Jade Island (Donovans Series #2)

by Elizabeth Lowell

Overview

Wild and restless, Kyle Donovan has freed himself from the constraints of his family's high-powered gem-trading empire to rove the world as a treasure hunter. Now the president of Donovan International has given Kyle an assignment with explosive ramifications. A casehe must take.

When one of China's legendary cultural treasures isstolen, Lianne Blakely, a mysterious and beautiful jade expert, is accused of the theft. Its Kyle's job to get to the bottom of what could be a potential disaster for the Donovans as well as Lianne.

But Kyle finds himself irresistibly drawn to the exotic beauty and captivated by her fierce claim of innocence. Soon they are in dangerous pursuit of the real thief, drawn deeper into the perils of spiraling power plays, and linked by a passion as powerful as the lore of the ancient culture and as enduring as the splendor of the treasured jade.

"The Donovan family saga continues in spectacular fashion with Jade Island. Clear your calendar, you will want time to savor every word."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780380789870
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	05/28/2001
Series:	Donovans Series , #2
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	4.18(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Lowell's exciting novels of romantic suspense include the New York Times bestsellers Dangerous Refuge, Beautiful Sacrifice, Death Echo, The Wrong Hostage, Amber Beach, Jade Island, Pearl Cove, and Midnight in Ruby Bayou. She has also written New York Times bestselling historical series set in the American West and medieval Britain. She has more than 80 titles published to date, with more than 24 million copies of her books in print. She lives in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with her husband, with whom she writes novels under a pseudonym. Her favorite activity is exploring the western United States to find the landscapes that speak to her soul and inspire her writing.

Las aclamadas novelas de suspenso de la autora Elizabeth Lowell incluyen varios bestsellers en la New York Times. Lowell ha vendido más de treinta millones de ejemplares. Vive con su esposo en Seattle, Washington y Sedona, Arizona, con quien escribe novelas de misterio bajo un seudónimo.

Date of Birth:

April 5, 1944

Place of Birth:

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Education:

B. A., University of California, 1966

Read an Excerpt

Jade Island

Chapter One

The pounding on Lianne Blakely′s door made her sit straight up in bed, her heart beating rapidly. For an instant she wondered if she was dreaming all the noise. She certainly was tired enough to be dreaming. She had worked late last night, arranging and rearranging the beautiful jade pieces in her apartment until she was certain she had the right design for the Jade Trader display at tonight′s charity auction.

The pounding increased in volume.

Lianne shook her head, pushed heavy waves of black hair out of her face, and stared at the bedside clock. Barely 6 A.M. She looked out the small window. Dawn had arrived in most of Seattle, but not in her old, west-facing apartment above Pioneer Square. Even if the morning had been clear-it wasn′t-no sunlight would reach her windows until late morning.

"Lianne, wake up! It′s Johnny Tang. Open the door!"

Now she really wondered if she was dreaming. Johnny had never been to her apartment, or to her business office, which was just down the hall. In fact, she rarely saw him at all unless she was visiting her mother in Kirkland.

"Lianne! "

"Just a minute--I′m coming!" she called.

Grateful that there were no neighbors to complain about all the yelling on a Saturday morning, Lianne kicked off the duvet, grabbed the red silk robe her mother had given her last Christmas, and hurried to the door. Two locks and a dead bolt later, she yanked the door open.

"What′s wrong?" Lianne demanded. "Is it Mother?"

"Anna is fine. She wants to see you before the auction."

Mentally Lianne rearranged her crammed schedule. If she did her own nails, she could manage a visit. Barely. "I′ll swing by after I set up the Jade Trader exhibit."

Johnny nodded, but he didn′t look like a man who had gotten what he came for. He looked restless, irritable, caged. Anger bracketed his full mouth and tightened the skin across his wide cheekbones. Despite that, he was a handsome man. Two inches under six feet, lean, quick of hand and mind, and with a generous smile when he was in the mood to use it.

"Do you have any coffee?" he asked. "Or are you still stuck on Chinese caffeine?"

"I have coffee as well as tea."

"I′ll take mine black. Coffee, not tea."

Lianne stepped away from the door as Johnny walked in. She didn′t know exactly how old her unacknowledged father was---close to sixty, surely-but he looked barely forty. Through all the years of Lianne′s childhood, her mother′s lover had aged hardly at all. Some silver hair was now mixed in with the black, a few laugh and frown lines had appeared, there was a slight blurring in the line of the jaw; small things, really, when Lianne thought of all the changes she had been through from birth to almost thirty years of age.

And never once in all that time, through all her changes, had Johnny Tang acknowledged that Anna Blakely′s child was also his own.

Pushing the thought away, Lianne closed the door and shot the dead bolt home. What Johnny did or didn′t admit was no longer the most important thing in the world to her. Jade was. Tang jade. Her father′s father′s collection. Hundreds of pieces, thousands. All of them were precious, some were priceless, and each piece of jade gleamed with time and secrets and the luminous soul of art.

"Couldn′t resist playing with them, huh?" Johnny asked, gesturing with one hand.

There were jade sculptures sitting on the small kitchen table, more objects lay on the floor, and some of the smaller pieces perched on the tiny counter.

"Playing? If that′s what you call it," Lianne said. "They aren′t exactly dolls."

He gave a crack of laughter. "Father would faint if he heard you say dolls and jade in the same breath."

"Wen knows I respect jade."

"Wen is using your skill and not paying you enough."

Lianne gave her father a startled look. "He taught me everything I know."

"Wrong," Johnny said impatiently. "Until seven years ago, he didn′t know you were alive. Then you picked up some jade beads in a garage sale and he decided you had some kind of jade genius."

"Those beads were from the Western Zhou dynasty, three thousand years old, and were incised with dragonsa symbol of royalty. They were tied with a faded red silk cord that was older than the U.S. Constitution."

"If you had sold them and put the money in the stock market, you wouldn′t be living in this dump. But no, you gave them to my father for his birthday."

At first Lianne was too surprised to answer. It wasn′t like Johnny to talk about family. Certainly not with her. She looked at him out of the comer of her eye, measuring all the small signs that he was truly upset.

"I didn′t know you disapproved of what I did," she said quietly.

"Would it have mattered?"

"Of course. I don′t want to anger you or your family."

Lianne had never wanted that. She had turned herself inside out, learned Mandarin and Cantonese, worked seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, to prove to the family of Tang that she was worthy of them. She was still working on it, no matter how much she pretended to herself that she was simply trying to keep her own business healthy by stayingthe widespread, interna-ying close to her best clients tional family of Tang.

"You should have done as your mother wanted and become a teacher," Johnny said.

"You woke me up at six A.M. to tell me this?" Lianne asked finally.

"No."

When Johnny didn′t say anything more, she turned on the gas under the coffeepot and waitad for things to start perking.

Jade Island. Copyright © by Elizabeth Lowell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

The Donovan family saga continues in spectacular fashion with Jade Island. Clear your calendar, you will want time to savor every word.

Romantic Times

Jade Island is book two of Lowell's new Donovan series, focusing on jade's value to Chinese culture. Lianne Blakely is a jade expert and the illegitimate daughter of an influential Chinese family. Kyle Donovan, of Donovan International, owes the U.S. government a small favor. Lianne and Kyle are drawn together like moths to flames. Unfortunately, Laural Merlington lacks the vocal range required to create noticeably different voices for Lianne and Kyle. She attempts to compensate by using cadence to create marked speech patterns but is unable to effectively sustain this approach. As a result, the story requires very careful attention to keep track of the dialog. Despite the flaws, larger fiction collections should purchase as Lowell is on the best seller fast track. Smaller collections should purchase for demand.--Jodi L. Israel, Jamaica Plain, MA

Library Journal