Free Jade Island by Elizabeth Lowell Page A

she hadn’t dumped him. She had just declined to continue their affair after he married one of her Tang cousins and took the Tang family name for his own.
    “No,” Lianne said. “No recent lovers, dumped or otherwise.”
    “No outraged admirers?”
    “Not a one.”
    “How about your family? Are they on anyone’s shit list?”
    “Recently?” She shrugged. “No more than usual.”
    “What’s usual?”
    “My mother is Johnny Tang’s mistress,” Lianne said neutrally. “She has been for over thirty years. That puts her high on the Tang shit list, but it’s old news.”
    Kyle loosened his grip on Lianne’s arm slightly. Though his hand still covered hers, his fingertips stroked over the backs of her fingers. He nudged her toward a quiet corner of the atrium, where examples of fine calligraphy were on display. Calligraphy was the Asian version of abstract art; without extensive education and training, most people didn’t appreciate it. That meant an island of privacy in the teeming room.
    “Have you bought or sold any hotly contested jades lately?” Kyle asked quietly. “Pissed off any shady collectors?”
    Lianne shook her head and pretended to concentrate on the calligraphy. “I told you. I don’t know why I’m being followed.”
    He shifted until he could see what was going on behind her. There were swirls of people around most exhibits, plenty of black tuxedos mixed in with the rainbow silks and gleaming gems, and more Caucasians than Asians. The man Lianne had described could be within fifteen feet of them right now.
    He almost certainly was.
    “What about Seng?” Kyle asked.
    “If he has any Caucasian employees, I haven’t met them.”
    “He could hire someone.”
    “It’s not Seng’s style.”
    “What isn’t?”
    “Sneaking around. He’s the frontal-attack sort,” Lianne said, her mouth thin.
    “Has he attacked you?” Kyle asked sharply.
    “Not exactly. But he’s made it real clear that I should be delighted to warm his sheets for a night or two.”
    “What happened when you refused?”
    “He barely noticed. All in all, Seng makes a sumo wrestler look like a mountain of subtlety.”
    When Kyle gave a muffled sound of laughter, Lianne looked up from the calligraphy and smiled slightly.
    “No telephone calls, no notes, no presents, no threats?” he persisted.
    “Nothing. Just a prickle at the back of my neck and a shadow sliding away at the corner of my vision.”
    “You should have gone for the great-white-hunter-type escort, not the stuffed elephant.”
    “You don’t have to—” she began.
    “Let’s look at some more jade,” Kyle cut in. “Maybeyour mysterious admirer will get careless, trip over my big feet, and break his neck.”
    Startled, Lianne glanced at Kyle. He was smiling, but his eyes weren’t. They were narrowed, measuring the nearby crowd. If she hadn’t met Kyle at her father’s urging, she might have been very wary of him, wondering if she had just stumbled out of the frying pan into the firing line.
    “How about another look at that Neolithic blade?” Kyle suggested.
    Lianne stretched her legs and kept pace with him. She was eager to see the piece again. She kept telling herself that it couldn’t be from the Tang family vault. She must have been wrong the first time.
    Must have, but couldn’t be.
    Doubt and certainty haunted her equally. Her visual memory had never played that kind of trick on her. Her uncanny accuracy was a lot of the reason she had gained a valuable reputation as an expert in all varieties and ages of jade.
    The people milling around the SunCo display were concentrated on the intricate, decorative Han and Six Dynasties pieces, leaving the Neolithic items less well attended. Still hoping that she had been wrong the first time, Lianne inspected the ancient blade.
    It took less than a minute for her to know that she hadn’t been wrong. The picture in her mind and the blade in the case matched too exactly to be anything but one and