Stone, Katherine (5 page)

Trade Winds Hotel

Hong Kong

Sunday, June 6, 1993

"How does it feel to be back in Hong Kong?"

Maylene Kwan wasn't surprised by the question or that James had
waited until now to ask it. Their dinner was over and the vintage champagne,
more golden bubbles with every gourmet course, had worked its magic on her
pain—and its menace on her defenses.

James wanted a truthful answer, and it would take her fatigued and
floating mind several moments to fashion one There wasn't any rush. No one was
waiting for their candlelit table with its spectacular view. They were dining
in James's penthouse, on the hotel's fifty-third floor. Their meal had come
from DuMaurier's, the Trade Winds French restaurant and one of Hong Kong's
finest.

As Maylene pondered James's question, her gaze traveled to the
view outside. Victoria Harbour was a reflecting pool on this night, twinkling
with the galaxy of lights that haloed its shores. The sight was breathtaking.
But like everything in Hong Kong, the emotions it evoked were bittersweet.

Maylene had been away for nine years, and during the twenty hours
since her return, she'd tried to remain focused on the reason she was here. But
the past was all around her. The view from her Drake Towers office was of Victoria
Peak, and from her apartment on the Trade Winds forty-eighth floor, she could
watch the Star ferries crossing the harbor to Kowloon. Her perch was so high,
her view so commanding, she could see the Peninsula Hotel—where she'd been
conceived.

Earlier today, when Maylene had seen again the hotel's famous
blue-green silhouette, she'd been overwhelmed by rushes of anger—and anguish.
She'd subdued her emotions
with the stern reminder that she'd be
viewing the Peninsula often and at a close enough range to see its guardian
lions.
Just one block east on Salisbury Road lay the future home of
the Jade Palace—the reason she'd returned to Hong Kong.

An architect, Maylene had joined Titchfield & Sterling's
London office only weeks before the letter from James Drake arrived. Titchfield
& Sterling wasn't the only architectural firm
to receive the
solicitation. The call for sketches from one of the world's premier developers
had been sent to all the top firms.

The thirty-eight-year-old real estate mogul would be deluged with
replies. Designing for Drake Enterprises was an architect's dream. True, James
expected excellence, but his commitment to quality assured that every Drake
building was a masterpiece.

Titchfield & Sterling's senior partners strongly encouraged
any of their architects with even a passing knowledge of Hong Kong to submit
ideas. The more submitted, the greater the likelihood of coming up with
something James might like.

For Maylene, sketching a building that symbolize Hong Kong was
simply a matter of putting on paper an image that had danced in her mind for
years. It wouldn't be what James wanted, though. Far from a portrait of
harmony, it reflected her own experience in Hong Kong—the agony of being split
in two, yet yearning to be whole. Of loving half of oneself,
trying
to,
while loathing the other, then reversing the process. Of roots divided at their
delicate tips, uncertain where to find a home, yet desperate to know where they
belonged.

That was Maylene's vision of Hong Kong—and of the Jade Palace. She
knew their discord, but was oblivious to their grace. She couldn't see in her
sketches her own attempts at peaceful reconciliation between the two disparate
parts. As a result, when the man who'd asked for harmony, not conflict,
requested she fly to Hong Kong to discuss further details with him, Maylene
flatly refused. James Drake's interest in her design was idle curiosity at
best, she decided, and if he was as besotted with Hong Kong as his solicitation
letter implied, he might be planning to harangue her for her heresy.

Besides, Maylene didn't believe her design for the Jade Palace
could actually be built. At first glance, the hotel would look Chinese. Then,
before one's eyes, its British legacies would appear. Eventually the two
architectural styles would blend into one. The visual illusion was challenging
to sketch and probably impossible to translate into glass and steel.

But James's interest in her design wasn't idle curiosity. After
many long-distance conversations, he told her he was coming to London to meet
with her. It wasn't until he was en route from Kai Tak to Heathrow that Maylene
learned from another member of her firm that the journey to England was as
emotionally difficult for James as a casual trip to Hong Kong would have been
for her.

Four years earlier, his pregnant wife had died in a gas explosion
at their country home in Wales. After recovering from the wounds he himself had
incurred, James moved to Hong Kong, escaped there, and hadn't returned to
London until he was forced to by the architect who stubbornly refused to travel
to Hong Kong and whose vision of the Jade Palace was, astonishingly, very close
to his own.

In London, during dinner at Claridge's, James told Maylene he was
going to build
her
Jade Palace. And though it was abundantly clear that
she was reluctant to return, he needed her on-site, in Hong Kong, during what
was bound to be the exceedingly complicated construction of her design.

Now she was here, and James was asking her how it felt to be back,
and although she'd already lied to him—successfully, she believed—Maylene knew
it was a difficult endeavor.

Looking away from the reflected glitter of Victoria Harbour, she
answered truthfully, "Pleasure and pain."

James greeted her candid confession with a faint smile. She was
like the hotel she'd designed, one moment Asian, the next British, the next a
rare and intoxicating blend of both. Her father was British, she'd told him, an
aristocrat who'd died before her birth. Her Chinese mother, from whom she'd
been estranged for years, lived in Hong Kong. He'd concluded there was truth in
what she'd told him, but lies, as well.

James had no idea why Maylene felt it necessary to lie to him, but
he was in no position to question her. He'd lied to her about the most
important truth of his life.

"Pleasure and pain," he echoed. "Would you care to
elaborate?"

No, Maylene thought as she left his inquisitive gaze. Her own fell
to her empty champagne flute, then to his, nearly full and draped casually by
his hand.

It was an elegant hand. And, Maylene knew, a lethal one. James's
Hong Kong childhood had instilled in him an interest in the martial arts. He
was a black belt, quite capable of committing swift, silent murder with his
bare hands. He'd never perform such a deadly act, of course. Above all, he was
a master of his emotions.

The lethal hand draped with controlled power over the delicate
crystal was like the man himself, grace cloaking rage. Maylene understood his
rage and knew its futility. His wife's death had been a freak accident No one
was to blame. Nonetheless, his fury hungered for revenge. And since Gweneth
Drake's executioner had no human face, James tore himself apart instead.

"I don't think I'll elaborate tonight, James," she
answered finally. "It's a very long story."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"But I am." Maylene smiled as she rose to her feet.
"You expect me to begin work bright and early tomorrow morning, don't
you?"

"You know I do." James smiled in reply, relenting
easily, respecting her wishes to drop the topic of her bittersweet memories of
Hong Kong. Standing, too, he said, "Oh, I forgot to tell you. I found a
photographer."

"The one I suggested in London?"

"No, someone else. It was sheer luck. When I was in San
Francisco last month, I came across a book she'd done. There's a copy in the
living room. You can take it with you— something to look at if jet lag keeps
you awake. I hope you'll agree her work is remarkable."

"I'm sure I will."

As they walked toward the living room, Maylene was swept with
hope.

Maybe I can do this. Maybe sometime in the next seven months I'll
confront my ghosts—and find the courage to see my mother. And if I need help,
strength?
Perhaps I can talk to James, who knows about rage and whom I already trust
more than I've ever trusted any man.

Maylene did trust James. On that night in London, after telling
him yes, she'd come to Hong Kong, they'd talked quietly, honestly, for hours.
They'd even talked, quietly and honestly, about love. When Maylene shared her
belief that she'd never fall in love, James replied that he'd felt the same
way. Then he met Gweneth, and it happened, deeply and forever. It wouldn't
happen again, he added, nor did he want it to.

As Maylene listened to James speak of his love for Gweneth, she
realized that this man, who'd known physical intimacy with a woman he loved,
wouldn't have the slightest interest in casual liaisons of pleasure. Most
beautiful women would have greeted the realization that James wasn't going to
seduce them with petulant disbelief.

Not Maylene. She'd known since childhood that she'd never be more
than a trophy to a man, a prize to be claimed, not loved. It wasn't until
womanhood that she learned what a disappointing trophy she was.

No man had ever wanted her for more than a night—and no man ever
would. Her fascinating face and enticing body made heated promises. But as her
lovers discovered, the provocative package was merely a facade. Inside she was
ice.

James would never learn that disappointing truth. For that, she
felt grateful, and strangely safe, and trusted him all the more.

When they reached the living room, he handed her
Lone Star
Serenade.
It took Maylene a moment to comprehend what she was holding, and
a moment more to recover from the blow. She did recover, accustomed as she was
to emotional assaults that came from nowhere. She'd spent her life being stared
at by strangers intrigued—at first—by her exotic beauty, then disdainful of it.
She'd become a talented actress, smiling through her pain.

Maylene couldn't smile now, not yet, nor could she look at the man
who'd perhaps betrayed her, after all. She stared at the photographer's name
until—suddenly powerless to prevent the actions of her own hands—she turned the
book over to look at the photographer herself.

Maylene had seen a photograph of her father, on the day she
discovered all the lies, but she'd never seen her sister... until now.