His eyes were blue-green fire, fierce and loving. He laughed and moved again, touching her, but not enough, not nearly enough.
Cat melted in liquid waves of pleasure. “I want you.”
“How do you want me?” he asked, his voice husky, deep. “Husband or lover? Friend or partner? Companion or father of your children?”
“Yes,” she said, closing her legs around him, trying to draw him into her liquid warmth.
“Yes, what?” Travis asked, fighting the desire that shook his strength, showing what it cost him to wait for her answer.
“Yes. Everything you can be. Everything we can be.”
Travis whispered Cat’s name and his love as he took her and gave himself. For a time he simply held her, murmuring his love over and over, hearing the words return redoubled from her lips. Only then did he begin to move with the timeless, potent rhythms of the sea and love, melting her, melting into her, stealing her away.
Above them the Wind Warrior spread its wings and soared through the incandescent dawn, a radiant pirate ship sailing to the ends of the earth and beyond.
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 shrugged, 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.
“In any case,” Kyle said, “if the lady was looking at me rather than you, we can be sure of one thing.”
; “What?”
“It’s a setup.”
Archer blinked. “I’m having trouble following you.”
“Take it one word at a time. In the last two weeks you and I have gone to three jade previews together.”
“Five.”
“Two were so lousy they don’t count. If Lianne saw past you to me, then it’s because the Tang Consortium figures that I’m an easier nut to crack than you.”
“You don’t think it’s possible that Lianne prefers blondes?”
Kyle shrugged. “Anything is possible, but the last time a woman passed up a tall, dark, and handsome type for me, I nearly got killed before I figured out exactly what kind of screwing was on her mind. That kind of lesson sticks with a man.”
For a moment Archer didn’t know what to say. Kyle was certain that the only thing women wanted was to use him and lose him. It hadn’t been like that before last year.
At times Archer missed the old Kyle, the one who laughed easily, the golden boy touched by the sun. But Archer never would have asked that golden boy to do anything more serious than match wines with meals.
“Maybe it’s a setup,” Archer agreed. “And maybe there’s a different game. That’s up to you to find out. If you want to.”
“And if I don’t?”
Archer shrugged. “I’ll put off my trip to Japan and take a run at the Tangs myself.”
“What about Justin? He’s blonde. Kind of.”
“Justin and Lawe are ass deep in their own alligators, trying to get a line on a new emerald strike in Brazil. Besides, they’re too young.”
“They’re older than I am,” Kyle pointed out.
“Not since Marju.”
Kyle smiled. It wasn’t an open, sunny kind of smile. It was like Archer’s, more teeth than comfort.
“I’m in,” Kyle said. “When and where does the game begin?”
“Tonight. Seattle. Wear a tux.”
“I don’t have one.”
“You will.”
Lianne Blakely sat in her mother’s elegant Kirkland condominium and watched Lake Washington’s gray surface being teased by cat’s-paws of wind. Never quite still, never predictable in its changes, the lake licked slyly at the neat lawns and sidewalks that crowded its urban shores. In balcony planters and along streets, tree branches were just beginning to shimmer with the kind of green that was more hope than actual announcement of spring’s return. The bravest of the daffodils were already in bloom, lifting their cheerful faces to the cloud-buried sun.
“Do you want green, jasmine, or oolong?” Anna Blakely called from the open kitchen.
“Oolong, please, Mom. It’s going to be a marathon tonight. I’ll need all the help I can get.”
And all the courage, Lianne acknowledged silently, wryly. She had promised herself that if Kyle Donovan was at the ball tonight, she would pick him up. Or try to.
Putting off the encounter hadn’t made it any easier, so she had decided to just get it over with. If she failed, she failed, and her father would just have to chalk up one more disappointment from his bastard daughter. In truth, she knew she didn’t have the kind of recklessness or innate female confidence to approach a good-looking stranger with the idea of getting acquainted for business purposes, much less for sexual ones.
But Lianne was definitely the kind to repay a favor or keep a promise. Engineering a meeting with Kyle Donovan was both.
Her stomach hitched at the thought. She tried to calm herself by saying that Kyle wouldn’t be at the ball tonight. He had no patience for that kind of arts-and-culture crush and no need to siphon money from society’s cream.
Lucky him.
“Nervous?” her mother asked from the kitchen.
Lianne barely prevented herself from jumping up and pacing the room. “Of course I’m nervous. I chose every single piece of the Jade Trader’s display myself. Wen Zhi Tang never gave me that much responsibility before.”
“Wen’s eyes are going. Besides, the crafty old bastard wanted goods that would appeal to the Americans as well as to overseas Chinese.”
“And his bastard granddaughter is as close as he can come to American taste, is that it?” Lianne retorted.
The sound of a teaspoon hitting the granite countertop made her wince, but she didn’t apologize for her bluntness. She had spent thirty years pretending that she was the legitimate daughter of a widow, while knowing full well that Johnny Tang was her father and Wen was her grandfather.
Lianne was tired of the charade, just as she was tired of watching her mother treated like an unwelcome stranger by the Tang family. As far as Lianne was concerned, bastards were made, not born.
And the Tang family had made more than its share of them.
Anna Blakely walked into the room carrying a lacquered tea tray that held a pale bone china teapot and two elegant, handleless cups. She wore a scarlet brocaded silk jacket, slim black silk pants, and low sandals. Pearls gleamed at her neck and wrists, along with a Rolex. On her right hand she wore a diamond and ruby ring that was worth more than half a million dollars. Except for her height and glorious blonde hair, she was the picture of a prosperous Hong Kong wife.
But Lianne’s mother was neither prosperous nor Chinese nor a wife. She had built her life around being mistress to a married man for whom family, legitimate family, was the most important thing in life; a man whose Chinese family referred to Anna only as Johnny’s round-eye concubine, a woman who didn’t even know who her parents were, much less her ancestors. Yet no matter how often Anna came in at the bottom of her lover’s list of family obligations, she didn’t complain.
Watching her mother’s quiet elegance as she poured tea, Lianne loved her but didn’t understand the choices the older woman had made. And still made.
Bitterness stirred, a bitterness that was as old as Lianne’s realization that she would never be forgiven for not being one hundred percent Chinese. She was too much an American to understand why any circumstance of birth, blood, or sex should make her inferior.
It had taken Lianne years to accept that she would never be accepted, much less loved, by her father’s family. But she had vowed she would be respected by them. Someday Wen Zhi would look past her wide whiskey eyes and thin nose and see a granddaughter rather than the unfortunate result of his son’s lust for an Anglo concubine.
“Is Johnny coming by later tonight?” Lianne asked.
She never called her mother’s lover by anything other than his given name. Certainly not Father or Dad or Daddy or Pop. Not even Uncle.
“Probably not,” Anna said, sitting down. “Apparently there’s a family get-together after the charity ball.”
Lianne went still. A family get-together.
And she, who had spent three months of her free time preparing the Tang Consortium’s display, wasn’t even invited.
It shouldn’t have hurt. She should be used to it by now.
Yet it did hurt and she would never be used to it. She longed to be part of a family: brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents, family memories and celebrations stretching back through the years. Except for her mother, the Tangs were Lianne’s family, her only family.
But she wasn’t theirs.
Without realizing what she was doing, Lianne ran her fingers over the jade bangle she wore on her left wrist. Emerald green, translucent, of the finest Burmese jade, the bracelet was worth three hundred thousand dollars. The long, single strand necklace of fine Burmese beads she wore was worth twice that.
She owned neither piece of jewelry. Tonight she was merely an animated display case for the Tang family’s Jade Trader goods. As a sales tactic it was effective. Resting against the white silk of her simple dress and the pale gold of her skin, the jewelry glowed with a mysterious inner light that would act like a beacon to jade lovers, connoisseurs, and collectors.
Lianne’s own jewelry was less costly, though no less fine to someone knowledgeable about jade. She chose her personal pieces with an eye toward he
r own desires rather than worth at auction. The trio of hairpicks that kept her dark hair in a swirl on top of her head were modern shafts of Burmese jade carved in a style four thousand years old. When she wore them, she felt connected to the Chinese half of her heritage, the half she had spent her whole life trying to be part of.
Distantly, Lianne wondered if she would have been invited to the party if Kyle Donovan was her date. Johnny, Number Three Son in the Tang dynasty, was hell-bent on getting entree into Donovan International. He had pressured Lianne to get acquainted with Kyle: Come on. Don’t go all modest and fake Chinese on me. You’re as American as your mother. Just do what the other girls do. Go up and introduce yourself. That’s how I met Anna.
The memory of her father’s words went down Lianne’s spine like cold water. She couldn’t help wondering if Johnny figured that what was good for the mother was good enough for the daughter: a life of guaranteed second-best in a man’s affections.
A mistress.
As Lianne drank tea from ancient, unimaginably fine china, she told herself that Johnny only wanted her to meet Kyle, not to bed him for the sake of Tang family business.
“Lianne?”
She swallowed the bracing tea and realized that her mother had asked a question. Quickly, Lianne replayed the last few minutes in her mind.
“No,” Lianne 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.”
“Johnny appreciates it. 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 a bitch.”
“Didn’t Johnny give you one of the Jade Trader passes?”
“No.”
“He must have forgotten,” Anna said, frowning. “He has been worried about something a lot lately, but he won’t tell me what.”
Lianne made a sound that could have been sympathy. Careful not to jerk the handle, she closed the door of her mother’s condo behind her and headed out into the gusty night.
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