Stone, Katherine (11 page)

Maylene didn't reach for the phone. She walked to a window and
thought about what her father's voice sounded like, full of love. She thought
about his heart, too. Did any part of it, even the tiniest corner, ever wonder
about the daughter he'd left behind? And did any part ever
care?

Because she had a visitor, Allison kept her phone conversation
brief. It ended with a promise that she'd call home often and a message of love
for her grandparents. As soon as the call ended, Maylene summoned every ounce
of actress she possessed.

Smiling, she said, "I think I'd better go. That blueprint
problem is beckoning to me again. I need to go deal with it."

"Of course."

Allison walked her to the door, and soon she'd be on her
way—except that there, in the doorway, stood Sam.

He'd come to offer his welcome to Allison, and did so. Then he
said, very softly, "Hello, Maylene."

"Hello, Sam." Maylene's gaze had to fall away. Sam saw
too clearly the shadows no one was supposed to see. Speaking to the tall, lean
cowboy blocking her escape, she said, "I was just leaving."

Sam didn't budge. "I'll walk you home, Maylene. I just wanted
to say hello to Allison."

"Hello, Sam." Allison smiled. "Goodbye, Sam."

Maylene's apartment was just down the hall. From where she was
standing, she should easily have seen her apartment door. But it was hidden
behind Sam.

She would have to move around him. Beginning
now.
Except...
"Oh, Allison, I forgot to give you directions to Drake Towers."

"Do I really need them, Maylene? According to my maps, I go
out the front door, turn left and walk along Chater Road for six blocks."

"That's really all there is to it," Sam said. "What
time are you meeting with James?"

"At ten."

Sam frowned. "Maylene and I are meeting with Tyler at the
construction site at nine."

"Meaning you won't be able to escort me?" Allison
teased. "Sam, no matter what my father may have told you, I'm really quite
capable of walking six blocks,
especially
in a straight line!"

"Really?"

"Yes!" The teasing vanished. "You're in Hong Kong
to build a hotel, Sam, not to be either a bodyguard or a babysitter.
Please."

"Okay. But if you need anything, Allison, I'm here."

"Invite me in, Maylene."

Sam's voice was soft, as if he actually cared for her, and she was
hurting, and so needy. What if Sam really
did
care? What if she
could
confess her secrets to him?

Get over it! an inner voice scoffed. Sam Coulter couldn't care
less about your wounded heart. His interest is a little more superficial than
that. He likes your body. He hasn't yet discovered there's ice beneath the
sultriness. But invite him in anyway, pathetic Number One Daughter. Get him to
tell you about Garrett Whitaker. Maybe you'll learn something terrible about
the father who abandoned you.

"Jade?"

"Please come in."

Maylene offered him alcohol.

Sam wanted only Perrier—and answers. "How are you?"

"Fine," she Med.

"I think something's bothering you."

Maylene answered with a noncommittal shrug, and Sam decided not to
push. He could linger over his Perrier forever if need be.

Maylene broke the silence almost immediately, but not with a
confession. She was playing the role of hostess making polite conversation with
her guest.

"What was it Allison's father told you about her?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"She said, 'No matter what my father told you about me.' I
wondered what that meant."

"Only that she hasn't done much traveling on her own. For the
record, he didn't ask me to be either a bodyguard or a babysitter. Why?"

"No reason." Maylene took a slow sip of her own Perrier.
"Do you know him very well?"

"Who? Garrett Whitaker? Not really. Only that he risked his
life to save an eighteen-year-old kid he didn't even know."

"You?"

"Me."

Maylene wasn't going to learn anything damning about her father.
But she wanted to hear the story. The eighteen-year-old who'd been saved was
Sam. "What happened?"

"I was working on one of Whitaker Oil's offshore rigs in the
Gulf of Mexico. A storm hit and we capsized. The Coast Guard helicopters showed
up fairly quickly and picked up most of the crew. The combination of nightfall,
gale force winds and heavy seas meant they had to abandon the rescue effort
before it was complete. No one said they weren't coming back, but it was an
easy guess." Sam shrugged, as he'd shrugged then, his face grave as he
remembered. He was the youngest on the rig, but it was to him the others
turned. Someone will come, he lied, his voice an island of calm in the sea of
fear. No one knew his calm was merely indifference to his own death—and theirs.
"When I heard the chopper, I thought I was imagining things. But there it
was, a Whitaker Oil helicopter coming to rescue us."

"You were all rescued?"

"Eventually. It took two trips. One of us had to stay
behind."

Sam paused, wondering if Maylene would assume he'd remained on the
sinking rig, or if he, like the others, had scrambled for the rope harnesses
lowered from above. For a moment, her guarded eyes gave him access to her
heart. She knew he'd let the others go first. But she didn't know why. She was
inventing a nobility that wasn't there.

"No one was waiting for me," he explained. "The
others had parents, girlfriends, children, wives. It didn't matter whether I
got off that rig—at least that's what I thought. Before they left, someone
shouted to me that Mr. Whitaker would be back. Until then, I hadn't known he
was the one who'd come to get us."

"But you knew him."

"No, I only knew of him. I'd never met him, and he knew
nothing about me."

"Except that you were a hero."

"No, Jade. I was just somebody who didn't care."

Like you? he wondered. Is there something so destructive within
you that in the same situation you wouldn't care, either—and might view your
death with a sense of relief?

"Did you believe he was going to come back for you?"
The
way I believed, all those years, even though my mother told me he never would?

"I don't remember thinking about it. It seemed impossible
that he could, even if he wanted to."

"Were you frightened?"

"No." Sam hesitated, debating whether to tell her about
the times in his life he
had
been frightened. When he was three,
listening to his parents' screaming voices slurred by alcohol. He hadn't
understood his mother's words—"You
raped
me!"—but he knew his
parents' hatred for each other... and that he was the reason for it. Or when he
was four, and his mother drove away, leaving him to face his father's brutality
alone. Or when he learned he was a child of violence—rape— not love. Or when,
as a teenager, he became strong enough to fight back and his father stopped
trying to kill him—and he realized that was something he'd have to do himself.

Sam was quite capable of self-destruction. His father's savage
blood flowed,
seethed,
in his veins. But unlike his father, Sam never
permitted the violence to spill over onto anyone else. He wasn't so kind to
himself in those days; he drank, smoked, used drugs, and when his grades
threatened to be good, he disappeared from school for weeks on end.

Despite the free rein he'd given the destructive forces inside
him, Sam survived to age eighteen. His life changed dramatically then, but the
demons, though tightly controlled, were far from dead. He smoked a lot—an
acknowledgment that outward appearances of success notwithstanding, he knew it
was his destiny to destroy himself.

Sam would tell Maylene those truths. Someday. But not before she
knew, without his having to tell her, that his violence would never touch her.
She'd be safe with him—always.

"What did you do while you waited for Garrett Whitaker to
return?" Maylene asked.
Did you dream—as I did while I waited for
him—of finally being where you truly belonged?

"There was a case of beer and a carton of cigarettes. I
figured I had just enough time to finish both before the rig sank." His
voice was as desolate as the man he'd been on that stormy night. It softened
when he spoke again. "But Garrett came back, even though he shouldn't
have. He's the hero, Maylene. He should never have risked his life to save
mine."

"But he did. Why?"

"It was his oil rig, and I was one of his crew. He felt a
responsibility to me."

To a stranger... but not to his own daughter.
"That
night changed your life, didn't it?
He
changed it?"

"Yes. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain by
rescuing me. I decided the least I could do was try to make mine a life worth
saving."

"Did he help you?"

"You mean money for college? He offered. I didn't accept.
He'd already helped me in the most important way."

"But the two of you remained close over the years."

"Not really. We've run into each other from time to time. Our
politics are the same. So are our favorite charities."

"You really believe he's a hero."

"Yes. Don't you?"

For you, yes, and for the golden daughter he loves, but...

As she'd listened to his story, she seemed fragile to him again,
and very vulnerable.

"Tell me about
your
heroes, Jade. And about the most
life-changing moment of your life."

My parents were my heroes, Maylene thought. Until I learned
he
wasn't
dead and
she'd
deceived me all those years. And the most life-changing
moment? The day I discovered the lies.

"Maylene?" Sam asked gently, fighting frustration as he
watched her eyes ice over. He'd opened his veins for her, not a crimson rush
but far more than he'd ever shared before. And in return? She was withdrawing
from him, shutting him out.

"I'd have to think about it," she answered dismissively.
"I'm not sure there've been any heroes or, for that matter, any
life-changing moments."

"Okay, Jade. You think about it."
And I'll think
about the fact that caring about you may be the most self-destructive thing
I've done in my entire self-destructive life.

"I'
m really quite capable of walking six blocks! Allison had teased.

Now, as she began that six-block walk, her entire being tingled
with energy. She'd put every ounce of it into taking the best photographs she
could—for James, perhaps to make him smile.

Chater Road's sidewalk was a brisk river of purposeful humanity.
The road itself, however, was a sluggish flow of cars, taxis, limos, trolleys.
Sluggish, and oddly silent. There was the heavy breathing of engines and the
occasional jingle of a trolley bell. But the blare of horns was absent. Four
hundred and eighteen cars per mile made Hong Kong's roadways the most congested
on earth. Yet there was
civility
to this traffic. Taxi drivers wore
white gloves, as if on their way to high tea, and everyone was exceedingly
polite.

Allison flowed with the river of humanity through a canyon of
skyscrapers. Tinted windows sparkled pink, indigo, silver and gold, and the
towers themselves shimmered in the heat. She'd capture this on film. But not in
the usual way. Each would be photographed as a reflection off another, gold
mirrored by silver, pink mirrored by indigo, gold mirrored by gold.

As she neared Murray Road, Allison focused on Drake Towers. It
shone ebony and silver beneath the summer sun, its lines elegant, stylish,
austere.

Like the man who owned it. He was walking toward her... to meet
her. His suit was as black as his hair, but even from this distance and despite
the sweltering day, he looked as cool as midnight.

Of all Hong Kong portraits, his would be the most magnificent.

James spotted her then, and he smiled his welcome. Murray Road lay
between them, and would until the pedestrian light turned green.

As Allison waited at the curb's edge, she thought more about a
portrait of him. Could she ever truly capture his passion, his pain— Her
thoughts took an unsettling turn. James's anguish was more than sadness over
the death of his wife. There was something else—a
hunger
of some kind.

Allison dismissed the thought as the pedestrian sign signaled walk.

Every fluttering cell in her body wanted to close the gap between
them as quickly as possible. But the woman who'd spent her life trying to
remain alive for those she loved paused to look for oncoming traffic before
venturing off the curb.

Seeing none, she took a buoyant step toward James—only to see on
his face what no one except a few firefighters in Wales had ever seen.
Fear.

"Allison! Watch out!"

A horn blared, a rare strident sound created as the driver of the
Daimler pressed his white-gloved hand against the steering wheel. As Allison
stepped back, the stately hulk of the heather-green limousine rolled past only
inches away.

She recognized immediately her almost-fatal mistake. This was
British Hong Kong. Here, as in England, one drove on the left-hand side of the
street. When you wanted to check whether to cross the street, you looked right,
not left, for oncoming traffic.

It was a foolish mistake. And had the Daimler been traveling
faster, it might have been a tragic one. As it was, she was fine, no harm done,
except to her pride—and the silly hope of appearing even a little worldly to
James.

He was beside her now, fear replaced by concern. "Are you all
right?"

"I'm fine! I feel like an idiot"

"Don't. It's a natural mistake."

"Well... thank you."

Once they'd safely crossed the street, and as if she'd managed the
six-block walk without incident, James said, "Good morning, Allison."

"Good morning, James."

"Did you sleep well?"

Allison looked up at eyes shadowed by their own lack of sleep.
What made him so sleepless? "Yes, thank you. Unbelievably well."

***

James's penthouse office provided a spectacular view of the world
below. Most of the world
was
below. Only the Bank of China and Central
Plaza stretched higher into the sky.

"I'd hoped to spend this morning showing you Hong Kong,"
he said. "But I'm afraid I have to leave for Sydney within the hour."

"From what I've read, there are excellent tours. I'd planned
to spend the next few days taking some of those anyway, to get an overview
before wandering around on my own."

"My administrative assistant, Mrs. Leong, will arrange the
tours for you, and when you're ready to begin your wandering, a car and driver
will be available for your use at all times."

"I won't need the car and driver, James. I'll get to know
Hong Kong much better if I use public transportation. Besides, unless I'm going
to the New Territories or across the island, I imagine most of my travels will
be by ferry or on foot."

James hesitated before answering, and there wasn't a trace of
condescension when he did, not the slightest indication that he thought he was
conversing with a naive or foolish girl.

"Please be careful, Allison."

As she met his eyes, Allison saw something that matched the
voice—a deeper gentleness...something that to her fluttering heart looked like
desire.
It lasted only seconds, and it had been an illusion, surely, a mirage.

"I will be," she promised.

"Good." His voice was a little harsh, a little parched.

"How long will you be in Australia?"

"Until Saturday afternoon. There's a party that night, a
celebration of the Jade Palace, to which you're invited."

"How nice. Where will it be held?"

"Let me show you." James led the way from the view
overlooking Victoria Harbour to the floor-to-ceiling windows on the opposite
side. Gesturing to the building perched atop Victoria Peak, he said,
"There. Peak Castle."

"Is it a hotel?"

"No. It's a private residence, the home of Sir Geoffrey
Lloyd-Ashton and his wife, Eve. You'll like her, Allison. I'm glad you'll be
meeting her so soon."

Eve? she echoed silently as she heard the fondness in his voice.
Who was Eve? And what was her relationship to James?

***

Allison didn't ask James about Eve, nor did she ask either James
or the very helpful Mrs. Leong about appropriate attire for the evening at Peak
Castle. It would be a black-tie affair.

Allison already owned the gown she'd wear. It was part of her
trousseau, the couture collection she'd have needed had she become Mrs. Stephen
Gentry.

The gown was her favorite. Her insistence on buying it over the
objections of her grandmothers had been a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the
greater defiance to come. Iris Parish and Pauline Whitaker liked the gown, of
course. Ivory
peau de soie,
adorned with swirls of iridescent sequins,
it was perfect for the eve of a fairy-tale wedding. Every sequin contained its
own tiny rainbow. To Allison, wearing it felt like being wrapped in a rainbow
itself.

The Pearl Moon label had been unfamiliar to Allison and her
grandmothers.

"The designer's from Hong Kong," the Neiman Marcus
saleswoman explained. "I can't remember her name, but her designs are
so
romantic. Pearl Moon's been a sensation in Europe for several years, and in
the short time it's been available in the States, the sales have been
phenomenal."

Had Pearl Moon been from Dallas, New York or Timbuktu, Allison's
grandmothers would have embraced her choice without hesitation. But because it
was from Hong Kong, they balked. Allison insisted—and six weeks later, as she'd
packed for Hong Kong, she'd decided it would be ideal for the grand opening of
James's Jade Palace on New Year's Eve.

Now she'd be wearing it sooner. She'd need another gown for New
Year's Eve. She was in Hong Kong, the land of Pearl Moon. If the new gown
didn't already exist in a Pearl Moon boutique, perhaps she could have something
special made for that very special night.