Free Dragon's Eden by Tara Janzen Page B

her hand through the air in front of her, the gesture
encompassing all the lush botanical wonders of her home, a place
where the plant kingdom had declared a decisive victory.
    Houseplants running amok encroached on the
courtyard and cradled the trees. Lianas wound through branches and
down trunks, snaked their way through shrubs and along the ground,
tying all the shades and shapes of green into one photosynthesizing
web of life.
    “Every plant manufactures compounds to
ensure its survival by any and all means available,” she continued.
“Chemicals to attract, repel, sometimes to kill, sometimes to heal.
Many of the species I cultivate are rich in alkaloids or essential
oils, the source of a lot of medicines.”
    She was so lovely, so softly beautiful, that
just looking at her nearly broke his heart. “When I was a kid in
Hong Kong, our doctor used a lot of herbal treatments, sometimes
burning them over us, sometimes pouring them down our throats.”
    “Hong Kong?” she asked, slanting him a
questioning look. “Shulan told me you were American.”
    The soft slap of their sandals added an even
rhythm to the intermittent songs of the flycatchers flitting
through the trees. All the sounds of her home were gentle, natural
ones. There were no engines, other than the one that ran the
generator, and since he’d been there, she’d only used it once, the
night she’d turned on the floodlights. There were no cars, no
electric hums, no music beyond the lilting tone of her voice.
    “Cooper took me back to Asia to live with
our aunt when I was still pretty young. Living with his father in
San Francisco was hell after our mother died. The old man seemed to
hate me more every day of my life.”
    “Because you were another man’s son?” Sugar
knew she was trespassing as badly as he had earlier, but like him,
she was interested, very interested.
    “That was a big part of it, but what really
infuriated him was that he couldn’t hide the fact that I was some
Chinaman’s bastard.”
    “Sun Yi’s?”
    To her surprise, he laughed. “Shulan sure
wants to believe it.”
    “But you don’t?” She kept her eyes on the
path and saw a blue-and-green lizard, a jungle runner, skitter
across it.
    “Even if I did, it wouldn’t change what I am
or who I am.” He lifted his hand and held aside a large fern leaf
for her. “Cooper raised me. If I’m anyone’s son, I’m his.”
    “Is he a lot older than you?”
    “Ten years. Not much when you think about a
sixteen-year-old kid hauling a six-year-old child halfway around
the world on his own, without the luxury of two one-way plane
tickets.”
    “You went by ship?” She cast him a
disbelieving glance.
    “Freighters,” he said, reaching into his
pocket and pulling out a strip of red cloth that she recognized as
the ribbed cuff of an old sweatshirt of hers. More distracting than
the red cloth, though, was what putting his hand in his pocket had
done to the waistline of the pants. Namely, it had lowered them a
good two inches below his tan line, exposing skin a bare shade
paler than his chest. She could see the top of one hipbone, which
was what she would have sworn was the only thing holding up the
pants in the first place. Worse, she could sec where the dark hair
arrowing down from his navel began to spread across his lower
abdomen. Heat infused her senses; he looked so undone.
    “Cooper worked for our room and board,” he
continued, reaching up behind his neck and gathering his hair in
one hand. He slipped the red cuff over the single thick cable he’d
made and pulled the entire length of his hair through. He repeated
the action twice more, until he’d secured everything in a
ponytail—and all the while she watched the fluid, rolling action of
his muscles and traced the tracks of his veins up the inside of his
arm. Another patch of silky dark hair awaited her there, nestled
into a curve of tawny skin.
    He was as alluring as any creature she’d
ever seen, colorful like a