted run. Grinning fiercely, she reeled in line.