Stone, Katherine (28 page)

The prospect of being in an audience of thousands tomorrow night,
near her mother but far away, was reason enough to make her this restless. Yet
it felt like there was something else, something even more monumental....

Across Victoria Harbour, Garrett's entire being, too, was on
alert. He was at the Peninsula Hotel—again, at long last. He'd just arrived,
many hours late. The storm brewing in the South China Sea wasn't the only
violent weather system in the Pacific. Torrential rains plagued San Francisco,
closing runways and causing delays. For six hours it appeared his Hong Kong
flight would be canceled.

But now he was here, and in twelve hours he'd see Juliana. Garrett
knew he wouldn't sleep. He sensed what his daughter did—that something
monumental was about to happen.

The Captain's Bar

Mandarin Oriental Hotel

Friday, December 10, 1993

H
er hands trembled. Her heart trembled. And trembling thoughts
filled her mind.

Her love for Garrett—and his for her—was the greatest truth of her
life. It illuminated her soul, sustaining her all these years.

But what if the light was about to be extinguished? What if she
learned that Garrett had long since viewed their "love" as merely a
crazy infatuation? A sailor's pleasurable—yet ultimately inconsequential—escape
from the horrors of war?

Juliana didn't want to know. But she was powerless to prevent her
mind from envisioning his amusement as he recalled the desperation of their
passion—and their foolish words of love.

Garrett didn't need to love her anymore. Just, please, don't let
him shatter her memory of what their love had been.

And if his memory was like hers? Even that filled Juliana with
fear. His recollection would be of an eighteen-year-old girl, not a
forty-six-year-old woman.

Juliana looked at that woman now. She had to. The short journey
from Pearl Moon to the Mandarin had been wind-tossed, as she'd known it would
be. She'd arrived early to repair the damage to her hair. Now, as she tucked
errant strands of black—and silver—into the knot at her nape, she saw the tiny
lines around her eyes... and what had become of her hands.

Her once-delicate fingers, slightly swollen from years spent
creating enchantments of sequins and beads, appeared grotesque to her, ugly and
gnarled—and so unlike the hands Garrett had known. What dancing hands they'd
been. Shy yet bold, they'd caressed him with grace and joy. In touching him,
loving him, her gifted hands had created their greatest enchantment of all.

I can't see him.
I can't!

But you have to. For your daughter. Go now. It's still early. You
can convince the maître d' to seat you, and you can study the menu in advance,
and long before Garrett arrives you can have replaced your reading glasses in
your purse, and for this lunch, during which it will be impossible to eat
anyway, you'll toy with your food with your left hand, because of the two
hands, the left is the least ugly, the least gnarled, the least
old.

***

Garrett's heart trembled, too. With exhilaration—and fear. For
months, he'd allowed his mind to wander to the glorious fantasy that he'd be
returning to
their
Hong Kong.

Except for the Peninsula Hotel and the Star ferries, the Hong Kong
of twenty-eight years ago had ceased to exist. It had seemed bustling at the
time, and very modern, but compared to the new Hong Kong, the old one had been
charmingly archaic.

As the
Twinkling Star
ferried him across the harbor, he'd stared
at skyscrapers shining like gigantic ingots in the steel-gray sky. And Victoria
Peak, he noted, now wore a crown.

Where were the innocent girl and the jaded pilot—who, because of
her, had discovered love?

Like this new Hong Kong, they'd grown up... and flourished. How
appropriate that the reunion of the two successful business owners would be at
a place renowned for billion-dollar deals negotiated over lunch.

As Garrett neared the hotel, a great sadness washed over him. He
hadn't wanted Juliana and her pilot to die. When he thought about her, he was
young. And the world shimmered with possibilities.

Was this a terrible mistake? Might it have been better to live
forever with the fantasy of what might have been? He'd convinced himself that
the astonishing coincidences of the past few months had been orchestrated by
the fates. He and Juliana had paid their dues at last.

But destiny had never been kind to the love of Garrett and
Juliana. What if this was the cruelest twist of all?

***

She was in the restaurant, seated on a brocade sofa and separated
from the other diners by partitions of etched glass. She wasn't alone. An
elegant woman, clad in Pearl Moon, had stopped to say hello—permitting Garrett
to gaze at Juliana before she realized he was there.

Her hair was swirled into a chignon, not floating free, and, like
his, it was laced with silver. Fine lines fanned from the corners of her eyes,
as they did from his, and when she gestured as she spoke, Garrett saw the
slender fingers which had loved him with such delicacy were still delicate, but
slightly swollen.

But she was Juliana, the woman he loved,

And now she was looking at him, and although it seemed she was
trying to fight her joy, a glorious light shined in her eyes.

Garrett remembered that light.

He'd never forgotten it.

"Juliana."

"Hello, Garrett."
My love, my love!
He was even
more handsome, and he was smiling as if nothing had changed— as if she'd never
sold her soul or lost the precious gift of love he'd entrusted to her care.

Garrett prayed her sudden frown was because she'd remembered they
weren't alone. But she was tense after the other woman left, then someone else
stopped by, and when Juliana introduced Garrett, his name was recognized—he
owned Whitaker Enterprises, after all—and the girl and her pilot were gone...
dead—
no.

"Are you hungry, Juliana?" he asked when, for the moment,
they were alone.

She'd anticipated a thousand different questions from Garrett, but
never this one. With a startled laugh, she confessed, "Not at all."

"Then let's go."

"Go?"

"Please, Juliana. Please come with me."

***

The winds on Garden Road blew in cold gusts. But the chill didn't
deter Garrett. Indeed, it assured him of the privacy he wanted when they
reached their destination.

The Peak Tram was almost empty, and the few hardy tourists at the
summit remained inside Peak Tower's sheltering warmth. The Hong Kong Trail
belonged to Garrett and Juliana alone.

Over the past twenty-eight years, Juliana had spent endless hours
standing in the precise spot where Garrett had found her. She knew exactly
where she'd been when her life changed forever. But as they neared the place,
it was Garrett who slowed first, remembering it after all these years.

His eyes glittered with wonder, as on that April night, and when
her eyes met his, he said, as he'd said then, "I'm Garrett."

And, as then, she replied, "I'm Juliana."

Suddenly it was that night, and she felt again, knew again, that
every event of her eighteen years, however tragic, had the single purpose of
bringing her to this place, at this moonlit moment, to him.

Even the winter air felt balmy, April-warm. Garrett
remembered,
as she'd prayed he would. He remembered their love.

A gust lashed her face, its cold fingers carrying the stern
reminder that it was December, not April, and now, not then. There was no
silver moon, only the silver of her hair... and all the secrets he didn't know.

Juliana needed to tell him those secrets. And when she did? Even
the memory of that April might not survive.

"Oh, Garrett. There's so much you don't know."

"Tell me, Juliana. Tell me everything."

He stepped closer, and in another instant his arms might have been
around her, cloaking her against the bitter wind while she told him the bitter
truths.

How she wanted his arms around her. How she needed his touch.

But she'd die when he withdrew his arms—as he might once he knew.

Juliana turned, facing the wind as she uttered words that could
forever freeze the warmest memories. She began with the first lie she'd told
him. She wasn't an heiress whose parents had been lost in a yachting accident.
She was an impoverished child of the sea, then its orphan. Her relationship to
Vivian was a bond of affection, not of blood.

She told him about Vivian's will. And Miles Burton—to whom she'd
sold her body. And her soul.

The wind carried her words behind her, to Garrett. When she
stopped speaking, she heard only the wind. It was crying, howling, its anguish
so loud it had hidden his footfalls as, in disgust, he'd walked away.

She wanted to turn, to see him one last time, but there was
another sound, his voice, close by. It was both warm and cold, as if caught
between the April night of love and this wintry afternoon of secrets.

"Did you try to reach me, Juliana? Did you phone only to have
my parents refuse to let you speak to me?"

"No, Garrett, I didn't try. You know how dangerous I believed
our love was."

"But...
Juliana."

She heard only coldness now, as fierce and icy as the wind.
"I'm sorry! I know what I did... what it makes me."

"What it makes you?"

"I sold my body. That makes me a prost—"

"That makes you a mother.
Juliana? Look at me.
Please."

She obeyed his plea, turning to him in hope and meeting eyes
gentle with sadness. "Garrett?"

"You saved our baby's life. What you did, you did for our
daughter.
I'm
the one who's sorry. I hate that you had to endure...
that."

"He wasn't cruel, Garrett, and after nine months he returned
to England and never came back." Oh, if only that was all she needed to
confess. If only she could let him touch her, as he wanted to. "There's
more, things you need to know about Maylene—her childhood. I thought she was
happy. But she was merely a gifted actress, hiding her pain so well that until
she was thirteen I didn't even know it was there."

"What pain, Juliana?"

"She has your green eyes, and her skin is snowy white. She's
very beautiful, but her classmates taunted her for being only half Chinese. I
should have known the prejudice against Eurasians! During my own childhood in
Aberdeen Harbour, I'd been taught to hate all
gweilos.
I'd even been
told that Chinese foolish enough to mingle their blood with foreign blood were
viewed with disdain. But I'd forgotten those lessons of hatred. I'd fallen in
love with you, and Maylene was our daughter, and mine was a world of love, not
intolerance."

"The way the world should be," Garrett assured her even
as he ached for his daughter. "Tell me what happened when Maylene was
thirteen."

Juliana drew a breath, inhaled the chill. "There was an
article about you in
Fortune
magazine. I'd told her you were British,
and had died before she was born, and would have loved her with all your heart.
I also told her your name. It made you more real to her, and she needed you to
be real, and it seemed so unlikely, impossible really, that a little girl in
Hong Kong—"

"What are you telling me, Juliana? That Maylene knows I'm
alive? That she's known since she was thirteen and has hated me ever
since?"

"She's hated both of us. I told her the truth about us—our
love, my fears—but she didn't believe we'd really loved each other. She was too
young, too hurt, to understand."

"I don't understand either, Juliana." Garrett's voice
was as cold as the wind—and as filled with the promise of a violent storm.
"You
should
have let me know. I would've come to Hong Kong. I
needed to be told she knew I was alive."

"I was afraid to tell you!"

"Because of retribution from an angry dragon?"

"Yes."
Juliana was face-to-face
with an enraged dragon now, and she feared his retribution most of all. There
was only one way Garrett could harm her, by revoking the memories of their
love. That was precisely what was happening. She felt the impending darkness as
the flame within began to flicker. The tiny blaze was struggling, a valiant
effort but a futile one, its strength pathetic against the storm in his eyes.
Soon it would die, and she would disappear. She'd watch it happen, bearing witness
to her own death as Tranquil Sea had watched her loved ones perish in the sea.
"I was afraid, Garrett. I was
afraid."

He didn't notice her fear. He was lost in his own kaleidoscope of
feelings.

"If Maylene knows I'm her father, she must know Allison is her
sister."

"Yes. But she'd never tell Allison. Maylene isn't cruel—
except to herself."

Garrett had come to Hong Kong with wishes and dreams. He'd meet
Maylene, of course, the gifted architect who was Allison's friend. That itself
was a dream come true. But he'd wished for more, that the truth could be
revealed gently. Joyfully.

Maylene already knew the truth. And, for fifteen years, it had
caused her great sadness.

"I need to see her, Juliana. I need to see the daughter who
believes I never loved her."

"You can tell her I'm to blame, Garrett. I should've let you
know. It's all my fault."

Garrett heard Juliana's anguish—at last. And, as he heard echoes
of his own harshness, he narrowed the gap between them—only to have her recoil.