“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.”
About the Author
Elizabeth Lowell’s many remarkable historical and contemporary novels include New York Times bestsellers, Forget Me Not, Only Love, A Woman Without Lies, Autumn Lover and Winter Fire. Her latest major accomplishments, Amber Beach, Jade Island, and Pearl Cove were instant New York Times bestsellers. Ms. Lowell has more than fifteen million books in print. She lives in Palm Springs, California, with her husband with whom she writes mystery novels under a pseudonym.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Credits
Cover art by Nick Gaetano
BOOKS BY ELIZABETH LOWELL
Amber Beach*
Autumn Lover
Beautiful Dreamer*
Desert Rain*
Eden Burning*
Enchanted
Forbidden
Forget Me Not*
Jade Island*
Lover in the Rough*
Midnight in Ruby Bayou
Moving Target*
Only His
Only Love
Only Mine
Only You
Pearl Cove*
Remember Summer*
To the Ends of the Earth*
Where the Heart Is*
Winter Fire
A Woman Without Lies*
*Available as a HarperCollins e-book.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH was previously published in an altered form entitled THE DANVERS TOUCH by Silhouette Books in 1983.
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. Copyright © 1998 by Two of a Kind, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Excerpt from JADE ISLAND copyright ©1998 by Two of a Kind, Inc.
ePub Edition © DECEMBER 2001 ISBN: 9780061797668
First Avon Books Printing: May 1998
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