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 fabulously beautiful. Normally, Kyle and Archer wouldn’t have bothered attending this kind of show-and-tell in the name of charity and social climbing.
“At least the tux fits,” Kyle muttered.
“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 karate 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 toward Seattle’s newest hotel.
“Not yet.”
“Not ever. I didn’t know this many people owned tuxes. Not to mention stones.” He whistled softly as a matron walked past 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 the woman and then looked away. “You want to talk museum pieces, try the companions of the Taiwanese industrialists who just walked in. Especially the woman in red.”
Kyle glanced past his brother. The red silk sheath—and the body beneath it—was an eye-popper, yet it was the woman’s headdress that sent murmurs of appreciation and greed through the crowd: a lacework cap of pearls encased her gleaming black hair. Teardrop pearls as big as a man’s thumb shimmered and swayed around her face. A triple strand of matched teardrop pearls the size of grapes fell from the back of the cap down to the cleft in the woman’s rhythmically swinging ass.
“Companion, huh? As in mistress for the moment?” Kyle said.
“It’s common enough. Most of the Asian men leave their wives at home with the in-laws when they come to the States.”
“Afraid their little women will bolt to greener pastures if they get the chance?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t be fenced like that in the first place. Let’s try the atrium. That’s where the Jade Trader has its display. SunCo’s stuff will be there, too. Ever since China took over Hong Kong, the Sun clan has been whittling away at the Tangs.”
Archer smiled slightly. “Been doing some research?”
“If I had to research in order to name the competition, I wouldn’t be much good to Donovan International, would I?”
“You’re really serious about dragging Donovan Inc. into the jade trade, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been serious about it ever since I held my first five-thousand-year-old jade pi,” Kyle said simply. “I’ll never know why the piece was carved, but someone back then was like me. He loved the smooth weight of jade. Otherwise he never would have tackled a stone that hard with little more than rawhide, sticks, and grit.”
When Kyle turned and started toward the atrium, Archer put a hand on his arm, stopping him.
“There’s only a limited market for Neolithic jade artifacts,” Archer said neutrally.
“The market is expanding every day. Even New York has caught on. Besides, there’s a lot more to jade than Neolithic artifacts.”
“Do you feel expert enough to advise us on the full spectrum of jade, to go one-on-one with the Pacific Rim’s best?”
“Not yet. But Lianne Blakely is. Or didn’t your contact mention that?”
“He didn’t make a point of it. He just said she was a kind of back door into the closed world of the Tang Consortium.”
“So let’s go see if I can learn more from sweet Lianne than she can learn from me before she’s finished using me for whatever old man Wen Zhi Tang has in mind.”
Archer blinked. “That’s scary.”
“What?”
“I understood you.”
Kyle forged a way through the crowd with Archer at his side. Once inside the atrium, the crush of people broke into clots centered around various exhibits of corporations that were donating pieces to the midnight auction.
“Forget it,” Kyle said, pulling Archer away from a Mikimoto pearl exhibit. “Lianne Blakely is into jade, remember?”
“Any harm in looking at something else?”
“You’re as bad as Faith when it comes to pearls.”
“As bad as you and jade?”
“Worse,” Kyle said, looking around.
Against the towering greenery-and-glass backdrop of the atrium, people from three continents and several island nations revolved around the central fountain, creating a kaleidoscope of languages and fashion. The fountain itself was striking: a clear, cantilevered glass sculpture of rectangles and rhomboids where light and water danced with a grace that people could only envy. The sweet music of the water blended with the languages of Hong Kong, Japan, and several regions of China, as well as English accented by countries as distant as Australia and Britain and as close as Canada.
“The jade must be on the other side of the atrium,” Kyle said.
“Why?”
“Most of the Anglos are right here, crowded around the rubies and sapphires from Burma or the Colombian emeralds or African diamonds. Jade is a more subtle, civilized taste.”
“Crap,” Archer said mildly. “Civilization has nothing to do with it. Jade was available in ancient China. Diamonds weren’t. Same goes for Europeans. Clear gemstones were more available than jade. Tradition is created from the materials at hand.”
Kyle and Archer continued arguing about culture, civilization, and gems while they circled around the fountain. On the way they passed museum-quality pre-Columbian jade artifacts from Mexico, Central, and South America that were displayed on slabs of hand-hewn stone. Fright masks of gold and turquoise grinned or snarled, scaring off demons whose names were known only by people thousands of years dead. Mixed in among the artifacts were modern examples of gold and jade art.
Everything—ancient and modern—had a card in front of it naming the corporation that owned the object. Corporate displays of support for the arts were as much the purpose of the evening as the charity auction that would precede the ball.
By the time the two brothers came to the section reserved for offshore Chinese exhibits, Kyle was wishing he was aboard the Tomorrow, sharpening hooks and tying leaders for a dawn fishing raid. He snagged a glass of wine from a passing waiter, sipped, and grimaced. At a function like this he had expected higher quality.
“Bingo,” Archer said softly.
Kyle forgot the mediocre wine. “Where?”
“To the left of SunCo’s jade dragon screens, near the Sikh in the jeweled turban.”
Though they were less than ten feet away, Kyle at first didn’t see any woman. Then the Indian Sikh stepped aside.
Kyle stared. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Damn.”
Kyle didn’t know what he had been expecting, but he knew Lianne Blakely wasn’t it. With a combination of skepticism, disgust, and grudging male interest, he watched the sleek, petite young woman who supposedly was so smitten with him that she had been watching him from afar for two weeks.
Yeah. Right. He was standing close enough to see that she had on real silk stockings and her patrician little nose was buried in an exhibit of Warring States jade ornaments as though he didn’t exist.
Then Lianne turned and for an instant looked right at Kyle. Her wide tilted eyes were the color of cognac. She hesitated as though recognizing him. But if she had, she wasn’t going to do anything about it. She went back to studying jade as though no one else in the room existed, certainly not a man she was interested in meeting.
“You’re sure that’s her?” Kyle asked quietly, praying it wasn’t.
“I just said so, didn’t I?”
“She doesn’t
look like an international art thief.”
“Really?” Archer asked softly. “How many have you known?”
“Not as many as you. So tell me, is she?”
“A thief?”
“Yeah.”
“They don’t wear labels.”
Kyle didn’t say anything more. He simply watched Lianne Blakely.
Archer looked from his brother to Lianne, wondering why Kyle had come to a point like a bird dog scenting warm pheasant. Lianne was attractive, even beautiful in an exotic way, but she wasn’t in the fabulously beautiful companion category. The simple white dress she wore fit well enough, but wasn’t slit from hem to crotch or throat to pubic bone in order to draw and hold a man’s eye. The jade bracelets she wore were doubtless Burmese and of the highest quality, as was her necklace, yet Kyle didn’t seem to have noticed them. He was looking at the woman and ignoring the jade.
Not good.
“Maybe we should forget the whole thing,” Archer said abruptly. “I’ll put off the trip to Japan.”
“My shoulder is good as new,” Kyle said without looking away from Lianne.
“Nothing is good as new after a bullet.”
Kyle shrugged, then winced. Though he wouldn’t admit it aloud, his shoulder still ached when the weather was setting up for rain. In the Pacific Northwest, that was pretty often.
“I know much more about jade than you do,” Kyle said.
“Considering how little I know, that’s not much of an argument for your participation in this little waltz.”
Kyle smiled crookedly. The non sequitur hadn’t even made Archer pause before he answered. That was the good thing about family: you knew them well enough to follow their thoughts.
It was also the bad thing about family. That kind of knowing could be claustrophobic when there were six kids. But Kyle had learned the hard way that running off to the other side of the world didn’t prove anything except what he already knew.
He was four years and one century younger than his brother Archer.
“What’s really bothering you?” Kyle asked, looking at his brother. “Afraid another woman will grab me by my dumb handle and lead me into trouble?”
“If you get hurt because of me, Susa will have my ass for a wall hanging.”
“Our own mother? Ha! You’re her favorite son.”
Archer gave him a look that would have backed off anyone else.
Kyle wasn’t feeling like backing anywhere. He felt like he had just taken a sucker punch to his gut.
Lianne Blakely was everything that appealed to him in a woman, and he hadn’t even known until he saw her. He had thought he liked big women; she was small. He had thought he liked blondes; she was dark. He had thought he liked outgoing, laughing women; she was quiet, poised around an inner stillness.
One thing Kyle did know for certain was that he never wanted to be at the mercy of his cock again. Yet he wanted Lianne in a way that had nothing to do with old knowledge, old learning, old promises.
Kyle’s sudden, primitive arousal made him furious. He must be a slow learner on the subject of being used by a woman.
Maybe he could be a fast learner on how to use one.
“Don’t wait up for me,” Kyle told his brother, starting forward. “I’ve got some monkey business to conduct.”
If you enjoyed To the Ends of the Earth,
then sample the following brief selection from
JADE ISLAND,
Elizabeth Lowell’s latest captivating romance,
an Avon Books hardcover,
coming in October 1998.
“LET ME get this straight,” Kyle Donovan said, staring in disbelief at his older brother. “You want me to seduce the illegitimate American daughter of a probably corrupt Hong Kong trading family in order to discover whether said family is involved in the sale of cultural treasures stolen from a Han emperor’s grave?”
Archer tilted his head as though thinking it over and studied the cold salt water beyond Kyle’s Pacific Northwest cabin, and finally nodded. “Yeah, that’s about it. Except for the seduction part. That’s optional.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Fine. So seduce her.”
“This is a joke.”
“I wish.”
Kyle waited but his brother wasn’t feeling talkative. Kyle was afraid he knew why. Archer hated involving family in any of the gray areas of his past. Uncle Sam was definitely one of those areas. But the U.S. government, like the past, never really went away.
“What’s going on?” Kyle asked finally, shifting in his chair. “And don’t give me any fairy dust about hands across the water and international cooperation.”
Archer looked at his brother. Sunlight glinted in Kyle’s tarnished blonde hair and made his hazel eyes look more gold than green, but even sunlight couldn’t brighten the dark rims around the irises. Nor could light take away the lines and shadows of experience—experience Archer would rather have spared his younger brother.
“Would you believe business?” Archer asked neutrally.
“Monkey business, yeah.”
Archer’s smile was fast but real, like the anger narrowing his gray-green eyes.
Kyle simply waited. This time he wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence.
Archer got out of his chair. He was tall, rangy, quick, a darker echo of his younger brother. Silently Archer prowled the cabin’s homey main room, touching things at random: a computer that bristled with Kyle’s personal additions, books on everything from international banking to five thousand years of Chinese jade, a small vase with a branch of rosemary in it, a letter opener that could slice to the bone, and a fishing lure that looked like a tiny hula skirt. Beneath the slithery, glittery skirt was a hook so sharp it could stick to rock. It certainly wanted to stick to flesh.
“You’ve changed,” Archer said, smiling as he carefully set aside the lure. “Before that amber fiasco last year, you couldn’t out-wait me if your life depended on it.”
“Does it?”
Archer’s smile vanished. “Not as far as I know.”
“Which brings up an interesting question,” Kyle said. “What do you know?”
“Enough to worry. Not enough to do anything useful about it.”
“Welcome to the human race.”
For a moment longer Archer studied the windswept fir forest outside the cabin and the water beyond, where currents more powerful than rivers coiled beneath the peaceful surface of Rosario Strait.
“I don’t know any more facts than I already told you,” Archer said.
“Can you get more?”
“Soon? I doubt it. My contact was unofficial.”
“Unofficial. Uh-huh. Do you really believe that?”
“Most of the real work is done that way. Off the record.”
Subtly, Kyle flexed his left shoulder, trying to work out the ache. The wound had long since healed, but the shock wave from an off-the-record bullet had done unhappy things to nearby cartilage. When it came to predicting rain, he had a much better average than the expensive weather guessers on TV.
“So this guy calls you,” Kyle said, “and says that there are rumors of the kind of cultural theft that will make diplomats reach for tranquilizers while governments beat the drum of nationalism and everyone with any sense heads for cover.”
“Yes.”
“Why did he come to you?”
“He didn’t say, beyond the obvious.”
“Which is?”
“Donovan International is in the right position and I know how the game is played.”
“With real bullets,” Kyle muttered.
“No. With real permits, passports, and paper. If we tell Uncle to bugger off, life becomes a lot trickier for Donovan International. It’s hard to run an import/export business without the cooperation of the U.S. bureaucracy.”
“And we owe them one, don’t we?” Kyle asked quietly. “For cleaning up my mess on Jade Island.”
Archer sh
rugged, but the tight line of his mouth said a lot.
“Mother,” Kyle said, disgusted. He had been afraid of that. “I tried to keep the family out of it.”
“So did I.”
Kyle flexed both hands, trying to work off the tension that came to him every time he realized how close he had come to dying—and taking his sister Honor with him. “Let’s go over it again, just to make sure I don’t fuck this one up, too.”
Turning, Archer looked straight at the big blonde man who had once been his little brother and would always be his younger brother. “What happened on Jade Island wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah, right,” Kyle said, disgusted. “I’m surprised you trust me with this.”
“That’s bullshit. The only one lacking trust around here is you, in yourself.”
“Did your contact ask for me by name?” Kyle asked, changing the subject.
“No. But you’re the one Lianne Blakely has been watching for the past two weeks.”
Kyle’s odd gold-green eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
“The illegitimate daughter of—”
“Not that,” Kyle interrupted. “The rest of it.”
“Simple. She was looking at you and you were so busy looking at cold jade that you never noticed a warm woman trying to catch your eye.”
“Jade isn’t cold and I’ve never met a woman of any temperature who wouldn’t crawl over my bleeding body to get to you.”
Archer bit off the kind of comment that would devolve into a family argument. He had never understood why everyone considered him a lady killer. As far as he was concerned, Kyle was the best-looking of the Donovans, with Justin and Lawe very close behind.
“Not this lady,” Archer said. “Lianne was looking at you. That’s one of the reasons I agreed to ask for your help in penetrating the Tang Consortium.”
“Penetrating, huh? First the woman, then the whole damn clan. You’ve got an overblown idea of my libido, not to mention my stamina.”
Archer made a choked sound that was a combination of exasperation and humor.